Like peanut butter & jelly or mustard on a hot dog, this just seems like a perfect fit.

Don’t you think?

Do you have a valid driver’s license? Are you attentive enough when you drive to identify traffic congestion due to construction projects? Are you comfortable telling construction workers to hurry the heck up in 110+ degree heat, without regard to life or limb? (People kinda get grouchy when it’s hot.)

Then the City of Phoenix has a job for you. For a mesely $160,000 a year, the City will pay you to drive around town and get right in the middle of construction caused traffic jams.

After scores of citizen complaints about congestion, Phoenix is moving to hire a “streets czar” to coordinate traffic projects around town.

Known officially as the deputy street transportation director, the czar will oversee every use of the public right of way, including maintenance, utility work, street widening and special events. The position pays $160,644.

The City Council recommended approval of the position this week during a policy session.

When hired, the czar will also manage two chief construction inspectors, another new position designed to alleviate construction burdens. They’ll travel along the light rail line looking for problems, ensuring as free a flow of traffic as possible.

I’d like to make $77/hour just to drive around town. I can tell people to STFU and get to work. Maybe I should get my resume ready. Hmmm.

Have y’all heard about the judge in DC suing a dry cleaner for losing his pants?

Quick backstory: Pearson brought five suits in for alterations because he needed the pants let out. One of the suits came back without pants. Pearson sued under the city’s consumer protection law. He got to his $65 million damages claim, which he lowered last week to $54 million, through a formula that penalized the cleaners $18,000 for each day a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign hung from the store.

Well, according to the WSJ law blog, while describing the agony when he realized his pants were lost for all eternity, this weenie broke down in tears on the stand. He cried over cuffed pants. CRIED over pants!

Good lord. No wonder the court system in this country is a mess.

(My apologies to James Taranto and Best Of The Web Today for stealing their headline. It was the only one that fit.)

So my Mother will stop nagging me.

He gets his table manners from his father.

Seriously though, it wasn’t the burger smack down that brought me back. It was the even more exciting topic of taxation. Try to keep your excitement contained, mmk?

It seems like I’m the only person not running for President these days. I haven’t been paying much attention to the field. As a matter of principle I refuse to get sucked in until after Labor Day. It’s June of 2007, the first primary is still more than six months away. Unlike other bloggers, I don’t get paid to be a political junkie. I get burned out on blogging and I disappear for a month or three.

In any case, candidates on both sides have made overtures to their tax policy platforms. As details slowly become available, I’ll be here ripping their proposals apart.

My Spidey Sense tells me I’m going to have lots of fun with John Edwards’. That just makes my fingers tingle with excitement.

I have the uncontrollable urge to use this bandwidth I pay for to spew the many random things that pop in to my head these days. The blog burnout is gone, the desire write is back. It only took Cam Edwards equating a Sonic Burger to a Double Double.

I have to say their Double Sonic burger with mayo is at least the equal to In-N-Out.

Um. No. I don’t think so.

Let’s pretend there’s such a thing as a burger quality scale. On the top of the scale there’s In-N-Out. It’s not a subjective measurement, it’s a scientific fact. Like global warming.

Moving on down the scale, below the acceptable burgers and the burgers you’d only eat under threat of bodily harm…there’s Sonic. How can a burger from a place that has fried cheese on the menu be equal to an In-N-Out burger? Not possible.

Don’t shed a tear for poor Sonic. The poor Sonic burger is in good company. Congealing at the bottom of the list is the red-headed stepchild of California burger institutions…Tommy’s Burger. And congeal it does. Any burger joint open 24 hours and puts chili on everything on its menu can’t do much more than congeal.

I’m hungry.