(Which by the way consists of the backsides of some apartments, a roadway, the interior of whatever book I'm reading, and the dark, dark tunnel that is the Red Line Subway. So all in all, it's about as scenic as you'd expect public transit to be; i.e. not. On the other hand, you meet the craziest people! (Not a compliment) )
In addition, not only is the bus cheaper, it's also a quarter mile closer to my apartment, making my morning/evening commute a little shorter; it doesn't cause me to have to take a short cut behind a back alley that looks like it would be at home in "Mystic River". (You know, the one where Sean Penn would take someone to get beaten up to try and get closer to finding out who exactly killed his daughter in the park. But that's getting ahead of myself.) Given that I'm no longer hurrying along this back alley clutching my laptop back/satchel (manpurse) at odd hours of the night, I feel that my survival chances in this neck of the woods have increased at least by 50% or more. I'm not sure where the current percentage lies, but I have a certain feeling that it's much better than it was two weeks ago. (On the other hand, if I should suddenly start missing blog entries, you probably have a good lead on where to find me. I'd start behind the laundromat and work your way north towards the Jarvis stop.)
Anyways, so my bus adventures began on an afternoon where I had to be at work at one of my places of employment (The one that rhymes with Schmc'cormick's) at around 4:30 pm. Naturally, I assume that the quote on Google Maps on the amount of time it takes to get to and from work is completely 100% accurate, and will take into account any and all traffic that I'm likely to encounter. This includes the street the bus runs on for about three miles named Sheridan that seems to be filled with pigeons and traffic lights, as well as some side street downtown that seems to be named Upper Michigan. Definitely making that commute in 55 minutes, so I will in fact leave my apartment at 3:20. You know, just to be safe and get there early.
Piece of cake.
One of the added benefits in Chicago is that you can text your bus location to the 411 (which sounds like either an oddly traffic-conscious rap group or a mysterious benevolent green space alien...who is also oddly traffic-conscious) and it will tell you how long until the next bus will be arriving at your stop, with about two to four minutes of cushion so as to get your lazy ass there in time. This is unfortunate in that you do not need to be standing at the bus stop in question to be able to text that magical 411 the number of your bus stop in order to receive the fully accurate, up-to-date information. This means that I can roll out of bed, check my phone, send the auto-text concerning my nearby bus stop, see if there's a second bus in 35 minutes, and crawl back beneath the sheets to grab that extra 20 minutes of sleep that I had to trade in to rewatch the "Blitzgiving" episode of "How I Met Your Mother". Again.
Come on, Jorge Garcia making "Lost" jokes! (Not that I've ever seen "Lost", but I'm assuming the jokes are just universally funny. I also am assuming that the jokes are in regards to "Lost." If they aren't, go screw yourself.)
(Gently.)
So an average morning for me now consists of the aforementioned rolling over, although I will get up to make a pot of coffee that fits neatly into my travel mug so that I can imbibe the necessary caffeine to go about my day. Upon making coffee, I will go back to sleep for whatever time I can get. I will then awaken, bundle up, and head out to catch the bus.
Anyways, I'm now aboard my first trip on the 147, or the bus that runs from Howard to downtown and beyond. (I'm still not exactly sure of what lies below Roosevelt in the city. I know Hyde Park is somewhere down there, as well as the White Sox, but the rest in my mind bears a strong resemblance to those ancient maps of the world. You know, where cartographers would simply fill in the edge of the oceans with made up countries just to make their maps more impressive, and to hide the fact that in secret they had no fucking idea exactly what lay 20 miles beyond Portugal. Generally, there's a sign resembling "Here Be Dragons", and in my current state of mind, there's a sign just south of the Roosevelt stop on the Red Line that reads the exact same thing. On a separate note, yes, I am from a small town in Southern Ohio, why do you ask?) Realizing that the first reason I took this trip was to see if the sights were any different from the Red Line, I immediately begin looking around, checking out my surroundings, as well as scouting out to see anything of interest that this trip might offer me. I'm always ready to try out new grocery stores, new restaurants, and new curiosity shops of interest. (In other words, places I shop at despite not really being able to afford bread. Yes, bread. Let alone tattered first editions of the Jerle Shannara trilogy by Terry Brooks, I am more likely to buy yet another three books that I've already read to add to my literally overflowing library than I am to buy bread to make sandwiches with so that I don't starve. But let's be fair: they were a great read, and I do need to have something to do on these trips. But more on that later.)
I quickly realize that this trip is not scenic. Gary, Indiana might be more scenic. (Gawd, is that a depressing thought) You know how you always see tourists in the streets of big cities taking pictures, gawking over the sights of the city skyline as though they've been raised in an underground missile silo for most of their existence? Or how when touring a farm with a petting zoo, they will look at the pygmy goat as though it were a twelve foot Burmese Tiger with two heads and a flashing neon tail, instead of just the malnourished common farm animal (named Steve) that you actually realize it to be? And in the background, you see the locals who push anyone and everyone out of their way as though they had to reach that burning building in time to save their baby, their kittens, and grandma's will before the whole damn inferno goes up in smoke?
I'm slowly becoming a local. Seriously, people, move your ass. The sidewalk is for walking, not gawking.
Realizing that the view of Sheridan is about as scenic as a can of tuna, (fresh, not stale; even if it's stale and moldy, it's at least interesting to look at, albeit disgusting) I turn my attention back to my reading of choice for the trip. (Sidenote #1: I'm reading a collected volume of Hunter Thompson essays, so for those who remember my writing the last time I had an extended exposure to Dr. Duke, you can look forward to my writing/blogging/existence taking a turn for the surreal and cruel. As well as slightly more sidenotes. The Writing Desk Committee feels very strongly in the prolonged existence of tangents and all things irreverent to the overall purpose of the stated article and/or essay. Therefore, consider yourself fully warned. The bastards can't stop me now!)
(Sidenote #2: This blog, however, will remain a drug-free zone. Mostly because I'm too poor to buy drugs. Nor would I know how to go about getting drugs if I knew how to buy them. I imagine my side of the conversation would go something along the lines of "Gee mister! You sure look dope! Dope as in cool! By the wayside, would you happen to have a dimebag of dope that I could purchase? I mean, that is what it's called, right? A dimebag of dope, dope?" You'd probably have to look for me behind the laundromat and the money exchange store then.)
Reading while on the bus and/or train is an interesting experience. On the one hand, it's an intended distraction to pass the time while riding on public transit. Your average trip from your home to the city/your stop of choice will take around 30 to 45 minutes, with some transits extending that to an hour to an hour and a half. Considering that you'll be returning to your original point of departure at one point, that's anywhere from one to three hours spent all day doing nothing but sitting in transit to get somewhere. That extends to 15 hours a week (if you're working five days a week) or more, and upwards of 60 hours total a month. Or, you know, three days of your month spent JUST TRAVELING FROM PLACE TO PLACE. Consequently, it's better to fill it with something productive or stimulating rather than doing what your typical CTA passenger is doing. (i.e. staring forward vacantly into space, wondering why their life is flashing by so quickly, typically with a drool string from their mouth halfway down to the floor. Or, you know, that might just be my shit luck to sit next to the same guy on every fucking transit. Boy, that's depressing.) On the other hand, intentionally diving into a book or tablet on the train is also a social statement, one in which you're saying "I have my own things that I'm doing right now, and consequently, I am not open or amiable to social conversation. If you make an attempt to talk to me, thus diverting my attention from my preferred focal point of interest, you are thereby distracting me from something I would prefer to be doing. If you are distracting me from doing that said something, you are taking up my valuable time and/or bothering me. If this is the case, then your distraction had better be hella good, or I'm taking my hatchet to your shins and nailing them to my headboard at home where I keep my trophies." (Again, that might be the same guy that I always seem to end up sitting next to on the train, and wouldn't that just be my shit luck to forget a book on the train the other day. Balls.) It's a fine line between polite and skull-fuck crazy, and I like to think I walk that line every day. (Successfully.)
Given that my current book of interest is an insane rant, I'm totally OK with spending the hour long (in theory) trip immersed in Mr. Thompson's writings, especially as an enamored fan of his. What I'm not quite expecting is that this bus trip through about 500 traffic lights at a peak time of day for transit to and from work during a peak holiday season is in fact going to take longer than the previously stated 55 minutes. I realize this about 45 minutes into the trip, when we are just barely beginning to capture the skyline of Chicago. (You know, the one that is visible from two miles away on a clear day. Much like the day I chose to ride the bus, in fact.) If you're just beginning to be able to see it from your bus, and you're supposed to be at work in the heart of that skyline in about ten minutes, a sort of profound sense of panic begins to set in. It's the panic that one can only realize when you start to feel that you're going to be late for a job in the heart of one of the largest cities in America that you only just moved to three weeks ago and you're currently trapped inside of a large metal shell traveling at a luxuriously slow twenty miles an hour surrounded by fellow city transit passengers who are in no hurry whatsoever to get to their spot on the bus which is always six inches within your preferred buffer-zone of human contact and you have at that exact moment $33.56 to your name in U.S. dollars in a bank account that you're not actually able to access anyways and $7500 in debt that only grows but never shrinks and a career field that seems to be shrinking all the while as your love life spirals into a black hole of oblivion from which you can never escape because you need a haircut and...
Is that lady walking a peccary?
Sidenote #3: The peccary.
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| The collared peccary. |
In short, a pleasant enough creature. It's fond of roots, tubers, and prickly pear cacti, although they are known to eat small animals. (The stated Wikipedia article is rather vague on the meaning behind "small animals", although given their particular habitat and range, I highly doubt that they're talking about Scottish Terriers and Himalayan Long Hairs.) They're often confused with regular pigs, given their close familial history, and are known to roam in herds that range in number anywhere from 10 to 100. It comes equipped with a pair of tusks that it uses to scrounge for roots and tubers, as well as to scare away potential predators. (Much like some girls I've encountered in the local bar scene of Dayton, Ohio.)
Given the above information, as well as my own personal confirmation that peccaries do indeed live in the southwestern United States through a wildlife sighting on a family trip to Monument Valley, it seemed at first highly unlikely that a woman of any sort of upper-middle class status would choose to keep a peccary, or javalina, as a form of domesticated pet.
Yet, sure enough, as I looked out the window, I was able to confirm that, yes, this woman was walking her peccary. Through the front pet garden of one of those high rise apartment buildings that sits on the shore of Lake Michigan. The kind where you're just living there to show that you can afford to live there, as opposed to making beneficial use of the proximity to cheap, public transportation. And apparently the kind of place where the owner is more likely to own a peccary than a Portuguese Water Dog. (The Obamas must be falling out of fashion. Make way, Bo, for Bolina the Peccary, coming soon to the White House near you.) For years, I have labored under the apparent delusion that it might be illegal to own such a creature, and even more so to keep an exotic animal like that as a pet of any kind. (For evidence supporting this apparently misguided and half-assed belief, I ask that you take a good look at this recent event.) Now, with my own eyes serving as eyewitnesses, I can assure you that not only is it completely 100% abso-tively possi-lutely permissable to keep a small, wild pig on a leash, but you can also take it for a walk in your condo's flower beds. So long as you tend to its business with the appropriate doggy bag.
With that latest shock to consider as the bus meandered it's way towards an inevitable rendezvous with downtown Chicago, I found that I was no longer concerned with a world where I would end up being 20 minutes late to work (again, hampered by a sudden outpouring of holiday shoppers and tourists upon the aforementioned boulevard of commerce known as Upper Michigan on a mid-December afternoon at 4:00 pm CST). Rather, I was concerned with the implications that somewhere in mid-Lakeview, it is entirely possible that an entire generation of deranged, mid-life yuppie housewives are secretly breeding and training a legalized herd of peccaries to submit to their own martini-soaked dreams of North Side domination. Given that the peccary has been known to travel in groups ranging up to 100, that means that there could be 100 peccaries that could be used at the drop of a hat to attempt a hostile takeover of my neck of the woods. Think of it. Pigs devouring small armies of mastiffs as though they were milk bones. Prickly pear cacti around the neighborhood being torn from their sheltered greenhouses and savagely mauled by the wild, feral pigs of Boystown (actual pigs). The Red Line awash with the blood of innocents and peccaries, the Brown Line stained with the feces of 100 sows gone mad with rage and martini-lust, the Blue Line (Blue Line?) with inevitable delays, backing up traffic all the way to O'Hare...wait, that actually happens regularly, nevermind.
The one fortunate side effect of a peccary invasion of the north side is that it most likely would not affect the buses running back and forth, to and fro, across the streets of Chi-town. The dedicated service of the CTA is stout enough to ensure that your bus will always be 20 minutes late to its destination, no matter what time of day, no matter what condition of road. You will always get there. 20 minutes to half an hour after you were supposed to. But that's ok, because no pigs were harming you while in transit.
Now that I'm fully aware of that, time for a nap. My bus will be here in 25 minutes.
(Postscript #1: Consider the Peccary is my attempted tribute to David Foster Wallace, and to a lesser extent, my time spent working as a bookseller at Borders Books and Music. David Foster Wallace, commonly viewed as one of the leading writers of the 1990's and early 2000's, as well as one of the voices of Generation X, released a compilation of essays entitled "Consider the Lobster", which is a fantastic read if you have three days a month to spend riding around in tiny metal cages of transportation, or if you're just pressed for a good book. While working at Borders, we were told to constantly provide our own recommendations throughout the store for books that we enjoyed. These recommendations were to be handwritten on small cardstock inserts, upon which any use of ink would invariably smudge. Given that my own handwriting is often less than stellar in its quality, it became something of a challenge to me to write out my personal advice in as few words as possible. Thus, here are a few good books to read if you're in the mood for post-holiday reading, along with my personal reviews in four words or less.)
(Postscript #2: It's getting so that I can write an entry with no exact goal in mind and still churn out 3,000 + words in around 2.5 hours. This is a good thing, and bodes well towards my goals of getting some actual writing done sometimes in the near future. Especially as my projects move nearer and nearer to their start dates. Currently, the fantasy novel (Still untitled) is under way with several character sketches and world designs laid out. Look for the first chapter to be under way by the end of the month, with a draft complete around the end of April/middle of May. Meanwhile, I have begun research on River of Doubt, with Candace Millard's treatise on the subject arriving in my mailbox shortly. Look for an outline by the end of February.)
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| Have you? |
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| Nom nom nom |
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| Bully. |
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| Whine, piss, moan. Yawn. |
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| Less than Forrest Gump. |
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| Still Not with Stupid. |
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| Just shoot yourself now. |
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| Closet Penn State Fan. |
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