THE WHEELS ON THE BUS...

Nobody likes getting yelled at. But there's something extra-humbling when the person who's opted to funnel their verbal violence into your face is a foul-mouthed homeless guy.

Sure, he might be off his meds or completely doped up out of his mind, and yeah he's probably seen shit I can't even begin to imagine, but when you're sitting quietly amongst two dozen total strangers on a city bus, to be particularly singled out to be the recipient of an endless trail of screaming bum spit is a bit humiliating. Because really, nobody, not even this shouting hobo, wants to be on a city bus.

I am of the opinion that waiting for, and then riding public transportation can be equated to being on fire, and then not on fire anymore.

Waiting for public transportation when you need to be somewhere is an excrutiating ordeal, standing there like a helpless chump, thinking about having to potentially rearrange your entire day because there's no bus in sight. Suddenly, you're making phone calls, changing plans, and thinking every 3 to 7 seconds that those underpass lights up there just might be a bus, even though they haven't been for the last 45 minutes. Is that one? No, it's a UPS truck. Fuck, I'm late for work again. I'm going to be fired today. But wait! What's that? Could that be it, or is it another fucking dump truck? How many god damned dump trucks could possibly be needed in this direction on this street anyway? Some of the happiest times in my Chicago life have occured when no, I won't need to alter my entire day's plans, and yes, I will still have a job, because that fucking bus has finally, ever-so-slowly rolled up to the bus stop.

But it's bitersweet.

As soon as you enter, you're smacked upside the sinuses with a fog of funky smells fading in and out of potency as you shuffle down the aisle looking for a seat- wet dog, farts, an actual rank armpit pressed into your nostrils, fried chicken, farts again, rotting trash, a diaper filled with baby poop, chinese food, then finally, hot, rotting luncheon meat. You begin to wonder why you had to have exact change and PAY for the priviledge of riding this slow moving stink tunnel. But at least a seat is open. You quickly snag the seat before someone else notices, but your elation is quickly snuffed by a wave of intense, sharp fear- why wasn't anyone else sitting here? There are four people standing in the aisle. Were they just tired of sitting all day? No- this is America, where everyone absolutely fucking loves to sit. For God's sake- people argue over who has more claim to being the one who should sit. Oh God... did I look at the seat before I sat down? No. Fuck. Why does it reek of cheese vomit? Did I sit in barf? Wait is this seat wet? You reach under where you're sitting. No- it's dry. So why isn't anyone sitting here? What's in that plastic bag on the ground? Uh oh. That's a fucking condom. A used condom, and it's about fur centimeters away from your pant leg. Deciding that's not the way you want to contract A.I.D.S., you jettison yourself from the seat faster than a monkey on fire and join the other brave souls congregating in the aisle. Suddenly, you realize the guy sitting in the seat next to you is muttering racist propaganda to himself with occasional bursts of volume for no apparent reason. And...oh god. Now he's feeling your ass. You move up the aisle. Finally it's your stop- you get off, feeling as though you're a closeted gay in the 1930's who's just survived a police raid. But you paid for a transfer, 'cause you ain't home yet... what new horrors await?

If you're set on fire, you're happy to not be on fire anymore, but the fact of the matter is, you're still burnt and in tremendous amounts of pain.

So maybe that's a loose analogy.

Fact is, boarding a bus and managing to settle into a bodily fluid-free seat is one of city life's happy little miracles. The only way to properly enjoy it is to completely zone out, eyes glazed over, stare out the window, and think of how happy you are that you won't be washing another person's crap off your pants today. To settle into this happy, numb little mental glen only to be screamed at and repeatedly called a "motherfucker" because you HAPPEN to be sitting in some insane bum's seat when there are other seats open (apparently one can claim ownership of a certain spot on a bus they've just boarded) is more than a little discouraging.

Oh, how I constantly wonder what majesty will await me the next time I hear those doors woosh open and catch the pungent stench of human misery blasting out the doors of a CTA bus.

DON'T FUCK WITH THE ELDERLY...

Back in my day, old ladies said things like "Oh my stars", "Heaven's to Betsy" and "Oh, for land's sake." What does "oh for land's sake" mean? I have no fucking idea. But it was old lady friendly, and that was that.

In my feeble, young, Game Boy-addled brain, I just assumed that old ladies were unaware of the horrors taking place in the outside world- drug addiction, murder, teenage pregnancy, the Maury show. But now that I'm older, I know that old ladies went through all that same stuff, just differently. If you came up in the 40's, that didn't mean there wasn't murder or rape or what-have-you corporate fuckery, it just meant that it was murder and rape that took place in the 40's as opposed to the "new millennium" balls-in-your-face version of the same thing. When it comes down to it, people can only do something so horrible before a person is dead or scarred for life(granted they can do the same horrible thing repeatedly.) The palette of unspeakable horrors hasn't expanded, it's just that people are more cavalier about it now. If someone was murdered in the 30's, it was a big deal. Now you're libel to hear a news report to the tune of:

"A man was found beaten to death, raped, dismembered, defecated upon, and thrown in a dumpster today. After the break, Mary's here with gardening tips!"

Which somehow makes it seem like being beaten, raped, dismembered, shat on and left in a dumpster is somehow at least tangentially related to gardening tips, which are nice.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say.

My point is that at some point, everybody's an old lady (or dude) so all those crazy free-lovin' hippies will be old, the bikers and bitches and pill poppers and partiers and coke snorters and vodka bar-elite will all be old, too. And at the end of the day, there they are, sitting on a park bench with their groceries from the drug store, waiting for a bus. Then I hear the above phrase, and think, "gee- old people are different nowadays."

I can't recall hearing an old person call another person "uptight," or mention eye-stabbings as a child.

Yes, I'm in the city. But, regardless...you gotta watch them old folks. Why, they're libel to stab you in the eyes for looking at 'em.

THE INNOCENCE OF YOUTH

There's a very good chance the up-and-coming generation is thoroughly and utterly screwed.

I'm not talking about what's been done to the environment, the economy, or any myriad number of other things that are hopelessly and unequivocally fubar at the moment.

No- they might not be able to, y'know, communicate properly, take care of themselves, learn, or clothe themselves without becoming frustrated with the point of it all.

Really, the total and utter dependency on technological bric-a-brac that we've developed might be seriously fucking people up.

How would neurologists and scientists really know what the true consequences are from an entire birth-to-grave lifetime of internet, cell phones, I-Pod's and all the other techno bullshit we stuff into our ears and eyes? They can guess is all. Because only after there is an entire generation of bleary eyed, unmotivated mutants walking the earth can they say that something is a FACT.

The trouble with science is that, generally, things have to go wrong a whole bunch before it knows whether or not something can be called a fact. Does coffee cause cancer? I dunno- hey focus group: you're gonna drink a whole lot of coffee for 30 or 40 years, and then we'll see when you're old and fragile if you start spraying blood from your body's many orifices. Says focus group, "A lifetime's supply of coffee and a sawbuck? Where do I sign up!"

I realize several things:

1.) In 5 or 10 years, saying things like "these kids today with their DSL inter-net, cellular telephones and I-Pod Nanos- they haven't got a clue!" will sound as ridiculous as someone saying "These kids with their game boys and Sega Genesis and Tamagachi's" or "These kids with their type writer ribbons, flapper dresses and auto mobiles." I expect, possibly, 10 people to read this ever, so it doesn't really matter.

2.) Every person thinks these things about the up-and-coming generation; every generation thinks the one behind it is a bunch of worthless, drooling idiots who will lay claim to the end of the world simply by being sheer and unabashed morons.

But when I hear things like the above pictured coming out of an actual human being's mouth, without a shred of irony, three blocks away from the school they've just left, I think that there might be something to it this time around.

Of course- we've managed to jack the planet bad enough it might not matter anyway.

Fiery apocalypse here we come!

When's "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" on anyway? The pizza-blasted microwaveable corn dogs are getting cold.

KEEPIN' IT REAL

A row of stone faced, hard looking children were standing outside the funeral home on Western and diversey a few weeks back, watching a departed stone faced, hard looking child getting loaded in the back of a hearse.

It was one of the saddest things I've seen in recent memory- each one of those kids looked more ready to cut you and run than the last, hands on whatever's in their waistbands in case they gotta react, while surrounded by crying old women and parents.

That's not a childhood. There's no easy solution, and so much ink has been spilled over the spilled blood that it's not even worth getting into the "how's" and "why's" of the thing. It's just sad to see such a weird, very real facet of it.

They have no emotion. No emotion, that is, except fear: fear those kids have been living with since they first crawled out of the womb. Fear that motivates them to put that fear into everybody else. And anger at whatever circumstance put them in theirs.

Easily one of my favorite things I've seen since moving to Chicago was while walking down the street near Fullerton and Western, maybe two years ago. A gang banger kid, maybe 15 or 16 years old, is walking towards me, scowling and posturing big time, "keepin' it real," looking around and staring down anyone who would dare look at him. He passes a woman with a puppy, which couldn't have been more than a couple months old who, in its excitable puppy way, starts jumping up and down on the kid, yipping. He looks down with ultra tough-guy face as a ridiculous, enormous ear to ear grin breaks out across his face when he sees the puppy. In less than two blinks, he's back to being an emotionless bad ass, looking around to make sure nobody saw him enjoy himself for that less-than-second.

So... if you're a tough guy, you can't even enjoy a fucking puppy?

Apparently not. And you can't be sad at funerals.

Tough way to live, frankly.

FEAR OF FURNITURE

I heard on the news today that a high percentage of household injuries occur from falling furniture.

Yeah... I had to process that one for a minute, too.

They went on to say that some things you can do to prevent harm from that pesky, dangerous furniture is to strap it to the walls and teach your kids how to behave safely around it, such as having the smaller ones wear protection if near a TV that might be in danger of falling.

OK.

It's fine- you can take a minute to process that. Go grab a beer, re-heat a Hot Pocket, and meet me back here in a few.

Back? Have you come to grips with all that yet?

Good.

So Americans now have so much shit in their house that they work and scrape and scrabble to be able to afford in a quest to make themselves "happier," and are simultaneously SO afraid of everything that they're now AFRAID OF ALL THEIR SHIT!

Seriously- a building, or an elephant, or a god damned grand piano could fall on your kid, too, but if that happens that's just some bizarre, freaky shit. It's not that he shouldn't be able to go outside, should've been wearing a protective helmet and body suit, or should've been taking weird Eastern self defense classes to build up his reflexes so he could just "Spidey Sense" himself out of the way.

And I really don't think the answer lies in nailing all your furniture to the floor. I know that if I see my friend's kid is in a neck brace, and they tell me a china hutch fell on him, I wouldn't assume that it was because the furniture was flawed or unstable, or (god forbid) plotting and insidious. No, I would assume that little Jimmy was acting like a jackass, and ran into said evil piece of shit furniture, and THEN it fell on him.

Unless you live on a sharp incline, have highly volatile floors, or live between two tectonic plates, furniture- especially furniture that can inflict greivous bodily harm when falling- seems to be pretty stable. Now, if you're eight years old and leaping around screaming like a lemur who's just been set on fire, then yes, furniture can no longer held up to the same rules.
I, for one, and...well...every other person I've ever met has spent their entire lives around furniture, and managed to avoid being aggressively beaten by a side table or crushed to death by a bureau.


Why is everything someone or someTHING else's fault? When can we start making ourselves and our offspring own up to their own bullshit?

Seriously... things just aren't all that scary and dangerous.

If you're that afraid of everything, maybe you should keep your child in a nice, safe, soft room. You'll have to bind his hands to his sides so he doesn't accidentally poke an eye out with those darn, dangerous fingers. You should constantly keep an eye on him through security cameras, and meals should be administered through a special slot in the door. The door should only open from the outside- you're in charge here, after all, so you should be able to decide when they can and can't leave the nice safe room. But don't ever let him out! Some furniture might fall on him!

LEAVE IT TO THE POO-FESSIONALS

I had always been under the assumption that business people know something I don't; that to succeed in their dog-eat-dog, power lunch-and-tie, work-a-day world, they must somehow have a sharper intellect in areas where mine is worn to a dull and useless nub, or have an iron-clad constitution that allows them to deal with the stress and intensity in a way my marshmallow-y insides never could. Or maybe they're just more grown up, whereas I like frosted flakes and cartoons. With this, I assumed that their fat paychecks, private jets and cars named after viscous animals were somehow like a flag flown to show how far they'd come.

But don't take this to mean I have a teary-eyed respect for those hardworking business folk out in the corporations buybuybuy-ing and sellsellsell-ing. I have an evenly mixed feeling of contempt and indifference to the corporate soldiers. If they wanna deal with all that banal and uninteresting claptrap, let 'em. 'Cause I sure as hell don't want to, and as an overgrown boy-man, I like to have options as to what kind of cereal to buy to accompany my cartoon watching. Without those business go-getters, I would be left with one type of dry, cardboard-y flavorless flake to choose from.

But as I get older and meet more people who are out there duking it out in the corporate battlefield, I've realized that it's not generally about who's "smarter" or who works "harder," it's about skillsets and aptitudes and all that stuff High School guidance councelors brow beat you with when you just want to leave so you can go to Taco Johns and do donuts in the parking lot. It also has a lot to do with how much and what kind of crap you can put up with, which is really what a lot of life in general can be chalked up to when it comes right down to it.

Turns out, a lot of these corporate types are, dare I say it, much MORE childish than folks of my ilk. I'd wondered about this for some time- but that image of the steely, serious 1950's businessman had been burned into my brain as the image these people must hold ideal. Then I see a gaggle of office ladies, drunk on apple-tini's stumbling down Damen Ave at 4PM singing "The Diarrhea Song" at the top of their lungs, staggering in and out of traffic as they go.
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So... that MBA? Maybe not as hard to get as I thought.

'Course, if I buckle down and start chasing that almighty buck, I might have to re-learn "The Diarrhea Song" for "casual Fridays."