Monthly Archives: September 2004

The Steve Lam

I used to real­ly, real­ly admire the steve lam. He seemed to have his own style, and not care what any­one else thought. I want­ed to hang out with him, get to under­stand him bet­ter, maybe be a lit­tle more like him. I even bought him lunch once (he chose a club sand­wich from the cafe­te­ria), although one time we almost shared a bag of roast­ed peanuts while stand­ing next to a vend­ing machine.

I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed. Sure, he prob­a­bly still does­n’t care what oth­er peo­ple think, and he has real­ly cool hair that I want SO BADLY, but now it seems like he’s caught up in the whole “indie new york rock­er” image.

Image.

That’s what’s wrong with this pic­ture.

Memories Of Korn

Holy shit, I was walk­ing towards work this morn­ing with the cool autumn air on my skin and the dulled sun creep­ing up, cast­ing tall shad­ows on the grass. Something from Follow The Leader came on (I think it was Freak On A Leash) and I was back in high school again, a shy, ner­vous teenag­er, wait­ing for the yel­low bus to Catholic school.

Yield To Me

On the way to work I walk adja­cent to a lane of traf­fic, and cars on the high­way can exit onto that street using a lengthy offramp. I have to cross the offramp every day, and there’s a yield sign there for cars com­ing from the high­way, but they nev­er slow down or yield to pedes­tri­ans (unless it’s some­one old dri­ving). Since it’s a busy area, the cars can just keep com­ing, and I’ve spent a ridicu­lous amount of time just wait­ing for the line of vehi­cles to end.

Right now I just get out my frus­tra­tions by pre­tend­ing that I don’t notice any cars com­ing, and tak­ing one step onto the ramp. Most dri­vers don’t care if some­one is walk­ing across; as long as they know that one sees them, they assume that one will jump out of the way. Drivers who believe that some­one does­n’t see them will almost always yield.

This morn­ing, for exam­ple, I pre­tend­ed to be com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to two cars speed­ing down the offramp. I made one con­fi­dent step across the path and then quick­ly looked up, while con­tin­u­ing to cross. The first car sped past me, but the sec­ond car slowed down sud­den­ly enough to make the tires squeak. The car actu­al­ly pulled to the side of the road and came to a com­plete stop. I could tell that the dri­ver, a book­ish man with light hair and glass­es, was both angry and shak­en, and had to stop dri­ving to com­pose him­self. I swear he was about to get out of his car to tell me off, had he not brought him­self under con­trol, and real­ized that it’s not a fuck­ing MERGE sign, it’s a FUCKING YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS SIGN.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t always assume that I have the right of way (although I do believe that pedes­tri­ans are sup­posed to under the Highway Traffic Act R.S.O. 1990, c. H.8, s. 144 (28), unless the car can’t stop in time) and just walk across the cross­walk regard­less of oncom­ing vehi­cles. It’s in every­ones best inter­est to be safe, but I do my part by keep­ing an eye on vehi­cles, and not jay­walk­ing or cross­ing unpre­dictably. This guy, as well as many oth­ers, have plen­ty of time to see pedes­tri­ans approach­ing the cross­walk but decide to nev­er slow down.

Morning By The Elgin

I was on my way to catch­ing the bus to work this morn­ing, when I passed by a fan­cy restau­rant filled with patrons at the cor­ner of Elgin and Slater. The patrons were all peo­ple past mid­dle age, enjoy­ing con­ver­sa­tions over break­fast, dain­ti­ly eat­ing their bacon, and tak­ing cau­tious sips of their sun­shine joe.

The first thought in my head was, “How could any­one be so hap­py at such an ungod­ly hour?”. Then I held my thoughts (along with my peev­ish mood) in check, and won­dered to myself. Perhaps they spent the night embrac­ing the warmth of anoth­er’s body, hud­dled togeth­er against the chill of the open night air. Perhaps they were think­ing of their lovers, and could feel noth­ing but strength, think noth­ing but hap­pi­ness. And I liked that expla­na­tion.

It’s all enough to make one smile at any time of day.