XIX - We're On The Bus To Nowhere

So, several months have passed between blog entries. It's quite sad, but my time is divided between work and play. As much as i'd like to spill my thoughts constantly, it's quite difficult to do so. Not least of all because of being moved to the side of the table where I can catch glances of my superiors gazing over my shoulder while writing anything not to do with work. As tragic as it sounds, i'd rather play video games than blog. This is mostly because my blogging comes from the heart as a white-hot stream of sarcastic, dark vitriol that only a Brit can spew forth. And when I get home from work, i'm too tired to do that. And on weekends, I like to pen more work for my novel in progress which has now been in progress for so long that I'm turning into one of those coffee shop hipsters who, when asked what their living is, doesn't answer with "dead-end job stacking shelves" but "I AM AN ARTISTE OF THE WRITTEN WORD".

My TEFL is entering its final stages. One last assignment left. In truth, the title "Smoggy On The Run" will be changed soon because I'll have long since gone. The time is quickly approaching. But that's not my reason for returning either.

So, what has inspired my return to the shores of blogging? I have a job, what could possibly inspire my ire? What could make me return to blogging, besides from a swan boat?

The buses.

Oh, how I hate the bus service.

To me, the bus service that is Arriva is a horrendous bus service. They have a monopoly on the bus services in the North East, meaning that if those bloody parasites want to raise fares, they can. They recently raised fares to help prevent tardiness. Did it work? Well, now your bus arrives at two times: Too early or too late. Thank goodness for that. I mean, i'm so glad they increased our bus fares to ensure that they don't actually arrive on time or stay there for one minute after they're actually due.

It's a real window into humanity when men like JFK, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are killed but we're still waiting for that special Irish surprise (I'm not going to say it outright for fears of the SAS busting through my window and eliminating me, since freedom of speech on the Internet is all since dead and all it takes is one 'lol you smell of poopoo' for the iron-fisted fascist brigade to knock on your door and march you away for High Treason.) for Arriva's executive committee.

Speaking of windows into humanity: That is what the bus is.

Hear me out.

A bus is a measure of society's hidden sociopathy and arrogance. For example, if someone steps onto a bus and people are sitting in the window seats with a spare seat beside him, you can see the hate on their faces. "Oh, don't let this pleb sit next to me" their watery little eyes seem to cry out. If you sit next to someone, you can be assured they will squirm and wriggle like a worm that's had several volts shot through its tiny body, as if they hate your existence so much they're trying to shift into a trail of fluid and escape through the window. If you're like me and hold a general apathy to people sitting next to you, mostly because the hate that fills your heart and head has turned the existence of nearby human beings into amorphous dark-coloured blobs and has turned the pathetic mewling and breathing they practice into white noise, then they'll still squirm. They chose to sit next to you, and they'll squirm like worms, as if this choice was the most difficult in their life. The way they squirm and the way discontent spreads across their face, you'd think they were sitting next to an escaped asylum inmate or a convicted murderer who is talking to himself about deboning the person sitting next to them.

Even worse is if they get their phone out. You can see their eyes darting around in their skulls as if you're going to lean over their shoulders and whisper in their ear "WHEN YOU TYPE LIKE THAT, IT GETS ME HOT" or as if they're a secret agent for MI5 and you're a Russian sleeper agent whose assassination programming will be awakened by seeing the words 'lol den i got totes hammered xx :)'

The hierarchy of a bus, in particular, is jarring. Mostly because it's old people over young people all the time, every time. For example, if I sit at the front of the bus, i'm evil and should be shot because it's there for old people. If I sit in the middle and the bus is full and an old person gets on, i'm evil and should be shot because it's there for old people. If a woman pushing a pram wants to get on and an old person is sitting in one of the front seats and blocking her from safely ensconcing her pram in position, she's evil and should be shot because it's there for old people. If an old person is sitting in the aisle seat, blocking the empty seat next to the window from use, then LOL I'M OLD ENTITLEMENT COMPLEX.

It's irritating. But we're British, so when we see a full bus but with an old person sitting in the aisle seat, blocking a perfectly good seat, we don't do anything. We just sit and stare ahead blankly. Unless you happen to me. Let me tell you a story: On my first day of University, me and a friend caught the 63. It's a shit bus which goes so slow that you may as well tie yourself to a pigeon and try and fly it to Middlesbrough. But it's the most reliable bus you'll catch because the 64A, if it decides to show up, always shows up late.

So, we sat at the back and talked. But someone didn't like this. Some snooty young woman who was really in desperate need of either a Xanax or a slap to the goddamn teeth told us, in not very nice terms, to be quiet. Naturally, we shut up. No, we talked quietly. This huge man sat in front of her (You know, the kind of man so roided up that he's got massive biceps, an unnaturally large chest, an abdomen retaining so much water you need a pier to cross it and a todger so tiny that you'd be forgiven for mistaking it as a maggot trying to invade his pelvis.) and just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

That's when I realised the hidden sociopathy of a bus. Naturally, that was just me and a friend. I've seen friends and couples talk on buses ever since then, but there's been a fair few buses i've sat in which have been rendered deadly silent.

The only things which show emotion on a bus are children. Sadly, not the adorable 'Awww' kind of children but the devilish hellspawn squeezed out of a Smoggy mother (1 of a pack of 16, usually, and called something inane like Angel or Igor or Tomtom or Lambrini or White Lightning or something) who run onto the bus and proceed to climb over it as if it's their playground.

And nobody will actually move. The parent (Heaven forbid there should be two of them in modern Middlesbrough. The other one is probably off smoking crack or dumping a body in the Tees) will admonish the child or scowl, but everyone else will sit, a slight tilt to their head, in silence. A madman could walk on the bus and unload an assault rifle, and people would sit there as their chests exploded to the sound of a 5.56mm bullet ripping through organs and flesh, their faces not changing from an expression more suited to someone thinking "Did I leave the oven on?"

It's horrendous, it's horrifying.

There is so much disdain and hatred on the bus. You can see it on everyone's faces. Next time you sit on a bus, look around: You'll notice either blankness or loathing. As the bus gets even more full, keep looking and you'll notice psychopathy creep in, too.

We like to think we're a race who would care for our own when the shit hits the fan, but the bus proves that's not the case. If a person gets onto the bus and notices every pair of seats has one person sitting on them, chances are they'll just stand at the front, blocking everyone's way because if they sit next to another person, they will cannibalise them. Or, if they have to sit through the complete goddamn indignity of being next to another person, they'll suddenly get up and change seats the moment one entirely empty pair of seats becomes available.

Quite recently, i've noticed myself being chosen for being sat next to. I give off an air of genuine sociopathy and disdain, yet people actually look around, see these seats with old people or teenagers sitting in them, and see ME as a better option to sit next to than Kayden Rockafeller McHipster Douchelips with his flat cap, leather satchel, super skinny jeans, iPhone and designer stubble. Unless they happen to be a female under 21, in which case they're attracted to Leon Jenkins Brooklyn Chicago Middlesbrough Newcastle McHipster and will sit next to him because my eyes, glaring ahead with a look of genuine resentment, are too fearful (Or because i'm so ugly that Stevie Wonder turned his head towards me and fainted.)

And if that's what a bus does, then that is just insanity.

Sadly, it's necessary, but it's a mobile window into the true nature of humanity.

Next time your on the bus, open your eyes, take out your headphones and tremble at what the world truly is.

A gaggle of sociopathic hipsters, young women and old people which smells like rusted mothballs.

If a bus is anything to go by, then humanity is nothing more than apathy and sociopathy rolled up into one horrendous little ball that is travelling down the cosmic timeline until another race comes across us and decides to kill us all for being unable to even purse our lips in the slightest bit of emotion. If an alien stepped on our bus, we'd simply look ahead, blink, and wonder if we locked the door or not.

Thankfully, we're on the 64A, so we'll be fucking late for humanity's grand genocide, too.