Spinning Yarns

To Whom it May (or May Not, But Probably Should) Concern:

As a recent reimmigrant to the People’s Republic of Massachusetts,* I have observed a few minor foibles surrounding the behaviour of her denizens with respect to the operation of motor vehicles, the rectification of which could lead to an overall improvement in the quality of life throughout said Commonwealth. In addition, I suspect that broader awareness of these idiosyncratic behaviours could lead to lower insurance premiums, as well as reducing the average blood pressure among her citizens. Therefore, I do enumerate these foibles as follows:

1. As schoolchildren, we learned that “nature abhors a vacuum,” a principle that effectively summarizes the general diffusive behaviour of a fluid medium across a gradient. However, this principle is not so apt a model for driving in traffic, where it were probably safer that we allow some space between the front bumper of one vehicle and the rear end of the next. A sheet of onion-skin paper ought to be able to pass unobstructed between each pair of adjacent vehicles. Rigorous scientific studies have conclusively shown that permitting another car to enter traffic in front of you neither disturbs the essential laws of nature, nor adds more than a few seconds to your travelling time. Indeed, evidence strongly suggests that allowing more space between vehicles in traffic will probably reduce the average duration of your commute.
2. When the conductor gives the downbeat with his baton, a good orchestra will begin to play all at once, simultaneously. Imagine, for a moment, the chaos that would ensue if each player waited for her section neighbor to begin, before drawing a breath to set her instrument in motion! By the time the violins were halfway down the first page, the brass section would just be lurching through the first measure, and the percussion section would still be hunting up their mallets. By Intermission time, the stage would be so bunged up with the discordant sounding of horns that the audience might leave in disgust. Space your seats so that every musician can clearly see the conductor, and let everyone move together, that the music should proceed smoothly and in harmony — a principle that applies even if the conductor is a traffic light, and the music made of engines.
3. There are times in life when it is necessary for us to make important decisions and stick to them. For example, should you go out to a restaurant, or eat at home? Should you buy a new iPod, or add that cash to your IRA? You cannot have it both ways. Similarly, when one is riding a bicycle, one must choose whether to behave like a pedestrian, or like an automobile. Fortunately, the State has simplified this choice for us, by mandating that bicycles are subject to the same rules and regulations as motor vehicles. However, there are still some bicyclists who seem to be confused on this point, and consequently alternate between obeying and flouting the signs and signals for motor traffic, riding willy-nilly through crosswalks, traffic lights, and other pedestrian spaces, or wrong-way down a lane full of cars. It is an uncontested fact that far more disastrous encounters occur between bicycles and cars that are facing each other than between those that face in the same direction.
4. Though it would be truly unfortunate if your neighbor’s back yard turned out to be a little too small for the enormous party he planned to hold there, I think we can agree that he does not automatically gain the right to climb over the fence and arrogate your lawn furniture unto his own purposes, without at least the courtesy of asking your permission. And so too if it should happen that your lane of the street becomes blocked with some obstruction or other (say, a garbage truck) while you are driving in it, neither should you force your way into the opposing lane, without that you should at least wait for an empty space therein.
5. They say Man’s reach should always exceed his grasp; however, it is also important to know just how long our arms and legs are, so that we can avoid treading on toes or elbowing each other in the elevator. When operating a motor vehicle, we should also learn how to tell where our bumpers are, and how to negotiate narrow spaces without wobbling back and forth like a child’s bumbling top. This is particularly true for those bumblers who happen to be driving large passenger vehicles such as pickup trucks, Blazers, and Suburbans, and will cheerfully obstruct three lanes of traffic for five minutes while incompetently backing and filling their way into a parallel parking space big enough to park a school bus.
6. To err is human, but to really screw things up (in traffic) requires your fellow drivers to be as unforgiving as possible. To achieve maximum chaos, I recommend that you change lanes frequently and without warning, avoid any use of your turn signals, never permit anyone to merge into your lane, and as soon as you see somebody make a mistake, be sure to collaborate with other drivers to make their mistake completely irreversible. If somebody slows down to read a street sign, drive up close enough to give them the finger, and honk your horn at them. If you see someone in reverse gear, preparing to parallel park, make sure you pass by him as closely as possible so as to prevent him from moving. If somebody signals to re-enter the flow of traffic, choke up tight against the car in front of you, to make sure they can’t possibly get in, and avoid their eye like the abject coward you are. Weave back and forth across designated bicycle lanes as if they were your own personal passing lane, and for god’s sake, don’t you dare let a pedestrian through a crosswalk.
7. Through conditioning, it is possible to train a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell. A similar process seems to have led to the Commonwealth driver’s use of the brake pedal whenever a law-enforcement officer hoves into view — whether or not there is any rational reason to do so. Now a pessimist might well assume that the typical driver is so willfully malicious in his habits that he fears the officer will catch him doing something wrong. I, however, take the more optimistic view that such drivers are simply too ignorant of the rules to be sure of their sins, and so err on the side of caution. It couldn’t hurt to slow down a bit around construction sites, though, even if the posted speed limit technically permits you to squeal the tires while slaloming ’round the marking cones.
8. Humans are said to be a cooperative species, yet when enclosed within the frame of an automobile, it seems that aspect of our nature is suppressed. Behaviour that would earn a stern reprimand or a trip to the Principal’s office among schoolchildren is the common stuff of commuting — crowding and tussling in the entryways, bumping and shoving and shouting at every minor grievance. Drivers who pull over to make way for an ambulance will soon find themselves pinned to the roadside by the cars behind them, operated by pushy and ill-mannered cretins who would kick their own grandmothers in the head to get to work thirty seconds earlier. After suffering the mortal indignity of having to wait through a green signal because the intersection was clogged with crosswise traffic, these moronic specimens will proceed to clog the intersection in the other direction, just to prove their point — which is apparently something like “two wrongs do make a right.”

It is my sincere hope that increased awareness of these peculiarities of Commonwealth driving may someday help us to improve the quality of life for those who drive, ride, and walk along the roads and streets we all share. But I’ll be frank with you in saying that I am not holding my breath.

* In the interest of full disclosure, I must duly confess that I was originally born in Massachusetts, although in my own defense, I got out as quickly as possible, and I was only there because I had to be with my mother on that particular day.

Filed by Michael at 01:04 under Diatribe, Open Letter, Social
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In the past three days, I have overcome several important bureaucratic impediments to peaceful living in the Massachuhusian Realm: Insurance, automobile registration, and the driver’s license. Having heard some horror stories about long lines, incompetent clerks, and minefields of misinformation at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, I was prepared for the worst, but while the clerks were indeed surly, they got their jobs done aptly enough. Furthermore, the RMV has a fairly well-designed bakery-style queueing system, so things moved along without too much unnecessary pushing and shoving — a reception clerk assigns you a queue number based on the nature of your request, and there are plenty of benches to sit on and read while you wait.

Now, registering a motor vehicle in Massachusetts is a somewhat delicate dance, requiring a number of steps to come together in a certain order, lest untold disaster should befall you. Before you can register your vehicle in Massachusetts, you must first prove to the State’s satisfaction that you have the legally mandated insurance coverage. However, you cannot obtain insurance coverage unless your vehicle is registered with the State. A quandary, it seems! However, like any Chinese puzzle-box, there is one way past the block: You fill out an application to register your car with the state, and you take it to the insurance company. They write you a policy, contingent upon the vehicle’s registration, and stamp the form. You then take the form back to the RMV, fork over your title and previous registration, and pay a couple of hefty fees. If you do this correctly, and Fortune smiles upon your endeavours, you can probably do all of this in one afternoon.* You then have seven days to get the vehicle inspected. The fallback is that, if you do not complete the registration process within ten days of getting the insurance form stamped, they cancel your policy (though I’d bet they’d bill you anyway).

* It took me two trips, totalling somewhere around four hours including travel time.

So, before you can do anything else, you must first find an insurance company. Pricing out insurance is ordinarily a somewhat harrowing business, between figuring out what kind of coverage you need, how much you should get, weighing deductibles against premium rates, and then of course repeating the whole process for several different insurance companies to find the best rates. One (seemingly) positive aspect of Massachusetts is that automobile insurance rates and requirements are fixed by legislative fiat. I say “seemingly,” because while a fixed rate means you don’t have to bother comparison-shopping for prices, it also means it can be difficult to find an insurer who is willing to write you a policy at all. Several of the better insurance companies won’t sell insurance in the state, and some of the ones who do won’t provide automobile insurance. The premiums are above the national average, and so is the rate of claims fraud in the state. Welcome to the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.

Fortunately, obtaining a driver’s license is orthogonal to the ouroboros of registration-cum-insurance. For this, you need to prove four things: Your date of birth, your Social Security number, your signature,** and your residency in the state. The RMV web site gives a long list of documents, possession of which is considered adequate proof of various items on this list. However, what they do not tell you is that any given document may only be used to “prove” one of these. So, for example, if you provide a passport, it contains your date of birth, your Social Security number, and your signature — but you can only use it to “prove” one of them (I chose “SSN”). A lease contains your signature and is proof of residency, but you can only use it for one of those (I chose “signature”). An out-of-state driver’s license has a signature and a birthdate (and sometimes an SSN), but you can only use it for one of those (I chose “birthdate”). It’s an asinine system. Fortunately, I had just picked up the mail on my way to the RMV, so I happened to have a bank statement in my saddlebag along with the rest, and I was able to use that to establish residency. The clerk looked somewhat disappointed that she couldn’t make me go away and spend three more days doing unpleasant paperwork, but I passed the legal tests.

I was even fortunate enough to get an appointment to have the car inspected (along with some other work it needs) before the weekend. All in all, despite many bureaucratic efforts to the contrary, I’d say I made out all right this afternoon. But sometimes I really do miss good old New Hampshire. They’re so paranoid here.

** I don’t really understand what they mean by “proof of signature.” It’s not as if I have ever had to submit my signature as a matter of public record, so there is no way to prove that any old squiggle I happen to write down isn’t “my signature.” But, you know how bureaucrats are — if the computer says, “He must provide it,” then, by god, you must provide it.

Filed by Michael at 16:17 under Personal
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Sara and I were delighted to discover a new web site called Bookmooch, the purpose of which is to provide a forum in which people can trade used books online. Everybody makes up an “inventory” of books they want to give away, and a “wishlist” of books they want to acquire. When a book on your wishlist turns up in somebody’s inventory, the system sends you an e-mail to let you know. Then, if you choose, you can “mooch” the book — basically, this marks the book as unavailable and sends a request to its owner, asking her to send you the book in question. Assuming she agrees, she mails you the book, and once it arrives, you tell the system you received it; if not, she can reject your request, and the book becomes available for mooching again.

To keep things lively, the site uses a point-based economy. For each book you add to your inventory, you get one-tenth of a point credited to your account. For each book you send to somebody else, you get one point. Mooching a book, on the other hand, costs you one point (two, if the sender is in another country). As incentive to promote interaction, if you give somebody a book that’s on their wishlist, you get two points.

There is no charge for using the site, nor for sending and receiving books, apart from the cost of postage to ship them. The sender is responsible for the postage, which I think is the right orientation, and it should average out in trades, assuming you get back as many books as you send out, more or less. Bookmooch requires you to keep a sent-to-received ratio of at least 1:5, so everybody has to contribute to the trade balance.

This site has been an excellent find for us. There is a lot of overlap in our book collections, so now that we live together, we have duplicate copies of a number of books. Oh, we could try to sell them to a used book store, or donate them to a library, but you don’t get much cash or credit from used bookstores (even if the books are in really good condition), and many libraries are not prepared to accept casual one-off book donations. With Bookmooch, we can clean our our duplicates and get back some new books (at least, new to us) for a very modest cost.

Go sign up for an account!

Filed by Michael at 14:22 under Personal
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