Isn't it nice to have left his world and gotten back to yours?

I often feel thankful that I don't have to live with or as the people who act like jerks on the road and in other areas of life.

Man, I never have the gumption to say anything to people pulling that sort of thing so nice job on being assertive and maybe letting an asshole know he was being an asshole.

Is there a ripple in the Universe? Because the Tool to Normal ratio is pretty jacked up.

Next time that happens (which it hopefully won't, but probably will), please feel free to go talk to the manager. And then I hope a dog pees on that guy's leg.

This happens every so often on the train. It seems impossible to me that people don't realize how rude they are being - especially on the early morning train, when everyone is quiet, most of us are somewhat groggy from just waking up, and many people are trying to read or prepare for their day. People just yap out their inane conversations really loudly. I haven't said anything to anyone yet - I'm trying hard not to, becuase I've been on a vicious misanthropic kick and don't want to encourage it - but one day it'll just be too much. Good on you for speaking up for a quieter world.

This happens every so often on the train.

Does it ever. Two experiences in particular stand out in my memory. Or three, depending on how you count.

One was when I caught a slightly later train than my usual one. For the entire 45-minute trip, one woman was yammering into her cell phone about all the drama surrounding some relative's wedding, at high speed and high volume, and without interruption.

Months later, I caught the same train again... and she was still doing the same thing! I pity the people who get on that train every day. Hopefully the wedding eventually happened, just to put a stop to the noise.

The other was a much later train on a Friday night. Not late enough for the party crowd to be heading home, just late enough for office workers who have been at work much too late to constitute the majority of the passengers, judging from our {I am so fucking tired} expressions.

So anyway, on this train is a man who had purchased a new cell phone. I know this because it was still in the box it came in. He unpacked it, read the manual for a few minutes, and the proceeded to try out every. single. ring. tone. at. maximum. volume. several. times.

I really wanted to just blurt out "WILL YOU CUT THAT OUT!" at the top of my lungs, which would have been the only other sound on the train that night. But, alas, I didn't.

My favorite thing about the cell-phone-conversation-on-a-train thing is that it always, always starts out this way:

"Hello?"

-pause-

"Hey."

-pause-

"Yeah, I'm on the train."


I mean, not that it's unusual or something, just that every single time I've been on the Metrolink here in LA, and most times I've been on an Amtrak, I have heard a conversation begin this way.

Me too, malapropist. And here, because the conversation usually starts while the train is sitting in Union Station with the doors open, thus letting in the incredible noise from a dozen locomotives under a roof, the next two lines are typically:

-pause-

"I'M ON! THE! TRAIN!"

"Sorry, I can't talk right now, I'm attending a performance, gotta go, bye!"

When I lived in Italy, whenever I rode the train, about 10 minutes before we pulled into our destination, three-quarters of the male train passengers would pull out their cell phones and invariably say, "Ciao, mamma! Sono in treno. Butta la pasta! Butta la pasta!" and then hang up, in order to let their beloved mothers know that they were about to get off the train and so it was time for mom to throw the pasta in the boiling water, the better for dinner to be ready and on the table by the time these young men got home.

It was both horrifying and highly amusing.

See, this whole topic is why I hope they never make it legal to use cell phones during plane flights. It's bad enough having to listen to wanna-be alpha male salesguys barking into their phones in the terminal, I think I'd go crazy if I had to listen to that all the way across the country.

I think my Buddhist commitment to non-violence would go right out the window if I was trapped in a steel tube at 30,000 feet with a bunch of cell phone yappers. The relative quietude is the last shred of civility on airplane flights. Take that away and it will turn into a bloodbath. I would expect to hear about midair fistfights weekly.

Don't get me started on flights and the rude people on them.
I had taken a very early flight to Stockholm, had a hellday with meetings non-stop, and was slightly worn out on my late-ish flight home (lands at seven-thirty). I sat with my eyes closed most of the flight trying to weed out negative vibes from my day.

As we landed I watched the announcements for when we were allowed to turn our phones back on, as I wanted to Gowalla that I was finally home. I pointed around on my phone with the sound off as people did that stupid thing were they all get up and stand in the aisle for no apparent reason for ten minutes before the doors open. I was in the aisle seat and my own little bubble.

The man in the window seat gets up, leans over me and drags his heavy coat-with-shit-the-pockets out of there, slamming me in my head and breaking my bubble of peace. I look up at him with a "dude wtf?" face and he exclaims: Woops.

Woops? WOOPS? MotherfuckerI'vejusthadtheworstdaymettingoldmenlikeyou...GRrr goes through my mind as I return to my phone and see if it has reception yet. Everyone is still standing still in the aisle, the doors are nowhere near ready to be opened yet.

"How about you help us out and get up?" the man says. I say: "Excuse me?" -"Get up. So we can hurry along out." "I will not get up until the doors open and the line moves" I snap.

I was fuming. First, no apology for slamming me in the head and then the conceited "help us out" when what he really meant was "I am in a hurry and you are in my way, chop-chop little girl."

"You're being uncooperative" he said in his deepest bossy voice, as if that was going to make things better. "Yeah, well it's better than being a rude old man who thinks he's the boss of me" I said. The nano-second that line moved I was up, out and outside of the airport before that motherfucker.

Last night on my way to the Toronto MeFi meetup there were a bunch of young adults (late teens, early twenties) talking VERY loudly to each other at one end of the subway car. I was twelve feet away and it was hard to take even from there. It was annoying everyone, even people further from the loud group than me, and people kept giving them looks and talking quietly amongst themselves about how loud the group was being. The loud ones were completely oblivious. When they left the train, a collective sigh of relief was heard.