Jitterbug's Beat

More Tri-Met Tales of Terror.

Text messages between R & K on the bus coming home yesterday:

R:  this bus smells like that old stale cigarette smell. three bums got on at once and I thought we were being hijacked. smelly pirates. 
K: Bus Pirates!
R: Fucking bus pirates. I am not going to be a smelly bus pirates bitch?
K: You'll be their wench! Argh me matey!
R: Watch out for the hook!
K: That would be one hell of a reach-around. 
R: Boy is totally helping you out!
K: He's not even here! I'm offended. 
R: I am not saying you aren't creative it just sounded like Boy would say it.
K: I've been living with Boy too long.

Meanwhile, I was texting this to R & K - and YES, this is TRUE:

"The man in front of me is reading porn.  He has a pen and is crossing out certain girls and circling others.  I believe this is like Buffalo Bill ala Silence of the Lambs and he is deciding which parts to use for his skin suit.  The bus is a scary, scary place."

Think there's a Tri Met in hell?

Ah Tri Met.  The mecca of public transportation.  To all of you poor schmoes stuck with your tiny city cars without four wheel drive, you took the advice on the news and tried your lot on the bus.  This morning, thinking I was being exceptionally clever, I was going to take the earlier bus.  But all you non-riders were on to me.  You all had the same plan.  Nothing I'm not used to - standing out in this freezing, windy, winter weather waiting, waiting, and waiting. 

Then the most miraculous thing happened - I actually got a seat!  One of the last, but sure enough, a seat for me.  For two stops, it was golden.  Then the seat next to me opened up, and I got to slide over to the side - great!  So it went like this: one super-sized person, empty seat, me.  And then, I see this incredible behemouth of a person waiting to get on - she gets on and exclaims, "Well there's a seat right there!"  undoubtedly speaking of the one between me and Andre the Giant.  She crossed her arms, scooted right up to the seat, and WEDGED herself into that seat, and I literally SQUIRTED out of my seat like so much toothpaste squeezed from the bottom.  I had about 58% of my seat left, with a metal pole digging into my side, cramed in with two living buddahs.  I tried to perch on the lip of the seat, to no avail.  I tried turning one way.  Then the other.  She was an unmovable force.  Now.  I'm all for political correctness, and I am no skinny minnie myself, but I tell you what, I fit in bus seats.  And it took every bit of not-wanting-to-burn-in-hell-willpower I had not to stand up (wait - I was already standing up.  She squirted me out of my seat) and yell at her, "Would it KILL you to miss DESSERT once in awhile?!"

I'm not nice.  Sometimes.  On the inside.

License to Bike

It's terrible, I know - but it's true... and as a disclaimer, I have friends who are bike messengers, cyclists, Iron Man competitors - and I realize it's a select few who are ruining it for the rest of them, but I am SICK and TIRED of cyclists in downtown Portland.  I think they should be licensed just like cars, and held responsible for breaking the rules of the road.  My experience - they weave in and out of traffic, choose which traffic rules they want to obey and when they want to, and we're supposed to yield to them when they're racing up behind us while we're executing a legal right hand turn!?!  I'm sorry - if you're in a car behind someone turning right, can you pass them on the right and expect NOT to get creamed?  Or on a motorcycle?  Hell no!  I'm sick of being run into on the sidewalk.  I'm sick of being blocked by an entire family of bike tourists.  I'm sick of the guy who takes up the sidewalk at the bus stop, balancing on his bike, who doesn't notice that he's about to roll his front tire right over some woman's foot!  I want to go over there and just shove him over.  I don't.  But if I did, I betcha people would clap for me.  But if you've been paying attention to the news lately, then I'm lead to believe would subsequently be attacked and beaten by cyclists who come out of nowhere and mis-assess the situation.  Lousy drunks!  Also, don't get me wrong - drivers are assholes.  Pedestrians are assholes.  I'm an asshole.  It's just that cyclists are a very particular blend of both worlds, and all this going-green aside, they piss me the hell off.  How much?  Kind of like this:

Totally inappropriate, but undeniably funny:

Not nice!  Some of my best friends are liquor heads.  Helps us over our horrifying of highness.

Try the dork!  Not sure about the barboo...

Really?  'Cause I thought horsebeans wouldn't taste strange at all.

Look, Jason!  The airlines took our request seriously!

 

Shut up. You know its funny.

With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person, which almost went unnoticed.  Larry LaPrise, the man that wrote "The Hokey Pokey" died peacefully at the age of 83. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin. They put his left leg in. And then the trouble started.

Politically Incorrect

First thing today - the dentist.  The bus to the dentist.  Is it politically incorrect for me to strangle/scream at/throttle/throw coffee at 2 bus drivers: one, who shows up to my stop 8 minutes early and drives away as I stand across the street waiting to cross, and two, a bus driver who is on his break chatting in front of the bus, and leaves 11 minutes late, in turn, making me 20 minutes late for my appointment? 

Second thing - also on the bus.  Kristi and I are discussing yoga after working out.  We are on our way home.  The man sitting next to us says, "Yeah, show me your leg warmers, right?"  Kristi and I exchange the appropriate wide-eyed, what-is-he-some-sick-fuck-freaking-psycho-
killer-with-a-twisted-desire-to-see-chicks-in-legwarmers look.  Is it politically incorrect for us to find out where he lives and then have our big male friends make sure he never bothers another woman about her legwarmers?

People, I implore you.