The Five-Dollar Bitch and The Wanderer

I am aware that this blog is in danger of becoming a "list of things that happen to Bing on the bus," but I'll be damned if something strange does not happen every other day.

I tried explaining this last night to Animala using my talking-words, but it came out all garbled. Hopefully it will go better here.

I catch the 5:40 bus to work. I teach at 8:00 and like to use the morning to do my prep work. Yesterday morning, as I got onto the bus, I noticed a guy in the back. Black guy. Big black beard. Knit cap torn at the top, through which stuck a strange, unkempt miniature braid thing. Dirty-looking rumpled clothes and a huge, overstuffed rucksack. Possibly a homeless person, I thought. The buses are warm, as I have found out over the last few months. I can see a spot on a bus being an inviting spot for someone with nowhere else to go in the winter. Many mornings, it is difficult to find a bus stop shelter that does not have a figure hunched over in a sleeping bag, and the train stations can even get warm underground. It's not at all surprising that MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) facilities are a magnet for the homeless.

Anyway, about halfway to my work yesterday morning, the driver lets some people off. But he doesn't start up again. He walks to the back of the bus to talk to the scruffy dude. I can only hear a little through my headphones. They talk for about 2 minutes, while I sit there, aging. Suddenly, there is a climactic nothing, and the bus driver sits down, and we proceed to the next bus station. The guy, who really looks like he has everything he owns on his back, goes up to the driver and starts accusing him of "hating on" him, fairly yelling as he stepped off the bus. I thought, hell, it might be a mistake on the bus driver's part, assuming, like I had, that this guy was homeless. I felt a little like a racist fuck as I thought about whether I had too quickly assigned a station in life to this guy based on a glance as found a seat. Damn it, Bing, I thought. You need to be better than that. Having privately embarrassed myself, I clenched my teeth and pushed my guilt to the back of my mind. We live in a world of snap-judgments, of course, and I'm going to totally miss the mark occasionally, but had I missed it this time because the guy was black? Did I ascribe dirtiness to him because he was dark-skinned? I was ashamed and said nothing to the bus driver when I got off at my stop. I'm sure the driver felt badly too.

When I got back on the bus to go home in the afternoon, the bearded guy was on the bus again, in the same seat at the back. I examined him more closely, and this time there was no doubt about it--that guy was totally fucking homeless.

Today, it was the Five-Dollar Bitch. I had been waiting for the bus in the rain, not peeing the whole time, mind you, for almost an hour. In fact, as I stepped out onto the sidewalk, I saw my bus pulling away, so I had the maximum wait time. finally on my way, I had a transfer at the bus station. As my bus started to pull out of the station, a woman ran out in front of the bus and flagged it down. She got in, set a bunch of stuff down and tapped her SpeedPass against the little sensor pad. It made the unhappy sound. She did it again. And again. And again. And again. Unhappy. Unhappy. Unhappy.

She was talking volubly to the bus driver, who I'm sure didn't want this to become a bigger issue. (They sure have to put up with a lot of stupid crap, I've realized.) Here is a list of things I had no business or interest knowing:

1) Her mother dropped her off at the bus station late. (Solution? I thought. Get a better mother.)
2) Her card works. (Tell that to the little machine.)
3) She only has a five dollar bill.

Finally she sits down. And then she starts complaining to everyone about how she had to use her five dollar bill. For the entire trip. I mean, fuck, it was five dollars. I don't know who she thought her bitching was benefiting. It's your job to get to the station on time, your job to have exact change, your job to shut your cakehole if you fail those two very basic tasks. It went on and on. I wanted to tell her, "Nobody cares. This is your fault. We are not impressed by your minor inconveniencing. You are an insufferable bitch and, honestly, I kind of hope you get kicked off." I really almost said something, because she was utterly self-absorbed and inconsiderate and failed to realize or care that everyone wanted to go all Murder on the Orient Express on her ass. But then I realized that I would be doing exactly what she was doing to everyone else, inflicting my minor discomfort on others.

She should totally get a blog.

HJ

Bing without a soda (and other improbabilities)

Yesterday, for the first time in years, probably a decade or more, I did not have a soda. Seriously. You'd be surprised how much Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi someone can drink. And anyway, I wanted to try that new water stuff everyone has been raving about. When it comes to new foods, I'm not one for variety. Once, I had the same salad every day for lunch for 3 years, and the only reason I stopped getting it was because I moved to another city. So this, my longest-running habit, is actually a biggish change.

Also, my new shirts have epaulets. What the heck does anyone need epaulets for? I am a man of many and varied interests, but these do not extend into clothing or novelty beverages. The store I ordered from no longer carry the shirts I like. I got the next best thing, which apparently have handles on the shoulders. I think I'm coping very well, thank you.

In other news, I want that Gibson guitar so badly I can almost taste it. For some reason my acquisitiveness struck me especially hard today. I really should have it by now. My 1995-6 Fender Strat (Mexican) is not cortando el mustardo, si me entiendes. You know, it sounds pretty good, more or less, except for an occasional buzz when plugged in, but the action is titanic crap. You feel like you are walking on high wires instead of playing a guitar. I'm ready for the next step up, but, Christ if I can't afford it. I don't want to take on any high-interest credit card debt for this, of course, so I am waiting. But I am getting ever more pissed off because I loaned a good friend an assload of money that should be going to my gear, more than enough than to buy a really nice instrument.

I have, however, decided that if I should come a Gibson (not Epi) that goes for $600 or less, regardless, I'm going for it. But you won't see see that price outside of a pawn shop, and even then, who the hell knows what you are going to get? A few months ago, there was just such a guitar nearby, but it was not there very long, as you might imagine.

Le sigh.

Maybe going for a drive will make me feel better.

HJ

20 questions...

I was looking at Steve Novella's site and he had a link to this genie thing that knows what is going on in my head! It's fun to play around with. I thought of "Bing McGhandi" and after 20 questions if came up with:

Oh! So close! Well, let's see what it gets after 10 more questions!

Bearded teacher on the Internet. That's me! Oh, wait, that's PZ. Oops. Haha! So very close! Then it decided that I was writer Chuck Klosterman. Sex, Drugs and Coco-Puffs, baby!

HJ

What a clever bird!

I was impressed.



HJ

So not groovin' on the readings...

Yeah, I have to read for my class tomorrow. What about it? I was busy today. I got my flu shots today and now am autistic, so cut me some slack.

Actually, when the nurse swabbed my arm, I asked her if the shot was going to make me autistic. Why? No internal censor or sense of propriety. (Turns out it won't give me autism.) Yeah, big pharma was giving out those shots for free today. Money grubbing terrorists who want to hurt me.

If Odysseus had to travel by bus, he would still be at it. Today's sojourn took me in a huuuuge loop. I worked at a library for many hours evaluating diagnostic essays for my new classes, then I crossed town to get my shots, and only many years later did I reach home. At that point my roommate was being beset upon by many suitors, whom I dispatched of forthwith. You should see my dining room. The fuckin' carnage. I told her that I had been holed up on an island where a witch was keeping me captive against my will. She believed it.

The day wasn't bad, but one of the bus drivers scared the shit out of me. I think that they might be breaking in new drivers. Or, possibly they now assign drivers to route numbers that match their IQ scores. It was amazing. I'm at the bus station, watching the bus I am about to climb onto make a left turn into the station. He fucking missed the driveway. He turned, as best I could tell, completely into a curb. Full-on perpendicular to the sidewalk and about 3 feet past the driveway. It was the damnest thing that I ever saw. Then I watched him maneuver like a teenager practicing parallel parking for about 5 minutes as he inched that gigantic sumbitch slowly in the general direction of the driveway. It was a 30-or 31-point turn, I think.


Then I got on the bus, choosing a seat by the emergency window, just in case. I almost got to use it, if you will allow me to exaggerate grotesquely. We nicked every single curb at every intersection we turned at. It's like this guy thought he was driving a Jetta or something. I made it home alright, but seriously, I want to know what that guy was thinking: "This time I'll make the very sharp turn." Jeez!

HJ

Pat Robertson: Swell Guy

I just talked about covenants with the devil in my class today. Make a deal with the devil, so goes Puritan thought, bad shit happens:



It seems to me that he almost thought twice about opening his idiot mouth. Almost. Pat Robertson, please hurry up and die. thnxabnch

HJ

"Avatar" causes depression?

Watch this:



The basis of this diagnosis of a new Avatar-based disease? Online fan threads. Some bozo at HuffPo (of course) saw this and ended their article:

"Whether or not these posts are for real there is reason to believe the affliction is rooted in legitimate despair."

Now, let's break out the skeptical sticks and start beating everyone involved.

First, does anyone see the logical Valles Marineris in that quote? The problem is that in the space of a heartbeat, the author has raised the possibility that the posts are not real, but then merrily forgets the first half of the sentence by saying that there is an "affliction." I'll show you an affliction, bitch.

Secondly, is it me or are people playing fast and loose with the term depression? I've had depression, long, drawn-out ubiquitous, all-encompassing depression. Feeling a bit under the bummer after seeing a movie...not exactly the same thing.

Ultimately, here's where my problem lies: the media has gone from anecdote to reporting on a new condition without first checking to see if there is a there there. I went to the site mentioned in the HuffPo article to see what we were dealing with. Among the major threads are Na'Vi Language and Culture (can you say "Klingon Camp," anyone?), and the Na'Vi Movement, which I can only imagine is going to be a new Jedi religion. The HuffPo says that "some fans"--well, how many is some? Are you describing a real thing--is there a bump in depression among people who see the movie, or are we looking at statistical background noise, the depressed people who would have seen the movie anyway?

Even if there is a small effect (and I'm not saying there is) among some people, there could be any number of reasons why clusters of the rare weirdos who get bummed after seeing a movie happen to find one another online. The first is the whole online bit. The Internet is great for bringing crazy people into contact with one another (ok, fine, "people with similar interests"). Take this site, for instance. Haha.

Since the germ of the story was online at fan forums, I mean, holy shit have you ever been to a sci-fi fan forum? The people who routinely go a site obsessed with a single thing are far from a random statistical sampling--this is an abnormal population statistically (and probably actually...you should see the pornographic fan fiction).*

So that's my new headline: "HuffPo Discovers Emo Avatar Fanboys: Posits Disease."

HJ

*True story: Perhaps the saddest thing I saw happened when I was teaching sci-fi fan fic. One poor girl wrote a story and the main character had her name and was having depressing sex with Picard, who was the only person who understood her. It was baaaaad.