Why We Love Road Works

I want to talk about Road Works (for God’s sake, take a Vicodin! I said ‘talk about it’! There’s no need to take your road-rage out on me!).

So here’s the thing… Is there a more obvious oxymoron than the term ‘Road Works’? Where in the universe can one find an actual activity that could be described as ‘Road Works’? At what point along any roadside construction site does road ‘work’ actually occur?

Let’s face it; Road Works have never achieved anything remotely useful. In particular, they've never actually resolved any genuine traffic congestion problems. They simply exist to coerce innocent motorists into a ritualistic sideshow of dust-emblazoned inertia, facilitating Vesuvius sized aneurysms and allowing kids in back seats to gnaw at the synapses in their parents' brains (with Banshee cries of "are we there yet?" and "can I go to the toilet?") making any two hour journey turn into a three and a half hour mission of torture and frustration.

And who is the evil genius that masterminds this sinister plot to ‘drive’ us all to the verge of vehicular insanity?

Well sadly there is no genius behind it all – just four of the lowest evolutionary members of our human species: the tobacco chewers. Yes, there they stand in their dumbass orange glow vests, leaning on their shovels and spinning their little ‘stop/go’ signs to the primitive rhythmic howlings of George Thorogood. This is whose power we have allowed ourselves to succumb to: hump-backed, banjo playing hairy-backs who think only of meat pies, four o’clock beers and getting home early enough to snog the woman who, seven years ago, was silly enough to wear a ‘Metallica’ t-shirt, get drunk, get a tattoo and leave her 16^th birthday party to take a ride in his unregistered utility. And now they’re breeding little George Thorogood ‘stop/go’ dancers everywhere (number six is on the way).

But again, I digress. These tobacco chewing Neanderthals may well be the architects of our frustration and doom – but the cause of this whole ‘Road Works’ debacle is our local city council or town shire. It is they who authorise our so-called Road Works projects, and they only do so to:

1. Justify any forthcoming increase in your annual rates bill, and
2. Piss you off.

So, are you pissed off yet? You should be. Think about it…

When do they actually ‘do’ Road Works? Well it’s often a seasonal activity – holiday season. I mean, have you noticed how many times they dig up major thoroughfares on December 29^th or on the Thursday before Easter? Like there’s nothing more fulfilling than heading off on your Summer vacation down a four-lane motorway in peak traffic to be directed into a red coned single lane by a ‘stop/go’ tobacco chewing Neanderthal leaning against a stationary bulldozer.

And when Road Works are being done outside the holiday period, they are mainly undertaken during week times and from the hours of 7am to 9am and 4pm to 6pm (these being the most publicly convenient times of the day). However, they do compensate for this by setting up a useful network of detours that criss-cross the city several times over, giving the motorist a new appreciation of the many sites, monuments, churches and attractions that the city has to offer. I mean, although I live on the east side and work in the central business district, it’s nice to know that elderly residents on the south side have ready access to a Bowling Green, a Community Centre and a mobile library service. Thank you City Road Workers for exposing me to my wider community.

So what is it about Road Works that really gets me dancing a jig across broken glass and razor blades? Well it is what happens when the Road Works are completed and they finally remove all the blockading chaos of machinery, cones and tobacco chewing Neanderthals from the site.

And what does happen next?

Nothing!

That’s right, God damned nothing!!! The road is just as bad as it always was. The geniuses who planned it all missed the congestion point by two kilometres. Now all that happens is that the traffic speeds twice as fast along the flash new piece of road to get to the jam quicker than it ever could before.

So take another Vicodin and get on your bike! There’s nothing you can do. It’s Darwinism in action, and the tobacco chewing Neanderthals will always win.

But there is a bright side – You’ll usually find George Thorogood CDs in the $6.99 bin at K-Mart these days. So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride…

... and get b-b-b-b-bad to the bone...

That’s what I think… and usually I’m right.