Happy Bus Drivers.

I travel to work via city transit. It's efficient enough for me, and it gives the side bonus that my wife has her sanity. You wouldn't believe what a difference that makes in my day.

Some bus drivers clearly have a spring through the middle of the cushion. They are surly to the point of being called the bus-nazi. Oscar the grouch would be proud. I almost want to pull the bell late for a stop just to tweak them.

Others couldn't care. They worry me. Instead of having road rage with 20 passengers, these drivers seem to have compounded muscle relaxant and anti-depressant medications. When I'm with them I'm sure I'll be on the bus that runs over a train. I have the fear that I'll be in an accident on my way to an important meeting. I'll be put out of 3 hours of my day between waiting for the police, filing reports, and then getting another bus. Oh yeah, and there's the possibility someone else could be hurt too.

But today I had Al, the happy bus driver. Al isn't annoyingly happy like he's supressing the dark voices calling him to go on a bus rampage through a mall. Al is genuinely pleased to be where he is in the world. He likes his job (well enough), and shows respect and welcome to all who ride his bus. I can't help but feel like scum for how dispondent I get with my job when I see him smiling while carting around people who missed their weekly shower.

So here is to all the Al's out there. You make our lives better, make us feel guilty, and confound us on your motivations. Don't ever stop. Except at all marked intersections and railway crossings. And in those cases do listen to the screaming people behind the yellow line on the floor.

I'm smarter today. I think.

I enjoy training. I don't mean dogs, I mean being bettered through education. What beauty it is to drink from knowledge's fountain, and when I have quaffed my draught, to cry out "How did I exist before today? I have been an invertibrate's inferior before now!"

Today was nothing like that.

My morning was interupted by some mandatory training. It was only an hour, but I found myself watching the clock as if it held the secret to my escape. I don't like being taught stuff I could more easily have read myself. I don't like sitting in a stuffy, overheated room without a desk to hide behind. I despise poorly aligned powerpoint presentations.

At least it was just an hour.

My problem mostly stems from my empathy. I TRY SO HARD to pay attention and give the instructor the benefit of respect. And then they read from an email and try to sound excited.

I crawled back to my desk, refilled my coffee cup, and had less than an hour before the next session.

This one was much better in a way. The room wasn't stuffy, and it was a teleconference.

For those who haven't had the benefit of a teleconference, imagine your teacher teaching a class via the intercom. I can still make some cool paper airplanes!

But you know me, even with this newfound freedom, I can't help but find fault. This was taught by an instructor who had two teaching faults equivalent to scraping dog whistles against my neck.

1. Repetition. He repeated himself 3 times for each point. I counted. 3 times!

2. Noticing everything, commenting on most, too polite to confront on any.

Teleconference etiquite says you mute your phone. This prevents sound effects like a voiceover track from an obscene phone call, comments like "This is the biggest crock of sh.." and sneezes that sound like you were using your microphone as a q-tip up the nose.

There were a few people on the call who missed that lesson. And the instructor would passively remind us to mute our phones.
"Mute your phones please."
"Keep your phone muted until you need to comment."
"OW, that sneeze was really loud."
"My right ear is bleeding."
"You should see a doctor after you mute your phone. You sound like you have 3 lungs."

Being a spectator to all of this when I could be hitting myself repeatedly with my stapler in the comfort of my own cubicle was exhausting. Oh, and it ran through lunch hour.

This is why I tell my kid's class I'm a fireman.

It's about choice.

I love my freedom. I'm not sure what that means, but I believe it. In order to safeguard it I consider my options. I'm honest about them. One option may be extreme, undesireable, or illegal, but that doesn't negate it as a option, it only sets it's priority.
So everything in my life is a choice. Breathing, eating, living, working, parenting. I *could* choose otherwise, but I like the choices I've made. Knowing that makes me quite content.

You know what's funny? I've found that most people don't share, or enjoy, this vision.

To illustrate, here are a couple of converstations that I have had:

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Them: "My kids are growing up too fast"

Me: "So you want you're kids to have stunted development?"

Them: "No, I'm saying I'm not ready for them to be so grown up."

Me: "The alternative is that they be slower than their peers. That's a pretty selfish wish. I'm glad I'm not one of your kids. You'd hate me for reaching adulthood."

Them: "You don't understand what I'm saying."

Me: "Try English. I know that fairly well."

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Them: "I would have been on time, but my boss made me stay late."

Me: "Did you call the police?"

Them: "Why?"

Me: "How did your boss force you to stay? Did he tie you up, handcuff you, what?

Them: "No, hey just said I had to."

Me: "Is your boss a hypnotyst? A Jedi maybe? Gee, I can't get my kids to listen to me, and you're an adult. Maybe he can teach me some things."

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Them: "I'm getting old"

Me: "There is an alternative. A 100% known cure for aging"

Them: "What?"

Me: "Death."

Them: "You're morbid."

Me: "No, you're close minded."

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Them: "I'd like to go with you guys, but I have to pay my mortgage this week."

Me: "No you don't."

Them: "No, it's due on Thursday"

Me: "I'm sure the bank would happily keep your house if your forfeit. They're pretty consistent that way. You could go out with us now and start looking at apartments tomorrow.

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And this one with my wife.

Them: "The kids need me."

Me: "No they don't. They don't drop into comas when you go shopping. They get a bit hungry, but I hardly notice."

Them: "No, they NEED me."

Me: "I'm quite certain they'll outlive you by 2 decades. You dropping dead or leaving won't kill them."

Them: "That's not what I meant."

Me: "But that's what you said."

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And yet for some reason they blame me for their misunderstandings of the issue. I'm only trying to clarify their options so they feel empowered. So I've learned now to choose not to help, people are more grateful that way.

Expensive pets

Last week I read about a woman who is paying $150,000 for a clone of her dead dog.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/15/cloned_dog_order/


Let that sink in.

I could get all upset that she could have saved a whole Ghanan village from starvation, but I've learned getting angry doesn't work. When life hands you a loon, make a loonie.

I want to start a competitive business of resurrecting their already dead pet for 1/3 the price. All I need is a taxidermist, a good battery, and a voice actor to play the pet.

I'd get the pet done up in a sleeping position. I'd have the battery installed inside the cavity, and connect a speaker of the voice actor snoring. The person could have the perfect pet, and it would be theirs. It would sit on their lap, never jump on the bed, and you could let young and old alike pet it to their heart's content.

As an added bonus I'd attach a tag with a passkey on it so those people can network with other people on my website. They could play games, dress up their pet's avatar, and even clean up virtually after it. I'll have to see if "Deadkinz" is trademarked already.

Any takers?

Sad Shopping

Shopping. It has differing effects on people. Some use it as an escape, or a euphoric experience. Others see it as a challenge, planning it in ways that would teach swat teams how to co-ordinate on an objective.

I get sad.

I don't know why. Maybe it's the people. Or the lights. Or the miles of food I can't possibly eat. Nonetheless, I tend to find myself lost (amazing seeing as the aisles normally are parallel), aimlessly wandering trying to decide if fruit cups are with the tinned fish, fruit juice, fresh produce, or feminine products section.

I like to bring my pda full of music along and listen to sad songs. Tonight I couldn't do that as I had no earphones. I was stuck with a grocery store's choice in music. And that was worse.

I normally feel the distant, numbing melancholy of existential confusion brought on by the choice of light Miracle Whip versus fat reduced Miracle Whip. Tonight I was listening to the band Simple Plan whine about how awful their lives are and I realized there is good melancholy, and bad melancholy.

Good melancholy is like a good sneeze. It clears out the junk, no one wants to be around you when it happens, and in a twisted way that is hard to describe, it's a great feeling. Not that you would do lines of pepper to get the feeling, but at the right time, in the right place, WOW!

Bad melancholy, like Simple Plan's narcissistic bemoaning, is like picking your nose and eating it. It's just gross, most people outgrow it before their first pimple, and only the already socially inbred would consider it a good experience.

How do you feel when you're shopping?

Scared? Scary?

I have a few sadistic idiosyncrasies. Little things that give me schadenfreude. Scaring people is one of them.

This is either genetic or learned, I can't tell which. Either way I know I'm not alone in this. It is just too funny to scare people to the point where they make a mess.

There are boundaries. If it results in any required visits to any type of physician (cardiologist, psychiatrist, urologist, etc) it is not funny. If any legal intervention (lawyer, police officer, legislative change) is required, it is not funny. Scaring my Mom or my wife, not funny. All else is fair game.

I've now taken it to scare my kids. This is pretty lowbrow stuff: hiding around corners and yelling. Once in the dinosaur exhibit at the Calgary zoo I did this, roaring to put the fear of extinct animals into their little dreams. I misjudged their distance (they can be quite loud you know), and also the fact there was a young couple between me and them. I don't know who was more embarrassed, me, or the guy who jumped up screaming and grabbed onto his girlfriend for defense from the crazy man jumping out from behind rocks.

Being a recipient: VERY unfunny. I'm not a person who feels most alive when they expect to die. Which raises the point of why are there so many scary movies out there?

Most aficionados of horror movies claim they like to laugh at how bad they are. That's amazing. I don't know anyone masochistic enough to listen to awful music just to laugh it. Except Weird Al fans, but they are a category all their own aren't they.

There's something about me.

I just returned from a whirlwind project management course in Sudbury. Wow, I need to take a moment to admire how pathetic that sentence sounds.


Done.

I've discovered two things about me on travel:

1. I am a very clean person.

2. I am an attractive man.

First: I keep an impeccable hotel room. I unpack completely, fold all my clothes, put them in drawers or on hangers. I feel like Mr. Rogers on an OCD binge. I even make the bed. I'm sure that really freaks out the cleaning staff. What sort of twisted perversion would be worth hiding by making the bed? I must catch them between the fear of what they may discover and the hope that this will be the story that gives them something to write about on Facebook.

When I was a bachelor I was Pig Pen's embarrassingly unkempt brother. At home I am the Kitchen Nazi, but my clothes are normally happily folded by gravity wherever the floor stops them.

Second: I am selected "at random" for special "opportunities". At Red Lobster, it was for a telephone survey where I can save $8 on my next meal. At the airport, it was for a "hand search", which despite the name, didn't even look at my eczema. I don't have that level of public display of touching with my wife, no matter how much I give her to drink. It was like a bad phone sex in person. "Now I'll be checking your pockets. Undo your belt". Out of reflex I was turning and coughing.

Did I mention the people picking me out were men?

Everybody's and above average driver!

It's said that everyone is an above average driver. I can see that everyone THINKS they are, but in my experience, most people drive in a bi-polar catatonic/panic state. It would be funny if they weren't wielding tons of steel around me. The fact they assume they are above average shows their mathematical ineptitude as well.

I must stay I am well above average. Inso I'm not good enough to be a race car driver, I'm not dangerous behind the wheel. I like to plan driving several cars ahead, looking through their car windows to see traffic farther up and anticipate the situation. Don't ask about crumpled side panels though, those don't count towards the driving average. Or the swearing.

Consequently I AM a way below average passenger. If I'm not driving, I should be in the back. Preferably the trunk. Slip me some heavy narcotics and I'll be fine. If I am at all aware of the road I act like a threatened primate. Except for the poo flinging. I honestly have trouble sitting in the jumpseat. I'm torn between the social unacceptability of correcting others and my will to live.
Sometimes the only thing keeping me from diving at the brake pedal is the extra awkwardness of the resultant posture. Not only would it be a weird position to die in, but I might be accused incorrectly as the cause of the accident, and cause undue suspicion on the driver too.

Are you an above or below average driver?