A Lonely Commuter's Random Thoughts

Disclaimer: If you're looking for a blog that has substance, you are frequenting the wrong site. 99% of my blogs will be mindless drivel. A majority of the time you'll finish reading what I wrote and think: well, there's time I'll never get back!

2nd Disclaimer: this is one of those blogs.

3rd Disclaimer: If I have many more commutes like the ones I had yesterday and today, the blogs are only going to get worse. There's nothing worse than sitting in unmoving traffic, because most of the time there's absolutely no good reason for it being that slow, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except grin and bear it. Or attack your steering wheel.

I saw the awesomist license plate border on my way home today (yes, I said "awesomist" and I'm proud of it. This ain't no legal brief, after all!). It had a scrolling marquee on it whenever the break lights came on. Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to rear-end the car in order to get close enough to read what it said because another car merged in front of me. Drat those merge lanes! Anyway, I'm sure that whatever it said was quirky, because really, how can a scrolling license-plate border not be quirky?

I also got stuck behind two slow-moving snow plows who were busily plowing the clean, dry highway. Methinks the snow plow drivers doth be a bit confused. They were supposed to plow the highways during rush hour yesterday, when there was snow on them! I wonder if I should call up the DOT to let them know...

Anyway, all the time I spend on the road gives me plenty of opportunity to mull over completely pointless things (as if you haven't already figured it out!). This morning’s mulling? Names of taxi companies. What got me thinking about that particular topic was that not too far into my drive today I passed a “Green and White” taxi cab. That got me thinking about a recent case we read in our Civil Procedure class: Black and White Taxi v. Brown and Yellow Taxi. Is there a taxi cab rule out there somewhere that dictates that all taxi companies must be named after colors? Because, on thinking further, I could not think of one taxi cab company that was not named after a color. When I used to work downtown Minneapolis I’d always walk by the Red and White Taxis parked along 7th Street, and there’s also the afore-mentioned Green and White Taxi, not to mention the Blue and White taxis seen as the airport (I wonder if Black and White Taxi only sued Brown and Yellow Taxi for exclusivity purposes to cover up the fact that what it was really upset about was that Brown and Yellow Taxi had the nerve not to make one of its colors White). And of course everybody thinks of Yellow Cab when a taxi is mentioned. Come to think of it, Yellow Cab is downright revolutionary in its name, because it chose to use just one color instead of two. After that thought, however, I racked my brain to think of any taxi company that wasn’t named after a color, and one finally popped into my head: Checkered Cab. Aha! That, however, also makes one think of colors. While a specific color isn’t mentioned in the name, the word “checkered” usually makes one think of a color pattern. So, really, Checkered Cab is also a color-inspired name of a taxi company. (Just a brief aside about the Checkered Cab: Not long after I remembered about the Checkered Cab company, lo and behold I passed a Checkered Cab on the highway! In case you were wondering, their cabs are a cream color with a black and cream checkered stripe around the window-line).

So I have homework for all you folks out there who stumbled across my blog today: is there any cab company out there not named after a color or colors? (By the way, “Gypsy Cab” does not count, because that’s not a name of a company, per se, as much as just the general name of an unregistered cab.) Is there a law somewhere that forces taxi companies to use colors in their names, or are all taxi-cab owners just unoriginal? Or, here's another thought: maybe all the cabs are owned by the same company who simply paints the new cars the latest "discount" color, thus the different color names. Hmm, there's a thought to consider.

So there you have it, an example of the kinds of thoughts that run through my head while driving in the morning. I know you were all looking forward to a list of my favorite words, as promised yesterday, but my brain just wouldn’t go there today since I was so preoccupied with the names of taxis (but I will throw another cool word out there for you: conumdrum!). Believe it or not, I spent a considerable amount of my hour-long commute on that problem this morning. Here, therefore, is proof that commuting really is a waste of time, because even though you do have all that time for productive thought and ponderings, it is actually filled out with mindless drivel. But wait, would that mindless drivel happen regardless of a commute, and if somebody did not have a long commute would they waste a part of their work-day considering such things? In that case, maybe commuting IS efficient! Maybe I’ll ponder that on my way to work tomorrow…