I Ride The Bus.

Yeah, I've been away for a while -- life tends to happen. If you were my mom or someone I might be tempted to explain everything that's been going on for the last couple months -- but you're not, so I'm not. Suffice to say that life has happened, most of it good. I've been busy, in other words.

On to the subject: I now take the bus in to downtown Minneapolis to get to work. This is significant, for real. I had a real issue with the bus for a long time, and for a number of reasons.

When you spend your childhood on a bus, being inexorably dragged to a place to which you really don't want to go, that leaves a mark.

When some psycho decides to turn a public bus into a re-enactment of the Dresden firebombing, that leaves a mark.

Bottom line, I didn't want anything to do with buses for a long time.

Well, I recently got over it (and no, if you're reading, this isn't your doing -- you just came along at the right time), and these days I take the bus to and from work most of the time. Specifically, I take the 18 -- renowned for being full of whackos and smelly folk. For the record, in the past few months I've encountered very few true whackos, and have been imposed upon by only a couple smelly people.

But there are things about the bus. For one, you're confronted with all sorts of folks. This, by and large, is a good thing -- I like diversity. The thing is, you're also confronted with real life -- like the couple with 4 kids who have to take the bus, with all 4 kids in tow, to wherever they're supposed to be going. They can't afford anything more, and we could all stand to think about how that would be. Like the elderly folks who have to endure the embarrassment of being slowly lifted into the bus by the Invalid Lift, only to have to endure further embarrassment of being slowly returned to the pavement by that damn lift a few blocks later. Or the poor fuckers who had to do some shopping and now have to drag the fruits of said shopping onto an invariably crowded bus.

But over all, the thing that really strikes me is this: Everybody's so FUCKING miserable. My god, each and every one of them -- they're just... defeated. This modern world is killing us, and these people are like canaries in a coal mine -- we're all next. And it's just so sad to be confronted with so much proof that we've all been sold a bill of goods; to have the folly of human existence plopped right into your lap. I'm not an empathetic person as a rule, but god damn -- everyone's so fucking sad. I just kind of want them to feel a little better.

So, yeah -- I ride the bus. So it goes.







Oh. Fun bus story for today: This evening, while I was quietly sitting in my seat re-reading Slaughterhouse-Five, not bugging anyone, some jackass managed to both crack me in the mush and cut my cheek while clumsily exiting the bus -- apparently,having no sense of balance at all is fine these days. I got a headache and a lovely scratch on my cheek bone, thanks to that fuck knuckle. Closed circuit to all you wannabe liberals out there: If you're actually afraid of black people, don't sit in the back of the bus -- and if you do happen to make this mistake, maybe skip the motherfucking jazz hands when you bail like the pussy you are.

Best part of the whole event: The enormous black man sitting opposite me giving me a quizzical look after the dumbass popped me, as if to say "I can't believe you didn't kill that douchebag", and then laughing his ass off when I just shrugged at him and went back to reading my book. He got it: the douchebag wasn't worth the effort it'd take to kill him.