Friday, September 30, 2005 Healthy Volunteers Do It For $$$
Luckily, I'm all done sleeping for pay. The medical pranksters that taped and stuck so many items to my skin are home, home to the sea, or I that's what I'm guessing. We haven't kept in touch--although the doctor in charge hinted that they may call me again, since I slept so poorly on Wendesday that I may skew their results. Luckily, I didn't do any better last night, so at least my readings will be consistent.
It is a shame. Being able to sleep soundly under ridiculous circumstances was my last, best hope for a Special Purpose. You're bush league, kid.
When the doctor was like, "So, if we should happen to call you back in a few weeks, would you say yes?" and I was like, "I require payment first!" I think I shocked him. He had thought I was more noble and concerned for my fellow man. Really, I'm just a little annoyed that the colossal machine of academic medicine will take two-to-six weeks to pay me, now that I am finally done (whereas the shiftless, fly-by-night study facility where someone once tried and failed to take my housemate's blood while she, the phlebotomist, was on her cell phone rewards participants with a baggie of twenties and a string to swing it on at study's halfway point, and that it took us four months or so of scheduling and rescheduling to to get to this point.
Meanwhile, though, I was reading Scientific American at the hospital the other night while Science was warming up the annoyance machine, and something struck me. Tracy and I share a hateful joy in reading print media articles about the internet, because they all say the same thing the same way: this revolutionary new technology allows online journalists, or "bloggers" to instantly publish their findings and ideas. I've rolled my eyes before, but I'm beginning to think there's something to it.
Not only did the magazine allude to the relationship between Kenny Chesny and Renee Zellwegger as though they were still a pudding-faced and loving couple, but they illustrated a blurb about changing one's workout music with a picture of an i-pod--an i-pod mini. I was embarassed for them. So five minutes ago. posted by Frenz | 9/30/2005 09:59:00 PM
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Thursday, September 29, 2005 Never again
Last night I slept under the watchful eyes of Science, and it was pretty unpleasant. The wires in my neck didn't hurt at all, but who knew there were so many ways to jab stuff up my nose without acheiving one's desired objective. I guess the research assistant knew, and now I know, too. Sadder and wiser. Also, last night science asked that I sleep on my back, and I don't like to do that. Just kidding, I don't mind. It's just impossible.
Today I'm not allowed to nap, in case I spoil my sleep tonight, but I wonder if there's not a fallacy in here somewhere. Because I didn't sleep last night, and I know the scientists have just about the same thing planned for tonight, wouldn't that mean that I'd get a nap's worth of sleep in today, rather than no sleep yesterday and no sleep tonight?
When I was waiting to go to bed and the scientists were milling around looking for equipment, a tech came in for his shift. Evidently he was late, and he was like, "Oops, sorry co-workers. I'm feeling kind of dizzy because I abruptly stopped taking Paxil a couple days ago." Now, I'm no medical professional, but damn, dude, what year is this where you think that's OK? PS are you the one in charge of making sure I don't suffocate in the night? Evidently not. posted by Frenz | 9/29/2005 02:25:00 PM
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Wednesday, September 28, 2005 have a good night's sleep on us
Since lately I've been the asshole who hits snooze five times, or, in an effort to avoid being that particular asshole, wakes up enough to set my wake-up time thirty minutes ahead, I should already be halfway out of the house by now. Instead, I'm sacrificing my very important career to type. I am a marvel.
Tonight I go back into the sleep study, and I am not looking forward to it. Bus challenge, but across town and using multiple lines. Is the two hours I have really enough? Will they turn me away from the study in shame if I'm late? I secretly kind of hope so, because they'd still have to pay me for the first couple of nights.
Ugh. I will be fine. I will be great. I will sleep so hard I'll blow they hair back. posted by Frenz | 9/28/2005 09:06:00 AM
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Tuesday, September 27, 2005 The mystery of where my day went
My internet, you have been betraying me over and over again. I have to use an arcane combination of browsers to do any old damn thing. Can't access my e-mail in one, can't blog in the one that lets me check e-mail (but won't let me delete or reply). It is so sad. My house is a vortex of crimes...against internet access.
Luckily, fall is baking season, and there is a cake in the kitchen. I made the cake. What a country!
You would think that this was content challenge, I am typing so hard with nothing to say, but I am just bored, bored, bored and boring. Don't get me wrong. I did a great job existing today. I did laundry, I washed dishes, and I went to work, plus the cake, which I've already discussed. I bet I'll shower eventually, too. One of these days.
Today I got an unexpected package in the mail from a summer houseguest. In part it contained dangly earrings. I'm wearing them now. ll day I've felt sheepish because they jingle when I move my head, so every time I move my head, for a split second, I think I've dropped change. posted by Frenz | 9/27/2005 09:38:00 PM
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Derby death
Tonight at practice, right at the end, a girl went down and started crying and grimacing. The camera crew swooped in, of course. It turns out she didn't break her ankle, or I don't think she did. Hurt herself some other way. My derby buddy said the main reason she was freaking out was because people were trying to call the ambulance, and she didn't have insurance, and it's like, damn, damn, damn.
Mine starts October first. A little man called me up at work the other day and assigned me a doctor, which is really the best thing that could've happened, because I have no idea how real people do things like that.
I was thinking tonight, as I sat in the tub and hoped that my muscles wouldn't lock up (too late), about how I haven't gotten more than slightly hurt so far. At first I thought it was weird, because I fall all the time, I run into people, and I generally skate as though I were a horse. I realized, though, that only jocks get hurt. I rode horses once a week from the time I was five until the time I was fourteen, and the worst that ever happened was that I got the wind knocked out of me. Meanwhile, you could tell the real serious riders, because they were walking around on canes. "What happened to you, Kasey?" "Oh, a horse fell on me." (This is what people will say about collisions with me, also.)
Tonight's practice was purposely brutal. Honey, the girl from the Philly team who came down to coach us, focused on endurance, and we endured and endured. My skates came today, by the way, and I'm so pleased, but disappointed, too, because the blurb on Lowpriceskates.com that repeatedly assured me that my skates were "Awesome!!!" didn't mention that they came without toe stoppers. We don't stop on the stoppers. We either plow or t-stop, but the stoppers are handy for when you need to get up off the ground. If we use our hands to get up, we have to do push-ups, because the alpha rollergirls really worry that we'll get our fingers broken by four-to-eight wheels of terror if we just leave our hands lying around the rink. unfortunately, without toe stops and hands, one has to rise by magic and willpower.
I did it. I'm here, ain't I? posted by Frenz | 9/27/2005 12:06:00 AM
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Sunday, September 25, 2005 My new life
Earlier today, I realized that I didn't have to choose between going skating and going to the big hurricane relief happy hour, because months ago, I chose to let scientists monitor me while I sleep that night (and the night before it, but what do you care?).
Also, I work this Saturday. It is so sad. One of these days, the sleep study will pay me, and then I'll take my $500 and start a new life.
One of the things I will do in my new life is plan the October happy hour with Tracy. It's October 19th, at Dougherty's in Mt. Vernon. It's a Wednesday.
I know that's a long time from now, but keep in mind that Dougherty's is convenient to several kinds of public transportation and carries inexpensive pitchers of beer. I was going to post something about it for September, but then that very day I was going to post it, it people came up with hurricane relief instead. Fair enough, and noble. Luckily, by mid October, the world's problems can be solved, and we can drink inexpensive pitchers of beer without worrying about anything.
P.S.: Confidential to Licentious in Lowell: Happy Birthday! (in 17 minutes.) posted by Frenz | 9/25/2005 11:18:00 PM
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TL:DNR/how my day was--in history, and in my mind
Today I shivered in DC, because I hadn't realized how cold out it was when Tracy's friends got here to take us to the march.
Strangely, there were no furtive e-mails from my mother in my inbox when I got home tonight. "I heard there was a protest???? I hope you will be safe and remember there are other ways to accomplish your goals." But, no. I think even my mom knows that I don't do shit anymore.
Showed her! Showed everyone! Walked around slowly, heard the same chants I've heard for a good while, went to a concert on the mall. MMM! Damn!
When I am around large crowds of the left these days, I feel guilty as hell that I stopped dabbling in activism. I had my reasons, and I know what they are, but I wonder and wonder whether even the ones I still think are valid are good enough, or whether I'm just lazy and selfish. I get bored silly at events where we just march around and chant the same old chants, but I am the first twenty-something middle-class girl in history to find out that jail is unpleasant, and I am 2 scared 4 civil disobedience. I could rationalize about how random self-sacrificing gambits to get mass-arrested eat up time and resources like nobody's business, but mainly, I'm scared. Jail just about wrecks me, every time, so that's bad enough, but more than anything, I get scared that I don't know my own mind or the difference between a good or a bad idea.
The second time I got arrested was at protest against the IMF and the World Bank in September 28, 2002, which was also my mother's sixtieth birthday. She found out where I was by watching the news, which ran a clip of me, in an outfit my sister later Mr. Blackwell'd, getting carried off and yelling something. I still haven't seen it, because I was detained when it ran.
The story of that day is full of punchlines. For example, what I was yelling was "The whole world is watching," and it was funny because I thought that was the exact opposite of the truth, and funny again because the portion of the world that was watching included my family and most of my professors.
It was an early-morning march that I'd skipped class for and that I didn't want to be at any damn way, and before I got arrested, I was already seething. The night before, I'd come down to the abandoned apartment in Takoma park where my fabled ex-boyfriend was staying, because nobody calls Marty McFly chicken, and although I had only been planning to go to the legal marches, I knew that was so lame and would ruin my cred, and somebody said as much. So: that guy and several associates and I stayed in the roach-trap apartment, where I was already afraid that the neighbors would call the cops and we'd get arrested for trespassing. In the middle of the night, an out-of-town contingent came in, and they were punchy from their cross-country drive. I just wanted everyone to stop talking and laughing and to lie silently in the dark, but no one else agreed, so I stormed out, quietly, so as to not get busted by the neighbors (who, PS, obviously did not care that people were squatting the hell out of that apartment, because our half-assed precautions were worthless and dumb), and went and huddled in the back seat of my car. A few hours later, I was stiff and angry and it was time to go march around.
Eventually, we got hemmed in by lines of police, and we stood and got squeezed for a while. The police would direct people to leave through certain openings, and then arrest people one by one, so people stopped leaving. Then the police began to grab people out of the crowd at random and take them to the waiting busses. They tried to grab the girl next to me, the giggly out-of-towner, and I pulled her back, so they grabbed me instead, and nobody pulled me back, and that is about when my mother and the rest of them saw what I'd been up to.
Then blah blah blah blah detained detained. They brought hundreds of disheveled young people to go and sit on excercise mats, flex-cuffed ankles to wrists in the gym of the Blue Plains police acadedmy, and then later on, they took us to Central Booking a few busloads at a time. I spent the night alone in a cell, and then got put in the series of holding cells that I already knew well from my thing a few months before that. I ran into a lady I knew, who had been arrested nude. She was wearing something that looked like a moonsuit made of thin cotton. I guess they have a closet full of them at Central Booking. She complained and complained that she was cold, until I was like, "FINE. God." and gave her the shirt I'd been wearing (The! Shirt! Off! My! Back! and here you see I am a good person), and after that I just wore my old bomber jacket. I was irritated, though. I'd been thinking that people behaved counter-productively at these things, and didn't think enough about the consequences, and here was an example! You see, I pictured myself wagging my finger at her, this one time you may wear my shirt, but next time you should remember how cold it is here, and you should think twice before ripping off your clothes and flinging yourself onto the hood of a cop car. That would be what makes the most sense.
I didn't get a chance, because she was hissing into my ear through the bars that separated us that the woman in the cell across the way from ours was really a police plant. "She's been here every single time I've been in here," she rasped. "Every single time. That can't be coincidence. Watch what you say."
Things happened. Things after things after things. We all had a meeting, me and the rest of the ladies, and a huge bunch of us decided to refuse to give our names, with the idea being that we'd snag up the system and eventually, when the time frame that they had to arraign us within passed, we would be free to go.
Time passed and passed, because they were arraigning the regular criminals first, and the men before the women. People lost their nerve about not giving their names, which was too bad for the ladies who had already been before the judge and refused to identify themselves and thereby ended up in honest-to-goodness DC jail for a week, and had known that would happen, but had thought they would have plenty of company. Whoops! Sorry. B-tr_A'd U. I was one of those people, but one of the punchlines is that when it was finally my turn to get arraigned they were like, "Hi, Cara," because, dddduh, they had my fingerprints on file from the other thing, so even if I'd tried to be noble, I would have been foiled by my own scoff-law attitude.
Anyway, I've been pretty sour on mass actions since then. I didn't feel great that people were in jail that really didn't have to be. I didn't stop feeling sick about it for a while. I was going to tell you more things about that day, like how, later, they shuffled us around in different cells enough so that I found out that my arrested-nude acquaintance had tried to warn others about the woman she thought was feeding information to the police, so she'd wet wad after wad of toilet paper and stuck them to the wall in the shape of the word SNITCH and a giant arrow pointing to the woman's cell. Except, in all the excitement of identifying a dangerous individual, she had skipped a letter and branded the other woman a SNITH.
I was going to talk about how all that stuff wrecked my head for a while, but here's the thing: I'm back in Baltimore now, writing from my living room, and everyone is just about to go to sleep, and I've had a hard time finishing typing this. My housemates were singing mid-90s hit "Hunger Strike" earlier, and I don't want to give away who was Eddie Vedder and who was Chris Cornell, but it was dead-on, and I'm still laughing, so eff a bunch of angsty jail stories. Goodnight. posted by Frenz | 9/25/2005 12:56:00 AM
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Thursday, September 22, 2005 Whoops!
Exciting day around here. Exciting couple days. On Wednesday when the City Paper came out, all kinds of people got swell-headed, because they were in some capacity the Best of Baltimore. If I squint, I can pretend that I'm covered under that, but as my housemate who designed the website that was judged to be the best band site keeps telling me, "Oh, was there a Best Receptionist category? " Well, no, so...
At least my car didn't get stolen, though, huh? Yeah, ouch. It happened today, to my housemates. Who the hell steals a caravan from the spot in front of my house at 3:30 in the afternoon? Oh, the same dummies who were then caught driving the same van around a couple hours later.
When no one knew that the van would be found hours later, things were very sad over here. Then I went roller skating, because one must live with discipline, and because I'd found a ride with someone who had neither been robbed nor was attending the big Will It Float Party like my work and derby buddy who routinely performs the best haircuts. The one guy I keep knocking down at the open skates because he is too intent on showboating to worry about not cutting me off looked daggers at me, but that didn't hurt my feelings in the way he had intended. Nor does it hurt my feelings when he skates over to other roller girls and whispers to them while pointing at me. That man is a tattle-tale, and I don't appreciate it.
I do appreciate the return of the car. Jesus. The little elves who took it away broke the ignition, but it seems that it is otherwise OK. It is spending the night at the impound lot. It's just like summer camp, isn't it?
In bruise news, I'm happy to report that my left hip no longer needs to feel left out. I was trying some new moves tonight, and I got it pretty good, but I'm doubly happy to report that Tracy and I are working on a move that is entirely badass. posted by Frenz | 9/22/2005 10:50:00 PM
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Tuesday, September 20, 2005 We miss you, baby
The other day, the cat that I'd allowed to become obese when my housemates were gone this summer escaped from the yard. He landed two yards down, and couldn't figure out how to maneuver his bulk back over the fence he'd jumped to get in. According to eye-witness reports, he spent the day rolling in the dirt and crying piteously, also sometimes sticking his still-slender paw through the fence, trying to get at the food my housemates were using to lure him out. The food was seaweed, nori, because the cat is weird. Somewhere in all of this, there is a parable that I could apply to my own life, but I've been able to put it out of my mind.
Did I tell you? I think I told the other internet. Anyway, my roller derby name is (obviously [natch {duh
In other news of the inconsequential, a man came into the beauty parlor today, and with him he bore a child. The little boy was strapped into the center of a stroller that was as long as a man is tall, with great rubber tires like those of a tractor. There were stair difficulties, and door difficulties. It seemed to me that any convenience that the stroller afforded was wiped out completely by its size and lack of maneuverability, but I suppose one could live in it in a pinch.
New Orleans!
Sorry. One track mind, when convenient. I am shameless.
My permanent blister is acting up, and my permanent hip bruise has been reinforced once again. They are teaching us good ways to fall, but I just keep freestylin'.
Tomorrow is my five monthiversary with my boyfriend, and you gagged just now as you read that, but get bent, internet. Maybe you have five-months like this every damn day, but some of us are still puzzled and happy. You just never know, you know? I'm sorry I told you to get bent. That was uncalled for, on this, a glorious occasion. I hope you can forgive me. I don't mind what you do.
If you'll excuse me, I have to retire now, because early tomorrow morning, I am meeting with an employment agency recruiter, so that we may both waste our time. posted by Frenz | 9/20/2005 12:44:00 AM
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Sunday, September 18, 2005 our humble folkways
This morning's market was crowded again. Who knew so many people ate vegetables? Maybe they are all buying hotsauce and pendants made out of bent spoons, or maybe they're just checking out the scene.
I was out last night and some guy alluded to himself as a snobby DC scenester. I said that it must seem like he's at a barn dance of some kind. He got uncomfortable, and kept protesting that he meant no offense, and really enjoyed coming to Baltimore. I told him I was glad he was amused by our simple ways, and that there was a butter churning competition later on. Some people can't take a joke that you drag out and won't let drop.
After I got off work yesterday, Tracy and I went up to Hampden to work at the Charm City Roller Girls booth. For some reason, the booth sold fudge, and there were kind people selling beer up the street, so I had fudge and beer for dinner, or so I thought. Later there were other opourtunities to eat, so it turned out it was just a fudge and beer appetizer.
The nutrients it granted served me well a little later, when we walked from Hampden to Charles Village. There were no cabs. There were no busses. The bums' luck that surrounds my life like a haze of golden light did nothing this time, so there was no long-suffering friend to appear with the promise of a ride.
It wasn't as long a walk as I thought it would be, but it was still pretty long, and we deserve accolades for toughness. posted by Frenz | 9/18/2005 11:24:00 AM
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005 boredom insurance
For some reason, my job thinks I'm full time, so I was able to sign up for health insurance today. It's going to kill me. I don't know how I am going to afford my diamond stick-pins and condor's eggs now, because they did not take into account the lifestyle to which I have grown accustomed when they decided how much to charge. I guess I'll save cash by cutting out fruits and vegetables, because the bars of Baltimore need me.
The Insurance Challenge is to fend off the legion gods of Go Fuck Yourself, Cara (official religion of several major islands) and not become sick or hurt until coverage starts in a few weeks. Luckily, being semi-prepared will mean that I will avoid major roller derby injuries until the day after I let the coverage lapse.
In other boring news, it seemed about to rain when it was time to go to lunch today, and since the coffee shop next door has taken a hard-line stance against salon employees sitting under their awnings, I walked up the street and ate my food under the sheltered bus stop on the corner. A few minutes later, a bus pulled up, and I kept sitting there, calmly eating my lunch.
Only later did I realize that I was perpetuating the harmful stereotype that people who linger in the vicinity of bus stops are just there to enjoy the atmosphere. Bus drivers use this common myth as ammunition in the War Against Stopping. I felt like apologizing to God. I also felt that way earlier today when I insinuated to a stylist that her client might be a werewolf. That was wrong on my part. It was just a dude. They're all just dudes. posted by Frenz | 9/14/2005 09:37:00 PM
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Tuesday, September 13, 2005 PS I AM STILL MEAN AND ANGRY BUT I DON"T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO SAY SO HERE ARE SOME ANECDOTES
Last night, after I got home from roller derby practice, I went to pour myself a glass of soda, and after I poured the most precise and beautiful beverage possible, the two-liter bottled slipped out of my hands and bounced on the floor. It soaked the kitchen. I mopped and mopped with the broken sponge mop from Save a Lot, but the floor is sttill sticky today. I think we should burn it and get a new floor, because I can't figure out what else to do. I'm sure as hell not mopping twice. Them ants'll die, come winter.
Ever wonder why I'm not dead? I certainly do. Laura Ingalls Wilder would've mopped that floor with lye and hog fat, when she was half dead with malaria or while she was giving birth to a child under the influence of ether. I can't work a sponge.
Today at work a man made some casual comment about the bus, and I told him what I thought about the bus, and he made some further comment, and I just kept talking and talking. I think that man learned a lesson today: don't speak to those in the sevrice industry, lest you be spoken to. He was all grown up, and it was time he learned. posted by Frenz | 9/13/2005 11:15:00 PM
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Sunday, September 11, 2005 Why is there a string around my finger?
This morning at the market, people were wearing commemorative t-shirts that said something like "September 11, 2001: ATTACKS ON AMERICA NEVER FORGET". It's hard. I know farmers are meant to be simple folk and all, but, oh, nice old couple selling apples, what the hell people? You just made some asshole the price of two t-shirts richer. Besides, I am way ahead of y'all on patriotism, because for me, September 11, 2005 started with a dramatic reenactment of the Tragic Events at midnight. I think some of the guests who didn't participate may have been a little offended, but I imagine that means they hate freedom.
Remember when 9/11, was like, the worst thing anybody could think of happening to the US? Those were the days, LOL. Remember everybody walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and shit, and nobody even tried to fire guns at them to keep them from getting into non-terrorized neighborhoods?
Remember how, after the tragic events, no one was allowed to say anything bad about the government, because they were going to keep us safe?
God, that "little Eichmanns" dude got in so much shit even a good while later, but prominent political and social figures get to go around saying any old goddamn thing they want. Aren't you better off? Isn't this a lot like camp? God finally cleaned you up. R U SIKED, U l00t3rs?
The funny thing here is, I was in a pretty good mood before I started typing. The weather is nice, and there's so much to see, as they say in Sweden and Detroit. (I found out the other day that in Finland, the idiom for "Go fuck yourself" translates into "Go ski into a cunt." If that's not true, I don't want to hear it.) Market was packed this morning, and that means people were making money at their booths, so that's nice. I even saw somebody talking to the lonely lady with the permanent smile who sells the socialist newspaper each week. It's their mutual funeral, I guess.
Also, some assholes are painting murals on the concrete pilings that hold the overpass up. Now, instead of concrete, we will have to look at poorly executed 1) Cartoonish trees in a field and 2) Oddly proportioned dancing people, which as my housemates and I determined after careful analysis are "Phoning it in stupid mural ideas" one and two. The worst part is, there are so many pilings that I don't think we, the people of the market are going to be able to escape without "White Hand Clasping a Black Hand in Friendship" and/or "Children of Many Lands", unless of course these people are stopped. posted by Frenz | 9/11/2005 11:52:00 AM
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Wednesday, September 07, 2005 Ow! My most of me!
This may not happen for real, but when I was trying in vain to total the books correctly at the end of the day, some of my co-workers and I were talking about trying to get the owner to let everybody come in some slow day like a Sunday and donate all the proceeds to building a time machine so that we can un-destroy New Orleans and un-drown all those people and un-scar all those kids for life and...I mean, to raise money for hurricane victims. I'll be glad if that works, the fundraiser day, I mean. Team 2 broke 2 Take Our Scheduled Day Off on Labor Day Saturday will probably not be able to rebuild anyplace all by ourselves, but several of the people who were enthusiastic about the idea were definitely on that team.
It's been nice weather for brooding, lately. Cool Autumn mornings make me scared and nauseous, because they make my most-of-me think that we are about to have to get on a school bus and go to seventh grade. The logical part of my brain is no match for my most-of-me.
Speaking of the bus, people, speaking of the bus, once again today, I was saved from having to finish a conversation about whether I believed in Jesus Christ by the arrival of the 61, the bus of the DEVIL. posted by Frenz | 9/07/2005 08:48:00 PM
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Monday, September 05, 2005 Gas prices: let's not get smug, jerks
About a year and a half ago, I sold my car, and I didn't do it for the environment. I sold it to my recently ex'd boyfriend, who drove it far away from me, which is just what I'd been hoping would happen. I had no job and no apartment, and I wasn't sure where I'd go. I sold him the car for some magic beans, which in hindsight was stupid, because he still crows about what a great deal he suckered me into giving him.
So: no car for me: my own fault, kind of, although I sold it in part because I knew I wouldn't be able to afford insurance and the constant repairs it seemed to need at the time. I miss having a car, although not that calamity. I miss driving, and I miss being able to go visit my friends and family in other parts of town or other states without conning a sympathizer into giving me a ride.
I bitch about the busses in this town, but my secret is that I hardly use them. I go to work and back on a couple of lines that are straight shots up Charles and down St. Paul for as far as I need to ride them. Whenever I've tried to ride the bus anywhere else in the area, there's been an amusing fuck-up.
For example: A month or so ago, a friend who lives in Hamilton was having a party, and God love her, she was doing it on a Sunday afternoon. It took Tracy and I about two and half hours to get there. According to Google maps, from my house to my friend's neighborhood, the distance is 5.2 miles, and the driving time is roughly eleven minutes. (That seems a little inaccurate to me. I'd say it's more like 20 minutes by car in moderate traffic.) Bus challenge is rough on the weekends or at night, but we are veterans, and we used our combined years of banging our heads against the wall experience to find a line that stopped in walking distance of my house and was plausibly near my friend's place.
We managed it even though the bus route maps posted on the MTA website and available in print seem to depict jagged caterpillars divorced from any street names, landmarks, or geographic context except for those hinted at by the names of the stops (not all stops are shown--one is, I imagine, meant to intuit). We walked down to State Center and waited for the 17. Bus after bus rolled by with a "finished service" sign lit up in the destination indicator. Sometimes, the would seem to slow at the stop, taunting us.
We joked and swore, and after about an hour of waiting for a bus that was scheduled to come about every 15 minutes, even on Sundays, I called my friend and told her that if there wasn't a transit miracle pretty soon, we were going to miss the party. Not long afterwards, another "finished service" came by. We jumped up before we realized they were just messing with us, and then something strange happened: the bus stopped. We ran over. "What bus is this?"
"The 17".
"You know your sign says 'finished service'"?
The driver gave some complicated explanation that the bus technically was finished service, although it was the right bus and would be continuing on its route and willing to take on passengers, but that in the few block around that particular stop, it was correct to say it was finished...I just went and sat down. I was so glad to be on the bus at all that it almost didn't matter that it took another hour for the bus to wind through town and stop and stop and stop and get standing-room-only crowded.
Not every city is a Baltimore, in terms of transit, but a lot of places have equally city situations, and not everyone lives in a city. If you live in a rural area, for example, you are pretty screwed without a car.
So, so, so, internets: let's not get happy about the gas prices going up or pretend it's going to be some kind of backdoor way to make everyone into an enviro-friend overnight.
I know, I know, the loveable fraternity in charge of the country left thousands of people to die in pain and fear, and they let one of our great old cities get destroyed almost completely, and when someone is like "Can you believe these fucking gas prices? Can you believe I had to wait in line? It's the end of the world!" it's hard to take.
The trouble is, the horrendous negligence on the part of the crew of cronies that allowed to refineries to get ruined along with New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast is just going to keep giving and giving. Gas prices are going to hit working poor people hardest, so remember that while you're yapping about how this is going to stick it to those bastards in SUVs. No it won't.
The same people who can afford to drive Hummers and so forth are the same people a four dollar gallon of gas won't break, and the same people who aren't going to get fired from their jobs if they get stuck in a two-hour gas line and can't come in on time.
The people who are driving old shit buckets that run on faith and get horrendous mileage because that's what they have and they can't get something better are the ones who are getting it stuck to them. posted by Frenz | 9/05/2005 10:29:00 AM
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Saturday, September 03, 2005 Kick in the shins
At work today, as I fielded the calls of those who were outraged that they would not be receiving haircut appointments due to reduced holiday hours, I flouted the ban on reading at the reception desk. I'd gotten a Post at the paper box up the street. I'd read some of it online this morning with Tracy, before we left the house to start our days and before I missed the one crucial Saturday morning bus, without the aid of which I am doomed to lateness. We were reading an op-ed about the difference between those good and noble looters who nobly acquire the bare minimum it takes them to survive, and those egregious (remember that word? What a blast from the past!) looters who take things that they won't die in the next day or two if they pass up. Liquor and guns, the article mentioned, which was interesting, because that is probably what I would want, too, but that's the rabble in me talking. Sometimes I'm all full of rabble, up past my neck.
Then I got home, and it might've been my imagination, but the bus seemed a little crowded on the way. I will make a Baltimore public transit tutorial soon, for newcomers to the bus who are going to get forced on by rising gas prices and are about to get outraged themselves at how hard it is to get from one place to another in a fixed timeframe in this town.
I got home, and I started trying to doctor my foot, because I did a stupid thing the other day, and I wore some uncomfortable old shoes to work, and a blister started, and then I made it worse walking around town last night. This morning, it hurt too much to put on a regular shoe, and I was thankful that mine is a workplace where one can rock a pair of flip-flops. Before I took up my forbidden reading, I passed the time noticing how a red streak from my wounded toe seemed to be travelling up my foot as far as the ankle. "Fuck," I thought. Maybe I should ask my physician. Sike! I don't have a doctor. Who do you think I am?
Now my foot is on a spa vacation in a tub of hot water and peroxide. How's your vacation, foot? Painful? Well, shit, other people have worse problems than you. All I ask is that you please don't give me blood poisoning. That's basically all I ask of any of you, unless your actual job is to manage emergencies. Then I ask you to manage fucking emergencies.
I just finished listening to the radio interview with Mayor Nagin. Jesus fuck. You're doing a hell of a job, Brownie. posted by Frenz | 9/03/2005 06:23:00 PM
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Thursday, September 01, 2005 How's your day been going?
Earlier tonight, I was at some friends' house with Tracy, waiting to leave for roller skating, watching TV. Earlier, my friend had asked, "So, what did you do today?" Worried about New Orleans, Tracy said. I agreed. (I also helped my housemates shampoo the carpet, which was a total pain in the ass, and yet I had to keep reminding myself that I was very lucky to have a house and a carpet and shampoo, so I was able to feel guilty and sad as well as bored and annoyed. Thoughts and prayers, guys! Thoughts and prayers. Gag.)
Anyway, we were watching TV, and talking, and watching TV, and on the way over we'd kept staring at gas stations and so forth, and gauging where we were on the spectrum of future troubles. We were all more on the end of "Somewhat inconvenienced" rather than the common, "So very, very fucked." We kept repeating the news we'd heard and read all day back to each other. Then there was a lull, and the news faded into a commericial. The screen flashed the words "BAD NEWS" and then a cheerful woman's voice said, "There's been enough bad news...for arthritis sufferers!"
We laughed hard for like, thirty seconds straight, almost 'til we cried. posted by Frenz | 9/01/2005 10:07:00 PM
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