Neighborhood Botch
by Scott Hardie on March 10, 2025
I've heard that riding in the front seat of an Uber signals that you want to chat with the driver, and riding in the back seat means that you prefer silence. I always sit in the back.
But when I went to catch a ride from my house the other night, there was stuff in the van's back seat, so the front was the only option. As I squeezed in, the driver cheerfully asked, "Do you like the neighborhood?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess so," I said, still trying to get the seat belt on. The driver started rolling away.
As he drove, he kept muttering questions, increasingly quietly. Between his dwindling volume and Arabic accent, I couldn't really understand what he was asking, so I kept offering bland responses. "Uh huh." "Yeah." "Mmm."
After five minutes, there was at last a lull where he stopped muttering. To fill the silence, I elaborated: "This used to be a really quiet neighborhood. But since they connected the new bridge last year, traffic has gotten really bad here. There are just so many people now!"
At normal volume, the driver said, "Hey, I'm going to have to call you back. I have a passenger." And then he took the earbud out of his left ear.
We didn't talk for the rest of the drive.
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Survivor Guilty
As a longtime Survivor viewer, I've been bothered by its slow decline. Some of the show's problems are apparent on its surface, like Jeff Probst's appalling gender bias and the show's overemphasis on tacky "themes" for the season. But I got to thinking about what's wrong under the surface, on a conceptual level. Go »Tooth in Advertising
Every time I go to the local Carmike cinema and watch their pre-show reminders montage, I wind up thinking about dentists. First they show King Kong howling with those yellowish fangs – he needs a veterinary dentist. Then it's the pirates of the Caribbean; they have gold teeth so they need dentists too. Go »Ten Stress-Relieving Tips for Visiting Walt Disney World
I know a few people visiting the self-proclaimed Happiest Place on Earth for the first time in 2008, and I've been there a lot, so here's what I tell them. 1) Go during the off-season: Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, or between New Years and Valentines Day. The hotels are a fraction of their normal cost, the Florida weather is dry and cool, and best of all, park attendance is at a minimum. Go »2012
What a great year. Kelly and I got engaged. Kelly gained permanent employment and health benefits. Go »Can't Live With Her, Can't Live Without Her
This is the truncated version of a much longer and more ambitious post about my relationships and why I don't blog about them. Let's just leave the reason at "duh." Denise and I tried being friends again after breaking up, but it was based on each of us not saying what we really thought of the other, which is always unwise. Go »
