The Best Laid Plans This Side of America

You're walking down Yonge Street and, at corner of Yonge and College you notice a large puddle.  It makes sense, it's rained all morning.  Up until this point you have been sheltered from a vertical deluge via an umbrella you've purchased to substitute for the one your sister stole from you last year.  Trying to be smart, you decide to cross the street (just before the lights) to avoid a situation where a haphazard motorist ploughs through the instersection and the puddle sending a wanton wave at you on a horizontal vector--sound thinking (you think).

 

You cross a little early when out of nowhere a cross breeze rips the umbrella from your hand forcing you to walk the rest of the way to work soaked.  There is little comfort to be had as you realise that the odds of getting hit by a cross breeze were slim to none had you not tried to avoid the puddle.  What you've inadvertantly stumbled upon is what in the mid nineteen eighties, theoretical physicist Igor Novikov called a causality loop.

 

Such a loop (also referred to as a causal loop, or the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle) usually occurs when an individual excercises free-will in an attempt to avoid something which they believe will occur.  In doing so, they inadvertantly cause the event to happen.  

 

Now, here's another theoretical situation.  You find yourself employed in Toronto making what (on the surface) is good money (anywhere from 53,000 to 70,000 per annum).  Your new job doesn't require a whole tonne of thought.  You didn't have to spend eon and a fortune in post secondary institutions plying your trade.  In fact, you may be apt to laugh at some of your peers who went that "other route" and are making significantly less than you are.  You have a great Pension plan, great benefits but (and there's always a but) your job has the potential to be slightly dangerous.  You work with the public afterall, and sometimes the public can be disrespectful,mean, even abusive.  However, for your trouble, you can rest peaqcefully at night knowing that it's not everyone, it's not all the time and you're paid more than other employees in similar positions nation-wide.

What do you do?  You strike.  You strike often.  Complaining that your salary is not enough to deal with the rigmarole of working in Toronto, that it's not enough to compensate you for working with the public. 

 

But this is where you are exactly like the pedestrian forced to walk on Yonge street with an umbrella thinking he or she is too smart to get hit by horizontal wave from a puddle at the corner.  The very disrespect, abuse and meanness you seek to avoid (or put up with for monetary gain) is worse when you try to avoid it.  News today that a TTC worker was spat on, and that there were "more glares than usual"at ticket collection booths certainly re-inforces this idea. 

 

Somewhere along the way, the TTC lost sight of its mandate.  It stopped seeing itself as an essential service.  It stopped being "the better way" when it became viciously evident that it was "the only way" for many commuters.  More importantly, the tyrannical entity we call the Toronto Transit Commission started viewing itself as a company that worked  WITH the public and not FOR the public.   Somehow, counter-intuitively the TTC believed that there could be no backlash inherent to inconveniencing the people who pay their benefits, their salary and their pension.  Obviously, Adam Giambrone and his flunkies at the TTC never took theoretical physics--but then, neither did I.

 

 

 

 

Mr. CouplandWonder WomanSelf-explanatoryA few weeks later she lemminged herself libe Berlin?Ha!Trying to sort this one out.No remixes?Apparently, African daisies.Never seen this.MadisonMount Royal-for an anglophile.The big Apple--no stickers unfortunatelyI failed miserably at the flag game.What can you say about this?Concrete pillars are great causewaysBring it on.racywaiting til it's warmer to do this with youOne of maybe three Swedish men named "josé"no banana peels hereMcGillRioFortunately, I still have mine--ever blow on the cartridge?Rough days at work? I might be able to use one of these.

You hear some strange banter on the train. Of course, the train is the only place it could happen. People engaging in the most inane conversation with one another for the briefest of moments before departing off into the good clean (marginal) air. Now, I detest small-talk. Conversation is, or should be regarded as an art form. Anyone caught in the middle of small talk turned "why Kerouac was so awesome" diatribe will agree. People whose verbage (yes I don't mean verbiage) spans the ghastly space of the horrible Toronto weather, or the new and dreaded "Facebook conversation" should be strung up by the gonads and beaten with a dead porcupine.

Of course there is room for discussion of the weather. Facebook, "he-said, she said" business and "how about them Leafs?" or *gasp* politics, but we all know people who take liberties.

On the train last night between Union and Rouge Hill I was treated (loosely) to one such liberty taking soul. The other end of the conversation? a seventeen year old woman who (unfortunately) didn't or couldn't find her i-pod fast enough.  She was seated directly in front of me facing away so that only the top of her head could be seen. In what would be her left hand, just within my (admittedly) small range of vision past the edge of her seat I could see a reddish orange baggie which I presumed to be Doritos or some other snack.

Two minutes out of the station en route to Danforth, a taller, balding, salt and pepper haired man possibly in his mid to late fifties decided to strike up conversation with this poor girl. Periodically looking up from Douglas Coupland's "Generation X" I caught him staring at what I thought at first was me but (as luck would have it) would end up being her.

"Do you have any idea what you're putting in your body?" the man says across the aisle to the woman (let's call her "Harriet")

"Sorry?"

"That can't be good for you" he says with the patronising tone that only a hypocrite can muster.

"Oh, ok"

"I used to eat that stuff all the time". He says with a flair for the hackneyed. I laugh into the book and hope he's not a motivational speaker.

"Oh, ok" Harriet replies with nervousness in her voice. I imagine her shuffling and avoiding eye-contact.

"Would you read me the ingredients on the bag? I mean not all of them, just the sodium?" He asks with the vim and vigour of someone whose fantasy is quite obviously a salt lick with several moose in Algonquin. This surprises me, his ability to go from trite to passionate is alarming.

"Ummm, uhh it' says 2%" Harriet replies fumbling with the bag.

"Is that 2% of your recommended intake? does it say recommended intake?"

"Umm no, just 2%"

"Well you know, for the first time in ages you can look all this stuff up online. Would you be interested in that?"

"I don't know" Harriet replies now quite obviously trying to avoid anything remotely resembling a committal response.

"Well, no, it's just you should keep track of this stuff. It's important. It's your body. What are you? like 20? 21?"

"17"

I shake my head averting my gaze to the reflection in the dark window and think: "silly girl"

The conversation (if you can call it that) goes on well past Scarborough Go and I am uncomfortable for Harriet. if it weren't for me having previously eaten the largest cookie imaginable, I might be inclined to scarf a bag of chips down on the train. At that moment I am happy. Under other circumstances I might be sucked into small talk with this man. It's either Harriet or me, and (if left up to me) I nominate Harriet every time . . . With sympathy of course.

People bear with me...and do yourself a favour and get through this...

 

I imagine a lot of people are going to be pissed off by what I am posting today.  I imagine a lot of people wont want to visit my blog ever again, but to that one person who's life is changed by reading and viewing this blog...then it is worth it.

 

Lungs are made to breathe oxygen.  It's a simple element  (O2) and being that it is so simplistic ideas concerning it should be easy.  Your lungs NEED oxygen why not provide them with oxygen right?  Well either the human race is inextricably stupid, or they are unaware.  Each year

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.1 billion humans are smokers, have smoked or will continue to smoke.  They will run away from infectious material, they wont roll around in toxic waste but they are inclined to smoke either cigarettes or marijuana and ingest harmful carcinogens in order to what calm down?  feed a disparaging addiction? cause life insurance rates to climb? clog up our hospitals with patients that (had they just qyuit smoking) would allow for other people who are not ill due to some choice they made to get the treatment at a time they need and deserve it?

 

How selfish is that?  Then you have all the poor people who die of second hand smoke each year.  Why because many smokers have a blatant disregard for the existence of themselves and others.  When is this going to stop? when are people going to wake up and say:

 

"I have a carbon monoxide detector in my home....so it is in my best interest to avoid inhaling it"

"Arseninic is a poison"

"cyanide is a poison used in weaponry and terrorism"

etc.

 

Now I know you're thinking...well "I smoke, it's not going to be  me"  and you may be right it might not be you.  But that's no reason to not quit.  1 in ten adult deaths is attributed to smoking related illnesses.  that emans think of nine of your friends.  One of them WILL die as a result of an egregious habit...and if they don't...it's YOU. 

 

Here are some facts...

 

 

 

 

 

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