is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Spare the Air.
It is hot Hot HOT here right now. Unbelievably, almost unbearably hot. I keep getting stuck in traffic, in my non-air-conditioned car, sweating to the oldies on my fm radio. Today I spent about two hours laying absolutely still on a bed in a darkened room, and I still couldn�t keep from feeling too uncomfortably hot.
We keep having �spare the air� days, meaning that public transit is free for everyone. I tend to take public transit instead of driving whenever I can, since driving is often no fun at all, but, man, �spare the air� days do make public transit even more unpleasant than it already tends to be� I�m not saying we shouldn�t have �spare the air� days. I�m just saying that on a really hot day it is just great Great GREAT that all the buses will be guaranteed to chock full of sweaty smelly impatient people who don�t normally take public transit and thus do not understand the codes of behavior to which one ought to adhere when one rides public transit.
SO I�ve overheard a number of funny and/or annoying conversations during my �spare the air� transit rides. There was the fat orange guy who Very Loudly wondered aloud to his friends, for about twenty minutes straight, just what �spare the air� accomplishes. I mean, (he said), you just know all these people are taking BART to their houses so they can get in their cars and go out to dinner! (Harumph, he thinks, looking around himself in great satisfaction at his wisdom, and also at the abounding kindness he has just shown the entire crowded train by dropping his science on us all. In the meantime, we all secretly want him to die, painfully. Or we�re thinking that we can think of like 18 ways in which we might enjoy making him �spare the air.�) He went on and on�. but we�ll leave him behind because while he is annoying he is far from interesting. Oh, except he also said this about �spare the air�: �It�s a stupid liberal beatnik thing.� The beatniks have so much power!
My favorite conversation so far was the gangsta guy who got on the BART train with two compatriots, opened up his cellphone and made a call. �Hello? Were you just standing by the ticket gate at Oakland West station? Yo, well I�m the pimp who was checking you out. Yeah, you is fine. Well, you never know, a lot of hos around here is stuck up. Yeah, well, you is fine.� I have no idea how he had her phone number, but apparently she didn�t just hang up on him. Perhaps she thought he was a fine looking young pimp, and wanted to get with him. Anyway, after he got off the phone (he�s sitting across the aisle from me, I�m the dorky white chick in glasses reading existential philosophy), another fine ho walked by (who I did not see because I was reading). The shy pimp did a complete turnaround to watch her walk by and walk away, and then said, �that�s what I�m talking about!� And then his friend said, �But look at her shoes!� [Pause.] �That�s a fine ho with no taste!� Until that moment I had no idea that a young shy pimp might disparage a lady for her choice of footwear! It pleased me somehow.
Apparently they were a rap group or something. They began to demonstrate to all of us around them their hip hop prowess. And then they started talking about song lyrics, and how it�s problematic to be too political. Shy Pimp #1 said, �You have to block out that �Bush� shit like it�s a cuss word or they after you.� And etc., and on for quite a while. It all became so much more interesting than Jean-Paul Sartre, I tell you. It seems that some sort of local outlet for rap music is censoring certain kinds of political statements?
I wanted to ask them to write a rap song for me right then and there in which they rhymed �spare the air� with �derriere.�
Off the bus already, right? Last night was my sister�s wedding reception. Almost everyone from both sides of our family was there, along with lots of Natalie�s and Scott�s friends, and Heidi and Marilyn! We had fun. It was a good party. I had to give a toast, as you know. It made me nervous. I think it went over fairly well? Lots of people told me they liked it. But maybe it was also a bit strange?
But maybe that�s just what it means to be Jill, she thought, resignedly.
The cake was yum Yum YUMMY. And a gay hairdresser who helped do the floral arrangements (which were beautiful) told me that I was so beautiful I looked like Leslie Caron. And I told him that is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. But then no one I talked to knew who Leslie Caron was. (Hello! An American In Paris with Gene Kelly!) It was like the time I got my picture taken with John Doe and excitedly told everyone around me in the Rhetoric Department about it, and no one know who John Doe was. Fame is very relative.
Which leads me to pose a question. Who is truly famous? I know some semi-famous people. All of the �famous� people I know are the kind of people about whom you never know for certain whether someone will have heard of them if their name comes up in conversation. Like Dave Eggers, David Lowery, Judith Butler, Chris Collingwood, etc. They are all famous only within some pocket of a certain type of an audience somewhere. Everyone who has heard of them is certain that each of them must have some kind of huge power in the world, but of course none of them do, except within their small spheres of influence. (For instance, people always think that Judith Butler can snap her fingers and get someone a job. But that�s just not how the world works. I�m pretty sure that�s a good thing, too.) But who is truly famous? Whenever someone tries to question me about someone I know who is �famous,� I say �it�s not like she or he is Bono-famous.� Ha. Bono seems to me to be someone who has a truly wide base of people who Know Who He Is and also Are Impressed On Some Level. Bono or Princess Diana (except maybe I should limit this to people who are alive). Bono, Famous. Eggers, Semi-Famous. Me, Dorky White Chick Reading Existential Philosophy on Public Transit.
7:14 p.m. - July 23, 2006
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