You’d best hope I don’t put bars on your window, Ronald Weasley!

Hello kittens, I am trés sorry that I’ve been missing in action for the last week, but I just haven’t felt like being coherent. I’m not going to get into it, there’s just a lot of stuff going on in my life that I’m trying to deal with currently, and some enduring problems that just won’t just bloody go away. Whatevs. Onto the theme of this week!

So as anyone in the waking world should know, the final Harry Potter film is being released this Friday (FINALLY!) and I am kind of twitchy with excitement! I already did a rant about Umbridge earlier, so I’m not really going to write a rant about Harry Potter itself. Instead I’m going to tie one of my favourite parts of the wizarding world to something that’s been ticking me off in real life.

One of my favourite scenes from the series is when Harry gets rescued on his birthday by the Weasley brothers via their father’s illegal flying car. It’s such a funny scene (what with Uncle Vernon falling out of the window), and I really like the idea of a flying car.

On the other hand I’m really not a big fan of people who can’t seem to drive properly. I don’t consider myself an aggressive driver, but since coming home for the summer and driving around quite a bit (to work and to the mall haha) I’ve found myself experiencing some pretty major road rage. People can’t seem to follow the basic rules of the road. It’s really not that difficult to read what the speed limits are (there’s signs duh) and to keep up with traffic, yet not break any speed limits. I usually drive a little bit over the speed limit, but I’ve noticed that there are constantly people speeding past me in a huge hurry to get somewhere. Seriously, there’s no need to be excessive. My kid sister learned this lesson the hard way recently and had her car impounded for a week for her poor behavior. I did nothing but laugh when I heard this. I’ve always known she is a reckless driver, and now the whole world has proof! HA!

My other pet peeve is about basic road etiquette. When you’re making a turn, use your signals. How else is everyone else supposed to know where you’re going, and that’s the easiest way to communicate with other drivers. When you’re in a merge lane, MERGE DAMNIT. It’s not called a merge lane for nothing, and it’s probably a good idea to at least attempt to get into the other lane before you run out of road. The main lane of traffic does NOT have to yield to the merge lane, so don’t expect them to just get out of your way at the end of the merge lane. That’s not how it works. If you want to merge, then put on your blinker, which in driver-speak means “I would like into your lane, please excuse me,” and usually someone will let you in. If you wait til the end, it’s rude to just expect to be allowed into the other lane and is the driving equivalent of budging in line at the grocery store: ie people aren’t going to like it.

Ugh. People need to learn to drive properly. It’s not that difficult! I wish there was a way to report bad driver behavior where it would actually have consequences!