It's just none of your business.

It’s no secret that Rhode Island’s roads hate your car – specifically, your shocks, tires, and axles.  But did you know that those roads hate you – specifically, your sanity, happiness, and will to live – too? It’s true! Potholes are abundant and elephant-sized, especially now, when the freeze/thaw cycle is really hitting its stride, but add to that the absence of street signs or any of the usual tools people use to find their way from point A to point B, and you have a level of craziness unique to the Ocean State.

It’s not unusual to complain about the roads where you live. Everyone tends to think that where they live has the nuttiest drivers, the crappiest roads, etc. But I have lived and driven in Chicago, New York, Washington, DC, Jersey City, and Los Angeles, and in those cities I witnessed some drivers’ habits and road conditions that could charitably be described as cuckoo bananas. And yet they do not compare to driving in Rhode Island. Not even a little.

Forget the fact that drivers in this tiny state are the most aggressive I’ve ever seen, Manhattan cabbies included. The thing that makes Rhode Island really stand out is that the details of road travel, the kind you normally take for granted, are none of your business. Street signs? Forget it. If you don’t already know the name of the street you’re on, you shouldn’t be there. Protected left turn? No, there’s no green arrow light; if you don’t already know it’s a protected left, you will when every car behind you starts laying on their horns, because you should have known it already. Stop sign? It may not be real, so you may not have to pay attention to it. Other traffic signs, like “No Parking” or “No Turn on Red?” If they haven’t been there your whole life, they don’t count.

I work in an area downtown called the Jewelry District, because once upon a time jewelry manufacturing was the dominant business here. I believe that when our forefathers planned the roads in the Jewelry District, they took a handful of wet noodles, dropped them on a piece of paper, and drew up the plans according to how the noodles fell. In the Jewelry District, not only is the existence of street signs sporadic, but so too is the appearance of numbers on buildings. I was late for the interview for my current job because the building’s address isn’t marked anywhere. I even gave myself an extra half hour to get there because I had tried to find another address in the area a few days earlier, and after driving around for an hour I gave up and went home, weeping. Not a day goes by that I don’t see someone driving around the Jewelry District, slow and confused, looking for an address that is none of their business.

You have to rely heavily on landmarks to give someone directions. Much of the time, addresses are meaningless, even outside of the Jewelry District. The people of Rhode Island are generally here for much longer than any business, so directions often include things that do not exist anymore. You or I might tell someone, “Take 95 to exit 14, go straight at the end of the ramp, take your third right onto Jefferson, and then the house is #18, a blue ranch.” A true Rhode Islander would say, “Take 95 to the exit before the mall, and then just go and go, and then when you get to where the Apex used to be, start looking for a Dunkin’ Donuts on the right, not the left, and after you go by that and the gas station, turn right where the uniform store was. It’s a blue house, kind of like the one your uncle Jimmy lived in when he lived in Cranston. Remember? The kind with the door in the middle? Like that, but blue.”

Thank god for GPS.

Delightful.

What is it with high-ranking public officials acting like gigantic babies in this state?

From today's ProJo:

Police Chief Dean M. Esserman, angry that a sergeant had a coughing fit while he was addressing a group of officers, threatened to throw a cup of coffee in the sergeant’s face, according to a city councilman, a former councilman and the president of the police labor union.

That remark, which officials said was taken as a genuine threat by the sergeant, David W. Marchant, became the basis for Esserman’s one-day suspension from duty without pay on Monday.

Taft A. Manzotti, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 3, reported Monday that witnesses quoted the chief as having said, “I’m about ready to throw this (expletive deleted) coffee in your face.” Manzotti said Marchant has been battling bronchitis and could not suppress the coughs.

Here's the best part:

Esserman was expounding on how the Providence police would be refashioned as “a teaching department” for the law-enforcement community and how the sergeants would be involved. But he was interrupted at least twice by the coughing and then exploded, Manzotti said.

The first lesson of the new teaching department? Take a (expletive deleted) Ricola or take it outside, Sgt. Sicky McCoughsalot. This is more of a big deal than you might think it should be, apparently because Chief Esserman has a history of being chronically "high-handed and rude." Now, I fully support my local police and all they do to keep us safe, but if the law enforcement community as a whole - in Rhode Island - thinks you're high-handed and rude, you have serious personality issues.

Win=Win.

I don’t intend to get political often, because I think being irritated at Rhode Island crosses all sociopolitical boundaries. But sometimes I can and will get riled up about something in the political realm. This is one of those times, even though I realize I'm a little late to the party on this one.

I have a full-time job and a toddler, so these days I’m not watching all that much TV. When I do, it’s on my DVR (bless that invention), on my time, and without commercials. However, I did manage to see a real-time commercial recently while I waited for the news to tell me if my child’s daycare was going to be closed the next day due to the awful, awful weather that won’t go away.  It was that kind of snide, bitchy commercial one usually sees during election cycles, the kind that chastises a politician for supporting a certain thing and urges “you” to contact said politician to tell him he’s wrong. In this case, the subject gay marriage. Now, if you don’t live in Rhode Island, and maybe even if you do, you probably don’t know that we elected Lincoln Chafee governor last fall. You might not also know that he was a US Senator from the state for a while, and was the only Republican in that body to speak out in favor of marriage equality for gays and lesbians. He was really a Republican in name only, and when he ran for governor, he did so as an independent against a Democrat and someone from his old party. The Democrat maturely, and somewhat famously, told President Obama to “shove” his endorsement after he did not offer one (how does one shove something that isn't given in the first place?), thereby shooting himself in the foot and handing the race to Chafee, who won with 36 percent of the vote. One of the first issues on his agenda is to introduce legislation that would make gay marriage legal in the Ocean State. And to that I say: right on.

Now lots of people, including  a whole lot of ProJo commenters and the out-of-state group who spent $100K to fund this particular commercial, seem to believe that the fact that Chafee won the election with less than a majority of the votes somehow dilutes his power as governor. (The group is the National Organization for Marriage, and you can google it if you want to, but I’m not linking to that nonsense.) “Chafee [got] just 36 percent of the vote,” the announcer sneers in the ad. “That’s less than the Cool Moose Party! Now Chafee claims a mandate to push gay marriage with no vote of the people?!”

Okay. First of all, the candidate from the Cool Moose Party did not run for governor. He ran for lieutenant governor in a field with only one other candidate. It is a moot and dumb point. And B, who cares? He won. Deal with it. Here in Lil’ Rhody the winner is decided by a plurality, not a majority. (And yes, there are forces at work now to change that, but whatever. ) The last governor barely squeezed into his second term with 51 percent of the vote, and no one stepped up to say that that chucklehead was just over halfway in charge, although that would have been lovely.

I think the issue is that NOM knows that this will pass in the Rhode Island legislature. But maybe, just maybe, if it’s put to the people, they and likeminded malcontents can throw a lot of money and advertising to push the vote in their direction. And you know what, NOM? Bring it. Like it or not, and regardless of how it comes to pass, it will pass. Rhode Island will join much of the rest of the civilized world in recognizing the right of two people to commit to each other and enjoy all the fun-filled privileges of marriage, like claiming your dead spouse's body! Woo! 

Even if those people happen to look the same from the waist down. 

Journalism!

The whole state - excuse me, the whole region - may be encased in ice, but Rhode Island's titans of worthwhile journalism forge on. Note today's article in the ProJo about some lady who got pulled over for suspected DUI. We may be a small state, but are DUIs rare enough to warrant statewide coverage? No, they are not. What makes this story of utmost importance to everyone is that the woman in question was a jerk to a police officer:

Patrol Officer Micah W. Chapman arrived, and [Ms.] Lane agreed to a field-sobriety test. She refused to change out of her boots with 3-inch heels into a pair of shoes or to perform the test in her socks, [Officer Gregory T.] Miga said. She swayed and lost her balance and refused to provide a preliminary breath sample, he said.

Told that she was being arrested on suspicion of DUI and placed in handcuffs in the back of the cruiser, “Lane became increasingly belligerent and stated, ‘I’m a nurse and I can’t wait to see you on the operating table,’ ” Miga wrote, saying she swore at both officers “and requested that we ‘go arrest a real criminal.’ ”

So. This woman was an ass. She not only refused to take off her non-sensible shoes to take a sobriety test, but she issued a not-very-veiled threat to kill the arresting officers on the operating table should they require surgery at her hospital. Who knew nurses liked to throw their weight around like that? Anyway, she definitely behaved poorly. But ProJo coverage? Clearly someone wanted to make sure that this person was as embarrassed as possible by her behavior, and the paper was happy to oblige. And why? For the commenters, of course! Oh, ProJo commenters. Is there nothing you don't have an opinion about? Do you never say to yourself, "I feel a certain way about something, but the rest of the world doesn't need to know what it is, just this once?" What sets the ProJo apart from many other newspapers (aside from its skeleton staff, lack of copy editors, and an over-reliance on wire services for content) is its willingness to let the public comment. On everything.

You say the height of a planned wind turbine in North Kingstown has been lowered? Someone's got a comment about it. There's lots of snow on the ground? Comments. Some Cranston doctor has revolutionized the way medical records are kept? You bet that has comments. And you can bet that those comments are often nasty, off-topic, and poorly spelled. It's not that I'm against comments -- they're a valuable communication tool and they have their place. But everywhere? For everything? It follows that when half of the copy on your website is commenter-sourced, eventually the articles will cater to the commenters, and then you get the journalistic equivalent of a bucket of chum in the form of a nurse who was a jackass to a cop. A nurse who appears to have lost her job, according to the article:

Lane responded by Facebook, saying: “I no longer work at Kent [Hospital], and I have no comment on the charges, nor does my lawyer. Thank you for the opportunity.”

Oh, ProJo. Nevermind that you don't say who or what she responded to, but Facebook? Really? That's your source? Well done.