8.19.2005 ||> Surviving the morning
For as long as I can remember, I have been afraid of heights. Sometime between my psychotic ex-boyfriend, my alcoholic roommate and the teaching counterpart I had with borderline personality disorder, I have acquired another fear: crazy people. I'm not too proud of this new phobia, (come to think of it, who is ever "proud" of a phobia?) but there it is. My apprehension makes riding on the bus in the morning a real treat, of course. While most people are normal and really cool, there are two that I see almost every morning that make me nervous as hell. One is a very quiet man who wears pajamas every day and who is probably autistic and the other is a woman with either schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. The man doesn't bother me too much and I'm generally understanding, but the woman (let's call her Dee) is loud and freaks me out.
Because I'm usually the first person on the bus, I play a game of "where will Dee sit?" in the mornings. I try not to sit where she will. I know that one day, I will have no choice, but I want to keep that day as far away as possible. Yesterday turned out to be a close call. When she sat next to me, I froze. My panicked thoughts turned to how to get out of my seat. So when I saw someone I knew sit down on the other side of the bus, I couldn't get up fast enough. I immediately struck up the most artificial conversation possible in order to cover for the fact that I can't sit next to Dee.
When she began to gesture wildly before her stop and speak in two distinct voices, I was thankful that I had gotten out of it. I hope she didn't realize why I switched seats though, because I didn't want to hurt her feelings.
I saw Comedy Central's Roast of Pamela Anderson the other night, and a little bit last night. It was glaringly apparent that you could see right through her shirt. This of course leads to a couple of questions:1. Why is it that Janet Jackson got flack for a year for "accidentally" showing nippleage (that few if any really even caught until the news shows replayed it endlessly) while Pam gets to trot around essentially half naked for an hour and a half on cable?
2. Why was it that the nudity wasn't edited out in the 9pm slot while words like "dick" and "shit" were? I'm not offended by either nudity or profanity, but I am curious about how they exactly draw that line.
No wonder people in other countries think we're nuts. After all, this is the America that they're exposed to.
Another day, another 96 dollars.
After taxes. And social security. Not to mention health insurance.
Maybe it's 80 dollars?
