Before I started my knitting blog, my food blog, and my beauty/fashion blog, I had an old-fashioned vanity blog. Here's one of the MTA-related posts where I get a little bit more soap-box-y than usual.
Above the Law
This is not going to be a good day - I can feel it.
It started out badly. I got to the bus stop an extra 2 or 3 minutes early, and it was already hot at just before 7AM. As the sun rose over the building across the street, I moved slowly northward into the rapidly retreating shadow, in order to stay as cool as possible. At just about ten minutes after 7, the time the Express bus thinks about heading down my way, a bus came roaring down past me, without stopping. There was a small rectangle of paper taped to the front windshield; this usually says "EXPRESS." But the bus passed me so rapidly, I didn't get a chance to see what was written on the rectangle. Well, you say, there should be an electronic display stating the destination as well as the number and type of bus. Of course...there's always an electronic display. BUT IT NEVER WORKS. Which is why the bus drivers are forced to make crappy paper signs and tape them to the windshield. Heaven forbid the MTA services their buses in any way! And people wonder why wheels have been mysteriously coming off buses. The truth is that nobody gives a damn about the safety or comfort of the passengers. The MTA just wants our $1.35 (or in my case, $1.70), and we should be grateful that they deign to put some multi-wheeled, pollution-belching deathtraps on the road for our "convenience."
Anyway, that was probably the Express bus that flew past me, because by 7:15, it had not arrived. I didn't want to wait another 15 minutes for the second Express, so I reluctantly boarded a local. Amazingly, it had a working air conditioner (another rare item on MTA buses).
The locals go through a pretty unsavory neighborhood and occasionally picks up an unsavory character or two, so I prefer to avoid them completely. I gritted my teeth as I sat at the front of the bus and tried to read my esoteric Japanese novel. The bus rapidly filled, but as I had my bag on the seat next to me, I was still seated alone. Then this behemoth of a woman barked "excuse me" my way and my bag had to relinquish its seat. This woman was so fat (how fat was she?) that the rolls of fat on her back looked like a second pair of triple F-cup breasts. She was wearing a long white t-shirt and red shorts, with a cut or slashed fringe on the sleeves and pants cuffs. Intellectually, I knew this must have been done with a pair of scissors, but it was not hard to imagine that she chewed through the fabric to create the loose, uneven strips of cloth. Her face was like Mike Tyson with lipstick (but she had a manlier voice). This vision of loveliness also had a fetching hairdo - short cropped curls with a shaved nape, dyed Bozo orange.
Miss Bozo had embarked with a man who chose an empty seat a few rows behind her. Of course the two had to have a shouted conversation. As she brazenly opened a bag of Utz sour cream and onion potato chips and took a big handful (despite the "no eating, drinking, or playing music without headphones" sign posted not 15 feet from her snout), she said something that gave me a Revelation. "I can't believe he was walking onna street, wiped his sweat with a tissue, threw the tissue on the ground...and got arrested for that!" She wiped her greasy paw on her ample ass to punctuate her thought. This was the reason that parts of the area which the bus was currently riding through were ankle-deep in trash. This was why the basement entrance to a boarded-up, once lovely row house was full to street level with garbage. Because people think they have the right to throw a piece of tissue on the ground and get away with it. The City of Baltimore has a $50 fine for littering, so I don't believe that the tissue-tosser in question was "arrested." But he should have been given a ticket. And so should every lazy bastard who throws a fast food wrapper, potato chip bag, or anything else that belongs in a garbage can on the street. This isn't a Third World country without sanitation or trash pick-up. This is the United States of America - keep your country clean or get your fat lazy ugly ass out of it!
Posted by theminx on MTA Diaries.
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