Two Bits of Unfinished Rambling

Posted on February 11, 2025 by Stupidity Hole

Here are two bits of writing; one from 2016 and the other from 2018. They’re not good and I have a fairly good idea as to why I didn’t share them (work starting or something along those lines), and I should probably trash them, but I’m not. Sharing them instead due to some sort of archival relevance or something. I don’t know.

The first one was shortly after my return to call centre work. I’d felt I’d escaped at the end of 2015 and had to return to it in late 2016, and that sucked but you pick up work where you can. I feel that, when it came to the writing course bit, I was probably far too critical and it’s just a mean thing to say.

The second one was early in 2018 and is more transitional. It was written not long before I was crashing in an attic for a few weeks before crashing at another place due to tension developing over years finally becoming too much. It was also not long after spraining my wrist on a field trip with UNSW and their complete lack of logging it anywhere. There was some good at the time, but it was an angry and introspective period. Both bits of writing share that background, now that I think about it.

I hope you enjoy.

—

2016:

And to those who want to see something amazing: Go outside of the city one night and check out the sky.

Sure, it might not look like the cover of a sci-fi book, but it truly gives you a sense of how small and insignificant you are whilst instilling a strong sense of awe and beauty as your mind tries to find a way to truly comprehend the vastness of it all instead of making a few slight variations with a different paint job.

I could probably say anything about Meshuggah and their new album that would be blowing smoke up their ass, using phrases that make little sense (“It sounds like Refused playing Tool covers using meat grinders in a sterile lab in the fjords”) unless viewed in some obtuse, oblique manner strictly for the purpose of fueling my pretentious leanings because I took a writing course and need to try and strangle it for all I can before people realise that I’m a two-bit hack.

So here I am, sitting at my desk at work, waiting for a call to come in and hoping that I can get this finished before I head home tonight, because I’ve missed writing and haven’t wanted to put it off for as long as I have, although I do have to admit that it has not been that long, but quite frankly that’s beside the point as I have missed writing my pointless drivel for the few days that I have not written anything. Therefore, I am writing now simply because I want to write and I am hoping that I come up with something that is worth reading. If I don’t, then it is business as usual and nothing really changes. If I do, then, well, everything changes and this will never be the same again.

That would really cause some differences to become apparent and I have no idea as to how I would cope with such a shake up that would occur. It would really be some sort of new and unexplored world that I would be opening the doors.

2018:

The hands are darting once more across the keyboard of infinity to try and find some sense of reason and accountability within all the things that I strive to look for in a piece of text that contains some sort of quality meaning that you will be able to drag out of this if you, the reader and my very exalted audience are able to do such a thing.

Of course, there is a grand canyon of depth and brevity to cross, but that is the way of things when you are trying to get something out that is good.

I think I’ve worked it out and the ratio works out to be about four sentences of quality writing for every three-hundred bits of writing that I write.

Perhaps that is not exactly the case, but that is the ratio that I have worked out and consarnit, that is the ratio to which I shall stick.

My wrist is still feeling the effects of the spraining event, but it is getting better… I think.

I could be wrong there, but it does feel as though it is slowly recovering. Writing this quickly probably does not help its recovery, but right now I do not care, for I desire to look for what it is that I am looking for and that does mean that there will be a lot of writing to get through. Besides which, my wrist is handling it much better at the moment.

Yesterday I went bushwalking into the Kuring-gai chase national park and it may have been a little too hot to do so. I came out sweaty, exhausted, feeling as though I was going to throw up and feeling like I should have given up. However, I survived and I bounced back pretty quickly. I have nothing to complain about as I brought it upon myself.

Besides which, I saw two goannas and that was pretty awesome. Got a few photos of them as well (here’s one of them).

When I got home, a new lens had arrived and now it is sitting on my camera. My camera is a Canon 60D. The new lens is for a full frame camera.

Oh well.

So I’m sitting here, warming up for the beginning of my shift today. I need to get a bit of work done.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

King Crimson: Industry

Posted on February 11, 2025 by Stupidity Hole

One listen for this one.

Tried to switch off whilst I listened. Didn’t quite work, but I feel the rigidity of the writing represents the song quite well.

King Crimson’s “Industry” is from Three of a Perfect Pair.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Pitter-patter pattern percussion plays precisely as bass pulses alongside. An eerie lightness fades in and out, creating a vague notion of further shape. More sound comes in, buzzes about, and the bass starts breaking the pattern, if only slightly. But it seems to be as though something is moving underneath it at specific moments.

The bass seems to grow louder, and this space has an eerie peace to it. It seems silent, still, peaceful in routine and it is quite uncomfortable. A sudden strike on the bass that becomes more frequent. It lashes out for a moment and the percussion follows.

The bass and percussion lash out more and more, and guitar more apparently guitar lurks lowly at cold angles, cutting and drawing long. The percussion rolls in starts and stops and, along with everything else, or at least most of everything else, becomes harsh, jagged, mechanical almost. That low bass remains steady, however. Unchanging whilst the other sounds continue their rigid drive.

Much of it fades away; the percussion and basses remain. Soon a new buzzing comes in, and it buzzes and quietly sends off an alarm for a moment, and scraping cold whilst tubes flow, and sounds clank and crash, and whir and slide across, and through it all there is some sort of sadness, or perhaps despair at what has happened.

Peaceful sounds seem to mourn at what they see, and what else remains seems to grow quieter. The bass strikes out less; the bass plays its low notes, and occasionally there’s a thing here or there, but it’s all winding down, growing quiet, and the last bass pulses play out and the song ends.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cheap Shitty Coffee: A Ramble

Posted on February 11, 2025 by Stupidity Hole

Alright so I just churned this out to express some thoughts to a friend about cheap shitty coffee. I’ve been reading On The Road for an essay I’m working on and it struck me as to how American the book is, and then I started thinking about shitty coffee and I messaged my friend, and he said something, and then I told him I’d give my thoughts and rambled out the lengthy below, which I might turn into an essay with proper editing and all that. Really work on my thoughts into something a bit more tangible.

Decided I’d post it here though because it has something that I feel is worth thinking about.

I hope you enjoy.

—

You know, there’s something about a cheap and shitty coffee that’s affordable, and perhaps much more appreciable, if not in the moment but rather in retrospect, than a good coffee that’s pricey.

I’m somewhat nomadic. Sure, I’ve a home base and, due to how expensive it actually is to go anywhere, stuck there more often than I’d like, and thus limited to driving up to a few hours away from Sydney, but I love being able to move. I love being able to travel and get away and the sense of space and isolation that can come with it. I love getting up at horrible hours and going, and the silence of being away from the city and continuing to move.

I love traveling, essentially, and whilst I prefer a comfy bed, I’m not averse to sleeping in the boot.

But you know, you get up early, you find somewhere to eat, you get a coffee if that’s your thing. But the coffee is more expensive than it used to be and you’re wondering why, and there’s some pretension of artisanal bullshit going on but it’s just a coffee. Sure, you’re perched at a table getting some rest, but you’re also on the move. You don’t want to necessarily be sitting there, pondering darkness.

The last time I had a cheap shitty coffee was back in 2018. I was in Melbourne with my partner, and one of the last places we had breakfast in was this café that seemed more like one of those truck stop diners you used to occasionally find along a highway in NSW. You probably still do if you go far enough, or at least far away enough from a highway. This was near the heart of the city, and it felt like truck stop food and coffee, or at least what I perceive as being that, and it wasn’t great. It wasn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, but the coffee, at least, was not great. But it was affordable. It did what it needed to. We ate, we drank, we left.

Shortly after getting my red P’s (about two-and-a-half weeks after) I drove down to Melbourne via Wollongong and The Hume. Wollongong to meet up with the person I co-run Culture Eater with, and it added some time, but it was nice. Made my way to The Hume after, drove along. No diners unless I wanted to take a detour, and that was not something I wanted to do, so the only other options were the developed rest areas with service stations and food places that seem more like a trap than a place to rest. I didn’t risk it; I think I got some food at one in the late afternoon, and stocked up on snacks at one earlier in the day, but I’ve been to enough to know that what they provide is not great. It’s acceptable for the road, but it always feels like a plastic representation of something genuine. A pale imitation of the roughness that seems to sit much better.

It was roughly the same for the trip back, though I did get coffee at some point and it wasn’t great and it was overpriced. An unpleasant experience.

Coffee has become such a widespread thing over a long, long time, but getting a good coffee still remains difficult. Getting a good coffee at a reasonable price more so. I spend a lot of time in Newtown, and getting something good here feels like a gamble. You spend a lot of money and then try to convince yourself that this overly milky thing you’re drinking is good, because you’ve spent a lot of money on it so it has to be good. It cannot be bad. But finding a café in Newtown that does good coffee, let alone good coffee at a reasonable price, is a shot in the dark. A suburb does not mean coffee is good; it just is a suburb, and coffee might be there.

On some of my trips out to Bathurst, and just the mountains in general, it has become difficult to get a shitty coffee at a good price. There were places, but slowly as the suburban culture has crept its spindly tendrils into areas to forcibly change what they were, the quality of coffee has kind of increased in some areas to something that’s generally decent, but the prices have also gone up. Yeah, great, but I don’t want to go on this journey to have breakfast. I want to go on this journey to travel. I know I know, people visit areas and all that, they need to be catered to, but some of it feels inauthentic in a way, and maybe it’s the price. It’s difficult to get shitty coffee at a reasonable price in Bathurst too.

So why a shitty coffee anyway, other than what I’ve said? They’re awful in the moment, but you get one that’s affordable, as in reasonably priced, and what are you going to do? Complain? A shitty, affordable coffee is a good coffee, and generally much better than a good coffee because it does exactly what it needs to. You go into a place that serves shitty coffee; you don’t get to complain about it. The purpose is not flavourful experience, though it certainly is that; it’s to have a coffee that’ll keep you caffeinated, to jolt you awake if necessary as the first pang of bitterness caresses your taste buds. It’s there to give you some time to plan your trip out, to see where you go and keep you going. It’s purposeful, and if it’s cheap, it’s better. You sit down, you have it, you leave. Maybe you take it with you and leave, though it might be better to sit, just in case it works your insides too well.

But the cheap and shitty coffee is a dying breed, and as the travel along the road changes into something more artificial it becomes a forgotten part of history. As coffee culture changes and shuns the shitty coffee for something pricier and no less shitty, the honesty of the cheap and shitty one is lost to a truth that’s self-delusion.

Posted in Essays | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1454: Rather Intense Storm

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Stupidity Hole

There is one rather intense storm going on outside. I’ve seen some pretty heavy ones recently, and within the last few years, but this is something else. Just no reprieve. No break. Continuous sheets of noise as a thick veil hammers on down on.

It’s reminding me of a storm back in late 2014 or early 2015. I suspect it was more likely the former due to how busy it was in the latter, but. that’s not important. It was so intense work was evacuated. We were actually pretty safe where we were, but there were people I worked with who didn’t know if their homes were going to be safe, and so fair that we closed early.

I went home and home as fine, but I lived in an ideal location. I know others didn’t. But whilst at work you could see the storm pretty well, and it was pretty heavy, and so is this one. I get the feeling, however, that if this one keeps up its intensity, we won’t be evacuated, which is fine for me, but I worry about others.

These are dangerous times that we are quite willingly sprinting into, and it worries me quite a lot. This weather is increasing in its regularity and it might just keep increasing. Might become more extreme in differences between rain and dry. Those changes that we all don’t think about and forget are happening over time due to how memory smears.

But this is heavy, and this is intense and violent and the rain is thrashing away, cutting through the air, filling the streets to form one massive body, and it is easing a little but it remains violent. It remains heavy and it seems destructive. It seems like it’s going to cause a lot of problems, and so there needs to be care and consideration for what is going on.

These are times where we really need to look out for each other in whichever way we are able to, and we probably won’t. Not enough people will look to see if their neighbours are okay. Plenty will, of course, be okay, but there are also going to be people who are going to experience some sort of setback from this. Do we just leave them be, or do we help them if they need it and want it?

Yeah, that might be a grim thing to consider, but this is some pretty bad weather, and I’m tired of people not caring. I’m tired of watching things go from worse to worse, and nothing seems to change and we just make token gestures rather than genuine outreach.

The rain concerns me, and I think it’s a good thing to be concerned. I hope it doesn’t last too long and I hope it doesn’t cause issues, or if it does, they are minimal and easily fixable. But I don’t know if that will be the case, and as much as I love the rain, I feel this isn’t good.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 11:09:28

Bit slow, but a bit more thought out, and this one required it, I think.

Written at work.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

One Thousand Word Challenge 211: Chicken is The Abyss

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Stupidity Hole

Some famous dude once said “If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you if you do it long enough” or something like that, and it left me wondering for a while. It left me thinking about things, and I came to a realisation, and then did billions upon trillions of hours of research to ensure that what I am about to say is irrefutable unless the right amount of research to help further and challenge and shape it comes forward, which it won’t because I was that thorough.

So a while ago I wrote about chickens and the power they have known as a Chicken Bawkade. I also wrote about how their beak P.S.I is comparable to the bite P.S.I of great white sharks, and hope they will be the dominant species in the future, and so, alas, I find myself writing about chickens once more. I find myself drawn to them, for they seem to be the answer to many questions out there, and once more they are the answer here.

You see, when that person who said the thing said the thing, some people think it has something to do with becoming introspect; with looking inward and seeing what lies there, and perhaps unearthing it and accepting it, and moving on to become a better person. However, it turns out that they weren’t. You see, they were going for a walk and came across an abyss, as it turns out, and as it further turns out, when there, they heard a click and saw eyes. Many, many eyes. But this person only saw the eyes after hearing the cluck, and they only heard the cluck after staring into this abyss for a while. Not sure why they decided to do so – maybe they went through a bad breakup, I don’t know – but they were there, and they stared, and they heard and eventually things saw that person. They stared back. The “abyss” stared back.

It is believed that there was a feather and the flapping of some wings, and the sounds of shuffling too, but that is unclear.

So anyway, I’ve looked into this, and perhaps the cluck was a giveaway, but the shape and positioning of the eyes also suggest chicken. So I looked further into chickens and chicken society and all those things, and as it turns out, chickens have the right kind of body shape, bone density and squishiness among some and the right kind of firmness among others to be able to neatly slot in and against each other in large formations to help stay warm, and fit into the right kind of profound physical space. Naturally, when this happens, rather than illuminating it (especially when it’s a space that goes below ground) it darkens, for all light becomes absorbed and denied by the great mass of chicken. As such, where the chickens rest becomes abyssal in appearance, and perhaps ominous.

You get a hint of danger and mystery, and an apprehension about the unknowable, but it’s all just a bunch of chickens congregating to stay warm and stay safe, or perhaps find a way to look into our perceptions of self and make us question what it is that we know of ourselves; to see if we really are able to conquer that which is what we don’t know of ourselves unless we look, or to see if there is anything conquerable at all. However, chickens also like to be left alone, and so if we stare long enough into the abyss, the chickens will find some sort of irritation and discomfort and start staring back.

There is no grand silence, but there is a moment of quiet that seems to run an eternity when we look within, and the chickens are there, looking too. They are looking to see what is true, and they make us think about what we must tear down and what we must accept to become a more honest version of ourselves. To be come a better version of ourselves, but we don’t realise and instead we just believe ourselves to be looking inward without the assistance. We think we look into our own abyss, but it’s there and its external to us, and we look at it without even realising that our fine, feathery friends are looking back, providing guidance, and eventually wanting us to go away.

Of course you need to make sure you don’t stare too long, because if we don’t leave these roosting aves alone by the point where they’re wanting us to leave, they might resort to increasingly direct measures. They might start bawking or flapping their wings and shuffling about en masse, and if it really gets too far, to the point where the person staring into the abyss won’t leave, then they might just move on up and engulf the person into them, thus bringing them into the abyss. For they did not go to it by that point internally, and so the external chicken abyss goes to them, consumes them, makes their world one of darkness and eternity in all directions, and thus they are forced to face that which they had chosen to stare from at a distance.

If you’re going to stare at the abyss, you need to deal with the one internal to yourself. You are now being forced to deal with the internal turmoil symbolically represented by the external chicken, and you need to find your way out of them, but you can’t until you accept that you need to leave and deal with your life.

And so, as you now know, chicken isn’t just the abyss, but it also is the abyss. Until we know to start looking inward without an external indicator of looking inward, we are just staring into a pit that is full of chicken, looking to rest and keep warm, yet providing guidance to our need to realise ourselves and work toward becoming better versions of ourselves.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 16:43:41

Decent speed.

I’m pretty sure I had the beginning of this idea back in 2018, when I wrote down “Chicken is the Abyss”, and then procrastinated. Would remember here and there but never got moving on it, until now. Silly and fun writing.

Written at work.

Posted in Fiction | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Tracks Through a Quiet Space

Posted on February 9, 2025 by Stupidity Hole

A photo from the early morning on the first day of this year. A space with little disturbance. The presence of people at some point apparent, but otherwise feeling still and with little disturbance.

This is my submission into the three hundred-and-thirty-fifth Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The theme for this one is “Exploring Color vs Black & White“.

I generally don’t like doing the comparative thing all too much, and more often than not prefer working with monochrome. Here it’s tough to say if one is better than the other, though I lean more toward the monochrome as it feels more minimal and empty.

The host of the Lens-Artists challenges cycles weekly between the following people:

Tina

Patti

Ann-Christine aka Leya

John Steiner

Sofia Alves

Anne Sandler

Egídio

Ritva

This one is curated by Patti. The next one is curated by Leya.

I recommend joining the community and participating in the challenges. They’re pretty straightforward, allow room for interpretation, and provide a good way to think about photography in general. If not, however, then at the very least you should check out what others submit to the challenges.

I hope you enjoy.

Posted in Photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

King Crimson: Requiem

Posted on February 9, 2025 by Stupidity Hole

One listen.

At some point early on I realised I was writing in a particular way that I’d done before and I’m not happy with it as, whilst I’ve gotten across an idea of the song quite well, what I wrote feels more rote than organic.

King Crimson’s “Requiem” is from Beat.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Slow hum drifts, and soon guitar rises from it. The guitar is busier, but it also drifts. Tension arises, as does weight. Perhaps a solemness. The guitar continues to move and be here and there, stretching and contorting whilst remaining as it is. Maybe it is a lament for something that was; for a place that changed.

The hum changes and seems to split; the guitar becomes busier and bass plays a doleful series of notes whilst percussion starts forming its way into the space. The guitar howls, and eventually disappears as the other sounds work on different lanes yet in a unison.

The guitar returns from a single point and howls and creaks, and the percussion grows in a controlled scattering and spread. The bass remains steady, as does the hum, and the rest seemingly becomes cacophony. An outpouring, perhaps, of grief.

And yet there remains a drifting. It is an intense moment, but there remains something calm in it, and that becomes clearer when the percussion and guitar suddenly stop, and it’s just the hum and bass, both familiar, but both changed and fading away as the song ends.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1453: Drafts and Cleaning the Plate

Posted on February 9, 2025 by Stupidity Hole

I currently have thirty drafts here, and that’s only here. There are other places where I’ve a bunch, but those are newer than some of the ones here. The oldest one I have here is a little over thirteen years old, though it may be scrapped as I’m pretty sure that I published it and somehow ended up with a draft. The next oldest is a little over ten years old.

Some other drafts are collections of scraps that I’ve considered expanding upon at some point, and cutoffs, and drafts for things that won’t get published but made for good writing exercises at some point. Some of those will disappear, but some of them I’ve been finally getting to completion because I want to get the plate as clean as possible.

Many years of things piling up and now I’m getting through some of them, and it’s not bad. But still, as I write I come up with more ideas and so I need to outpace my thinking which I find difficult on a good day. But I have to try. I have to keep on going and push on through, and maybe it’ll happen. Not expecting the best end result, but not aiming for the worst either. Just aiming to get there.

And then I’ll have those done, and then what? Where do I go from there? Of course there are other things in other places to shape and form and turn into completed essays, reviews, and so on, and I’ll work on those, but those will be worked on here to, or rather, published here. It keeps going and I’ll keep going and I’m not planning on stopping. I’m just gonna keep on working on what I can and keep at it.

So… yeah. Drafts. A lot of drafts. A lot of ideas started and not finished. Some are just sentences, fragments. Some are ramblings that go nowhere. Some are nowhere that go rambling. A lot of silliness, some serious. Vague remembering of parts of my life, and a push toward something better throughout it all.

Really it’s just a push toward something worse, but sometimes it’s better.

But some things that are interesting to me, and I’ve had this burst that is still going (it has only been a few days, I know), and I almost cannot stop. But I need to use that to finish things. I need to use that to improve and I need to use that to clear the plate, and have as few drafts left as possible. I need to keep on chipping away, because – and I know I’ve said this a few times, especially recently – if I don’t finish the stuff it’s not going to be finished, so I have to stick to it. I have to keep on going and pushing forward, and I am, and that means getting through fatigue, but it also means staying focused. It means continuing working on what is, and I’ll get the plate clean.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 07:55:96

Not the fastest, not the slowest. Not much of a bit of writing either, but I think it carries something forward. These drafts are definitely sets of memories in a sense, in that they remind me of where I may have been in life when I saved them. Stuff like that.

Written at home.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Walking Through a Light Rail Tunnel

Posted on February 8, 2025 by Stupidity Hole

I walked through a light rail tunnel once. In 2015, on Sunday the first of March. It was soon after my birthday. May have written about it before, but I don’t think I’ve done so.

Anyway it started off at a place near Central, in the morning. Ewe and I were at a place we’d gone to a small amount of times where you could smoke shisha through a hookah. We got food, smoked, had a good time. Easy day. Nice.

Later on Ewe, Anna, Si and I headed out. We were still neighbours at the time and in various stages of getting toward life obligation and so organising stuff was pretty easy. We went to Darling Harbour to go bowling, had a good time, left and it had been raining.

We crossed over Pyrmont Bridge to get to the nearest light rail station and saw a Freddie Mercury tribute happening. That was nice. Also took some photos of us four being silly.

But yeah; we went out, had a good time, took a bunch of photos, did stuff, didn’t do stuff, caught the light rail back home. We lived a short walk from it, which also made heading out an easier decision to make at times.

After we got off at our stop, Si and I decided to go through the light rail tunnel. I can’t remember how we came to the decision to do so. I know it’s not that exciting a thing, but it was something I hadn’t done before and had wanted to do so at some point, but I was concerned about consequences. I know that Ewe and Si had done it before during late night hours and that made me more curious to do so, if not sparking my initial desire to do so. Ewe didn’t want to this time, however and Anna that interested. Fair.

So we got off at Glebe, Si and I waited for the tram to leave, then started walking. It was dark in there, but illuminated well enough, and all sorts of “quiet”. We took photos of the things we saw; graffiti, shape and design, lights… things that can be curious to look upon. We kept walking, looking at stuff, trying to take it all in, and eventually another tram came along, because of course that was going to happen, and so if I remember rightly, we moved pretty quickly at that point. The driver may have called someone; don’t know and didn’t want to find out. Quickly got away from the station on the other side too.

It wasn’t too far from home so we sort of meandered back. Saw some things I wasn’t aware of but Si was, took in sights we’d seen before, and then made our way around Blackwattle Bay.

The clouds were heavy and threatening, and the day was getting the certain kind of dark when rain is approaching. And of course, not soon after that darkness came it started raining. Si and I ran back home, not too drenched but wet enough. And it was a nice sort of time, and felt pleasant in the way that some of these things can. It was a bit of life and, in looking back, it was small, and that’s nice.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bus Passenger

Posted on February 8, 2025 by Stupidity Hole

Thus far this year I’ve been doing a lot more walking and a lot more catching public transport. I’m very tired of how stressful driving in Sydney is, and wondering if I’ll get to and from work alive far more often than anyone should, and I’m trying to get more exercise.

A couple of days ago I left work, walked down to Parramatta Road, hopped on the bus. Bus was pretty full, though there were a couple of open seat spots. I went for one next to some guy and, lo and behold, he was taking up most of the seat by spreading his legs. Plopped right down next to him, or rather, right up against him because I was not able to sit properly on the seat.

My sweaty right arm against his left, and my right leg against his left. He would not budge, so I started pressing my right leg into his left, and he started forcibly pushing back. I chose not to relent.

I don’t know if it was my sweating or my being against the guy because there was not space to sit properly on the seat, but he was getting pretty uncomfortable from it and forcibly asked me to stop pushing against his leg. Something along the lines of “Can you stop pressing against my leg?” but really, really firm and annoyed. I said something along the lines of “I’m trying to sit on the seat properly, you could just close your legs” and of course he fought against this. Told me a few times I could go sit elsewhere, with me responding a few times saying it’s public transport, I’m trying to sit on the seat properly and he could just close his legs and I wouldn’t be against him if he did; you know, that sort of stuff.

He tried to justify it by saying he’d had a long day, kept refusing to close his legs, claimed he was taking only half the seat (it was quite apparent that he wasn’t, and even more so when he got up to get off the bus). I told him he wasn’t the only one who had a long day, and all he had to do was close his legs and it’d be fine. It was just a lot of back and forth that was going nowhere because this guy didn’t want to be considerate in the slightest, and I can be quite obstinate when it comes to public resources and people being assholes.

So eventually I said something along the lines of “I doubt your dick’s so big you need to spread your legs”, followed by “You’re not the only one who’s had a long day. You’re just the only one using it as an excuse” and he stopped talking after that, and relented a little. Closed his legs a little. It doesn’t really matter much, but small victories and all that.

Yeah, telling someone their genitals are small isn’t tactful, and maybe I could’ve found another spot to sit if I stood for a while (the other spot was taken soon after I sat down), but public transport is a public resource and maybe, just maybe, people should be a bit more courteous. Maybe we shouldn’t be shitty and selfish.

This isn’t a recent thing. This had been happening well before Covid-19 lockdowns, and well before anyone cares to remember. People just tend to think it was after that as they started taking more notice when they had more space to move around. Plenty of people can actually be aware that they’re not the only person in the world; that other people around them are indeed alive and might actually like to use public resources too. They choose not to, however, and maybe we need to be willing to make them deal with the fact that, no, they aren’t more important than anyone else.

 

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment