Crazy People on Public Transport

I'm quite certain if they did a world wide study of which city has the most crazy people on public transport, Vancouver, Canada (also the most 'liveable' city in the world) would come in at number one.

Vancouver has a reasonable amount of heroin addicts and lunatics, all of which usually keep to themselves around the East Hastings district. However, they're relative segregation does not apply to public transport where they absolutely flourish in numbers.

This is due to a few influencing factors. One, a lot of the buses in Vancouver are stretchy buses with multiple boarding points. This means that you can board them for free if you board at the rear door. Therefore, a lot more fare-dodging homeless people ride the transport system than in other cities.

The other factors are the natural inclination for crazy people to talk to strangers couple with the general friendly and polite disposition prevalent in Canadian culture.

What results is a super chatty insane person who gets to ride around on a packed bus for free all day long.

I've lived in Vancouver (a city of 2.5 million people) for a year now and I have seen more crazy people than I did living in London (a city of 7 million people) for two years.

But strangely it's not the crazy people that bother me, it's the people that speak back to them in polite conversation  as if they weren't haggard drug addicts with a warped sense of reality.

I learnt in London that whenever someone comes up to you on the street you keep walking as if they weren't there and don't look at them in the eyes or respond verbally. They'll soon realise you're not paying any attention to them and break away to approach some other person in the sea of pedestrians.

I once walked past some homeless person sitting next to a dirty bin and I saw that some young art student was bending down to chat with him.

She was nodding along and having a conversation to him. You know exactly why she's doing it as well. She'll tell you:

'The homeless are ignored in our society, they're human beings just like us and they appreciate being spoken to on the same level.'

Bullshit. She doesn't give a shit about the guy. She's just speaking to the guy so that she can feel better, not the other way around.

So that she can go home with a false sense of satisfaction that she has done some sort of good deed by chit chatting with a heroin addict. Good work Mother Teresa. You've done nothing but feed your own ego.

For some reasons it's always naive, pompous liberal arts students who talk to these crazy homeless people.

Once I was sitting on the bus and a text book Crazy Guy hopped on.

The guy had a big bag of empty cans and bottles with him, he was clearly homeless and absolutely hammered. He sat down and I did what I always do when crazy people get on the bus. I paused my iPod, stopped reading my book and began to eavesdrop for a few minutes to see if they're entertaining.

The Crazy Guy sat across from a skinny Student with glasses and school books tucked into a Hessian jute bag. The Crazy Guy, started making conversation with anyone who would listen and the Student began to return polite conversation as if he the man was a real human being.

The conversation went like this:

Crazy Man: 'Yeh mang, these are me cans. Take 'em up to Burral Street you know? Cash 'em in, it's what I do, I got to work with the system man, to keep alive. Yep.'

Student (nodding in profound agreement): I see. Yeah, okay. Cool. What else do you do?

Boring!

I went back to my iPod and my book as the two passengers became best buddies.

After a while, I noticed that the Crazy Man was talking much more energetically and the Student had a look of horror on his face. The Crazy Man was showing him a pencil and thrusting it into the air to demonstrate something. I turned down my iPod:

Crazy Man: 'With the right amount of pressure on the tip this will puncture a man's skin just as deep as a knife. With a knife, though you have to pull it out, and carry it around. That's the benefit of pencils.'

The Crazy Man pulled another six pencils from his pocket.

Crazy Man: 'With these I can stick it into someone and then leave them dry. It works every time. You push it through their ribs and walk away. It's you or them. You have to survive on the street, you know?'

Student (pale white and quivering): 'Oh, o-okay, yeah, is that so?'

Yep. That's what you get for treating a crazy homeless person like a regular human being. It's not as simple as this whole 'we're all human beings' bullshit. They live in another world then us.

Another thing that shits me about talkative crazy people. How come they never ask me about how things are going in my life?  They're always trying to explain some caper or what they do on the street without ever giving a fuck about what I do for a living. Last time I checked a conversation was two ways, I have a passions, I have tastes and desires, show an interest in me for a change.

That's probably why their homeless in the first place, no-one liked talking to them because they wouldn't shut the fuck up about themselves or show interest in the other people so they lost all their friends and eventually turned to drugs which put them on a one way street to a bed in a dumpster.

Drunk Dialling

Everyone thinks they are super charming when they're drunk.

This is the main incentive of drunk dialling. People honestly believe that their charm is so thick when their hammered that it will tear down the boundaries formed by waking up someone at 3:30AM.

Drunk dialling destroys my life so I wanted to attach something on my phone, some sort of application, that would prevent me from using it when I was drunk.

I some sort of security barrier to operate my phone and it had to be something when that I could do when I was sober, but I could not do when I was drunk.

So now every time I want to make a phone call I have to form an erection.

The Boldest Things I've Ever Done

Some people may have heard of this story but no-one knows that it was actually me who started it.

It was during my philosophy exams. I had an eccentric professor who was renowned for his unorthodox teaching methods.

When I sat down to take the test after months of studying  Kierekgaard, Socrates, Aristotle and  Plato, I looked at my sheet of paper which simply asked one question:

'Why?'

I looked around me, hundreds of students scribbled down pages and pages of philosophical notions that explain on the meaning of existence. Suddenly a realisation dawned on me that was too genius to pass up.

I smiled, clicked my pen and wrote a simple two word answer:

'Fuck you.'


 

Libricide in She-Bu

Read it, quickly!!

http://milliondollarcompany.com.au/articles/13/

It's about travelling Australians.

Two a week! Another pledge towards productivity.

I am a victim of the silly season. The silly season is the period during Christmas time where all held beliefs on productivity are destroyed along with your braincells. So in entering the New Year I have to yet again pledge to update this fucking blog more regularly. 

Now, the thing is, that I don't write these posts for you, I write them for me. If I wrote them for you then I would be technically insane in believing that you exist. In reality there is no one reading this blog because we live in a time where only research analysts click on the second page of Google search results and the internet is so saturated with websites that Search Engine Optimisation has become a full-time career. 

No. I don't write this for the reader. I write this for myself, so I can get better at writing. 

And yet, even though I love writing, and I want to be a professional writer, and that the act of writing in itself is good for me, I still fucking resist the process like it's a unappealing chore. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pursuing writing for hollow reasons, I sincerely enjoy writing, feel that I have a certain level of competence to get paid to do it, and experience the joy and pride that comes with creation. 

Still, fuck, it takes motivation to do something when your content with doing nothing. Especially when you live a busy life (like almost all of us do) and have a lot of other commitments. 

For example, I am very rarely bored. This is for the fact that I'm always doing something, running some errand or trying to achieve the fruition of a specific goal. When boredom comes it's usually because I have the day off, so I embrace it with a warming smile and raised chin. 

So whenever I get a tiny pocket of spare time I use it to cram in all the guilty pleasures like looking up dumb shit on the internet or watching an episodes of something.

This is part of why I envy the dreamless, these people can come home and use all their free time to their complete advantage. They can go for the gusto. While I work away at the pursuit of my goals they sit back and smile like the hare against the tortoise without any of the guilt that comes with losing the race. 

Could it be possible that some of these men and women are wiser than those who's lives are corrupted by ambition? 

Do they see the fallacy of their pursuits and understand their limitations? Do they choose to adopt a satisfied outlook on life, content with all the creature comforts that are provided even to the poor in Western civilisation?

If you knew that all the work you put towards achieving your dreams would result in nothing would you still do it and take the disappointment along with the knowledge that you had tried your best? Or would you curse the wasted hours of a futile attempt?

Think of all the gluttonous enjoyments you could experience if you consume more than you contribute. 

Children don't carry the burden of ambition which is why we look at them with undying jealousy consoled only by the knowledge that they will be thrown into the snake pits of hell for their sin of sloth. 

So anyway, you get what I'm saying, basically I will post on here twice a week until I inevitably fall off the wagon again and write another pledge to keep up my productivity. So until next time.  

 

My Flatmate Says the Darndest Things

My flatmate has lived with me for the past three months, he is large in stature, completely shaved head (due to onset of pattern baldness) and wears glasses. He is 34 years old.


To give you some insight into his character please read the following quotes that came out of his mouth verbatim. For effect, please read them in a moaning yet pretentious Canadian accent with a strong essence of self hatred. They are all true...

Josh (on drugs): You know what? I think that certain raw vegetables and natural super-foods can give you more of a high than most drugs.

Josh (on employment, after completing a bar course): I don’t want to be just a bartender. I want to be the best bartender in the world.

Josh (on women): For some reason whenever I go to a house party I always just end up with the phone number of the hottest girl there. I don’t even know how I do it, it’s like it just appears in my hand.

Josh (on a female stranger he looked at in a store): It was weird, as soon as we locked eyes, almost instinctively, like she couldn’t control it, her hand went right down to her crotch. Then when she noticed what she was doing she pulled it away and got all embarrassed.

Josh (on the gym): You know how there’s always the biggest guy in the gym? Well, today I looked around the gym and thought ‘wow, my arms are bigger than the biggest guy in the gyms.’

Josh (while I was drinking a beer out on the street): Can you please get rid of that beer man. There could be cops around.

Josh (on magic): I am very fond of magic, I like it a lot.

Please also note the following post scripts:

NB 1: So far Josh has not been hired at any bartending jobs he has applied for.

NB 2: Without any exaggeration, Josh once got the phone number of a woman who would be in the top two fattest woman in the club. He not only went on a date with this woman while he was sober but he actively pursued sexual intercourse.

NB 3: Josh repeated his appeal for me to throw away my beer can multiple times. He wouldn’t stop. In every request his eyes filled exponentially with tears. When I finished my beer, then I decided to discard the can.

The weird thing is that upon meeting him I thought he seemed cool, then after one or two of these small little moments my mind began to form an opinion that he may be a little bitch who talks bullshit. From then on I fought with myself to really try to like him and to try and see past the cringe worthy lines and the shitty attitude.

But late last month my little bitch flatmate came out drinking with me and my friend and lunged at me in pure fury and tried to physically attack me because I was drunkenly calling him on his shit.

Now, after the blow up I am moving out and I am so happy that I no longer have to pretend to like the guy. The lesson I have learnt is, JUDGE PEOPLE and PIGEON HOLE PEOPLE and BE EXCLUSIVE. Because ultimately they are probably not going to change and your inner angst against them will just manifest in destructive ways.

So if they tick a few boxes on your shit list, write those people off and do not surround yourself with them, don't waste your time trying to look past their personality failures and go on with your life focussing on people you actually like.