I understand that, in the greater scheme of things, road crews are a necessary evil (much in the way that raging forest fires are--they destroy everything beautiful and leave nothing but charred remains, forcing the environment to adapt and renew), but the scowling mountain orcs who raze the streets of my city on a daily basis could not possibly have any deeper motivations for doing so than the primal urge to assault and destroy that was instilled in them by the torturous agents of Sauron in the shadowy depths of Mordor.
Like a band of Uruk-Hai shock troopers, they leave a seemingly random trail of destruction in their wake that takes decades to fully recover from, but the trained eye knows that their plundering isn't as random as it seems; it is instinctually guided to cause as much damage to the infrastructure of cities as possible, forcing the helpless citizens of Wherever-ville to start their daily commute to work almost immediately after clock-out the night before, lest the roads prove so impassable as to make them late for work.
The destructive warpath of the road crew workers is more thoroughly devastating than the firebombings of WWII. They manage to hit not only every bridge, highway, and extension necessary to maintain a flow of traffic in and out of cities, but also every important street, road, or dirt trail through the woods in the outlying suburbia. Even people living in the quietest and most peaceful Midwestern villages frequently return home to find their cul-de-sac barricaded by orange cones and surly orcs holding 'SLOW' signs. And the destruction literally lasts for decades.
The orcs have been guarding the encampment on the plundered roadway leading into my subdivision for going-on ten years now, and I cannot, for the life of me, determine what work has been done on that corner since the initial assault. Every day, I drive my car through the ruined lawn of the unfortunate house, long vacant, that provoked the ire of these deliberately cruel road crew warriors.
The bridge into the cultural hub of the city was their latest victim. One day it was there, gapping the span between my half of the city and the other; the next day, its expanse was amputated at either end, and the only marker on the grave of this once-functional landmark of human ingenuity were the flapping strands of 'DANGER, ROAD CREW AT WORK' ribbons strewn between battered orange drums. The orcs were, of course, nowhere to be seen--as they were probably besieging another important metropolitan lifeline.
Occasionally the road crew may be tempted to build monuments to their dark lord, but being agents of destruction, the unfinished husks of their efforts inevitebly silhouette the skyline until they, too, are torn down as a warning to surrounding infrastructure.
Beware the blight of the Road Crew of Gundabad. They come without warning or purpose, destroy everything in their path, and then leave just as quickly, salting the earth behind them.
Fuck road workers. Wanna know why cities are always in deficit? Road workers get paid hourly. The longer they take the more money they get. You drive through a work zone and maybe see them working once every 6 days.
holy shit my city is the exact same way
they just destroyed a very highly trafficked road overpass for no discernible reason besides chaos and shits
I was held up in traffic for an hour yesterday, passed the one way signal set with no road workers or maintenance being done. raged. (Even worse it's going to be like this every day for the next few months meaning I lose an hour of my personal time just getting to and from work.) Get them contracted properly.
[QUOTE=Artemis;30405467]Fuck road workers. Wanna know why cities are always in deficit? Road workers get paid hourly. The longer they take the more money they get. You drive through a work zone and maybe see them working once every 6 days.[/QUOTE]
The only work I've ever seen done, excluding the methodical destruction of every feat of human engineering, is sending one of their kind to stand guard at the entrance of their encampment with a 'SLOW' sign, ensuring that passer-by have plenty of opportunity to witness their abortion of sense and reason. Roman generals had Triumphs to mark celebration of major victories. Those orange signs are the orc equivalent.
Yeah you can avoid them by 'going somewhere else', or 'not going out at all'; Judging by your deep metaphoric analysis of road workers - you'd prefer the second one.
[QUOTE=David Cameron;30405741]Yeah you can avoid them by 'going somewhere else', or 'not going out at all'; Judging by your deep metaphoric analysis of road workers - you'd prefer the second one.[/QUOTE]
That's a terrible solution. Despite my "deep, metaphoric analysis," of the Road Crew Threat, my points are all pretty damn valid: there is no fuckin' excuse for the level of destruction wreaked upon the infrastructure of towns and cities by these insidious bastards. You can't tear apart a major highway, and then just leave it that way for the next eight years, and neither can you justify that decimation with, "well, I didn't need to get into the city any way."
That's just, like, terrrible. I mean, what kind of defeatist attitude must you have to simply accept the horrid state of a first-world country's infrastructure at the hand of backroom union politics aimed at bleeding the city for money for as long as possible? That [i]is[/i] siege warfare, by definition. Orc insurgencies always impact morale, that's a given, but to simply [i]accept[/i] it is the most pathetic kind of surrender.
I saw two guys taking turns holding the slow sign. Where do I sign up?
:golfclap: That was a brief, fun, comparation.
Didn't see you got moderator. Congrats.
Also well written post, too.
I love you BDA
What's worse is the fact that no one ever sees them putting the cones up, or taking them away.
You turn your back and they're there :ohdear:
Yeah, it's called taking another route. What would normally be slower on any other day will usually be faster if road crews are on the main route. I try to know a minimum of 3 routes to any possible destination I have.
[QUOTE=Wealth + Taste;30406164]Didn't see you got moderator. Congrats.
Also well written post, too.[/QUOTE]
It's a useless post filled with relatively flowery language and dumb Lord of the Rings comparisons...
[editline]12th June 2011[/editline]
I mean fuck wouldn't the rest of us get banned for making a thread like this?
Dealing with a road crew is easy as pie.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stF2O_5N-zQ[/media]
[QUOTE=Thorny;30407404]I mean fuck wouldn't the rest of us get banned for making a thread like this?[/QUOTE]
why would the mods ban for a good thread?
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;30407691]why would the mods ban for a good thread?[/QUOTE]
I see threads like this get locked/users banned all the time. This isn't a 'good thread'.
This is stupid, either go around or crawl through slowly it's not like someone sits there going "You know what we should do? We should just fuck up the road, I don't know why and I don't care why just take a sledgehammer to it maybe someone can make a thread about it on the internet and make some lord of the rings comparisons!" sure it takes what feels like forever for them to finish but so what it's a fact of life that shit breaks and needs to get fixed.
I have one road in my town that is a state road and I guess a certain portion of the budget has to go to road work, so every two years the exact same 2 stretches of 31F are redone, despite them not needing it in any way. They make sure to take the entire summer, in case anyone wanted to get anywhere for those 4 months. Then there are roads which are litterally reduced to asphalt coblestone that are never touched.
[QUOTE=Thorny;30407404]I mean fuck wouldn't the rest of us get banned for making a thread like this?[/QUOTE]
Honestly I let the idea of this roll around in my head for a good while, then I thought up of a good reply to this question.
BDA's post is simply more entertaining.
On the streets of this forum, as the sun rises to greet the day, I can see a man hop up onto an empty crate sitting by the corner of the cobblestone road. There I see what I often fail to see in the densely packed crowds of the midday. There a man stands, wider than he is tall, dressed to the eyes in the dazzling raiment that all but the least self-respecting practitioners of the bardic arts wear. So by his side, I also see, his trusty lute. Worn with age, and of a war as well, he intends to strum it's strings, and tell tales of the most fanciful sort.
And so, he takes pause to survey the street and sniff the air. Once the road is fulled with the passing of horses and the busy movement of bodies, will he begin.
I wait a moment. Maybe two. Soon, he and I see and hear the rapping of footsteps and hooves across this cobbled-stone road.
Then, with a voice pure and deep, he lets fly a well spun story. Yet one all too true. His telling is louder than the rapture of noise from the street, but quiet enough to let it lead the pace of his own. The lute he leaves by his side, it is not needed now, only for occasions such as those that require the note of sorrow to pierce the hardened hearts of men.
People that once seemed to eager to pass by on their way slow, and come sit by his side as the bard spins a tale of dangerous "Orcs" that ravish the great roads, which we use seemingly every day.
When the man is done, and sits down to rest, one disgruntled man steps forward and declares in a loud, angry voice: "This is a useless tale filled with relatively pretty words and horrid comparisons derived from popular fantasy novels... Really now, if any of us stood up here today wouldn't we be stuck down for disturbing the peace?"
I take this moment to step forward, and answer this person thus:
"Yes. Yes we would. Any man may take what bothers him and shout it to those unwilling to hear. But, it takes those of practice and charm, to make others [I]want[/I] to listen."
and that's all I'm gonna type for now
I have seen one road crew that changed my view of them forever. Back in 07, a water main exploded in my neighborhood.
[img]http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1041/1050152929_751bc59d3f_z.jpg?zz=1[/img]
It took them less than a week to fix the pipe, and reopen the road.
The road worker bears much resemblance to the brutal Ork. Once they move and begin their vile machinations, it is impossible to remove them, and they remain until the native flora and fauna is utterly consumed. The best we mere mortals can hope for is an occasional vain cull of their numbers.
Here in Houston you always hear/see construction workers. If you are unlucky you might hear them blast spanish music on their radios. That's why traffic is so bad here. :smith:
I didn't realize Spanish music had a negative effect on traffic.
[editline]12th June 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=Thorny;30407404]It's a useless post filled with relatively flowery language and dumb Lord of the Rings comparisons...
[editline]12th June 2011[/editline]
I mean fuck wouldn't the rest of us get banned for making a thread like this?[/QUOTE]
"You're not allowed to make silly comparisons to prove points! If I were a moderator, I'd ban you!"
Road crews have been waging war against cities like mine for longer than anybody can remember. They intentionally destroy roadways, bridges, and lines of travel to major parts of the city, and then refuse to repair it for as long as the city can tolerate so that they can continue making thirty dollars an hour for doing no harder work that standing around and holding a sign. They cripple cities and towns and benefit from their destruction. They don't have to rebuild the roads for years, should they not feel like it, because they understand that the city doesn't have much option but to continue paying them in the hopes that they'll one day repair the damage they caused. As they are a union, the city can't even go through other contractors without raising their ire and potentially inciting them to more destruction and 'legitimate' striking and picket lines--which could lead to a [i]total[/i] shutdown of traffic routes.
For this reason, I compare them to orcs--who also participate in siege warfare. Of course, there are a lot of other things I could compare them to, but I choose to use orcs as my example, because orcs are funny.
So, to summarize: no, I wouldn't ban somebody for using silly imagery. Want me to go ban the Chilean volcano dude? He compared it to Mordor, but it's not [i]actually[/i] Mordor! What the heck is up with that?
Glory to the Road Emperor!
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;30405563]The only work I've ever seen done, excluding the methodical destruction of every feat of human engineering, is sending one of their kind to stand guard at the entrance of their encampment with a 'SLOW' sign, ensuring that passer-by have plenty of opportunity to witness their abortion of sense and reason. [b]Roman generals had Triumphs to mark celebration of major victories.[/b] Those orange signs are the orc equivalent.[/QUOTE]
[img]http://imgkk.com/i/aafy.jpg[/img]
[citation needed]
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;30413325]"You're not allowed to make silly comparisons to prove points! If I were a moderator, I'd ban you!"
Road crews have been waging war against cities like mine for longer than anybody can remember. They intentionally destroy roadways, bridges, and lines of travel to major parts of the city, and then refuse to repair it for as long as the city can tolerate so that they can continue making thirty dollars an hour for doing no harder work that standing around and holding a sign. They cripple cities and towns and benefit from their destruction. They don't have to rebuild the roads for years, should they not feel like it, because they understand that the city doesn't have much option but to continue paying them in the hopes that they'll one day repair the damage they caused. As they are a union, the city can't even go through other contractors without raising their ire and potentially inciting them to more destruction and 'legitimate' striking and picket lines--which could lead to a [i]total[/i] shutdown of traffic routes.
For this reason, I compare them to orcs--who also participate in siege warfare. Of course, there are a lot of other things I could compare them to, but I choose to use orcs as my example, because orcs are funny.
So, to summarize: no, I wouldn't ban somebody for using silly imagery. Want me to go ban the Chilean volcano dude? He compared it to Mordor, but it's not [i]actually[/i] Mordor! What the heck is up with that?[/QUOTE]
Way to totally miss what I was saying.
Road crew outside my apartment has been working on two blocks of a two-way road for eight fucking months. I have never seen them do anything but tear up the road, and that took them the first week.
Recently half of a major freeway cloverleaf was shutdown and it nothing has been done do it so far except a few workers standing around.
[QUOTE=Thorny;30407799]I see threads like this get locked/users banned all the time. This isn't a 'good thread'.[/QUOTE]
Don't try to argue, it's like the hurf life thread, the only thing I learned was that the mods can make as shitty of posts and threads as they want but if your a normal member, you better have a 8 year degree in english or more to post a thread or your probably going to get banned for shit posting.
We had some road work once around here, it took them 3 days and all they left was a small pile of dirt that they came back and cleaned the next day.
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