a short note to the readers

Hey, I know that some of you are going to be reading this just through the RSS feeds, but may I suggest you use the RSS as a kind of trigger to read the posts on the site itself. Since I write the majority of the posts on my phone and post them while I'm out and about, the formatting is a little off and I'll probably get onto a regular computer to update and expand it a little bit. If you already read the RSS of the last post on loud people, I added some more experience from the rest of the trip home, which you'll find amusing. Maybe.

Louder means it's more right. Right?

There's an old guy behind me who's yelling at the poor kid across the bus who's trying to study. The old guy is listing the birthdays of all of England's royal family and saying that we'll give them Manuel Noriega if they'll come show us how to do border patrol. Really loud.

One of the nice things about having my iPod headphones on is that I miss most of what other people are saying. The downside is that there are a few people who don't get the hint that if I have my headphones on while I'm on the bus and I don't take them off when they talk to me, it's a pretty safe bet that I don't want to be part of that conversation. As a result, they usually just talk louder.

You know that everyone on the bus was thrilled to hear this guy's plan to let the Brits do to Noriega what they did to Phillip II. I think he might have meant Charles II, but I'm too smart to get into that discussion.

Along the same lines, there was one guy in front of me, yelling at another guy in front of me about how college was a waste and the Job Corps was such a better option. Don't get me wrong, I'm okay if someone doesn't want to go to college and the Job Corps seems like it's pretty cool, but the guy he was trying to convince said he wanted to get an associate's degree in graphic design, get his bachelor's in illustration and animation and minor in creative writing. Seemed to everyone within earshot like a highly ambitious plan, and having worked on part of that plan in my own educational pursuits, unless he was far more gifted and brilliant that I am (which is a slim possibility), it wasn't going to happen. Anyway, in that case, louder equals righter. Right?

Then I was on the train. This guy got on. The thing on his head looked like he cut the sleeve off an old white t-shirt and pulled it over his head. Please note the very fashion-forward choice of plaid with a garish floral print, white socks and sandals with the shorts. On top of which he was talking to his food, singing a little song that I couldn't make out the words to as I was listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on my iPod, and then had a scintillating and loud conversation with a young couple on the train. I wrote it down in my notebook so that I could get it verbatim. He was talking about how cool it is to be in the center section of the train when it goes around the 90 degree turns downtown. Then, out of the blue, he gave this loud little gem of insight. "You know what's the best thing about this town, man? See's Candies, man. They've got this toffee about this big [he showed how big they were] and it's covered in chocolate. It's like, three dollars, but it's so good, man." And then he got off the train. Just like it always happened on the Lone Ranger shows, we all sat around thinking, "Who was that extremely right guy with a t-shirt sleeve on his head?" But he hadn't left a silver bullet or anything behind. Which is just as well.

Personal hygiene

You know how some people smell like they sleep in a pool of dog vomit? Just making sure I'm not the only one who's had my olfactory senses assaulted.

We have liftoff!

I wrote this whole great blog post earlier in an email, pushed send, and my email program crashed. So I lost the whole brilliant post. I tell you what, I hope the new software that comes out in the next couple of weeks for my phone fixes the crashes I have every now and then because when they happen, it really bugs me.

Today, there were about four kids standing off to the side as people loaded onto the bus, and they each had a huge suitcase. Bigger than the one I lived out of in Europe for a month and a half on vacation. Since they didn't have anywhere to stash the suitcases, they threw them onto seats. As people at later stops climbed on the bus, looking for a seat, they saw some places, but once they got back to the seat, they saw that the seats were actually taken. By huge suitcases.