IT'S PERPENDICULAR

If it weren't for cell-phones, all the law-office drones heading home on the number one California Street bus would probably talk. Considering how noisy that would be, I am glad that they can scroll through their text messages and stock-reports instead.
I usually wander down to the end of the line to catch the bus as it heads out; that way there's no crush, and I can ensconce myself before it fills up. Walking six blocks east is easier from Chinatown than even three blocks west. Down a gentle slope rather than up a very steep hill.

From four o'clock to seven o'clock, that bus line is pandemonious. By the second stop the vehicle is already filled, by the fourth there is no standing room left, except for a stretch in the back that law-office employees seem to feel is off-limits. The area near the back door is completely cluster-fudged, because many of them think that an entry way is the perfect spot to come to a dead stop, cling on to a pole, and read their e-mails, oblivious to whether anyone needs to get on or off.


SURELY MY PRECIOUS SELF IS INVIOLATE?!?


Well, yeah. But if you get in the way of a little old lady, you're asking for trouble. She's had it with your type. You never open the door, you never move aside, you never say 'excuse me'. You are, like many law-office workers in downtown San Francisco, a rather sorry excuse for a human.

Oh wait; you're a programmer? That might be even worse!

Marketing and Sales types are totally bestial.

As everyone except them knows.


I will gladly confess that I do not like much of modern society. This is a generation that feels entitled, and truly believes that they themselves are far better and more deserving than any one else.

Many of them are not from San Francisco, but hail from hinterland California and all the other states in the Union. Some of them are Aussies or Brits, and a number are technologically educated foreigners.
But as individuals, they are largely interchangeable.
There is nothing truly unique about them.

Of course, not everybody on the bus is like that. A number of the other passengers are middle-aged hatched-faced law-office harridans, angry that they are no longer springy or attractive, and oblivious to the fact that their dark emotions are reflected in their bitter body language.

Gluten intolerance, creativity, entitlement, attitude, ass, and an ocean of ignorance; these are the characteristics that fill the bus during rush hour.
I often seriously enjoy people watching.
But these folks are repetitive.

There is no lightness to their being.

I would take the Pacific Avenue bus over the hill instead, but that's always filled with twenty-something white folks pissed-off that so many Chinese people also want to ride. You can smell their anger-hormones, and tell that they are tightly clenched and seethingly resentful.
Good lord, some of those "Orientals" are carrying food!
How perfectly horrid! Why do they need to eat?
There should be rules against that.
Forbid all food and drink.
Except Starbucks.


I love all of you.



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