A.S.M.

If you are squeamish – DO NOT READ FURTHER!

“One of my daughter’s gerbils was obviously sick last night.”  A woman told me as I drove her to work.  “Then this morning I was awakened by a scream.”

“The gerbil was dead?”

“Yes, but the reason my daughter screamed was that the remaining gerbil had eaten the dead one’s face!”

“Woah!”  My mind evoked an unbidden and unpleasant mental image.  “I didn’t know that gerbils were cannibals.  Was that gerbil’s name Hannibal by any chance?”

In further taxi small talk today, I found that pet rodents, other than just gerbils, will eat the dead ones.  Pigs will also eat another pig that dies.  Yuk!

So this is really a nothing post and I don’t have any deep moral to offer.  But if you’re thinking of getting a cute furry little treadmill running gerbil for a family pet, be prepared for the nightmares and emotional scarring that your child could experience as a result of the cannibalistic nature of these creatures.

Annoying People who overuse Expressions

“Got her.”  A voice comes over the cab frequency.

“Did someone run away from a fare?”  My customer asks.

“That driver is just continuously annoying.  He always uses expressions like ‘got her/him’ or ‘got her/him home’ as if he is the only taxi driver in the known universe, capable of finding an address and taking a passenger to the destination.”

“It must be annoying to hear it all the time.”  The customer then lowers his voice.  “I’d be tempted to shoot him.”

“If all annoying people were shot, there would not be many left in this world.  Instead, I could put him under hypnosis, so that he finds his own expressions annoying.”

“Shooting would probably be easier.”

“Not really.  A murder involves an exceptional lot of crap that I’d rather not deal with.  Whereas if I simply pre-plan a conversation with him, I can implant the message without anyone being the wiser – and with the radio chatter being much less annoying.”

“Isn’t it hard to slip something like ‘you’re getting very sleepy’ into a casual conversation?”

“With conversation hypnosis, you don’t have to put someone into a hypnotic trance.  I’m certain that without much difficulty, I could slide some anti-annoying hypnotic suggestions into his subliminal mind though a normal conversation and that would be worth more.”

“Turn left at that corner.”  The passenger points as we near his destination.

“I’ll give you a huge tip on the subject of hypnosis.”  I say, putting a tiny bit of extra volume on some of the words.  “The subconscious mind tells you what to do — not the other way around.”

“This ride has been interesting and you deserve an extra large gratuity.”

“How unexpected!”  I smile and accept the bonus money.  “Call me back anytime.”

The passenger leaves my taxi, wondering what inspired his sudden generosity, when he is normally very frugal with his cash.

Click Here to Learn Conversational Hypnosis

This story ACTUALLY happened.  You don’t know how much really good stuff can happen for you when you know the secrets of Conversation Hypnosis.  You can make people you know less annoying and have them doing almost anything that you want them to do – without them realizing that you made them do it.

Even if you don’t use it, know how to  defend against subliminal tactics

Do road designers even have driver licenses?

I know that many people are  just crappy drivers but this is compounded by some roads that are piss poorly disigned.  I often say that city planners must have ‘done some lines, before drawing the lines’.   For example, a cement median wide enough to build a two-car garage on, stretches for a half a kilometer between the traffic going in opposite directions – then the left hand turn lane is only long enough for five cars!  Okay, maybe the green arrow light cycle is only long enough for five poky cars but left hopeful cars can even get into the lane until long after the arrow is gone – then the left turning people back up the straight going.  Hello!  Why didn’t you use more of the redundant median space to facilitate the heavy flow of left-turning vehicles?

Does a contributor to the mayor’s campaign fund own a curbing company?  Is the policy for hiring city planners ‘nepotism first and qualifications later’?  (The city might consider installing a drug testing program, but the city planning staff may to stoned to manage pissing into bottles).

Click Here to turn your Rags to Riches

Random drug testing might be the answer to solve many problems.  However, the drug testing should start at the political level.  Have the politicians piss into the bottles first.  Maybe then the problems will be cured without having to drug test anyone else.

You NEVER know if they are being nice!

I picked up a fare at a mall and I had to turn onto a very busy one-way street.

“We might be here awhile.” I said to my passenger, as the traffic was all backed up at a red light.

But when the light turned green, a pickup truck hung back, leaving a wide open spot.

“Awesome!” I said. “Finding a courteous driver in this money town is rare.”

I waved ‘thank you’ to the thoughtful motorist, as I zipped my taxi into the lane in front of him.

‘HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK’ The driver behind voices his extreme displeasure with his horn. It seems he wasn’t being nice. He was just slow and my taking advantage just rubbed his turtle pace into his face.

“Apparently those courteous drivers are still close to extinction.” I joked with my passenger.

Click Here 2 B AMAZED by what Conversational Hypnosis can do 4 U

As a taxi driver, I spend my whole day observing other motorists. Often their middle fingers. It is no wonder that the accident rates are so high. Many people are driving around with a borderline case of road rage. Take this one case for example. I pulled into the pickup truck’s lane but I never slowed him up any more than he was already moving. So why did he honk so vehemently? I personally know why, but I’ll go into that in another post.

Set a Spell and I’ll tell you about a Witch.

I had a witch in my car yesterday. No, this wasn’t just a girl trying out her Halloween costume early. This woman was an actual witch. It’s funny what topics one can get into while in a taxi. We has sat for a spell at a red light and I said in jest that I ‘wished I had the magical power to turn signals to green’. That’s when she confessed to being a witch: one couldn’t have known it from her stylish clothing.

‘Can you,’ I asked the lady who looked more like a lawyer b*tch than a jilted witch, ‘ zip your broomstick over to push the pedestrian walk button?’  She laughed and then we chatted about witches and witchcraft.

“Can you put a spell on my meter to make it run faster?”  I asked.

“That’s a mechanical thing,”  The witch replied.  “You probably just need a screwdriver instead of a witchcraft spell.  I could make you a charm that causes passengers to give you better tips though.”

“Bylaw enforcement would burn me at the stake if I monkey with the meter mechanism.”

“My ex-boyfriend was a policeman.”  She mused.  “I caught him monkeying around with another girl.”

“Did you put a jinx on his monkey business?”

“That’s putting it mildly.”  The uptown-class witch laughed wickedly.

I really tried hard to get the urban witch to tell me what witchcraft spell she actually put onto her ex-boyfriend but she wouldn’t confess it to me.  However, some of the things that she did tell me were impressive.  Then when we got to where the witch was going, I found myself offering the cab ride as free in return for the magic charm she offered regarding extra gratuities.  She must have put a super effective spell on me for that – I don’t give many freebies.

So we’ll see what turns out.  I’ll let you know.  If you have a yearning for some learning about witchcraft, I’ve found a link for you.  Old Witchcraft Spells!  I wonder if I’ll hear a rumor about an ex-boyfriend local cop having come down with a nasty case of genital warts.

Bad Taxi Humor

I do get bored with talking about the weather, and I even get sick of complaining about the traffic.  Humor is usually a good alternative but there are some taxi humor remarks in some situations that don’t always turn out out so well.

1.  When picking up someone while police / ambulance / fire sirens are heard in the background, don’t say ‘Get in quickly: it’s my taxi they’re chasing‘.

2. When a person of an ultra conservative religious sect notices that your (female/male) cross shift taxi driver’s permit does not match your gender, don’t say ‘That picture was taken before my sex-change operation‘.

3.  If the taxi dispatcher has informed you that you will need to have change for a (large denomination bill), don’t tell the customer that ‘Rumor has it that we’re supposed to drive around until the taxi meter reads (whatever the denomination amount)’.

I’ll post more of these as I think of them, remember them, or blow holes in more conversations.

When driving a taxi in a money town, you see the difference between those and actual communities.  By a money town, I mean where there has been explosive growth due to economic activity and where those who have moved in vastly outnumber those people who were born there.  I don’t blame the new-comers for all the problems because the long-time residents play their part in the money stupidity too.

My time is worth more than yours is! – This money town attitude presents itself in bank lines, busy restaurants, parking lots and in traffic.  I’ve personally watched as many near collisions at the entrance to coffee drive-through line-up, as I have at intersections.  My time is worth more than yours, so I have to get my vehicle in front of yours.  On the streets my time is also worth much more than yours is: therefore I can’t let you merge into my traffic lane in front of me.  I see this attitude all day long and it isn’t just aimed at taxicabs.  Actually, it isn’t effective against a taxi because I’ll get into the gap between your front bumper and the car in front of you – whether the space is big enough or not.

Maverick Money’s NEW cell phone system is the BOMB!

It takes more than Money

If you need help, go to the bikers: only go to the police if you want to buy drugs. The street drug and property crimes in a money town are porportionally larger than in established cities.  The pay checks the workers get are larger than they are used to where they used to live.  That leaves more money for attractive items to show off in vehicles and plenty for recreational drugs.  However, the pay scale for the police officers is the same as the national averages.  So for policemen to benefit from being in the money town, where things are also more expensive, they need to supplement their inclomes with graft money and shakedowns.   “I had a small bag of weed and $300 in my possession when the police frisked me for no reason.  They took the drugs and the money but didn’t charge me.  Had they arrested me, they would’ve had to turn in the booty for evidence.”  (That was not me speaking: I don’t do drugs and seldom have that much cash.)

“Buddy,” I say as I get into a friend’s taxi for a visit while in a slow period, “your supposedly ‘non-smoking’ taxi smells like an overloaded ashtray.”

“Smoking in my cab is illegal and the Nazi F**king Police would write me a huge ticket for it.”

“Yah right,” I laugh, “You must smoke about two packs a day in here.”

“I don’t smoke any in here.” He protested. “The f**king Nazi law says I have to have this non-smoking sticker on my window or I can’t get a f**king taxi permit. So instead of sitting inside my cab and blowing my smoke out the window, I stand outside smoking and I blow all my smoke back into the cab through a cracked open window. That way I’m not breaking the Nazi’s f**king law but I’m giving the non-smokers who elected the f**king Nazi government a good strong whiff of my anti-Nazi opinion. Smokers that get into my cab appreciate my allowing them to light-up as long as they pay the smoking fine if we get one.”

Click Here To Kick The Smoking Habit

This cab driver makes some very good points. All taxi cabs here are forced by law to have a non-smoking sticker, yet some cab drivers DO smoke, whether inside or outside as my friend does. So instead of protecting non-smokers from smoke, the law just gives a false impression of all cabs being ‘non-smoking’ ones.  A practical way to protect non-smokers would be to forbid a cab from having a ‘non-smoking’ sticker on a vehicle where the driver does smoke. Conversely, it would also allow a smoker to choose a smoking cab if that is what they want.  But that common sense approach doesn’t net the greedy government any extra ticket revenue and we all know that it’s all ONLY about the money anyways.

My friend called it a f**king Nazi law, but in fact it is a STUPID f**king Nazi law.

While waiting for my aircard to be set up, I used to park my taxi near a hotel so I could piggyback on an open wireless network while wait for taxi call.  But this skin-flint hotel management took offense, even when I stopped off of their property.  I would get rude messages relayed through my dispatcher.  ‘Our open wireless is free for our customers only!’  Then stop the signals from getting off your property line – if you can.

My point here is ‘Big Whoop!’  So I used their precious signal for awhile without renting a room.  I also will go to a toilet in a restaurant without stopping for lunch – even when there is a big placard that says ‘Washrooms are for customers only’, as if a one extra toilet flush of water costs them anything extra.

Yar! Take the Treasure or Walk the Plank!

Then today, I happened to park near this particular hotel, and I now do have my own internet access, but still I got the nasty message relayed through my dispatcher.  So fine.  I’ll move away and I start giving my negative advice for anyone seeking a room for the night.  I’m a cab driver and I drive many people from the airport or bus who are looking for a room.  Skin-flint business practices are disgustingly cheap and they cost the skin-flint more in the longer term.  For example, I’ll never buy any food from a place that has a ‘toilet for customers only’.  If they are too cheap to spend water on a few extra toilet flushes, are they scimping on kitchen cleaning supplies too? This was just a small rant about disgustingly skin flint business practices: I hope U enjoyed it.

Give a hoot, or maybe a honk for Drivrr.  He’s the newest blogger here at ASM.  Drivrr is a taxi driver and he will post the ’secrets’ that people tell him in the privacy his cab.

Passengers suppose they can tell a taxi driver anything.  We are just anonymous ears that hear without ever telling.  But I never promiced that I wouldn’t spill my guts about them on the internet.  Well, I won’t use their real names — even if I actually know who they really are.  To a taxi driver, most people are just anonymous strangers too.