[Previous entry: "Fruit of the Loon"] [Next entry: "What Would Pantera Do?"]
05/28/2005: "Tragic Bus"
For the benefit of those of you who may have missed the earlier
announcement: the reason that this site is only being updated once every
week or so, instead of on a daily basis (as was the practice), is because
simply getting to and from my new job requires that I spend over three
hours a day commuting.
Now, you probably think that not having the time to blog is the worst
part of this situation. While I admit that I do miss dispatching my musings
to the world, "not having time to write" actually comes in at number three
on my list of recent annoyances.
The number two spot is held by the fact that I no longer get to co-host The
Paul Kircher Show. Paul's show gave me the change to speak with such
luminaries as James Randi and Paul Krugman (also with walking turds like
Oliver North); not to mention my adventures at Fort Mifflin.
Number one goes to having to endure the stupid questions about my job and
my commute that otherwise smart people, for some unknown reason, feel
compelled to hurl at me in much the same manner that the earthborn savages
of Phrygia felt compelled to hurl rocks at the Argonauts or as bonobo apes
feel the uncontrollable desire to fling their own feces at the nearest
human. Below is just a small sampling of the sort of questions with which
the citadel of my sanity is assaulted, on a near daily basis, by
well-intentioned, barbarians. Sure, they're just trying to be nice and show
some concern for my well being, but I really wish they'd take off their
silly fur hats and step away from their catapults before opening their
mouths.
Oh, I've taking the liberty of adding how I the questions actually sounded
to me (read on; it'll make sense).
Question: Why did you take a job three hours away from where you live?
(How I heard the question: Why did you take a job three hours away from
where you live? Mom, I'm done pooping. You can come in and wipe me now. )
Answer: Let me make this perfectly clear: I did not accept a job in
a town located three hours away from where I live. If I dad accepted a job
in a town located three hours away from where I live, my daily
commute would take a minimum of six hours. I (grudgingly) accepted
a job in a town located forty-five minutes away from where I live.
By the way, the town in which I work is King of Prussia, PA. Yes,
some point in history, a group of actually said "King of Prussia - let's
be that!" It's like naming a town President of the United States AK,
Sultan of Brunei, OH, or People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive 1995, NH. If
you actually care how this shopping mall and collection of industrial
parks masquerading as a municipality got its name you can click here. If
you find that interesting reading, may I also recommend the text on a box
of Tampax.
Speaking of industrial parks, King of Prussia is home to the nearby
Freedom Business Center. Please tell me that I'm not the only one
who thinks that the words "freedom" and "business center" don't belong in
the same sentence together let alone combined to form a name. Unless of
course that sentence is "The raging inferno resulted in our freedom form
the business center." or that name is "The Lack-of-Freedom Business
Center". The Freedom Business Center plays host to The Freedom Deli. Let
us pause for a moment of silent reflection upon those brave Americans who
have sacrificed their lives so that I could be free to purchase a cup of
turkey chili.
And what exactly is it that I do for a living? (Not a stupid question) I
can't tell you. What I can tell you is that I do it in bunker sank deep
into the ground (the guy two offices over is Dick Cheney) and it is the
worst possible job for me to do.
If you were to ask most people what they would do should they ever win
the lottery, they would think for about ten minutes and then rapidly spit
out about 100 answers. Ask me, and you won't even get to finish the
question before I shout "Travel!" For seven hours a day (I get an hour
off for lunch) I monitor a map of the world. It's like asking a guy
with no legs to judge a race.
Whenever I need a healthy dose of perspective I try to remember that my
father often put in 16 hour days in a steel mill, his father lost a finger
working at a paper mill (no paper cut jokes, please), and my
great-grandfather was killed during a fight at a mill where he worked as
a blacksmith (One man used a pair of tongs to hurl a red-hot bolt at
another with whom his was arguing; the second man ducked, and the bolt
struck my great-grandfather, who wasn't involved in the confrontation,
in the head. )
Question: Why does it take you close to two hours to make what should
be a forty-five minute trip? (How I heard the question: Why does
it take you close to two hours to make what should be a forty-five minute
trip? Wow, a shiny object. I think I'll put it in my mouth)
Answer: I was hoping that it wouldn't come to this, because the
following subject is on par with The Rape of the Sabine Women as far as
"scope of tragedy" goes, but we have to a little talk about traffic in
America.
Here are a few statistics which in the newspaper business are known as
"gee whiz numbers", but which, for our purposes, shall be known as "Holy
Fuckin' Shit numbers":
In 2003 (the last year that we have accurate numbers for: no doubt because
the people who collect these sort of statistics became depressed and
collectively committed suicide) Americans wasted 3.7 billion hours (420,000
years) stuck in traffic: up 79 million hours from 2002. In '03 the average
driver in LA spent 93 hours a year stuck in traffic: and that number is
down from the year before.
So what does all this waiting cost? $63.1 billion in lost time and excess
fuel consumption (2.3 billion gallons of gasoline get burned away by idling
vehicles) every year. Of course, no one has yet to compute the
psychological costs.
But enough of this pessimism: Let us turn to a spokesperson for
Transportation California who optimistically said, "The only 'good'
news in today's 2005 Mobility Report ... is that in some areas, congestion
has stayed about the same because of a slow economy."
Yes, we could fix America's traffic problems. If by "fix" you mean "slap
a goddamn band-aide on it while it festers for another decade or so.": and
that fix would only set us back 400 billion dollars (That highway spending
bill that Bush is threatening to veto will set us back 284 billion dollars,
by the way.). And we'd just need to add 5,000 additional lane miles and
another 7.3 million trips by public transportation each day and we'd be
able to maintain our present levels of congestion for a couple of years.
Speaking of public transportation, despite what most Libertarians will
admit, it's the one think standing between you and a nation of gridlock.
A bus, when packed like the cargo hold of a slave ship a can hold about
fifty people. If those fifty people were in cars, each car would require
one hundred feet of space in which to properly operate. In other words:
each full loaded bus helped to reduce that traffic jam which you were stuck
in this morning by almost a mile.
Then again, despite what most Greens will admit, public transportation has
all the charm of a late-night twister competition at Abu Ghraib Prison: a
crowed, smelly heap of dejected human bodies but with admittedly fewer
rednecks present.
Take my daily journey aboard the 125 bus (please), for example. Now, most
of my fellow Argonauts are decent, well mannered people who make the trip
from Philly to Chester County for about a quarter of the money I make and
who posses a working knowledge of the washcloth. It's the exceptions who
turn the rip from a jaunty little ride through the countryside into a
mobile version of the Chinese Water-Torture. Foremost among these
proto-humans are the Troglodytes who insist on holding lengthy cell phone
(the internet for illiterates) conversations at the loudest possible
volume. Even with the distractions of a book and a mini-disc player I'm
still forced to hear skull-piercing bits of wisdom like "I don't know
what's wrong with that boy. I hits him and I hits him but he don't act no
better" and "He crazy. He stab his mother once, but he my man."
Moving, ever so slightly, up the evolutionary scale we find a group of
Neanderthals who posses a natural curiosity about the inner-workings of
the modern mass transportain system which compels them to delay the bus
by standing in its doorway and asking the driver an endless series of
questions like "Where does this bus go" (I guess the large, flashing sign
which reads "125 Center City to King of Prussia" is a tad vague), "How
much?" (Not necessarily a stupid question, until you consider that I've
witness at least eight people ask this without first stating their
destination), and, my all-time favorite, "When do we get to New York
City?"
Finally, we have Homorosieodonellus, commonly known as "fat people",
"butter beasts", or "ham monsters": which reminds me of another stupid
question:
Question: Why don't you use your laptop to write while you're on the
bus? (How I heard the question: Why don't you use your laptop to…
whoops, I just made a "stinky".)
Answer: Because, at least three days a week, the seat next to mine,
and about a quarter of my seat along with a good portion of the aisle, is
occupied by a Schuminette. I barely have enough elbow room in which to turn
the pages of a paperback, let alone type on a laptop. By the way, I
recently lost fifteen pounds, yet no one on the bus has thanked for either
making more room or increasing the 125's fuel efficiency.
Two weeks ago, my return trip on the 125 was made even longer because the
Kelly Drive (named after Grace Kelly's do-nothing city councilman brother,
Jack. Phun Philly Phact: Grace's father, John B. Kelly, Sr., was president
of the Fairmount Park Commission at the time when Grace Kelly married
Prince Rainier of Monaco. Since Monaco covers only .6 square miles and
Fairmount Park extends over 6 square miles, Grace's father ruled over a
considerably larger area than the Prince.) was blocked off to accommodate
the Dad Vale Regatta.
Before we can talk about the Dad Vale Regatta (which my friend, Dave
Brookman, has dubbed "The Gay Dad Regatta" in hour of the English band), I
need to say a few words about Greek Picnic.
Back in the mid-70's, a group of Black Fraternities decided that it would
be a good idea to hold an annual cookout/party/get together in Fairmount
Park (a small Principality once ruled over by Grace Kelly's abusive
father). You-know-what? It was a good idea: for about twenty years, until
in the late 90's the picnic started to draw young people who were not only
didn't attend college, but who couldn't even write their own names in the
dirt with a stick. It was this crowd who transformed the once-peaceful
Greek Picnic into a riotous mixture of drunkenness, petty crimes, and
sexual assaults.
Eventually, the National Pan-Hellenic Council, which organizes Greek
Picnic, grew tired of all the drama (and of constantly getting maced by
the cops) and took steps to tone down the seamier side of the festival.
And everybody lived happily ever after …
Except for old white people who still can't shut the fuck up about Greek
Picnic. You can't mention warm weather in front of the
eighty-seven-year-old woman who cut my hair (and who is convinced, despite
repeated corrections, that I am a Jew. You have no idea how tempting it is
to say "Could you hurry up, please. I've got a bunch of gentile children
that I desperately need to sacrifice before Yom Kippur.") without hearing
"Oh no, that means they'll be having that Greek Picnic again. Why
does the city let them get away with that?"
"Oh, Greek Picnic's nothing", I said the last time she started in, ", sure
some windows get broken and some trash gets get knocked over, but that's
only property: and didn't Marx teach us that property is theft? No, what
really gets my goat is that Gay Dad Regatta. Is there anything worse than
seeing a bunch of rich kids rowing around in little boats that were paid
for by looting pension funds? 'Nice scull you've got there, Thurston. I
said 'scull' with a 'c' not with a 'k'. That pointy thing in the water; not
that pointy thing above your neck. And to think that my family only had to
toil for three generations in the mills so that your daddy could buy it for
you.' And what's worse is that the city not only rolls out the red carpet
for the soulless larvae of the privileged class, but they also shut down
Kelly Drive, creating a traffic nightmare. I mean, don't we do enough for
those people, what with corporate welfare and the elimination of the
Estate Tax? So help me, when The Revolution comes - and it will
come, those little trust-fund bastards in the bleachers at the Gay Dad
Regatta will be the first ones up against the wall. Could you take a
little more off the sides, please?"
Last week the 125 was late making its return trip simply because "teh worst
bus driver EVAR" had been assigned to it. Not only was this guy clueless
(on Monday he actually yelled out "Um…does anyone have a 125 schedule?")
but his seeing-eye dog wouldn't stop barking. Which brings me to the final
stupid question. It's the most painful question because my own mother
actually asked me this:
Question: If the bus trip is so bad, why don't you buy a car? (How
I heard the question: If the bus trip is so bad, why don't you buy a
car? By the way, you're adopted. Your real parents, Stephen Jay Gould and
Eartha Kitt would never ask a question like that.)
Answer: Ignoring that fact that, even if I did own a car, I'd still
be stuck in the same traffic, I still have plenty of good reasons for not
purchasing a set of wheels: the most compelling of which is that, in order
to afford a car (along with a couple of grand a year for insurance, a few
hundred bucks a month in parking garage fees, and the ever increasing price
of gas), I'd have to get another job.
So, for the next seventeen months (until my contract runs out or I'm found
naked and ranting in the street) I'll continue to commute for over three
hours a day on a crowed, noisy, smelly bus to a job that I hate. Hey, at
least it's not sixteen hours in a steel mill, and I haven't lost any
fingers, and no one's tried to kill me with a molten hunk of metal…at
least, not yet.
