When it comes to parking straight and within the lines no one can be perfect all of the time. For those times when you're not perfect, back up and try again you lazy pieces of human garbage.

A Special Kind of Lazy

I turned to park in this spot at Costco today and what do I see? [See the above photo] At least some slightly less lazy people try and park their cart on the line, or push the front wheels over the curb, then at least a Smart car could fit. (Still unacceptable!) But this person felt that their discarded cart was so special, having carried the toilet paper that would soon wipe the @$$ of Number One, that it deserved its own full sized parking spot. Either that or after walking at least 3.7 miles through the aisles of Costco, they couldn’t muster the strength to walk an extra 20 feet to put the cart in the return area, or 'corral.' What kills me is that they didn't just leave it where it was when they were done unloading. They obviously took the time to place it neatly in the parking spot, perpendicular and central to the parking block, as if it were a car.


Rantiquette’s rule of parking lots the first: Once you’ve loaded your purchase(s) into your vehicle, always place your shopping cart in a designated shopping cart return area.


Although it’s not required to be a faithful disciple of Rantiquette, taking an extra cart with you to the return area is a bonus. Additionally, embarrassing the hell out of someone you catch attempting to get in their car without returning their cart will absolve you of any ‘Rantgressions’ you may have recently committed. (Camera phones can be a powerful tool if you're like me and would prefer not to confront them then and there, especially if they're bigger than you.)

Can't You See That My Escalade Has 20-Inch Rims?

So, I’m driving to work today, north on the I-5 to 405 interchange (the El Toro ‘Y’), and this low-rider, 20-inch rim Escalade driving douche decides to cut me off. I was in the far right lane ready to exit. He was in the lane to the left, maybe a few inches ahead of me. Then he starts to sort of inch over, getting close to the line but not going over, probably thinking it was a sufficient indication that he intended to move over. Well, I don’t see a turn signal and I don’t see any arm signals (you know, the ones they teach you in driving school that you’re supposed to use if your lights don’t work), so I maintain my speed. He stays there, hugging the line for a second or two. When he notices I’m not slowing down to let him over (there was a line of cars in front of me so he couldn’t just speed up) he just goes anyway and gives me the bird as I’m slamming on the brakes (he has to roll down his window to make his gesture, with the tinting I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise). So I’m looking for my horn (you can never find it when you’re angry), and just when a lay into it, a turkey vulture swoops in his open driver side window and lands on him, talons to chest. As the vulture plucks out his eyes the Escalade drifts out of control and crashes into the side rail. The car bucks up over the rail, and rolls end over end, coming to a stop, rubber side up, in a ditch. As it comes to a rest the vulture hops out of the vehicle, unscathed, with two dangling eyeballs hanging from its beak. Using its bloody talons the bird pulls a lighter from the now screaming driver’s breast pocket, strikes the flint, lights the eyeballs on fire and crams them back into the guy’s eye sockets. Then the vulture drops the still lit lighter onto a pool of leaked gas and flies away. Three seconds later the Escalade is engulfed (cars don’t actually explode when they catch on fire like they do in the movies). The driver miraculously manages to crawl out the window. Blinded, eyeballs on fire, he scurries around in circles screaming, “AAAHHHH!! THIS IS SO WHACK!!!!!!!” Amazingly his flat-billed trucker hat has stayed on his head in its slightly off center tilt. He’s wearing a Sacramento Kings “Bibby” jersey and as I drive on to my exit, I can just make out the “Limp Bizkit” tattoo on his shoulder before the skin melts off.

This brings us to Rantiquette’s rule of car travel the first: “ALWAYS use your turn signal.” Whether you’re changing lanes, turning from a dedicated turn lane, pulling into a parking spot, weaving in & out of traffic trying to outrun the feds, pulling a last second U-Turn (what median?) because you just saw Lindsay Lohan going the other way and you promised yourself years ago that if you ever had the chance you’d tell Lindsay that despite what everyone says you truly understand her and you know that if she got to know you, you think you could be BFFs, use your turn signal. Even if you are positive no one is looking, because you’re David Faustino and no one has been looking for decades, use your turn signal.

For you philosophizers, I realize that there here appears a logical conflict. If the foundation upon which all Rantiquette rests is, “Never do anything that is unpleasant to others,” how can one break a rule if there is no one around to experience the unpleasantness? My answer is this: if a douche bag is watching a movie in the woods and no one hears him talking to his ‘bros’ via cell phone, he is in fact NOT being rude. He is, however, still a douche bag.

The point is, one should use Rantiquette to cultivate good life-long habits, not to simply check items off a list. a.k.a. Try to make using your turn signal a habit, not something you have to think about.

Rantiquette's Rule of Air Travel the First

I tend to hate crowds, which means I tend to hate air travel. I think it’s the American life experience with the most people squeezed into the smallest amount of space, with smallest amount of comfort, and no compensating utility to make up for it. (Standing in front of the stage at a Jonas Brothers show might be equally, if not more uncomfortable and crowded if it weren’t for the measure after measure of pure rock genius emanating from their vocal and guitar chords.)

Naturally there are many factors of air travel that could be made far more tolerable with the observation of what should be obvious etiquette. So here it goes, Rantiquette’s rule of air travel the first: Do not stand up and congregate anywhere near the gate until your row is called. Your seat is reserved! Why the hell are you so eager to get to your airplane seat anyway, with the 17.5 inches of legroom, and the negative seven inches of shoulder room? (Why is Shaq flying coach anyway?) If anything you should wait until everyone else has boarded and they start calling you name on the loud speaker. The seats at the gate are infinitely more comfortable and once you’re on board you can’t go back to McDonald’s and get that $8 McFlurry out of which you talked yourself. (You're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition.)

Nevertheless, when the gate lady announces that it’s time to start pre-boarding, she might as well say, “Dudes, Megan Fox is on board itching to go a mile high, if you know what I mean, and she said anyone will do. Ladies, it has been officially revealed that the vampire Edward Cullen is actually real. Until now he’s been pretending to be the actor Robert Pattinson. He’s on board, (has no interest in that skank Megan Fox) and would like nothing more than to whisper sweet nothings into your ear for the duration of the flight.” So 200 red-faced morons, immediately run up to the gate to ask the gate lady if their row has been called yet. Apparently, in the language of morons, the words “Your row is not yet being boarded, please wait in the seating area until your row is called,” translates to “Please back up two steps, into the person behind you, so that just in case I go directly from talking to you over to the PA and announce that your row is now ready to board then you get to be first in line.”!

I realize that many of you may be extremely excited and eager to get in there as quickly as possible and show off the fact that you know how to buckle your seatbelt without having seen the corresponding demonstration. But please remember that they don’t do the spiel until after everyone is seated and the cabin door is closed. You’ve got plenty of time to show everyone your skillz.

Rantiquette

I suppose that's the thing about etiquette, nothing is written in stone and most of the topics Emily Post wrote about are difficult to translate into our culture. But she has at least one entry that is universal:

Regard For Others
Consideration for the rights and feelings of others is not merely a rule for behavior in public but the very foundation upon which social life is built.
Rule of etiquette the first—which hundreds of others merely paraphrase or explain or elaborate—is:
Never do anything that is unpleasant to others.