If we ignore them, maybe they'll go away...

So, me and a few friends were going to make a trip out to San Fransico the other day. Thursday, actually. We were going to go to the Japanese shopping center, enjoy a little anime and sushi. General geek stuff. Anyway, we're on our way there and suddenly traffic starts to get heavy. Really heavy. Then it just stopped. We were confused and frustrated. Time was ticking before all the good places closed and here we were sitting in what seemed to be deadlocked traffic. Then cars started going into park, engines started to shut off. The freeway became one big parking lot. Shortly after this, we found out the cause...

Apparently, some group of brilliant minds decided that a good way to promote a protest would be to stand in the middle of the freeway. For 4 hours. Now, I'm not really a political person, and I don't really get involved in this, that or whatever when it comes to where the budget is going and all that. But my common sense would tell me that if you wanted to get people to follow your cause, it would probably NOT be a good idea to piss off nearly half of the metropolitan area by blocking traffic for 4 hours. I mean, there's other forms of peaceful protest. You could set yourself on fire, for example.

What hurts the most is the reason why these people were protesting. They were trying to protest cuts in the educational budget. Now, I don't know if this was meant to be ironic or not, but it's really the only explanation I have for people doing something so utterly stupid. Were they trying to show that without an education budget, people would become so utterly moronic as they would think it was a good idea to actually stand in the freeway for 4 hours? It's possible, but I doubt it. I've learned not to give people that much credit. Most likely this was the only way the genius that came up with this plan could figure out how to get attention without doing something illegal. Oh wait. He got arrested and charged with two felonies. Someone didn't think their cunning plan all the way through.

On top of missing out on my little romp through manga-ville, I was twice as pissed off that something I actually support, which is education of the masses (Something that is sorely lacking nearly anywhere you go...) would have such a bunch of dumb-asses trying to stage such an asinine display on it's behalf. They've probably done more harm than good with this little stunt as everyone pretty much hates the people involved and have probably ruined any chance the budget had of being fixed. Way to go guys

And people wonder why everything comes with an instruction manual in 4 different languages. Fuck, even Top Ramen has directions with PICTURES on it. How fucking hard is: 'Add hot water, wait five minutes.'? Seriously. If you can't figure this out without a diagram, then I think you really need to sit back and reflect on your life.