Staring down death

Thursdays at the office are Donut Day. There's an assortment of donuts and bagels in the breakroom for us, and every Thursday, I go down and try to find the one donut in the box most likely to send me into a diabetic coma. Since I'm not diabetic, though, it would take a seriously frosted donut to take me out. I ask "Which one is most likely to kill me?"

Today's candidate is this one. Chocolate frosted, with raspberry jam and pudding filling. I also try to get one of the ones in the middle because they get some of the frosting on the bottom too, from the next donut over.

I haven't eaten it yet, but if you don't hear from me in a couple of days, this was the one. I don't think this will be the one though.

Noise cancelling

I read an article from Time magazine the other day about how these tiny portable music devices with the crappy earbuds could contribute to an entire generation of people with significant hearing loss. At the end of the article, the author said that most of the doctors interviewed recommended headphones that either block noise or cancel it out.

I try to be very careful about how loud I turn my music up, but there are times I'm tempted to turn it up loud enough to hurt myself. This was one of those times. These guys were yelling at each other about how much cheaper it is to ride the bus than to drive back and forth to Provo every day and about their car troubles, arguing over the number of the bus parked in front of us, and where it was heading. I thought for a minute about turning my headphones up louder, but I'd rather not be the deaf guy on The Fifth Element in about 4 years.

Maybe I should start saving my pennies for some new headphones.

Put them together

There's a girl both with a BYU bookstore bag, reading something heady: Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. How's that for doubly relevant to this blog?

Aren't they supposed to go together?

There's a guy at the bus stop today who I think might suspect I've been trying to get a picture of him and seems slightly unhinged, so I'll use words instead. I tried, but I don't feel like getting into a fight. Wait a minute, here he comes.

I snapped it really quickly, so I'm not sure I got the detail I want to talk about here. His purse. He's standing there, smoking the butt of a cigarette he smoked earlier and rapping to himself with a black and white striped purse on his arm. It just doesn't seem to go with the rest of his outfit: jogging pants and a wasp-yellow "Ralph Becker for Mayor" shirt.

Who am I to judge though? I don't even have a purse to have to match my outfit to.

Book mashup

A lot of people read on the bus and you all know how I feel about books. (If you don't, I love them.) Since I'm always on the hunt for something that fits into my strange taste in literature, I look at what other people are reading. Let me warn you now that this is going to spiral pretty quickly into very nerdy literary territory.

As this is Utah, there are always people reading scriptures on the bus. That's not so much my style, so I'll move on. There are also people who enjoy the mass-market thrillers, whether they're political, military, or murder mystery books. Again, not me. But I read over their shoulders every now and then in case there's something I might like anyway. Some of those kinds of books are compelling, like The DaVinci Code.

And then there are the people reading the classics, which I usually do. Today, though, I saw a book out of the corner of my eye as I stalked around the stop that completely caught my attention and made me take a closer look. I saw "The T-something of the S-something-else-
ending-in-rew". My brain automatically dug through the book titles I knew that fit and mashed two of them together. In my head, I had The Taming of the Screw, a comedy by Henry James that no one was going to laugh at, as it involved an outsider taking a bet that he could make these children think that they were going crazy. That and it was written by Henry James, who ranks up there with Emily Dickinson for me in the list of people you couldn't pay me enough to want to become an expert in and I'd prefer not to read. (Anybody catch that Herman Melville reference? Way inside and dorkier than dorky, I know.)

Sadly, I realized when I looked closer that the book was really Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which was admittedly the best of the options there, but I was sad because the thought of a mashup between those stories made me laugh. Not that I'd read it, if it existed.

And while I'm on the subject of mashups, I saw this guy wearing this outfit. If you don't remember how freaking hot it was or if you're reading from somewhere else, it was about 95 degrees Fahrenheit. And it's kind of tough to tell because I was trying to be sneaky, but his jacket (covered in fringe) was a sturdy-looking leather. As was the hat.

My head gets hot in my hat and my hat's cotton canvas, not leather. I was also standing in the shade here. I can't imagine wearing my leather pants in weather like this. Uncomfortable isn't even the right word there. It would be downright miserable. So what was this guy thinking?

Time for everyone's favorite game...

It's that time again. Time to play everyone's favorite transit game: "Guess That Stain!"

Fortunately, I didn't inadvertently sit on this one and then wonder what it was that I had sat on. This would have been a difficult one to miss.

If you want to venture a guess, put it in the comments. I don't know what it was, since I didn't taste it (ew!), but before everyone says that it's pea soup or demon projectile vomit like from The Exorcist, let me say that there were a LOT of pistachio shells on the cement as I walked around. So who knows?

Beating a hot day

Today started out cooler and even rained a little bit. But as summer days typically go here, it dried up and warmed right up. It's been hot the last few months, but it looks like this guy's got the solution. I can't think of a better place for an air conditioner than at an outdoor bus stop. And to boost the efficiency, a vacuum.

Yes, I mock. I can't help myself. And that's really why you read this blog, right? Anyway, that's all fine and good that the guy had his air conditioner and his vacuum cleaner with him at the bus stop, but consider what happened just a couple of minutes after I took this picture.

His bus showed up. Can you imagine having to sit next to that guy on the bus? And I thought I had it rough when that smelly fat guy took up half my seat. At least I didn't have to share a seat with an awkward inanimate object. I couldn't just politely press my elbow and shoulder progressively harder into its side to make it move at the first available opportunity. It doesn't care. It's an air conditioner.

I think it's funny I just wrote that last paragraph about how it's an inanimate object that doesn't have the same attributes as a person and personified the object to make my point. I know I'm a big dork.

A special treat

Happy The Dark Knight weekend to all of you! This is shaping up to be a surprisingly fantastic weekend, judging from what I've seen on my trip home so far. First of all, an update to the previous blog post. Remember how I described the two girls that the guy was chatting up, since I couldn't quite get my camera ready quick enough before the bus got there? Well, fate smiles upon you; they got on the bus with me today and I got a picture of them. From the little I could gather over the sounds of the ever-tricky Impossible Missions Force, they sounded like they were speaking some Eastern European language. Maybe even Russian, which would have been good for me. I was more concerned with getting a picture of them for you.

The placement of the pole and the arm are kind of hiding one of the things I was telling you about, but you get the idea.

And this next story didn't happen while I was on the bus, but it has to do with transportation, so I'll share it anyway. I went grocery shopping and on my way back to the car, a guy said "Excuse me, we've run out of gas." Immediately, I was going to point out the gas station right across the street, but he finished his thought. "Do you have like a dollar or something so we could..."

Right then, I said, "I don't have any cash." What I was thinking was, "That was just bad planning on your part, wasn't it, guy?" I didn't because I'm at least that polite. I was prepared to help until he asked for money. It's not like gas prices have just gone up for a few, picked-on people, we all have to pay more for gasoline. Ask me if I feel bad for denying him. Go ahead, ask.

I don't. Not a bit.

More Right Revisited

So there I was, sitting in my seat when a guy plopped down next to me. The trouble with that is that he sat turned diagonally and took up both his seat and part of mine. Since I'm a relatively small guy, this is not uncommon. It's still really annoying, though. On top of that, he needed a shower.

Sadly, he got into a very loud conversation with the older woman across the aisle who needed a better bra. That's all I'm going to say about that topic, but they were practically yelling about illegal immigrants, church affiliations, and some other things I was trying my hardest to drown out with Alice Cooper. I think I need to get some nicer headphones that block out external noises a little better than these do; I'm afraid that one of these days there'll be a conversation I want to avoid so badly that I'll damage my hearing while trying to escape. I'd suggest a topic here, but I'm certain that some of you would bring it up just to bug me.

Which leads me to something I saw in school a lot. It seems like the people who talked the loudest usually didn't have even a vague clue of what they were talking about so loudly. Like these two people on the bus. And then you have that famous tiff between William F Buckley and
Gore Vidal. Both bright guys, but they were also sanctimonious, self-righteous pricks.

There's a guy at the station, mid-forties, who's been reading a presumably dry book (it looks like a textbook) on market forces or something to do with economics. I've seen him the last few days
reading the same thing, but today, he was reading at the station, facing the shady part where all the sane people wait. (I'm taking laps around the station in the sun, remember?)

Well, in the cooler shaded center, there are these two girls in their late teens, wearing clothes that highlight their gifts. One was wearing a summery dress with a low plunge neckline and the other one had an outfit that showed off her young, incredibly flat stomach. Both very nice, but I was busy walking and taking mental notes for this blog post. I noticed that the guy was doing less reading than gawking in their direction and was curious to see if anything happened from it.

On my way back around a couple of laps later, I saw that he'd moved to "read" while sitting on the same bench as they were. Not only that, but it looked like he was trying to chat them up! Smiling and chatting. There was some nodding when the girls talked. He was keeping a polite distance, but trying to cozy up. They were so out of his league and way too young for him, but I can't fault the guy for trying. In the end, he got on the bus with me and they didn't, so it apparently ended. Most good things do.

Dr. Horrible rocks

As a special treat, I've found something I want to share with you. It has nothing to do with riding public transit, but I watched it and almost hurt myself trying to be quiet at work. It's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. If you haven't heard about it yet, I want you to kind of discover it on your own, so do yourself a favor and click on the link. I promise, it's not a Rickroll.

What are you in for?

There's a girl, well, woman on the bus with an ankle monitor. I'd never seen one in real life before, just on TV. Makes me wonder what she did. My guess is that she was one of those people who cut off those tags that say "Do not remove under penalty of law."

The bus driver didn't take a turn quite wide enough and scraped the side of the bus with a shrub, breaking a window in the door in the process.

Also, there's a guy who looks almost like a detainee at Guantanamo Bay undergoing sensory deprivation. Long pants, long-sleeved shirt, plastic gloves, surgical mask, glasses and those earmuffs you wear at the shooting range. I would have expected a hat of some kind. With the rest of the outfit, a hood seems fitting. There are days that I feel like that's a prudent way to travel on the bus, so I don't catch the idiocy that's apparently rampant on the bus. Of course, then I wouldn't have anything to write on this blog. So I brave the bus for you. Now you don't have to.

The perfect container

According to the Adam West-era Batman, the perfect container is an egg. (It's from the movie.) Only in a fantasy world, though. In the real world, the perfect container appears to be a BYU Bookstore bag. Everyone who has one apparently can't find anything better because they get reused all the time. The BYU Bookstore bag understandably appears frequently in the Provo/Orem area, but I've seen it in other, farther locations. I saw a family hauling things around in one at Disneyland, and there's nothing wrong with the bags from Disneyland. And best of all, they're free with the purchase of something from the BYU Bookstore.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that ..."

At the bus station, I saw these two guys. Yes, they're guys. I thought the uniform they had chosen was an interesting one, but fit along with the stereotype. It's not unusual to see gay men, except for when you're in Provo. Then it's unusual. Although as my gay friend who used to live in Provo tells me, it's not as unusual as one might think, they're just more careful. I thought that was going to be the most exciting thing that happened to me on the bus today, but I was completely surprised.

I had no idea when I began writing this post that I would have the strangest experience on the bus to date.

It began when I sat down at the back of the bus and the most convenient open seat on the bus required me to step through a strange conversation about the nature of God, the universe and religion. I should have taken that for a sign. Fortunately, I had my iPod going and the bus engine was right behind my back, but the breaks between songs let me catch some of the undoubtedly uncomfortable conversation. Let me begin by describing the guy.

He had this interesting haircut, where it was all short, but the hair on the very top was really long and swooped back on the bottom. He was missing some of his front teeth. He was also carrying a tribal drum around with him. He had this great aloha shirt, cargo shorts, and some really nice new hiking boots. It wasn't an unusual picture for the bus, but given some context (which I'll get to later), this will make the outfit that much more strange.

As I already mentioned, I was listening to my iPod, so I didn't get pulled in as much as I'm sure I would have been had I not had my head in my music and reading. Also, I was out of his field of vision. Here are some of the topics they covered on the course of the bus ride. Mostly covered by this guy.

• Nature of the universe and religion with a guy across the bus who looked and sounded like Richard Dreyfuss in What About Bob? This guy above actually said "It's different things, but it's like essence, man."
• He had emptied an opaque energy drink container and filled it with some kind of liquor, which he drank to help the trip go faster. It certainly fueled much of the journey's conversation. By the way, that's against the UTA rules.
• Something about the acidity of something that seedy people inject shrinks your veins, so you have to drink water to make your blood vessels bigger. I wasn't paying very close attention to that one because it involved needles and it seemed like total crap anyway.
• He was homeless. Currently. He had all of his belongings with him, including a sleeping bag, a bag of clothes and his freaking tribal drum. And really nice hiking boots. I tell you, if I were homeless, I wouldn't be lugging around a drum. Unless it magically conjured food. Which leads me to the next bullet point:
• He said something like "You know, I eat out of the trash every day and I don't have Hep A, Hep B, [he named some other diseases here that I didn't care enough to remember]. I wash it down with [some kind of liquor that I don't remember the name of]. I know I don't have them because I get tested often through The System."
• Which is how it came up that he has been part of the criminal justice system since back when he was a juvenile and had to get frequent testing as part of his probation to see if he's clean.
• Worked today for some guy in Provo who paid him in bikes. Until this afternoon.
• He can visualize and sculpt hair into shapes he's never imagined before. (If you can tell me how that works, I couldn't figure that one out.) Not just cut and style it, but he can just imagine it and put gel in it and then sculpt it like it was clay. Once, he made big elephant ears on the sides of someone's head out of hair and a trunk. He made an elephant head out of someone's hair and then months later, his friends tell him about other people they've seen with animals sculpted out of their hair. Where are all those people with hair animal sculptures hanging out? I've never seen one.
• He said something about telling jokes to yourself that you don't laugh at just to keep your mind occupied while you do something with the gutter. I don't know about you, but I like the jokes I tell in my head. I think I'm a funny person.
• And then he was talking to the Hispanic guys next to me about his white supremacist friend. Talking to them, he used the word 'homie' a lot.

The one time I got pulled into the conversation, he looked at my Lenny Kravitz shirt and asked who it was. I told him it was Lenny Kravitz, which launched him into some discussion about Lenny deciding to rock rather than be a rastafarian that I only kind of listened to because I was watching my episode of Mission: Impossible. And then when I got off the bus and waited for the train, he yelled over the fence, "Hey, man. Kravitz really rocks man. I know." And then he started singing a Lenny Kravitz song for me. It was, um, a nice thought.

Again, God bless El Steve for inventing the iPod. It keeps me out of conversations I don't want to be included in, because they're so strange it's better to just document them as an uninvolved observer.

Worst possible bus schedule

Together, the schedule two busses I take each day make up the worst possible schedule. Both ways, the bus I'm trying to catch leaves about two minutes before the bus I'm on to get to the station arrives. That means I have to hang out at the bus station for about a half hour. It doesn't usually bother me because I can think and watch the strange people who are also waiting there.

This afternoon, though, my bus got to the station in record time, despite the road deconstruction and the other bus waited for just a little while, so I made it. That means I'll be home earlier than I usually am. Just another happy addition to the fantastic weekend I'm anticipating.

In a late, mostly unrelated note, just because you paint your face like Darth Maul from Star Wars, it doesn't give you special evil Sith powers. A teenage skater kid had painted his face like Darth Maul and tried to stare me down.

You're doing it wrong

I was sitting on the bus this morning, liberating hostages and destroying a poppy field in SOCOM, and a guy plopped down on the seat next to me, talking and laughing very loudly into his cell phone in some European language I didn't recognize. I could tell some Germanic influence, but it wasn't German. It was probably some Scandinavian language, but that doesn't matter as much as when the sun started shining on the screen of my PSP.

I'm careful to sit on the shady side of the bus so that I can do things like watch Mission: Impossible episodes or play SOCOM, but for some reason, I was getting a glare on my screen. It threw off my bad-guy-targeting, so I looked up to see that the bus was going the wrong direction on the route. I don't know if the bus driver got confused halfway down to Provo or if there was some kind of detour because I was too busy capturing a warlord, but it reminded me of Mr Mom, where Michael Keaton's dropping his kid off at school and the kid keeps saying "You're doing it wrong."

And then the other bus actually did take a detour because of road construction, meaning that I finally dragged my butt into the office far later than I had planned.

Déjà vu

Same bus route, different footrub couple.Seriously? Why do I have to deal with this two days in a row? Have I done something awful in a previous life to deserve this? I'm not John Tesh, so I can't be blamed for singlehandedly misaligning the planets and the stars. He's still alive. I guess I could be Vlad the Impaler, but everyone did that kind of thing back then, right? If there were ever a time I didn't want to be me, this might be one of them. But there isn't, so it's not.

Our tour guide

Right behind me on the bus this morning is a little girl, probably about 4, who's providing a brilliant commentary on our trip and every now and then, treats us all to a little song. My favorite so far is when the bus started moving, she very clearly told everyone "Here we go! Hold on tight!"

There's also a lot of "whee!" and "Is this it, Mommy?" We had just left about 2 minutes before.

That was fun, but then I got on the bus that comes down to the office and because of construction, we unfortunately had to take a detour, so it took longer. That wouldn't usually be a problem, but today, the bus smelled like the lifts in Ukraine. Since probably most of you haven't had that singular experience, let me do my best to describe it. First of all, they aren't elevators. Elevators are nice. You can lean on the walls of an elevator. Elevators also have lights.

Lifts, on the other hand, make you afraid to touch anything but the floor button, and even then, you do it thinking about the next time you're going to wash your hands. If you could use your transcendental meditation skills to levitate yourself so you don't have to touch the floor, you definitely would. There might be a lightbulb in the lift and sometimes, the light might even reach the floor and you wish it wouldn't. But really what's awful that relates the two experiences is the smell. Ukrainian lifts almost always have a pool of urine on the floor. A guy goes out with his buddies, gets totally wasted, and then heads home. He just can't hold it anymore on the way up to his apartment and this seems like as good a place as any, so he just lets it go in the lift. And no one wants to admit they did it and no one wants to clean it up, so it's there for who knows how long, drunk guys just adding new stuff to what's left over after some of it has evaporated over the last few days. That's what the bus smelled like this morning. I'm hoping the ride home this afternoon is less smelly.

My shadow

So I was stalking around the bus stop like a badass in a floppy hat, trying to get some exercise in. I sit at a desk every day, so I figure I should get up and take the time to move around when it presents itself. As a result, I take laps around the bus station, which I'm certain looks strange, but in my head, I look like one of the guys from Reservoir Dogs, walking all tough in slow motion. If you're having trouble remembering what that looks like, this should jog your memory.

Anyway, I was just on my little constitutional when I noticed a guy kind of following me but going the opposite direction. This tall, skinny guy in the stripy black shirt.

I'm fine if he wants to walk around too, but as I came around, he'd pop out at me from behind a pillar, from around a corner. Was he trying to scare me? Hoping to walk out of his body, like in the Kurt Vonnegut story? Whatever his motives, it was strange to have someone popping out at me on kind of a regular basis.

In an unrelated note on PDA, the bus is already an adventure in odor without adding your smelly feet to it. And I'm glad my phone has a form-masking cover on it; otherwise, the footrub guy sitting next to me would have assailed me with questions about it, like he did to the poor guy sitting across from him (you can probably see him in the footrub picture) with his brand spankin new touchscreen phone.

As so many of my observations on public transportation point out in the subtext, it frequently pays to be somewhat invisible. If only I could find a way to make these strange people I travel with invisible. And smell better.

What are you smoking?

It's not strange at all to see a group of people hanging around the bus stop, smoking. And you'll probably have to sit next to one of them. No biggie. But this morning, I saw someone smoking something you don't see very often, unless you hang around in very strange circles.

There was a guy sitting on a bench, reading his newspaper, and smoking a pipe. No, he wasn't Sherlock Holmes, and yes, it was still stinky. A pipe! What, seriously? Warning: I'm about to rant a little bit. Here it is, the 21st century, smoking is on the decline because people are starting to realize just how dumb smoking is, and this guy is still smoking a pipe. When I was a kid, my dad--a respiratory therapist--had a box of preserved lungs of both normal people and smokers. There's a huge difference in the lung tissues just from that one choice. Kind of weird, I know, but that explains something about me, doesn't it? Not only that, but in fourth grade, we did experiments in science class to observe the effects of tobacco ourselves. I've had three grandparents die from the direct effects of smoking. I'm pretty sure that most people now have stories like that. And yet, people still decide to smoke themselves to death.

To quote Pepe the King Prawn, "Smoking is very bad for you, okay?" If you smoke, you really should quit, and today's as good a day as any to start your new life as a non-smoker. Until then, I'll still write about you on my blog about the silly things I see, riding on public transit.

Pressure wash

We got to a stop today where a worker was pressure washing the stop. After the people got off the bus, he turned and decided to wash the windshield. It was kind of surprising, like a waterfight. So we sat at the bus stop for a few minutes while the guy washed off the front of the bus. Don't they take care of that at the garage at night?

In another note, I think it's interesting how many people seem to travel around in their pajamas. Like this guy.You can't see it particularly well, but he's totally wearing pajama pants, a t-shirt, and slippers. But really, I took this picture because his hair is freaking sweet. Mine will never do that, which makes me kind of sad. I'm sure my wife's glad about that because she wouldn't want to be associated with me if my hair were like that. On another note, I wonder if he was actually talking to my friend, Ron, there. But back to the point, it's not just this guy traveling around in pajamas. There were two women just to my right about 20 feet who looked like they were wearing their pajamas on the bus, and have you been on an airplane in the last 10 years or so? I'm all for being comfortable while you travel, but seriously... Does that have to involve what you wear to bed?

You can be plenty comfortable in real clothes. I promise. At least I haven't seen someone just in their underwear. Yet. When I do, I'll do my very best to get you a picture of that because that'll definitely be worth documenting.

Eyebrow brush?

I'd take a picture of it, but the girl next to me is brushing her eyebrows with a pink toothbrush. What's that all about? Aren't there special brushes for brows? Or has my aesthetician always been using a toothbrush and I haven't seen it because my eyes were closed?

She's been putting makeup on this whole bus ride with a little handheld mirror. Seems to me that it would be more comfortable to be in my bathroom at home, where I didn't have to hold all my makeup in my lap and had plenty of indoor lights and a mirror that didn't jiggle around. But what do I know about putting on makeup? Not enough to be an expert, but enough to be a metrosexual.

And how long does it take? Either she's really insecure about her face or she's a perfectionist. I don't know which one it is. But she's not dressed to be going somewhere that she'll need that much of a face. The girls I know who have spent that long on their faces were getting ready to go, say, to the ballet. Or a show at an art gallery. And having just got off the bus and seeing her whole face, I can't tell what she was doing.

Speaking of makeup, I was walking around the station at the mall and saw a blonde walking towards me with feathered hair ala Farrah Fawcett-Majors. She had on a blue sleeveless shirt with a floral print and long denim shorts, cute little sandals, and some of those big cat glasses that were so popular in the 60s and 70s.

As she got closer, though, she was about 60 years old and had her makeup all done like Baby Jane Hudson. I tried to get a picture for you, but it didn't turn out. Also, I'm trying to be careful and get angles of people that you would probably not recognize them if you saw them on the street.

Back to Baby Jane, though, the porcelain doll look isn't a good one for anybody. Unless you're at a comic book or video game convention and you're into cosplay.

Then I got on the train. For some reason a guy sat across from me. One of those guys who walks around with his pants down around the middle of his thighs, showing off his nasty black underwear, has to hold up the waistband to keep them from falling completely off his body. Had one of those tribal pattern tattoos around his arm, but it looked like it was drawn on with a fine-point Sharpie. He had that pathetic gangster swagger and plopped down in front of me. Then his girlfriend came over. A shortish girl who dressed like she was thinner than she actually was. Her shorts were too short and so were the sleeves of her t-shirt. Let me explain.

Sitting, watching the two of them through my mirrored sunglasses, I learned some frightening things about them. Judging from the mix of bruises and hickeys on her exposed body and the complaints of the guy, either they liked to play rough or he was even less of a winner than he dressed and acted like. He complained that he didn't see a point in arguing with her (a glimmer of intelligence) because they would fight, yell, have fantastic sex and then fight again. He suggested that they just skip straight to the sex, at which point she started rubbing the back of his nasty black underwear. He kept flipping his rusty pocketknife open, making it squeak, and then twirling it around in his hand.

Real men keep their pocketknives in good working order.

I was not impressed. But I wasn't the one he was trying to impress. The girl covered in hickeys looked kind of like she got attacked by that salt sucker monster in that episode of the original Star Trek. It was disgusting.

Left in the dust

You remember how it's 2008? This guy with the portable DVD player has been watching movies on the bus the last couple of days. Forgive the fanboyism, but even iPod nano models play video now and still fits in your pocket. And if you're not inclined to follow Steve Jobs like a little lemming with square-rimmed glasses, there are all kinds of little electronic devices that can play videos. I've watched Kill Bill on my PSP, I've seen a guy watching the Spongebob Squarepants Movie on his Zune, and there are people who play on their laptops during the trip.At least he's upgraded from his cassette player. I don't know where my cassettes are any more, and even if I did, I don't have anything to play them on anymore.

While we're on the subject of entertainment technology on the bus, nothing beats a good book. You just have to recognize up front that your book is going to have a rough trip. I'm careful with my books, but my copy of Gravity's Rainbow will never be the same.

Extreme style

Here's an example of the kind of extreme styles you find on public transit. Yes, this is a girl with a short mohawk. You may be able to make out the wispy little sideburns, but what you can't see in this picture is the Amy Winehouse-style eye makeup.

In this picture to the left, you'll see the saggy-pantsed, tattooed slacker in his natural habitat. I stole this picture right before one of them yelled out, "Dude, we totally got to get back to this area of town, like, tonight."

And the other one, even louder (remember that louder means righter?) yelled, "'Yo, Vicki, we got lost on the bus.' Heh huh huh huh." And then they both laughed just like Beavis and Butthead. The sad thing was that the one directly across from me gave me one of those reverse nods, as if he were trying to make up for his demeanor. The kind of gesture where you lift your chin towards someone that can easily be misinterpreted as an aggressive action. I just stared at him, which would have had more of an impact, had I not been wearing my mirrored sunglasses. Again, a great excuse for not engaging with someone on transit. I can always feign that I was examining something else or had my eyes closed, and no one would know the difference.