don’t panic

Have you ever noticed how some people are just LOUDER than others? I was sitting on the trolley today, and the old guy behind me was speaking so loudly that passengers in the other two cars could probably hear him. And the thing of it was, he wasn’t talking in an angry way, or even with that much passion. He and this other guy were discussing the upcoming Superbowl, and going on about this starter or that, or how this year’s game is like this other game played in 1982, yadda, yadda. I have never been into team sports, and certainly not to the level that I waste what few brain cells I have devoted to memory on something like SPORTS SCORES, so these guys could have been talking about the rise of the Yen, or the process of making a MacDonald’s chocolate shake, and it wouldn’t have been less boring to listen to. And believe me, you HAVE to listen, because it’s impossible to do anything else at all.

I don’t think the guy was intentionally causing temporary loss of hearing to those around him, and I don’t think he was in some way hearing disabled himself either. He was just plain loud. But I did notice that he was proportionally loud, in that he felt it was imperative that he be at least eighteen decibels louder than anyone else in the train, so that if there was a sudden flurry of conversation around him, his voice would rise up above the cacophony like the voice of Mecca.

He had the kind of volume that makes people glance at each other and consider whether or not they should move further away in case he’s some kind of psycho, or maybe just to be sure he can’t suddenly focus his attention, and his voice at them. An uncomfortable loudness.

Jordan is a loud kid. She has that same kind of always-at-maximum-volume voice that the guy on the trolley has. She looks at me funny when I tell her to use her “indoor’s voice”. Renee is somewhere in the middle, and I tend to be a bit on the soft side unless I’m talking about something like SPAM or politics (is there really a difference?). Renee is always telling me that she can’t hear me. She’s going deaf, but I mutter. Let’s just hope Jordan is going through a “phase”.

In other news, I discovered that the main trolley station downtown does NOT open until 8 am. This is important because if you need to purchase a monthly trolley pass (which of course you do, once a month if you ride the trolley) you can NOT purchase that pass before you go to work from the Trolley Mart located right next door which conveniently opens at 6. And unlike all the other Marts that sell passes, this ONE location CAN’T sell them “because of competition.” Huh? A ticket is a ticket, is a ticket. It’s not like the guy’s in the Marts are somehow slaving away to produce these things… They’re buying them from the MTS! Why not make it actually EASY to buy a pass and sell them at BOTH locations? The money goes to the same place. It’s not like the Marts are making any kind of a profit off the things. They’re $54 whether I get them at the official MTS counter, or from Apu at the Lemon Grove Kwik-E-Mart. DOH! (more…)

Yesterday night I did something with my family that I’ve never done before… We watched the Superbowl. All of us. Even my daughter. Actually, my five-year-old was more into it than either my wife or myself were.

To be fair, I think she was more interested in the whole excitement factor rather than the game. We had tuned it in because, well, it’s in our home town, and if we’re going to be inconvenienced by the traffic and increased security everywhere, then by golly, we should at least turn on the tele and see what all the hoopla is about.

None of us is into sports, but if you’re going to watch a game, then this would be it, yes? Besides, Sting was singing in the half-time show, the television ads are always more interesting than the teams, and there’s just something awe inspiring in seeing a full stadium when the average seat price is around $1,300.

And the Raiders stunk.

Sorry, but they did. I never liked the Raiders anyway, but when I tuned into CNN the following morning, I was quite surprised to find out that some peeved fans had taken it upon themselves to burn down a McDonalds and set fire to a number of vehicles (among other things) just because…well, because they’re Raiders fans. It turns out they did much the same thing a week or so ago when they won, so it’s not like they were doing it out of anger at loosing or something. They were just assholes, plain and simple.

Message to Raider Fan: It’s a GAME you moron. It’s not like you’re making a political statement or feeding a revolution or something. Football (not to be confused with Soccer) is for ENTERTAINMENT. Perhaps you find it amusing to burn and pillage whenever your team plays, but I doubt that Micky-Ds is laughing right now. How much do you think one of those burger joints goes for these days? A million? How much for the poor guy who’s now taking the bus because you torched his car. I’m sure the fast food giant is covered by their insurance, but how many people take out fire insurance for their cars? And SOMEBODY’S going to pay for that McDonalds. Just because it’s an insurance company, doesn’t mean it’s free money. And what if someone had been IN one of the cars you torched? What if someone had been killed? Baaah! You bit-head! Why do I bother? If you had enough brains to understand the stupidity of your own actions, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.

Grrr… And the worst part of it all is that we just let them get away with it. Nobody’s responsible for these adolescent jerks. Perhaps we should penalize the Raiders as a team for the actions of their fans… Maybe we should change their name to something more docile like, “The Pigeons”, or the “Oakland Mice.” That would sure take a bite out of their arrogance. (more…)

I was driving with my daughter the other day, and as we pulled up to a stoplight at one point, both of us were assailed by the music and lyrics blasting out the window of the car next to us. Now, I’ve worked really hard with my daughter to keep her sheltered from “harsh” language, even those semi-abusive words like, “stupid” and “ugly.” This can really be a challenge at times because I’m the kind of person who speaks their mind about others, especially while driving, and believe me, there are multitudes of “mentally challenged drivers” out there on the roads in SoCal. If ever there was a place to use the “S-word,” it’s there. So it isn’t uncommon for me to be driving down the freeway saying things like, “Oh! Just look at that… silly driver who just cut off daddy…” and, “Don’t be like that… not-nice woman in the big SUV when you grow up, okay?”

Anyway, there we were, stuck in line at this light, unable to get away from the blaring example of the common man’s social rebellion, and my daughter turns to me and says, “Daddy, they shouldn’t say that word…”

I was so proud of her I could have burst. But I was also angry as… as… uh, Gehenna! I mean, which word was she referring to? Every fourth utterance was foul enough darken the air around the car. It amazes me that people can play lyrics in their cars, as loud as they want, that would get them arrested for public vulgarity anywhere else. There’s a reason they put that “offensive language” warning on CD’s, and it’s not just to boost sales.

But the part that burned me the most was the total lack of respect that the two juveniles in the car had for those around them, especially my five-year-old daughter and myself. They looked over at us at one point, no doubt to see if we wanted to challenge their “manliness”, so I know they were aware they were verbally attacking a minor (and everyone else for a city block), not that they could have heard us if I DID want to challenge them. Did they turn it down? Of course not. They just faced forward and continued to pretend to be cool. They just didn’t care.

So what does this mean? People didn’t do this when I was a kid. We just didn’t. Sure, we had our own ways of rebelling against out parents and other adults, but we never would have done something so heinous as to use foul language in front of a child, it just wasn’t done. Oh, sure, we might curse up a storm with our buddies at school, but if somebody’s little sister showed up, we were all model citizens. Now, it’s almost a pride thing to see how many people you can offend in a single day. Kids go driving to cruise with their “music” playing at volumes that can be heard in the next zip code, just to get a rise out of adults. And if you ask them why they choose the music that they do, they’ll tell you it’s because it makes a statement against how repressed X group is within Y society. Oh yeah, it makes a statement alright.

So am I becoming a cranky old-timer? I mean, didn’t our parents say the same things about our music? Well, no, they didn’t. Our music was full of sex and of course the ranting political statements, but what else is there to sing about? Besides, there was a limit. There were the occasional references to “strong” language, but we all knew that the groups were just doing it to get publicity. Only the really naive said that it was to “push the envelope musically.” And we NEVER would have listened to such music outside of the very closed and guarded teen circles of our close friends. To let a little one hear such “filth” was simply taboo.

Is the “music” of modern-day Rap any different morally from the bad-boy music of my own generation? Am I missing something “important” here? I don’t think so. If there’s a message in there that people should be listening to, then the way to get the common man to take you seriously is not by screaming obscenities. Sorry, but I don’t buy that whole “angry generation” crap. Political statements are not made by offending as many people as possible to effect change. Is the message important? Maybe, but I say, find a soapbox that doesn’t have to burn the ears off my little girl, who isn’t even going to understand the message, let alone know how to discriminate between “simple truth” and simple filth. (more…)

The trolley ride was a little psychotic this morning. In the past, I’ve found the trolley drivers to be friendly and courteous. Today’s driver must have just found out he had liver cancer or the like, because something was biting his ass, and he was taking it out on us helpless and captive riders in a big way.

I usually sit in the first car, near the front where the operator’s compartment is. There’s a window in the locked door so that the driver can tell if you’re holding a gun before telling you that you can’t come in. The window is just light Plexiglass, so it’s not like it would stop a bullet or something. You have to wonder why they do this… I mean, couldn’t they have at least made it LOOK like it was bullet-proof? As it is, the only purpose it serves is to allow the driver to see just how scared he should be.

In any case, it also allows the passengers to look through and see some of the control board. I noticed a while back that there is a little red light that comes on when the train is going too fast at any given moment. There are different speeds all along the route, and when pulling into a station, so I have no idea how it knows when to turn on, but it does. Pixies maybe. Today, that light was on almost continually while the train was in motion. It was like being on one of those kiddie roller coasters at Disneyland that tosses you around a bit, but doesn’t require more than a “no thank you” seat belt that’s only there to satisfy the lawyers anyway. Only we didn’t have those seat belts…

Another thing the trolley drivers do is beep the soft buzz-horn before they accelerate or decelerate. That way the standing passengers have a second to reach out snag a hand-rail, lest they loose their balance and end up falling into one another with embarrassing results. Today the driver seemed to have his mind elsewhere. There were no warnings, just the abrupt lurching as we pulled into or out of the station.

The net result was that people were stumbling all over the place with questionable glances at the locked door. I was standing by one of the doors, having given up my seat to a very tired looking Hispanic woman who must have just come off the late shift or something. I have to digress here for a moment to vent about human nature. Why is it that men in the lower end of society have no problem with general manners like giving up your seat to a woman or picking up something that someone else has dropped, but getting an upper-class individual to do the same requires nothing short of a court order? I guess I fall into the middle somewhere socially, but thank goodness my mamma saw fit to raise me with a proper social ethic.

So there we were, bouncing around like a bunch of groupies in a mosh pit, when all of the sudden the train makes one final REALLY hard brake and comes to a complete stop. The train gets remarkably quite for a moment while people try to figure out if they should be panicking, and then we all notice that we have stopped smack in the middle of the county cemetery.

The driver’s voice comes through the speakers almost inaudibly, and he starts complaining about someone having hit one of the emergency buttons or leaned to hard against one of the doors causing the automatic braking system to engage. After a few minutes of mumbling, the train starts back up and we continue on our way. What did the guy expect? People have mass, and they have this funny tendency to fall over when the floor under them shifts abruptly. I was still hearing the rumbling comments about having picked that particular place to stop even on my way back home later that night. They never did figure out who was the one who tripped the alarm…

And I don’t plan on telling them. (more…)

I’ve been getting really philosophical on the trolley lately. I have this thirty-seven minute ride into downtown from my house every morning and evening, and I can do one of five things during that time:

1) Stare at my feet,
2) Stare out the window,
3) Stare at other people without actually LOOKING like I’m staring at them,
4) Stare at other people’s feet, or
5) Read a book.

I started Microserfs a couple of days ago, and it happens to fall into a category of reading that I call, Books That Make You Go, Hmmmmm. These are books that for whatever reason, make me really think about something, usually regarding myself.

Today, I stepped onto the trolley and smiled at the “usuals” that comprise the corporate chain-gang of secretaries, career engineers, and government pencil pushers that all seem to work at the same building and share Christmas photos like one big happy family. One of the gang lately has been a thirty-something, mildly Downs gentleman who always sits on the steps near the door with his Adidas backpack and a Walkman. I say, “mildly Downs” because it would seem that his condition is mostly physical rather than mental. But you can still tell that something isn’t quite right, you know? He has the stigmata.

Genetically, if you really got down to it in terms of actual data, the difference between him and me is incredibly minuscule; less than 1% of the total information. Given that, and chemistry aside, what IS it that is different? Sure, with Down’s Syndrome, there are some pretty distinct physical characteristics that hinder him. But what about the guy sitting two rows back with the 92 IQ? How different is he from me, and in what way?

On the way downtown, the trolley passes through some pretty “interesting” parts of San Diego. In many ways, the low-income communities right around the tracks are social cast-away’s. These are the people that can’t afford to live anywhere else, and when they leave, no one will ever live there again because the homes will be condemned. What remains is slowly eroded down to the foundations by gangs, junk-yard scroungers, and mother-nature, until all that is left is a three inch-high outline of where the walls used to be. It’s like looking at a life-size blueprint filled in with a lush green of weeds and wild grass. But you can imagine what the house must have looked like when it was there. You can construct it in your head seeing only the most basic structure.

And it occurred to me that maybe the difference between me and the guy with the 92 IQ has nothing to do with my physical construction, but rather the unseen structure beneath the house that is my mind. Perhaps that what is passed on to me that gives me that genetic “edge” is a way of thinking, and not merely a bigger chunk of grey matter.

This opened up a lot of other questions, which I had to quickly write down so that I wouldn’t forget them, my memory not being one of the better structural designs in the house of my mind. The trolley ride is only 37 minutes after all. (more…)