I hate posting at night

Driving school online turns out to be a tremendous beating. I am currently listening to a flash presentation on the difference between the "you are approaching a crosswalk" sign and the "you're at a crosswalk, fool!" sign. Did you know that Texas law gives the right of way to pedestrians? I've been pancaking them like a pre-NFL Tony Mandarich all this time. Boy, do I feel like a fool.

It goes on and on with these driving points, some of them deadly obvious and some of them dirty police lies. The worst part is it has to be a six-hour course, so they make you take a certain amount of time on each section before you can move on to the next one. This is to punish me for making that rolling stop. Clearly, I need all this information so I don't make rolling stops anymore. When driving today, I found myself judging other drivers for their "dangerous" behavior. This is just like the Assemblies of God all over again. I'm only sorta kidding, btw.

My favorite paragraph so far:

Common Mistakes When Entering from the Acceleration Lane Do not suddenly slow down or stop when you enter the acceleration lane. You may cause a rear-end collision. Do not merge too slowly. Travel at the same speed as other vehicles in the traffic flow.

You hear that, Dallas? I am vidicated by my driving school! Stop merging at 40mph, people. I'm judging you.

My wife and I watched two things tonight: Zero Day and the latest episode of The Office.

This episode of The Office was the best yet. It's still not good enough, but this time they kinda captured the tension of the original show, although they're doing things with the Jim/Pam relationship I'm just not prepared for. In fact, I'll state right now that the Jim/Pam/Roy bizarre love triangle is the worst part of the show. And this after going through the Tim/Dawn fun, which was often the best part of the original Office.

I'm also ready to declare Michael Scott to be No David Brent. Where Brent was a genius comic creation, Scott is just a jerk with some mannerisms. The guy has got some good things down, like the facial expressions and the inability to deal with conflict. But Scott's simply not British enough. There, I said it. Something is lost in the "translation" across the ocean. Now, if they would install Ricky Gervais into that boss' position, British as all get-out, and put these American workers under him, that could have been really funny. But we'll never get to see that, because I'm a parts coordinator and not a TV producer.

As my wife has said, Dwight is good precisely because he's not trying to be Gareth. He's fun to make fun of, and he bought a purse this week to impress a girl. The episodes are getting better, which I'm sure means the show is toast.

Zero Day will have to be compared and contrasted with the Gus Van Sant film Elephant (because the two are attacking the same exact issue in the exact same way, making the same exact points and using the same casting and acting techniques), but I don't have time to do that properly now. I may not ever, at this rate. The main bit in Elephant is the natural acting and the hypnotic "cameras following the person walking for 5 minutes even though this isn't Gerry" shots interspersed throughout the movie. The main bit in Zero Day is the one I like to call the "Blair Witch framing device", where the moive purports to be made up of edited video footage shot by the characters themselves. Both movies follow the stories of Columbine-style pairs of teen school shooters, and end in bloodbath/suicides. Both movies make the point that no one single thing drove the kids to murder, but they make the point in quite different ways. Now that I think about it, I must do that compare/contrast after all. Seeing as how 99% of Americans have seen neither movie, it should be a ratings classic.