WTF, MAN!!!

Geez! I mean, WTF! DAYUM, THAT WASN'T NICE AT ALL!

Ok.

Now that I'm calm, allow me elucidate.

On W. Windsor, right there at the rec center, near all of those baseball fields and frisbee golfs and that one model airplane field, I think all of it is collectively called Northlake, or North Lakes Park, or whatev, anyway, right there where the rec center is, you know, that gym for working out and learning karate, right there, the sidewalk on the south side of Windsor ends, and if you wanna keep on the sidewalk, you gotta cross over Windsor to the north side, where the sidewalk picks up again.

With me so far?

The thing is, I think that pretty much everywhere, as in at every intersection in every city, they've started making these crosswalk signals that talk. You know, the ones where you press the button and it shouts WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! and then it shoots a machine gun to tell you when it's safe to cross the street. I ain't kidding, for those of you who might not be familiar with current streetlight crosswalk etiquette. I'm not even trying to be funny, because that's what really happens. The crosswalk thingy shouts WAIT and then shoots a machine gun when it's safe to cross. Look it up on YouTube.

I'm assuming now that everybody knows about those militant crosswalk signals, and if you didn't, then now you do, so that's just some backstory to warm up the frontstory.

Onward.

Right there where I was talking about wallago there's a brand new talking crosswalk. It's not an intersection for traffic, it's just where the sidewalk moves from here to there, to designate the official place from which to move from here to there, like I already explained.

I didn't notice it at first, since I'm so used to walking this route, but as I passed by it, I heard this subtle blip sound that was louder then softer then louder then softer etc. No way could I just keep walking without investigating that thing, so I followed the louder blip and discovered it emanating from that brand new crosswalk thingy, and the softer blip was coming from the one on the other side of the street.

Well, of course, there's buttons on those things, and, of course, they want you to push those buttons. So, conditioned as I am, like a slobbering Pavlov thing, I pushed that button... and it was like that part in every movie you've ever seen where they trip the alarm! On both sides of the street, bright yellow lights - like ambulance lights, or emergency lights, or OH SHIT lights - suddenly lit up and started flashing, like the nukes were about to show up! And this loud machine voice began yelling at the top of its speakers...

YELLOW LIGHTS ARE FLASHING! YELLOW LIGHTS ARE FLASHING! YELLOW LIGHTS ARE FLASHING!

I tell you, it scared me shitless! I thought I was under arrest by the sidewalk police! Man, I just ran like a dumb blinded thingamajig for a few seconds!

After that I just kinda stood still for a minute, processing the event which had just happened. And... man, it started to piss me off! Who's idea was that anyway, to install the equivalent of a blinding flashing yellow strobe light shouting at 120 decibels on a pedestrian crosswalk? Who was it that thought this up as a good thing to implement? And who was it that reviewed this idea and decided, 'Yeah, this is a good idea, let's make it a real thing!' ???

I WANNA KNOW WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE BECAUSE I WANNA LOOK DAGGERS AT THEM! ALL OF THEM!

Or did any of that even occur at all, with the officially sanctioned insanity invented by the official professional civil engineer and presented as an officially good idea to the officials in charge and then officially built into a real, official thing? Because maybe the city council just gave this job to what's his face the civil engineers son, because they'd SO promised him that they totally, seriously loved retarded kids, and weren't prejudiced at all, and that retarded kids should be involved in city planning projects because it's politically correct? So maybe that's what actually happened?

WTF, MAN!!!