Vomit Comet

I heard something on the bus that just made me sad. I don’t even know if I can make this make sense to anyone else but myself, but I’ll try. I heard a little kid, maybe 6 or 7 sitting with someone who sounded like he was only in university, but I wasn’t sure, but the kid seemed to know him. They were talking, and the kid looked at a sticker on the bottom of his toy, and said, “Made in China. Wonder what it’s like in China.” At this point, the dude he was sitting with started into this big speal about how people in China work in horrible conditions and all the company ever cares about when getting them to work is about profits and the people are basically slaves. After a couple repetitions of “why?” the kid was silent for the rest of the bus ride. At least this is what I heard. Somebody please tell me why this little kid has to know that this sort of thing happens yet? And, does the guy really know that that toy was made in horrible conditions? Does he know for a fact that everyone in China works like slaves? Way to fill this kid’s head with your ideas of what it’s like in China. Holy wow the poor kid was not prepared for that reality, or this dude’s view of reality, bomb. Why don’t you just tell the poor little guy that there’s no Santa Claus, the easter bunny doesn’t exist and the tooth fairy is his mom. The hell with innocence and fantasy altogether.

Then I heard something about think about that the next time you play with your toys. Ok hold the pony. Somebody bought him those toys. If you did, then you’re real sick because you acknowledge those horrible working conditions, and then give that company more money. If you didn’t, how dare you turn him against his parents through his toys? Now he’ll go home and wonder about his parents. I’m all about opening somebody’s eyes, but like this? I guess this only happens in this hippy vegetarian city.

Maybe I misheard the whole conversation, but that’s what I heard. Maybe I’m just jumping to conclusions. But I couldn’t believe that he was telling him all that. IT’s one thing if the kid brings it up first, but to do it that way. I don’t know. I just found it unsettling. Maybe I’m a wimp. But it won’t leave me alone. Maybe it will now. What does everybody think? Does this seem normal?

No, I’m not an idiot. I really do mean that cereal. Let me explain. I saw something on the bus that just scared me. It shook me to the core and made me question once again the safety of riding those huge machines with people packed in them like sardines and no seatbelts. I was riding happily along on a relatively empty bus. It came time to switch buses, and there was some delay between when we pulled in and when I would change buses, so I started talking to the driver. As she talked, I heard, crunch. Apparently so did she, and it was as startling to her as me. When she looked down to investigate, she exclaimed, “The last driver of this bus had a bowl of Cherios! There are cherios on the floor under the driver’s seat!”

First, I tried to envision how one, either passenger or driver could manage to eat *anything* while riding the bus. Those things don’t have the world’s greatest suspension systems, and the drivers love the brakes. I’d imagine the only end result of eating on the bus would be decorating your clothes with your meal.

Then I tried to imagine how a driver of the bus would manage to eat. I didn’t ask whether there was milk on these cherios. If there was, yuck what a mess. Anyway, she said that you would in fact need two hands on the wheel, like I thought. So if the guy was driving technically properly, this guy would have to be bent over the cherios eating them like some kind of animal. But then he wouldn’t be watching where he was going.

Then I was very thankful that I wasn’t either walking on the street or riding the bus driven by our cherio fan. It seems like a deadly combination. Please bus driver dudes, eat your cherios at home!

For some reason I got thinking about love poems the other day and I realized something. I’ve seen many love poems over the years, and a few of them were even meant for me. some of them are quick, simple and awful, some of them are long, complex, overly drawn out and awful. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten some really sweet ones and hopefully I’ll get a few more, but I find that a lot of the time the writer tries way too hard to get across in words what could easily be expressed in much simpler terms or better yet, with a kiss. But that’s not what I realized, I always knew that.

As I sat here pondering this issue I was struck by the realization that even though I’ve read many love poems, there’s 1 thing I’ve never seen, a love limerick. Why is that? Limericks are arguably the most accessible form of poetry in existence. They’re rigidly formulaic which makes them reasonably easy to put together and they’re not intimidating to the non-English literary set, a group to which I’m fairly sure I belong.

But after giving it considerable thought I think I’ve come up with the reason for the lack of love limericks. It boils down to 1 simple truth, that being that thinking them up is goddamn hard. Seriously, sit down and try it for a little while. It’s not as easy as I thought. Maybe it’s because I’m still a little bit sick and by the time I got to the third line my head was spinning, but it’s not as simple as it looks.

Feel free to prove me wrong, that would make me happy. I’ll keep trying to prove myself wrong too, because I honestly feel that the limerick is a vastly under-rated poetic art form that deserves far better than the beating it takes from the elite of the poetry world who are constantly trying to diminish it’s worth as a style in an attempt to prop up their own overly wordy non-rhyming brand of whatever the hell that stuff is. Let’s show them that the limerick and all of it’s greatness has a place, and a prominent one at that, in the world of writing. Together, we might just be able to do this.

Yep, I’m an unoriginal copycat. So sue me. Well things don’t suck nearly as much in my life as they seem to in Steve’s, but I’m in a rather suckalicious mood, and I have a bit of time to spare, so here we go. Everything sucks for me cause I’m stuck at the school library until well after any sane person should be there. I have to meet with some people in that class that I’m o so fond of. Then I get to walk home in the frigid cold. I actually gave in and got out the winter coat, and the day I break out the winter coat, I’m never a happy camper. And I got a mark back from a class that I thought I was doing well in. Well Guess what, sparticus? Not only does everything suck, apparently so do I! Now all that’s left is to find out that I suck in French too. And I get to do that most likely in about, hmmm, an hour.

So is everybody’s day sucking, or just ours? I am very happy to not be feeling sick, and I did get to see a friend, so that was cool. I just hate hate hate the cold, and the fact that I probably won’t make it home until 9:30 or so. Ick. I should be happy it’s not snowing. Now that I’ve said that, I’ll get caught in horrible snow.

Well I should probably do something productive. Have a less sucky day everyone.

Imagine a day when everything’s the opposite of what it should be. You wake up. You go to do your laundry and on your way out of your apartment you run into your neighbour. he’s an ordinary guy. You always happen to see him leave on his bike somewhere, seems to be keeping rather busy. He’s always offering to help you with something. Anyway, he tells you in conversation that he has cancer, has been fighting it for years, but it has returned and now it’s near his brain. You’re completely floored and after you finish talking to him, you head off to do your laundry. But you’re always bringing the wrong money or you somehow end up leaving without your soap. You manage to get the laundry in the dryer, but you have to go somewhere before it’s done. You leave your clothes there and hope for the best. You run to where you’re going, and a fountain that’s part of the town square, a fixture, isn’t running today! You realize this just before you slam into it, and look like a complete dope. You get to where you’re going, and the people who are usually mean are really nice, and the people who are usually insincere seem to mean what they say today. You leave there a few hours later to catch the bus to meet up with some other people. But you miss the one bus and the next bus doesn’t move its ass for a good five minutes after it’s supposed to. You get up to where you’re going, but the people who you’re meeting aren’t there. Then you meet some people who are really nice, nice enough to run around with you looking for the people you were looking for in the first place. You check everywhere, but no dice. So you go back home. You go to play the “where’s my laundry” treasure hunt, but miracle of miracles, it’s all in the dryer where you left it!

Sound like a weird day? Now imagine that it’s real. You don’t have to. It is. That was my Wednesday.