These Lights Won't Guide You Home

By Erica Clayton

This past weekend I was delighted to make the journey from CT to Long Island (ugh) for a show my band was playing in Garden City (High School Football Heroes reunion). Although I was graced with terrible LI drivers across the Throngs Neck bridge (who apparently don't understand that "LANE ENDS, MERGE LEFT" actually means "MOVE THE FUCK OVER, THE LANE IS FINISHED" and not "Stay in this lane until you hit the barrier, then cause a traffic jam while trying to get over to an open lane") and idiots in CT driving 40mph in the left lane on 95, my real beef was with the trip home.

I headed out after the show around 1 with another band member in the passenger seat of my poor Ivic. Obviously it was dark out and there weren't many other people on the road, but I can't even count how many motherfuckers in big fucking SUVs pulled right up behind me on the highway with their brights on. Are you kidding me? You're on the HIGHWAY and your car is bigger than my house; there is a huge open highway with plenty of open lanes, and I'm chillin' in the right lane... why are you tailgating me with your brights on?! WHY?!

General rule of thumb: don't drive with that shit on on the highway. Even while on a highway void of streetlights, chances of you really needing those brights are slim, and they're even smaller when you're right behind someone else.

I get it, we all leave our brights on once in a while. I'm guilty of this. But I'm not a dickhole and I don't use them on the highway. And I DEFINITELY don't use them when there are other cars traveling either direction within a reasonable distance. We're not talking about the backwoods of bumfuck here, we're talking about the Hutchinson River Parkway and 684 in New York.

So for those of you who turn your lights up at night on the highway: fucking, STOP IT. If I was a cop, I would pull every one of you jerks over and give you huge tickets for being dickfucks.

Complaining: You're Doing it Wrong

By Christina Joniaux

Complain [kuhm-pleyn]: to bitch and wait for someone else to fix the problem.

Last week, as I was on my way to enjoy the wonders of bar crawl with the rest of the senior class, I heard a classmate complain about the fact that they were on a yellow school bus. Now, I know that a school bus is not anyone’s first choice of transportation - unless you are seven and wearing light-up sneakers - but transportation is transportation. On any other night, many of us would be giving our left arm to find a designated driver instead of paying the $12.75 cab fare to our favorite bar. Why is it that these people were complaining about free transportation?

As the night progressed I heard more complaints about paying for $2 drafts instead of $1 bottles, the fact that we HAD to move onto another bar, and even the fact that it was still light outside, which was affecting their ability to drink. This generation is so used to complaining because they believe they have been wronged in some way, or for the incessant need to hear their own voices. No one, including me, wants to hear about how mommy or daddy isn’t buying you a new car.

Here is an idea. Complain about something that is important like, oh I don’t know universal health care, and then (here's the trick) do something about it. There are people worse off than you! While I can’t say that $2 draft drinks changed my whole outlook on life and I will never complain about something insignificant again because, hello, I love to complain (especially about a lot of things that dumb people aren’t smart enough to figure out will fail). I can say that I have seen what complaining can do and will try and to make a conscious effort to complain for some good. If nothing else, in the end when you are winning awards after getting all the homeless people off the streets (after complaining about the lack of government funding for domestic issues and coming up with a program to help them), and you become extremely rich and famous, you can rub it in the faces of those who complain to their parents that they didn’t give them enough spending money instead of getting a job; making you more successful and the better person. Just remember who inspired you to complain for a change and hook a sister up. And that’s the way things should be.

The Way Things Should Be

The Way Things Should Be came about in a fairly interesting way. A bunch of friends and I work in an office. An office in the basement of a terrible, terrible building at the University of Hartford (just so we're clear, the office is fab. The building is not fab), where we produce the University's weekly student-run newspaper, The Hartford Informer. As we go through our daily routines and bump into each other throughout the day, we express our grievances and demand that we know what's best for humanity. Instead of doing anything about it, we Tweet it and put it all over Facebook and let the internet know how we feel in our blogs and other social networks.

While mocking the entertainment editor/fellow blog-mate/all around pal for HIS blog ( called The Truth About Music ), I came up with the brilliant idea to start my own. Why? Because I know what's best, that's why.

So take TWTSB, all of its contributors, its contents and its mission however you like, but know that you shouldn't really be taking us seriously. We don't even take ourselves seriously.