To Serve and Protect and The People’s Court All On One Bus!

Today I had the weirdest bus ride. I got on a pretty quiet bus and it started to drive. It stopped to pick someone up and he got on the bus and showed his transfer. The driver said thanks and the guy walked away. The driver caught his attention and asked him to please either put the transfer in the garbage or give it to him. The passenger looked at him and walked away. The driver yelled for him again and said, “The rule is put the transfer in the garbage or give it to me. You can’t ride around all day on the same transfer.” Like duh. Where does that even work? The passenger responded with, “No. I want to keep my transfer as proof of payment.” At this point, we all wonder what this guy’s problem is. The driver asked him once more for the transfer and said if he didn’t do it, he’d have to call the police. I understand why, since in the last while, bus drivers have been beaten up by people who try to get on the bus with an invalid transfer and the driver says no. Come on, people, a bus ticket is 2 bucks. I mean, with the whole blinky thing, we don’t have to pay the bus fare, but even if I did have to pay it, I don’t think I’d be so poor and desperate that when a bus driver said I couldn’t ride and had to pay 2 bucks, I’d hurt him.

Anyway, back to our friendly neighbourhood weirdo. The passenger still said no. Now we definitely think he’s weird, because if the driver’s willing to call the police, why fight him over a stupid transfer? Is that little slip of paper really all that valuable? So the driver calls the police, and the passenger goes into this crazy rant about how the driver only wants to punish him because he hates his job, how stupid this is, why in hell would he call the police, etc. So we sit pulled over to the side and, after about 5 minutes, long enough to make everybody miss their buses downtown, the police officer comes on board. What follows makes me feel like I’m in an episode of To Serve and Protect, except nobody seems drunk. He asks the driver and passenger what’s wrong. When he gets to the passenger, Mr. Weirdo starts using all these way too official words. “Sir, if I’d only had the procedure explained fully to me, I would have had no issue with cooperating. I only want to reach my final destination, sir.” Seriously, what’s with that? Whenever you see people who look like total slobs on the People’s Court, especially slobs who are obviously in the wrong, they use all these needless, big words as if they’ll somehow impress the judge and make her say, “You’re just too smart to lose your lawsuit.” This looked like what the guy on the bus was trying to do. The police officer just cut him off and told him either handover the transfer or get off the bus. He grudgingly handed over the transfer and then the officer asked the driver if he was ok with the guy riding to wherever he wanted to go, after taking the weirdo’s name and birth date, and he said he was. Now, think about that. Because this idiot wouldn’t hand over a slip of paper, he’s written down in police files for causing a disturbance. I know it’s not a huge thing, but that whole pile of crap could have been so easily avoided.

As the police officer left, I thought to myself, “Damn! I wanted to see him drag our weird passenger friend off the bus!” At the same time, I realize thatI’m evil for thinking that. So what a needless waste of our time, the police officer’s time and the driver’s time! How hard could it have been to just do what he asked? I almost think this situation was more stupid than the screaming freak incident!

Meet My New Heroes

Whoever the men are who invented
this,
they’re super geniuses.

According to the site, the Beer Belly as they’re calling it can hold up to 80 ounces of liquid, and looks and feels exactly like a real beer gut, other than all the hair and stretch marks I guess.

The marketing pitch is pretty convincing too, since the idea is that you can strap this bad boy on, fill it up, go to a concert or a sporting event and avoid paying an arm, a leg and a small Mexican child every time you get thirsty. At $34.95, I figure it’ll pay for itself in no time flat. Think about it. At a lot of places, the hotdogs are $34.95, which leaves a lot of us broke and thirsty with no way around it.

But as cool as this whole thing is, I should probably throw a few tips out there because once human beings get involved, it’s only a matter of time until a fine idea is ruined forever.

  • Don’t use this thing in places you go to frequently and expect to get away with it. People will probably recognize you and wonder what the hell happened, especially when they see you out on the street much thinner before and after the fact.

  • Don’t drink and drive. I shouldn’t have to say that, but you know somebody’s gonna try it sooner or later.

  • As Carin says, “if you’re a woman, just don’t.”

But since I’m not a woman and drinking and driving really isn’t in the cards, if any of you have 35 bucks you don’t know what to do with, Christmas is coming up and I can think of at least 1 blog writing guy who wouldn’t object to seeing one of these under his tree.

Fruit Is Like Oxygen

Ok, thanks to me and my stupid titles, I can’t get that old love Is Like Oxygen song out of my head now. I hope somebody knows which song I’m talking about so I won’t be alone. It’s one of those songs that once you hear it, or even think about it, it’s in your head for hours, sometimes days. Oh well, I have no one to blame but myself, and to be honest, I think I’d rather have that song in my head for a hundred years straight than think about what inspired me to use that title in the first place. Speaking of which, I should probably get to that.

I need to apologize to a whole lot of people, so here goes.

To anybody I’ve ever made fun of for buying bottled water, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for saying that paying for water might just be the stupidest use of perfectly good money there is. I didn’t mean that. Ok, I suppose I did, but starting today, if ever you hear me saying something like that, it’s just me talking out of anger or moodiness and not saying what I truly feel.

Furthermore, I would also like to add that you are not in fact morons, idiots, dumbasses or fucksticks. Ok, maybe some of you are, but it’s not simply because you buy tap water and think you’re making a healthy choice by doing so.

So why the sudden change of heart? Simple. I just found out that soon you will be able to buy
cans of fruit-flavoured oxygen,
and quite frankly, any person who would be foolish enough to do such a thing deserves my wrath far more than any bottled water consumer ever could.

Please Don’t Kill Me

I just read that Ontario is now allowing bbusses and streetcars to use the same technology that emergency vehicles are able to use to change traffic signals when they need to get somewhere in a hurry.

The idea is that letting them do so will reduce congestion, speed up bus traffic and get people to their destinations more quickly, which is a fine theory I’ll admit, but the execution has me worried. I do a whole lot of walking and a whole lot of bus riding, and I can’t help but wonder if our Transportation Minister or the CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, both of whom think this is a good idea, have ever actually done the same. Just in case they haven’t, I’d like to share a few observations with them.

  • Any time you manage to save by switching the lights will be all but cancelled out by time spent sitting at a stop waiting for elderly or disabled people to board and find a seat, or by giving directions to people who ask for them.

  • No matter what, transit vehicles are going to find a way to run off schedule.

    • I don’t know why, but that’s just the way it is. They’ll run early if they have to if it means messing with somebody’s life, it’s just what they do. But my point is that no bus system in the history of the world has ever been immune to delays, especially ones caused by unexpected circumstances like accidents or stalled cars, both of which happen on a pretty regular basis in most cities.

  • Speaking as a pedestrian, and somewhat more importantly [to me anyway] as a blind pedestrian, I’d like to point out that a fair number of traffic lights aren’t long enough for anybody who isn’t sprinting to make it across the street before they change, and that’s now, when we don’t have anybody other than the occasional emergency response person monkeying with them in order to save a few seconds of travel time.

    • I have no problem with emergency vehicles using this system by the way, I want to make that clear. What I do have a problem with is putting this type of technology in the hands of more people. The more people who use it, the greater chance there is for error, which leads me to my final point.

  • No matter how careful you are, no human is perfect and there’s always a chance that a driver might not see somebody, change the light, and end up running a person down.

    • That’s not to say that once this light changing thing takes off that people are going to start dropping dead left and right, I just don’t think that saving a couple of minutes at most on your way to work or the mall and a person’s life is enough of an even trade to make it worthwhile to take that chance. Besides, if you end up hitting a guy, think of the delays that would cause. We’d probably be right back where we are now, which honestly isn’t that bad to begin with.

Just When I Think I’m Done…

Something compelled me to go visit the other vomit comit and I discovered holy shit, I’ve been tagged! So I have another post handed to me. This one’s going to be hard, but here goes.

Six Things about me:

1. I’m short, and always get mistaken for a 12-year-old. If I had a nickel for every time I heard, “where’s your mother?” or “What grade are you in?” I’d be rich. It does come in handy though. People seem to look out for me, which is cute.

2. I managed to rescue two animals and make them my pets. One was the rat from psych. We didn’t do anything dastardly to her, she just learned to do tricks for a few sugary treats. If I didn’t take her, they would have put her down. She must have been pretty cute, because when I told mom I was going to take home our project rat, she gasped, but when she saw Hope the hooded psych rat, she put on the voice she uses to talk to pets all the time. I had that little rat until the day she died, *shiver* I don’t want to think of the next time I have to touch dead flesh again.

The other animal I rescued was a guinea pig. There was a girl in one of my psych classes who really wanted a guinea pig, so she got one. Then she really wanted a Jack Russell Terrier. Anybody see where this is going? Jack Russell Terriers like to hunt, and a confined llittle animal would make a perfect prey. So home came the guinea pig. She was with me, until the day, *sob* I had to give her to my parents, who one day took her outside, penned her in, and she got loose, never to come back. I don’t want to think about what happened to poor Bella the guinea pig. I don’t blame my parents though. She could be a real rascal.

3. I know people from all over the place. That’s what happens when you grow up and go to school most of your life in one place, and then go to a school for the blind for two years where your classmates come from all over the province and then you go to university. It makes the phone bills big sometimes, thank god for email. Now that I look at that one, it doesn’t look all that special.

4. The end of my nose apparently looks like a ski-jump.

5. I was quite the little brat when I was a kid. My parents got called into lots of meetings asking if the things I’d say were things they thought. Once, I accused a teacher of forcing kids to do the floride mouth rinse thing. Apparently my words were, “They’re crying, you’re forcing!” Um…I’m lucky I wasn’t born in an earlier time. I might have taken quite the beating for that one.

6. Because of a weird sickness a couple of years ago, I gained a new appreciation for life. There’s nothing like wondering if you’ve served your purpose on this earth, making peace with anyone you may have hurt, and thinking about making a will at 25. I guess I’m still here, so there must be more to do.

Hmmm…who should I make do this? I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll make anyone do it. If someone wants to, they can. That didn’t take as long as I thought.

>Ah, More Proof!

>Today was the king of random days. All kinds of random things happened to me, some of them I talked about already, a couple are still to come. Yes, I think I am finally running out of ideas.

I was walking down the street past my house and towards a restaurant with a large covered patio, but for the purpose of this post, I’ll call it a gazebo. As I walked by, I heard a voice softly say, “I’m thinking next year I’ll have the gazebo nailed to the ground.” I didn’t think about it at all, and kept going. Then the voice said again, equally softly, “Oh! So you’re just going to keep on walking are you?” Suddenly realizing the voice was intended for me, I turned around. What he said next still has me laughing.

“remember a few months ago when this whole gazebo fell down? You were the first to notice it, at least the first to call it in. We always remembered that and talked about how the girl with the white stick was the only one to notice something was wrong!”

I had to think a while, and then remembered. There was this one windy night. The next morning at around 10 or so, when I tried to walk by the restaurant, something was taking up a lot more of the sidewalk than it should. So, I did the only thing I thought I should. Since this place was right beside my apartment building, actually kind of surrounded by the building, I called the landlord and asked who we should talk to about the collapsed gazebo.

But apparently I was the first and only person to let them know. Considering there are 20 other apartments in this building, and this street isn’t exactly the quietest, um, I’m scared. I’m really thinking people aren’t using their eyes anymore.

Some Things are just Cool.

I don’t know what it is about today, but it’s just full of cool things that absolutely need posting. Take what happened tonight at the women’s shelter where I volunteer, for example. I walked in there for a little appreciation meeting. At the end of it, we were all to reach into a bowl and pull out something we liked. The bowl was full of fridge magnets, decorated by the kids in the shelter. I’m now the proud owner of a cute little turtle fridge magnet!

I know I talked before about the small things about working there that break my heart. This is just one of the many small things that are so wonderful!

And the Absurdity Continues!

Ok, I’m going to bitch for a little bit and then continue my pile of posts of happiness. Yes, I have more. Anyone scared yet? Or are you just asking me what’s in that cuppa soup? Honestly, I’d like to know as well.

I got this from a friend who got this from a friend who…got it out of Associated Press.

> > Slow-walking woman, 82, fined $114
Apr. 12, 2006. 01:00 AM

LOS ANGELES-An 82-year-old woman received a $114 (U.S.) ticket for taking too long to cross a street.

Mayvis Coyle said she began shuffling with her cane across a busy road when the light was green, but was unable to make it to the other side before it turned red. She said the motorcycle officer who ticketed her on Feb. 15 told her she was obstructing traffic.

“I think it’s completely outrageous,” said Coyle, who described herself as a Cherokee medicine woman. “He treated me like a 6-year-old, like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Los Angeles police Sgt. Mike Zaboski said police are cracking down on people who improperly cross streets because pedestrian accidents are above normal. He said he could not comment on Coyle’s ticket other than to say it is her word against that of the citing officer.

“I’d rather not have angry pedestrians,” Zaboski said. “But I’d rather have them be alive.”

Others, however, supported Coyle’s contention that the light in question does not give people enough time to cross the five-lane boulevard.

“I can go halfway, then the light changes,” said Edith Krause, 78, who uses an electric cart because she has difficulty walking.

Councilwoman Wendy Greuel said she has asked transportation officials to figure out how to accommodate elderly people.

There are a few things that piss me right off about this, and they’re all sort of connected. I can se why the law was designed. It was designed for people who can’t seem to see whether it’s red or green, go or stop, and just tear across, or worse yet, stroll across as if they own the road. if you’re whistling a merry tune and taking your sweet time while eighteen-wheelers go meep meep and desperately try to avoid turning you into a road pancake, then you deserve a big ticket. But this is a sweet old lady, or at least an old lady, who is trying her damnedest to get across a street. Why wouldn’t the police officer do the right thing, get off his fucking motorcycle and help her across and leave it at that? There is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Why couldn’t the officer understand that this is one of those times that the letter of the law doesn’t work? OR, is it that these police are so strictly governed that they have no choice but to enforce the law even if they know it shouldn’t be enforced? Somehow I doubt that’s the case. He could have just helped her across and not said another word. There is always room for human free will, especially when it comes to this kind of thing.

Also, that last comment at the end just did me in. The city councilor wants transit to “figure out” what to do about elderly people. In response to this, I ask, why do they pay the woman the big bucks? There needs to be an election held immediately so she can be replaced with someone who has a functioning cerebrum. What you do is be a decent human being and help them across! There is no figureing to be done! The best possible spin I can put on her comment is that when the reporter asked her what she thought of the whole thing, she realized that it was a sticky situation, so that was her best attempt at PR.

Ok I’m done bitching. I should just be thankful I don’t live in LA because here, we don’t have stupid laws like that. But that must be immediately followed up with, for now. It is only a matter of time before some poor senior is paying a hefty fine for just trying to get around.