The zine is over, but you paid your three bucks, you deserve the regular 60 pages. I’ll fill the rest of this final issue with letters to the editor, some of which are worth reading.
But first, I want to say goodbye with something more thoughtful than two glazed doughnuts and a cup of coffee.
The point of the Pathetic Life project was to be honest about myself and my life, and find something in each day that was worth writing about, maybe even worth reading about. Did I pull it off? Meh. Overall, I’d give Pathetic Life a B-. Some of the writing doesn’t embarrass me, and as for the rest, well, I tried, except for the days I didn’t.
The calendar says there’ve been 761 entries, not counting a few days doubled up and a few days skipped. If half of those — 380 or so — were worth the bother, that’s 380 more than if I’d talked myself out of it, which I almost did.
Publish my diary as a zine? What a stupid idea. And maybe because it was a stupid idea, I started typing.
Now it’s about finished, but the pathetic life goes on. It’s nice to skip the part of every evening when I’d stare at the typewriter and wonder what the hell’s worth writing about from that shitty day.
Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” but so far I’m having a blast. There are movies to see, zines and books to be read, and every twelve minutes I might ride the J Church to the end of the line and back, just for the view. And then I’ll come back to the hotel, and not write about my day.
For the future, my plans look just like the past: I expect to be living alone, scraping by, laughing at idiots but broken inside for as many years as the world allows, and then I’ll be dead and forgotten. It was fun while it lasted — the zine, and being me.
And by the way, you know that stupid idea you have? That thing you’d like to try but haven’t, because it’s dumb or impossible or hopeless? Do it anyway, and then write a zine about doing it, and maybe send me a copy.
This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.
Metro Transit has gone green, they say in their ads, by buying a bunch of all-electric buses. They’re made by a company called Gillig, and they’re lousy.
The first sign of a problem with these buses is, literally, the sign — the external readerboard which lists what route the bus is running. The signs are electronic, like everything on the bus, but even on the new buses’ first day in service (and still now, months later) the electronic route number and name are often gibberish, with the lower half of all the letters missing, or the text flickering in some electronic code instead of English.
Metro gave these new buses an ugly paint scheme, in assorted florescent colors that vary from bus to bus and even from the front of the bus to the back. A bus should look like a bus, not a piece of pop art, so old folks like me know it’s the bus.
Inside, the seating arrangement is the worst of any bus I’ve ever ridden, with only two front-facing seats in the main seating section, surrounded by about a dozen sideways seats. Can’t speak for other humans, but my body wasn’t built for going sideways at 30 miles per hour. It leaves my back and neck sore, especially if the driver is too enthusiastic with the brakes and acceleration, or the bus goes over some bumps. And all buses go over some bumps.
There are another dozen front-facing seats in the balcony, but most of those seats have a wall or a wheel-well that reduces the foot space. And I got big feet.
And anyway, you have to climb stairs to get to those seats, and climbing stairs is not my great talent, especially in stop-and-go traffic. So I’m usually stuck in a damned sideways seat on these damned electric buses.
And they’re usually the only buses running on the #105 and #128, two routes I frequently ride. So my back and neck frequently hurt. And I’m frequently grumpy on the Gilligs.
♦ ♦ ♦
One afternoon, riding the #128 with very few passengers, I kinda knew the driver, so I asked him if he liked these new electric buses. And he talked for a block: “I hate ’em. Nothing but trouble, a control panel like a fighter jet, a million dumb doodads, with always one or two of them not working. One day the back doors won’t open, the next day the turn signals won’t signal, the next day the signs are out of whack…”
“Oh, I’ve seen that about the signs. And I’ve seen two of these new buses getting towed back to the bus barn.”
“It might’ve been me. I’ve had two runs end in a tow with these suckers.”
He was saying all this while the Gillig was zooming at 35 mph in a 30 mph zone, so I said, “What about the acceleration?”
“That’s the only thing I like about these buses. They got some gumption and get-up-and-go.”
So I said no more, but that’s what I hate most about the new buses. Too much get-up-and-go. Most buses, diesel or electric, run on putt-putt power, but I’ve driven cars that couldn’t go from zero the thirty as quick as these buses. And that ain’t good. Slow and steady is better for my body. I’m really not looking for a land speed record on the bus.
♦ ♦ ♦
All of which brings us to a sorta sucky day a few sorta sucky weeks ago. It was windy, slightly rainy, but I’d forgotten my jacket, and that morning’s sideways ride on an electric bus had left my back and neck in moderate pain all day.
I was a little wet, a little cranky, a little pained, waiting for a bus toward home, and here it comes and it’s one of those damned electrics. It was nearly full, so my choice was a sideways seat or no seat at all. I took a damned sideways seat.
Before I’d sat down, the driver accelerated, too abruptly. Half a block later, he braked roughly in traffic. Then, at a bus stop, he braked hard and it sent a fresh jolt up my back and across my neck. After a few passengers came aboard, the driver accelerated too enthusiastically, again. At a light, my neck was turned 90 degrees and I was watching — the bus driver had plenty of time and space, could’ve stopped smoothly at the red, but instead he stopped with a jolt. And the bus was going down a fairly steep hill at this point, so I had to hang on tight to keep from slipping from the sideways seat I was in to the sideways seat beside me.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said, perhaps ever-so-slightly too loud. I popped up from my seat, grabbed a stanchion, and said still too loud, “I’ll just stand.”
Indeed I stood in the aisle for the rest of the ride. Which ain’t great for my legs, but it’s better for my back than being pushed and pulled with every nudge of the brake and gas. And it turns out, it wasn’t a long ride.
Was it rude to say “Jesus fucking Christ”? It was a prayer! And this was a bus, not a library! And I would’ve had nothing more to say — I was looking out the window, not for an argument.
After a block or so, though, I swiveled my sore neck and made eye contact with the driver, who was glaring at me in his rear view mirror, so I glared back.
A block later we were still glaring at each other, and he said to me, “You gotta problem?”
“No problem,” I said, and that’s all I said.
He was still glaring at me, and after a few bumps and brakes he said, “You sure look like you gotta problem.”
“That’s just my face, man. It’s a problem face.”
That’s a laugh, right? My back hurt, my neck hurt, and I just wanted a damned bus ride. But he was still glaring at me, so at the next stop light I added, “Anyway, now that I’m standing, you probably won’t cripple me slamming on the brakes.”
“I can try,” he said, and tapped the brakes, but it was a tender tap, not enough to topple me or even stir anyone. The other passengers were hanging on already.
“You’re doing it on purpose?”
“Doing what? I’m just driving the bus.”
“Driving the bus shitty,” I said.
And at that, the driver pulled to a too-sudden stop at the curb, and said, “This is where you get off.”
It wasn’t a bus stop, and we were a mile from my destination, but that’s where I stepped off. The door closed, the bus roared away without me.
Usually I’m chill with bus drivers, even lousy drivers. If I don’t say thanks as I’m stepping off the bus, it must’ve been a particularly bad driver, and this time I didn’t say thanks.
Maybe I deserved to be evicted from the bus, maybe I didn’t, but I’ve watched other passengers get the boot, and you can’t win. If you stay on when you’ve been ordered off, the driver radios the police.
So I walked two blocks in the rain to the next stop, then waited fifteen minutes in the rain for another bus, filling my increasingly soggy notebook with what had happened, and hoping it might make an amusing story. You’ll be the judge of that.
When the next bus came, it was another damned electric bus. All the front-facing seats were taken, so I rode in a sideways seat.
America has had many scoundrels as President. Seems likely we’ve never had anything but.
The historical habit, though, of the good, the bad, the ugly and horrific US Presidents, is that they’ve all put genuine effort into the appearance of dignity, statesmanship, and giving a damn about We the People.
It’s always been fake, of course, but it’s sad to see that long tradition of fakery has ended. The current criminal-in-chief, Donald J Trump, makes no attempt to conceal his criminality. The grift is right there, out in the open, every day, in everything he does.
Nobody outside of US intelligence really understands what US intelligence does, and I’m sure I’d oppose 90% of it if I knew, but sending ignorant and incompetent people to fire everybody — the ‘DOGE’ method, again — is only going to make things worse.
The Times‘ headline is “Inside the White House freakout over the Trump-Epstein files,” but the only reason they’d freak out is that Donald Trump fucks children.
The Times‘ headline is “Bill Gates says Epstein tried to use his extramarital affairs against him,” but the most obvious reason Epstein would have such leverage is that Bill Gates fucks children.
Wherever someone hawks a loogie on a kiosk, I’ll be there. Wherever someone spray paints graffiti over an ad, I’ll be there. When someone swings a baseball bat and shatters a kiosk’s plexiglass shield, I’ll be there, too.
It’s not possible that this cop’s partner & his buddies at the precinct didn’t know he’s a ginormous throbbing racist. But they never said anything about it because, guess what, they’re all ginormous throbbing racists.
Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Joey Jo Jo & John the Basketemeritus, Jeff Meyer, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn’t always shitty.
News always and only from reliable sources, and I decide what’s reliable — no right-wing bullshit, no Substack because fuck Nazis, and no RawStory, Newsweek, or other clickbait sites. Written news is preferred; video links will be rare, and damned near never to videos where the reporter sits, stands, or strolls in front of a camera — that’s show biz, not news.
If you’re blocked from reading anything linked above, please send an email, and I’ll reply with the article’s complete text, via my computer’s fine ad-blockers and paywall-vaulters.
