Two things I detest, besides my throat

Thing the First:

I hate seeing Cuban guys around here (and occasionally women, but on them I don't notice it as much) wandering around outside in the heat and humidity (today it was 85 with 81% humidity) with a sweater tied around their shoulders. Invariably they're wearing this outfit. Invariably: brown driving shoes, very tailored stiff chinos made of...like...canvas or thick denim, almost to the point of too short, and almost on the verge of too tight in the crotch (hi, lil' basket!), a tucked-in small-plaid pattern shirt, usually blue and white squares, and a fucking heavy cotton sweater, the arms tied around their necks.

What. The. Fuck?

Are you really going to get chilly? Really?

Because I just walked from my car into the sweet, sweet air-conditioning, and my lower back is definitely a little sweaty. Already. So please, 'splain to me why you're going to get cold traipsing around outside in Miami. Yeah, sometimes when you go into a building it's a little cool, but I attribute that to the thin layer of sweat covering every inch of me, and soaking into my cotton clothing. We all know the last thing one wants to do when sweaty, is to hold in the sweat. It makes you clammy, gross, uncomfortable, slightly stinky, and a breeding ground for fungi and bacteria. I'll bet Lotramin flies off the shelves down here at this time of year... I say best to have a slight sweatstain for five minutes, and let that shit dry! (Of course, for me, sweating begins the unbreakable loop, because I'm hot, so I sweat, and then I'm not hot anymore, but I'm sweating because I started sweating, and now I'm sweating because I'm sweating, and getting anxious about sweating, so I sweat some more. So I'm always a little clammy. Unless I never started sweating in the first place. Or until I get drunk. I miss being sweaty next to my sweaty ex-boyfriend. He always made me look dry in Public.)

It just looks retarded when you wear sweaters in this weather. Even on the COLDEST day in Miami, it's barely sweater weather. Sure, I break 'em out, but that's because nothing is heated here, and...you know...because I can. But whenever I break out a sweater, it's a thin linen sweater or a thin merino sweater. I hold the wool and heavy cotton suckers for going home during Thanksgiving or Christmas. Because let's face it...it's just never cold enough down here for those.

So, please. It's fucking hot as balls outside already. It's starting to rain in the afternoons... summer has arrived. And we're in the Tropics. Maybe you come from, like, I don't know, Hell, or the Sun, and 85 degrees with 81% humidity is cold to you, but where I'm from, this is about five degrees off from the hottest it gets in the summertime (Okay, I lie. It occasionally gets up to 102...with 81% humidity), and we're only starting to get crankin'. Yeah, maybe you're used to drinking molten granite and basking in the temperate climate caused by atomic fission, but you look like an idiot.

You don't see me wandering down the street in an umbrella and galoshes, and a bright yellow slicker with a bright yellow rain hat on a sunny day. I'd look like a freak. So do you.

Can the sweaters. Unless you've tied it around your shoulders to cover up your backsweat. And even there, although I applaud your modesty, gentility, and resourcefulness...it's Miami in the summer. And only the harshest critic would dare think basely of you for sweating through your shirt. And those that do, are assholes.

Thing the Second:

I think I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating.

I hate people that drive Jaguars.

I realize that for those of you in other parts of the Country, this statement is akin to something like, "I hate people who wander down the street eating lollipops," or "I hate people who drive 1932 Dusenbergs." For most of you (and you should be thankful for this) you don't interact with many Jaguars on a day-to-day basis. And when you do, they're a minor amusement, if they even flicker across your radar screen. But they certainly aren't around in enough volume to actually bother you. But this is Miami, where even I drive a Mercedes... I regularly have Rolls Royces cross my path, and I see at least a Bentley a day, usually more. Ferraris and Maserattis and Maybachs. They're all just... the norm.

Whenever I go home, I'm always sort of stunned at the... normalness...of all the cars. In Miami, I feel like I'm always staring up the tailpipe of a Lexus or of an Audi or a Beemer...or another Mercedes (Dear CL 500 AMG, I love you, and one day, you will be mine. Black. Dark tinted windows. Those awesome rims I like so much, not the shiny chrome, but the brushed titanium.) At home, I'm behind Caravans and Tauruses and Camrys and Auroras (Worst. Car. Ever.) and the plethora of other Honda and Japanese products that... you know... normal people drive.

Back home, seeing a Rolls Royce was a once-every-three-year occurrence. And Bentleys? Forget it. If you had a really nice car, you had a BMW...

Okay. I'm getting off topic. Focus.

Jaguars. Fuckin' hate their drivers. Now, I like the car. I really do. I could never, ever afford to buy one, so I never looked at them, and they're also sort of "old people cars" but no matter.

A Jaguar driver will roll through a stop sign, pull out in front of you as you approaching, causing you to slam on your brakes, and then, the Jaguar driver, as clearly he or she has nowhere to be going in any sort of a hurry, will rest their foot on the gas pedal, only increasing the pressure thereon in the most minute of increments.

And for someone with intense road rage like myself, it's almost too much, and I almost take my foot off the brakes, and allow my car to careen directly into the back of that smug, selfish, asshole driver. That'd learn 'em good.

But then I'd wreck my shiny car, and drive up my insurance premiums, and get a ticket, and have to go to Enterprise and have to deal with a car that wasn't as good as new anymore, because it had been in an accident. So I refrain from doing so.

But it doesn't mean that I don't burst a blood vessel in my eye whenever it happens.

Maybe it's the luxurious roominess of the leather-and-wood appointed interior. Maybe it's the way the creamy butter leather caresses their asscheeks. Maybe they're drunk, because they're so rich, they can afford to tool around Coral Gables at 8:10 in the morning, drunk off their asses, enjoying a nice, leisurely drive through our Poincianna-and-Banyan-lined, winding boulevards.

But I got places to go...i.e. work, so I can afford my car, and just maybe buy a shithole on the Beach. And I hate being behind Jaguars.

Because, on top of the game of, "Go ahead, and run into the back of my seventy thousand dollar sedan" that they play, they never reach a crusing speed of more than 28 miles an hour. Once again... blood vessels. Eyes. Bursting.

This morning, as I was accelerating up to 45 in a 30 zone up Alhambra, some swarthy schmuck with hair that was too long nonchalantly pulled into my path, causing me to stomp on the brakes, and satisfyingly tailgate him at a distance of not more than a foot, bumper-to-bumper, before I realized "Shit, this is a passing road, and there's not much oncoming traffic." You better believe I stomped on the gas and passed him on the wrong side of the street. And it was worth the $1.25 in gas it probably cost me to do so. Oh, sure, he was behind me for the better part of a mile and a half after that, but I got immense pleasure in staring through the rear-view mirror, at him, and the line of traffic that he was holding up, get farther, and farther, and farther away from my back bumper.

And that's just typical. I will NEVER let a Jaguar in front of me for any reason, if I can help it. At this point, I never let any car get in front of me if I can help it. This is Miami, and no good deed goes unpunished, after all.

But I save all my ire and rage for the Jags. Fucking cars. Fucking drivers.