user: Q: Luckily I was not the target or victim of this road rage, but I was a first hand witness. Back in the mid 1990s when I worked in Southern California, I was returning from lunch one day with a coworker when we noticed two pickup trucks driving erratically. This was on Valley View Blvd in Cerritos which is a large roadway divided (by a large, planted median strip) with 3 lanes on either side. One truck seemed to be chasing the other when suddenly the lead truck made a quick U-turn and was followed by the second truck. But the second truck came to stop just after making the turn. This was when the driver of that truck got out, walked to the front of his vehicle, raised his arm holding a semi-automatic handgun, paused, and then fired a single shot. At this point, I was parallel with the shooter’s truck and only about 50–60 feet from where he was standing. I remember my coworker exclaiming, “Oh sh*t! Did he just shoot at the something?!” I floored my accelerator and sped off to my workplace which was about a 1/2 mile down Valley View Blvd. I parked and my coworker and I got into the building as quickly as we could. While he started telling our other coworkers about what we had just witnessed, I ran to my desk, called 911, and reported the shooting. The dispatcher kept me on the line after my initial report and then transferred me to a detective in order to take down my information. As it turns out, my information and the fact that I called 911 immediately resulted in the arrest of the shooter. I was later asked to testify in court which resulted in the shooters conviction. I lived in Southern California for 10 years and now I drive a commercial truck several days a week so I have PLENTY of other “road rage stories”, but this is still the craziest one. Question: Where in California did the event take place? === The answer to the above question is

A: Southern


Q: My love affair with technology began at an early age. On my seventh birthday, my parents bought me a second-hand ZX Spectrum and, in a foretaste of my life to come, I immediately set about learning how to use it to get attention. It's a sign of how rapidly technology develops that my crappy Spectrum, with its 48k of memory, already had 12k more storage power than the computer that had guided the Apollo 11 moon landing eighteen years earlier* With power like that, there seemed to be no limit to what I could do. While my other computer-owning peers would sit for hours while their tape drives squawked away loading 'Manic Miner' or 'Bubble Buster' I was more fascinated by learning to write my own programs. The first of these consisted of just two lines of code* that made the word 'shit' appear again and again on my screen, to the huge amusement of my friends and the irritation of my parents, who obviously had more educational motives for bringing a computer into the house. From that day on, the possibilities offered by technology to both subvert the norm and get attention had me hooked. Years later, at secondary school, I convinced my English teacher, Mr Coen, to teach me desktop publishing, ostensibly to work on the official school magazine, but in reality to produce an alternative underground version - complete with less than flattering articles about teachers and fellow pupils and distributed via the publicly accessible shared hard drive that was supposed to be used for collaborative coursework. That particular stunt got me banned from the school computer room for half a term. And then, in 1997, I discovered the Internet. Throughout history, every fame-hungry media dickhead has found his preferred medium for pursuing fame and wealth (in that order). For Tony Parsons - and Hitler, for that matter - it was books. William Randolph Hearst chose newspapers. Don Imus and Howard Stern preferred radio. For Nick Griffin it's inflammatory leaflets. For Tracy Emin it's art. Or at least an approximation of it. With the... Question: Who taught him desktop publishing? === The answer to the above question is

A: His school teacher


Q: Not exactly. I have no problem with divorce since, as others have stated, everyone has their reasons, however there was one person that I dated briefly but upon hearing the reason why he divorced I opted to end the relationship. I remember, we were having brunch and were talking about our past relationships and what happened. He brought up his marriage. I had previously known his divorce but, up until this point, not the reasoning. He told me, straight out, that he had cheated. Now, cheating in itself is one thing. I try not to judge since everyone has a past and I was never always innocent myself, however his attitude about it was what was very off-putting to me. He didn’t seem remotely fazed by what he was telling me at all. There he was, spreading jelly on his toast as he told me about all the women he had cheated on his wife with. He told me about how it had started with a secretary (talk about cliches!) and then graduated to trysts in motels with girls off Tinder all with the same amount of casualness as someone describing how to make an omelette! And when he finally finished the tale of his cheating adventures I asked him if he regretted cheating on his wife with so many women, His answer? “Oh Definitely.” Oh good! So at least he regrets his actions, right? Or he’s at least a little sorry about it> Wrong. “One of the reasons I regret not divorcing her sooner. Had I divorced her sooner, I wouldn’t have to have cheated on her so much. But it is what it is and, well, I was unhappy.” I have no problems with divorced men. I can forgive a man who has cheated in his past. But a man who had no problems cheating so frivolously and, in all honestly, would likely do it again without problems? Nope, not for me. Question: What was he doing as he was telling the story of cheating on his wife? === The answer to the above question is

A: Spreading something sweet


Q: I've had two. Both happened in Newport RI when I was in the US Navy. First, I lived in a cottage that was in an old motel. It had a cottage in front where the landlady lived and there were ten little cottages in a half-moon configuration around it. Ours was a party place and we didn't have a phone. This was in the early 1970's. The landlady was in her 50's I'd guess. The only phone was a pay-phone outside her cottage and it was o party line with her phone. When we used it, she would try to listen, especially if we were talking to a girl. We could tell and sometimes we'd ask he to hang up, but other times we'd talk about sexy stuff and let her listen. We could hear her breathing heavy when we did. When we'd be parting, she'd come to the door wearing sexy clothes that were completely inappropriate and want to be invited in. Though we were a bunch of horny sailors, no one wanted any part of that. We never let her come in. I got married and moved into an apartment that was three rooms in a huge old house. They closed that Navy base and all of the sailors were transferred elsewhere. There were bumper-stickers that said, "Will the last sailor to leave, please turn out the lights." In those days, Newport was a small town that leached off of sailors. My landlord said that when my wife and I were completely out and it was completely clean, he'd refund my deposit. We left the apartment immaculately clean and he wouldn't refund my deposit. That was nearly 50 years ago and it still pisses me off. Question: Who wore sexy clothes? === The answer to the above question is

A:

assistant: The landlady at the motel cottage