Etiquette Excellence: Driving

This article was written for mass publication and was crafted in such a way that any newspaper can run the guide before any major holiday to remind the readership about safety.

With the upcoming holiday weekend, there will no doubt be thousands of motorists flooding our streets and highways in order to be home for such a joyous occasion. In fact, it's hard to talk about this particular without remembering this day and all of the celebrations it brings to us. The streets aglow with fireworks, kids running with valentines, and inside houses across the country, families share a turkey dinner while passing out fake dog doo. But before you honor our fallen soldier by dressing up as a whore-nurse, please keep the roads safe with some basic driving tips.

Traffic lights
The meaning of traffic lights have been embedded in our culture. From an early age, it is known that red means passion and aggressiveness and green means success and money. However, some states have adopted traffic lights with up to 17 different light colors in order to better help traffic flow. Blue means calmness and devotion, orange means vitality and alertness, and brown means the right turn lane is closed.

Lane merging
Whether on an expressway or sidestreet, lane merging always proves to be a balls-to-the-wall experience. In order to get into the correct lane, it is expected of you to turn on your turn signal and negotiate speed with the people in the desired lane. As someone in the desired lane, your job is to keep at perfect pace with the car in the lane over, even in the event of a full stop. While this might be a double-standard of understanding and assholery, you are really overlooking the worn down emotional state people drive with during this holiday weekend. They could be the nicest people ever off of the road, but you do not want to get between them and a night of BBQs and haunted houses.

Flashing your brights
Brights should only be flashed when you want to blind all traffic in front of you in a hope that they all fly off the road and burst into flames. If you think you are helping them with a small warning that their tail light is out, or that they forgot to turn their headlights on, or that there is a killer in the back seat, you are wrong.

4 way stops
Chances are if you just drive through them really fast, no one will hit you. I mean, they are going slow from all that stopping they had to do, and if they cannot react to you barreling down the road, then I guess they shouldn't be driving. Besides, for this holiday weekend, we all know that witnessing a man blow a 4-way stop means good luck, and that is the way its always been since the Dutch brought the day over to honor the Druid new year.

And as always, watch out for Trick and Treaters.

Safety First: Halloweening

Halloween is one of the only holidays still around where the public eye can personally witness how stupid their kids truly are. Recent research shows that, when a kid's stupidity is measured on a 1-10 scale on non-Halloween days, they usually rank in at cuntaroonie. Halloween activities make matters worse, where masks, candy and the macabre often act as multipliers towards the kids culminated retardocity. This is why kids everywhere have been debriefed safety tips over and over again, in hopes to get it into their very thick skulls. There is no need for the Survival Guide to Everyday Life to repeat such a useless venture, so instead, we cut out the middle man and offer advice to the reason your kids need to learn to look both ways: The drunk driver.

Don't hit shiny things - Parents already take artistic liberties with their kid's costumes. Pretty princesses have bike-reflectors sewn into their dresses, and ninjas become covered with neon glow sticks as a last ditch effort to make sure their kids do not get hit. But Goddammit, do they have to be that bright? I mean, I like this street because it's dark and shit, but it's Halloween, there's stupid shiny shit everywhere. It use to be just in yards, but its in the street now? They could be shinier, and these cans are shiny, so you should just chuck this at them or something. It'll help but... fuck, man.

Start early - Like a normal Wednesday, make sure you start drinking pre-lunch. The trick here is to stop drinking and forget about any sort of family issues by 3pm and be somewhat capable of driving by when you leave at 6. But it is hard to forget why she left you. I mean, fuck man, you're just doing what you can do, and it's not like the chem mines were your idea. No fucking way they weren't. Someday, you'll show them, you'll show all of them about that shit and stuff.

Remember: this is the only day that you will not be dubbed a local hero for running over the Wolfman.

Honk/yell often - Kids are loud. Too loud. You can hardly hear yourself think over all of their laughing and screaming. I mean, some people really don't need this yelling shit right now. However, when you yourself yell, it is a calming experience that can help clear your mind of some of it's cobwebs and offer some clarity in your life. Also, by uncontrollably honking your horn and yelling obscenities to the 7-year-old passerbys, they know your presence, and you can concentrate on just how much you hate yourself and your stupid car and this stupid life.

Get home - You are your safest to yourself and everyone when you are at home, so it doesn't take a rocket psychologist to realize that the faster you drive home, the safer everyone around you will be. Seriously, why the crap is everyone blurry this year? Last year was Pokemon, this year is fucking blurry things. Kids are dumb. If you had a kid, he wouldn't be dumb. He'd be just like you. Fucking awesome. You'd party together and do it with bitches all the time. Shit.