Public Transit: Paddywagon O' Crazy

Reminded by a friend recently moving to a new city, and having to rely on public transit to shuffle him to and from his job, I flashed back to just a few years ago when I, too, relied on the moving petri dish that is public transit. Akin to Vietnam, it brought back horrible, awful, smelly memories.

I'm sure many of you haven't ridden on a major-metropolitan transportation system before, but despite the many glaring downfalls and drawbacks to the system, it's really not as bad as you think it would be. Sure it took me two hours to traverse the same distance I could cover in a car in 20 minutes, but where's the fun in that?

Public transportation isn't JUST about a cheap and painfully slow means to get anywhere you want to go, but really it's about the sights, smells and sounds you take in while en route to your destination. There's a venerable cornucopia of freaks, degenerates, foreigners, losers, social outcasts, disease infested carrier monkeys, people with only few functioning body parts, people with MORE functioning body parts than the rest of us, gang-bangers (in both the guns, and herpes varieties), prostitutes, drunks, crazies and should-be-shots, that all call the bus their ride.

Granted, I've never used public transportation in any other city, but I imagine that southern California's city bus experience is second to only places such as New York or Paris. Although many of you perhaps have not ridden on a city bus before, I'm sure the normal rules of the bus aren't foreign to anybody. There's three simple, and easy to follow rules that are posted on all buses and trolleys, probably in every city in the world:

What many don't realize however, is that these three are not the only rules that govern public transit etiquette.

Nay.

These three were just widdled down from a much larger list of do's and do not's for riding successfully and correctly. Through many months of careful observation, and a few leaked internal memo's, I've been able to track down the full list of rules.

		If you're too old and crippled to live without assistance, and you are barely (just barely) mobile...then the bus and all it's boarding procedures are right for you. Yes, there are approximately three steps required to getting on and off the bus, but you shouldn't be able to do any of them without everyone helping you. Ideally it should take you between 2-3 minutes, compared to everyone else's 10 seconds, to get on the bus and move 4 feet to the seats meant for old people. In a perfect world, you'd be so crippled that any steps at all are beyond your scope of operations, so that the bus has to deploy its little ramp/lift thing to hoist you up 16 inches, all so you can go to the Ralph's three blocks away, get some diapers, and do the whole process over again on the return journey.
		You must be this fat *hand estimation of ginormous* in order to get the full effect out of riding the bus. If the heavy duty air suspension of the bus has to give way, leading to it listing to one side as you board, that'd be great. And please have an ass so fat that you can't fit down the aisle between seats on your marathon to the back of the bus. Don't let this discourage you from attempting to and brushing everyone's shoulder with your ass-lard on the way, however. You couldn't get out of your house without a special door being installed, but don't give a second thought about trying to squeeze into the bus.
		Under no circumstances is any one to use the rear doors of the bus. There are two sets of doors on the bus, so that entering and exiting can take place at the same time; but it's far better if everyone uses the front doors concurrently, resulting in a time wasting clusterfuck for all parties involved. Even if you're near the rear, take the extra time to walk to the front so that the people waiting to get on have to wait just that much longer. Any amount of time wasting is appreciated.
		While some people may prefer to sit with the person they wish to communicate on the bus with, it's preferred that you sit so far apart that it would warrant using two cups on a string to communicate. Just go ahead and shout your poorly-constructed, and idiotic conversation through as many people as required to speak to your friend who chose to sit six seats away. Silence may be golden everywhere else, but you should try your best to fill the bus with your important conversation about purchasing stamps. Or that old chestnut "Shandra had her baby this weekend and it was totally cute, and as soon as she determines who the father is, she'll be able to afford a crib".
		You know what the best place to practice your dope-fresh rhymes is? The city bus. Your crazy, silly, whack-ass, bomb, sick, shit-dope, retarded rhymes, that 're are totally off the chain are great, and everyone knows it. What better place to free-style rap about your hard-knock, white, suburban, teenage, middle-class life than within earshot of 20 other mostly silent riders on a city bus. Nod your head to the invisible and silent beats as you come up with asinine after asinine limerick, about your life; which I'm sure is worthy of many MTV documentaries about. Sure the buses may not have a radio for our listening enjoyment, but surely you can do us all a favor and fill the silence with the majesty of your songs.
		While shirts and shoes may be required for service in any normal establishment, they merely hinder normal bus operations. Ideal candidates for bus/trolley travel will have the top half of a shirt on (so that it looks like some shitty version of a midriff shirt, if they were made by wolverines), three or four pairs of layered pants on, all of which are sagging and being generally worn improperly, and shoes made out of trash bags. The purpose of this glorious wardrobe decision is so that their bloated, distended, sun burnt belly can hang out freely and become both a source of disgust and puzzlement for all passengers on board.
		Sanitation is a good practice for most people. By most people I mean those that don't ride the bus. It's your civic duty as a public transportation passenger to reek of as many disgusting and confusing odors as possible. If I can properly identify what the fuck you smell like or I'm not breathing through my mouth as a last defense, then your job isn't quite done. Piss yourself, have others piss on you, roll in some chemicals, and bake in the sun for a few hours then get back to us.
		Let's say for argument sake that you as a full-grown adult, for one reason or another, shit your pants. Great start to a story, I know, but let's continue with it. Your pants are full of loaf; what do you do now? Find the nearest restroom and attempt to salvage your pants? Quickly hide, and find a way home that involves the least amount of being seen? Kill yourself? The correct answer is, of course, get on the city bus and continue on your busy, shit-filled day. When you sit down, be sure to lean to one side at a steep angle so as to not sit directly on your own feces. But don't worry, no one will have to guess what you're doing as the smell of shit will be quite strong. Once you reach your destination, simply get up, and walk your stained pants out the front door, dragging as much smell with you as possible. Then just wander around aimlessly on the streets paying no mind to the nutty situation brewing down south.
		Be a grown-ass adult Get on the bus Get to seat Calmly sit down Begin weeping uncontrollably and loudly Make it so loud and powerful that people move away from you Mission accomplished
		Drinking when under 21 is generally frowned upon by most responsible adults. Drinking when under 13, however, is always a good idea as far as the bus is concerned. Don't let 'the man' tell you what you can and cannot do. You're 13 now goddamit and you make your own choices! That's why you drink the only beer manly enough for a 13 year old: Natural Ice. And you drink it at the back of the bus in plain site of all people. From the six-pack you carry around in your backpack. Which you probably bought from bullying milk money out of other 13 year-olds. No beer tastes as sweet as ill-begotten bus beer.
		Fare: Check. Idea of where you're going: Check. Shame: Check that shit at the door. One thing you may never bring with you on any public transportation medium is your sense of shame. For if one brought their shame with them, they might have reservations about dry humping their woman in the back row of the bus, while she's trying to restrain her child from climbing out the window. There's nothing wrong with public displays of erections.
		Not only can you get to your destination economically, but only on the city busses can you also get delicious chlamydia at the same time. It may be cold or hot outside, so the best and most comfortable environment for hookers to conduct business is, of course, on the bus. All the potential John's come right to you, and are trapped for long periods of time where you can entice them with a combination of dirty talk and that "cold sore" on your upper lip. Is that a shit or cum stain on my bus seat? Yes! Mixed together! "Hey baby. You want to watch me put this umbrella in my ass? Only $10."
		No one can understand your troubles and the issues affecting your life better than you. So who better to have a loud and borderline-violent conversation with about said issues than yourself? Fucking whore? I agree! My medication costs too fucking much? That's correct! Charlies in the trees? True that!
		Buses are tricky and sneaky urban beasts, and as such they can easily sneak right up on you. With this is mind, it's totally acceptable to wait until you're on board the bus to dig out and rifle through all your money to find your fare. Once you've dug out your money, feel free to argue with the bus driver over the fare you actually have to pay to get to where you need to go. It's a little known fact that each bus driver makes up the fare for their own bus, so there's plenty of room to haggle with them. When you agree upon a price, simply take the required bills and slowly and carefully force them into the bill receptacle, so that they bunch all up are aren't accepted. When the machine beeps and attempts to reject your bills...and it totally will if you fuck them up like you're supposed to...simply keep pushing them into until the bus driver has to do it for you.
		If you know where you want to go, but aren't sure how to get there, feel free to just hop on any bus. Once in motion simply ask the bus driver about all the other routes, and what it is you should do to get to where you want to go. It's best to not have the foresight to research what buses will take you where. Who has the time for all that noise, when you could just look like a a dipshit who doesn't realize there's 75 bus routes and maybe they don't all go to the Yarn Barn you want to get to. But in the grand scheme of things, this foresight is unnecessary as it's common knowledge that bus routes aren't rigid structures, and are instead open to your input and needs. Where you need to go is only three blocks off the normal route, so the bus driver will be happy to adjust his and everyone else's needs so that you might get to where you're going with the least amount of walking.
		All children ride the buses for free, so go ahead and crank them shits out! 2, 3, 6, 15 kids, the more the better! And whatever you do, don't sit with or have any control over your spawns. It's best that they freely roam around the bus under their own guidance, and take up as many seats as possible by laying in them and climbing on them. With as cheap as it is to load all the screaming, misbehaving kids up into a city bus, there's simply no reason to not have 15 of the fuckers. If you can get 50% of them crying and/or pulling the cord to stop the bus, you can also ride for free! Everybody wins!
		You see those people on the bus that look pregnant? Don't be fooled...they're not. Whatever is brewing inside of them that allows them to maintain the physique of a woman harboring an eight pound larva inside, is strictly a lifestyle choice they've made. Is she an alien incubator? Is it a giant tangled web o' tape worm colony? Perhaps storing things in her snatch is cheaper than a purse? No one can say for sure, and we'd all be truly horrified if we actually found out. But no matter what's causing her physical distortion, the point is, don't feed her. Whether it's worms or tiny Mexicans being smuggled across the border, feeding her will only exacerbate the problem.