stuff & nonsense

I'm not working and probably won't be all summer, and therefore should have all the time in the world. So where does it go?! Actually, I know where some of it goes. Routine stuff like grocery shopping, making & eating meals, laundry, cleaning, attending conferences, lunches with friends (this has only happened once so far, but I'm remaining optimistic), applying for first a provincial (not township) birth certificate and then a passport, mollycoddling two catkins, taking the vehicle in for repairs & retrieving it, reviewing, visiting the dentist, flossing (it's a new thing as a corollary from the previous item), and French class twice a week (6 hrs of class, not including homework - the homework I should be doing right now). Oh, and bussing, of course. It's not a typo. Not busking (although if I get desperate enough for a little extra cash...hmm, it's a remote possibility), but taking the bus.

There are actually many stories just waiting to happen on public transit, you know. For instance, OC Transpo buses sport signs at the front, just behind the drivers' seats, which read, "Assault against transit employees in any form will not be tolerated. Offenders will be prosecuted." I can't recall now if there are commas offsetting "in any form" within the sentence, but whether there are or are not, those of you who worship at the altar of grammar should get a chuckle out of the above. I mean, did it used to be acceptable to attack employees if they weren't in form? Methinks somebody messed up a modifier.

Speaking of dangling modifiers, I found another today--and this from a conference Web site:

Like the city, the wilderness and the small town, suburban space is a product of our society and culture, inevitably changing what space means in relation to assumptions about national identity. Frequently characterized as ambiguous and amorphous, my paper will argue that the suburb as it is represented in a variety of post-war Canadian texts works well as a spatial metaphor...

So kind of the presenter to warn attendees in advance that her paper is "ambiguous and amorphous." These two examples fill me with glee primarily because dangling modifiers are the scourge of my own life. (If you find one in this post, feel free to point it out, but please have the courtesy not to gloat.)

So back to the stories on the bus. I'm contemplating whether or not to phone up OC Transpo and ask for an interview with a bus driver. I'd like to do a little research on how to drive a bus. I don't want to drive one myself, but I want to know if anyone's ever tried to take off with one at any of the stations while the drivers take bio breaks or whatever it is they do when they're not sitting in the driver's seat. Back in the winter, there was one day I took the #171 and the driver was wearing not the standard uniform jacket, but what appeared to be a red flannel shirt. I had visions of this being just some guy off the street--disillusioned with his own job as, say, a grad student working as a marker/grader for a business communications course, tired of correcting those first-year ingrates, the MBAs of the future, who write about an individual's gentile manor when they mean gentle manner, who write about receiving massages rather than messages, who write sweat when they mean sweet, who write about toxic sins in place of toxins--who up and decided a blue-collar position might suit him better. That would have explained why we got stuck twice on the street. Well, that and the fact that it was the umpteenth time it snowed, and the plows hadn't yet been by. Both times, though, the driver freed the red and white behemoth with a bit of gentle (or maybe it was really gentile?) coaxing.

Then there are all those "I'm on the bus, like, where are you?" cellphoners. My personal take is that with YouTube and such technologies being so pervasive, these people are desirous of their 15 seconds of fame (I think it's down from minutes to seconds now); after all, they are practically inviting others to exploit their supposedly private phone conversations. They would probably be delighted if they were presented with a transcript, such as the following, which I fondly entitle "Mother-Daughter Tease":

What happened at school today?...What did she do then?...Did you explain...Well, look, we'll talk about it when I get home...No, I'm on the bus...I'll be home soon...So you start your homework, and do that for an hour, no, half an hour, then pick out what you want for supper...We'll talk about it when I'm home...OK, so do your homework for half an hour, then take a break and pull out what you want for supper, and by then I should be home...

That's a reasonable facsimile of a conversation I overheard a couple of months ago. The stories, I tell you, the stories.

Finally, there's the advertising. All sorts of possibilities there. Here's an ad that has been gracing the ceilings for far too long, in my opinion. Gives a new meaning to the expression "driving me bananas." (Some of you will never look at a "giraffe banana" in the same way ever again.)


On that sordid note, it's time to take this "too, too sullied/solid flesh" off "to sleep, perchance to dream," for I must rise early tomorrow to tackle that homework.