Assignment 4: It shouldn't take this long!!!

To Laura and Gertrude Stein....
I loved this assignment because it really got to the crux of Los Angeles.... getting places. Whether it be sleeping your way to the top or driving from your home to the home of the person you need to sleep your way to the top with, getting places in this city is challenging.

My commute to work every day involves two turns. One off of my street , and one into the parking lot of the office I work in. That's right, I live off of the same street I work on. It is a 4.6 mile commute! And somehow you can't imagine the shit that I go through in those mere 4.6 miles on one street. I am late to work. Every. Day. Fired!

So I decided to document my journey in statistics. My Mama* always told me that if I want to prove a point, the best way to do it is with stats. I took data collected over four days and here is what I found.

* Statistics teacher. I really mean my statistics teacher.

On average...

- I park a 1.5 blocks away from my aparment. (F you, street cleaning. Ha ha rich people... you have to move your cars in this city too).

- I hit 7 red lights every day.

- I steal 1 yellow every day.

- Time spent at really long red light to get off of my street: 34.25 seconds. (This was shocking to me. I blame all of my lateness on this stoplight... it can't only be 34 seconds! I accuse the data gatherer of fraud.) Click on "street view" to see the very stoplight in question:

http://maps.google.com/maps?sourceid=navclient&rlz=1T4SKPB_enUS304US305&q=3rd%20St%20and%20Norton%20Ave.%20Los%20angeles&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=il

- I see 0.5 women being assholes in/with their cars.

- I see 0.75 men being assholes in/with their cars.

- I see 0.5 fat people. (I guess that means I see one regular sized person).

- I am 7.75 minutes late.

- When I am the above amount late, there is a 0% chance my boss will be in the parking lot smoking when I pull in.

- On days I do my make-up in the car, I am 50% more likely to nearly rear-end someone.

- My trip takes me 19 minutes. AKA 4.13 minutes per mile. AKA the speed of a Kenyan running a mile. AKA 13.04 Mph on average. SOMEONE SHOOT ME IN THE FACE.

- I see one crazy thing every other day (my favorites this last week were Matt Dillon/ Matt Dillon look-alike in an old old car and a mini-van of which the front wheel totally came off).

Statistics gathered. Point made. Class bored.