On Web Culture

Props to the Stagecoach bus drivers this week. They are both dudes and hardcore. Early this week going home my bus driver got the route wrong which caused Panic! On The Bus! and people getting out of their seats to let the bus driver know we were going the wrong way. He had started to take a different route that still went to Newmarket but which skips out Parnell. He realised straight away but this didn’t stop a couple of people weaving down the aisle while we were moving to queue at the front of the bus to tell him.

It could have ended there once he told us all we would rejoin up with the correct route as soon as possible. But once everyone had sat down one lady, in her early thirties I’d say, stayed standing next to the driver clinging to a pole and staring at the rest of the bus. Initially I thought she was just eager to get off at the first available stop but no. Instead she wound into the bus driver, starting by speaking her mind and getting steadily louder, shriller and more emotional with a strong Russian accent. It seemed that she was upset we had gone the wrong way and what time this was costing her (all of 10 minutes, lady).

But it didn’t stop, I don’t know if she had just had a bad day but she got more and more angry and the bus driver started defending himself, explaining he was doing all he could to get us back to her stop. This just aggravated her more, she started swearing: “You f*****g b***h! You b***h! Do you know how much this is costing me? You should think before you do such things…..you know? Do you know?….f*****g b***h” At this point the rest of the bus were staring at her in silence going Er, what the hell?

She went on, right in the bus driver’s face as he was driving, she yelled at him about cost and I think things along the lines of making him pay her back her back for the money she was going to lose and the bus driver saying the bus drivers union or something would pay her back. Eventually she got at him so much that we stopped in the middle of a backroad so she could get off.

So that bus driver was a dude. Thursday’s bus driver was hardcore though. Months before he got the bus stuck in the narrow streets behind Parnell shops trying a shortcut to get around some fire engines. He’s a pretty gung ho Arab guy and tends to operate his bus a little independently of the rules. On Thursday his bus arrives and we are queuing up to pay to get on board when he gestures to me saying “Get on board, get on board now” so I step up and he pulls the lever to close the doors.

There are still people wanting to get on the bus, the Asian chick behind me puts her foot in front of one of the closing doors while she tries to get money out of wallet. Gung Ho bus driver says to us inside the bus “I am going now, they, they can catch the Link”, the Link being a bus that comes every 15 minutes. Which is not a great plan dude, some of those people may have needed to catch this bus specifically. It is unusual for a bus driver to leave before letting everyone on board when his bus is only half full.

He starts to move the bus slowly forward to the consternation of the Asian chick with her foot in the door. I’m looking at her foot and then back at the bus driver then back at her foot. She takes her foot out just in time and goes ballistic at the bus which is fair enough. Gung Ho bus driver proceeds to let those of us who got on pay for our ride all the while tooting away and absolutely flooring the gas pedal. Hardcore.

Best Valentines Day story:

“Mellons Bay Primary, 1992, Mrs Gavin’s Standard 2 class – a hotbed of tender emotions where hearts were broken daily and girl germs were rife. Mike Smith* was a shy and innocent blond-haired boy. He was not in my direct circle of schoolyard chums, primarily because he didn’t do My Little Ponies at playlunch, but I knew that he must have been pretty cool because he regularly sat up the highest on the classroom mat. However, it was not until he let me use the hallowed mint coloured crayon first that I realised that his feelings for me were more than platonic. I would catch him watching me during stories, and I’m pretty sure he bribed the teacher to be put on guinea-pig duty with me. It culminated in the best love note I have received to date. I caught him dropping it in my letterbox at home: “Dear Fiona, Do you want to come round to my house and draw ninja turtles? Love Mike.” I don’t recall acting on this confession of love. I do recall that it was adorned with his favourite turtle, the blue one. Mine was Raphael, so I knew it would never work. I didn’t tell him as much, but he must have realised when he found “Mike smells” scrawled in the mint crayon on the cloakroom wall. Not my finest hour admittedly. Mike’s unrequited love grew dim and we drifted apart. Tragic, but true story.
*Not his real name”

Via NZHerald.

I think Daily Show clips are now getting pulled from YouTube so watch this before it becomes broke.

Via YouTube.

I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me –
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered to me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for the meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire–
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

– Edgar Lee Masters, ‘George Gray’

Freedom is useless if we don’t exercise it as characters making choices…
We are free to change the stories by which we live.
Because we are genuine characters, and not mere puppets, we can choose our defining stories.
We are co-authors as well as characters. Few things are as encouraging as the realisation that things can be different and that we have a role in making them so.

– Daniel Taylor