Jesus had a Mullet

One of the more fun parts of riding the South Shore is observing some of the people who ride the train. Friday I got to do the time warp again, and visit the 80's. On the Van Buren platform was a guy who had a beautiful specimen of a mullet, to go along with the beer gut, and matching stained shirt. To complete the ensomble he was smoking one of the cheap thin cigars that are pratically given away today, even with this age of high tobacco taxes. And for some strange reason, this nearly flawless creature was standing alone, and managed to get a seat alone on a crowded Friday train. I do sure hope that he enjoyed his day of taping at the Jerry Springer show, and his case of Miller High Life that he got as a parting gift.

Muggle-Ticker------>3

Slumped shoulders, furrowed brow, audible sigh, backpack carelessly slung over the shoulder, dirty looks, quick walk... Usually off of the train these things mean the wife is mad. On the train, these things are a source of accomplishment. Add all of those things up and that means we have successfully ran off another muggle.

[pats selves on the back's]

The surprising things was that the conversation wasn't even too harmful. It was some of the usual talk, but somehow it managed to work out. It might have had something to do with having an unusually large contingent of 4:30 people on the 4:01, as Part-Time Rider has retaken her rightful spot on the 4:01, and we also had NDBill, and Permenantly Open-Seat also with us, to go along with the usuals in me, Nerd, and High Maintence. The combo of volume and crudeness was most likely the key to our successful runoff of Muggle #3. I can only hope the drought until #4 isn't nearly as long.

Let Me Roll it to You...

I always know it is going to be a fun write up when I have multiple potential titles in my head. This is one of those stories, except with a tragic ending.

Friday the gang plus a few of the 4:31 refugees sneaking out early were out on the Van Buren platform as the train slowly approached. There was a group of 7 or 8 of us waiting, me of course being in "the" key spot where the traindoors usually end up. Right as the train is pulling in, I feel my knees start to go out from under me. As I am trying to figure out what the hell is going on, I notice some 4'3" woman with a waist to match pushing past me, with her backpack firmly planted in the back of my knees, using it to shove me out of the way. Honestly I was in shock. This was a huge violation of the Chicagoian "dibs" theory which extends not only to parking places, but to spots at bus and train stations.

"Dibs" is when you are standing in a spot, it is your spot, and no one is to push in front of you. People are to line up either to the sides of you, or behind you. But no, this was a catastrophic failure of the "dibs" system. But sadly, I was so in shock after getting rolled by a midget who could have passed for a bowling ball, (if you took off her legs and head) that all I could manage was a "What the fuck??".

Embarassing I know. It was even more pathetic than anything else. I probably should have shoved her in front of the on coming train (but then again I would have had to face the angry commuters who were delayed by my actions), or grabbed her by her backpack and turned her around to go the other way, but no, I choked. There is no joy in Mudville, the might Casey has struck out.

Mugglepalooza 2k5 draws to close

Times when school is out always suck on the South Shore. When school is out, some parents get the idea to take their kids to the big city, which in itself is a cool idea. The big problem is that inconsiderate, selfish, dopey adults, tend to raise inconsiderate, selfish, dopey, and loud kids. Its like half of these kids get out of their chains in the basement and have no idea what it is like to be in a crowd of people. So what happens is that these same illequiped parents decide that it would be a good idea to educate their kids all in one day by taking them to a museum, or to further their spoiling and waste a ton of money on something like American Girl Place crap. Then after a day of walking around Chicago or some cultural exhibit, they try to get them to sit still on the train for a hour or two. Needless to say this works about as well as taking them to Science and Industry for a day so their kid can become a nuclear engineer. Lucky for us commuters these little brats are back in school, so the South Shore should become a little more tolerable... at least until Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Mas Grande Gorditas

Some of the more observant PWP readers might have noticed that there is a counter on this site. Besides keeping track of how many people click onto "Purgatory" one of the other fun tricks that it does is keep track of how people get onto PWP. By far the most common way is that people have bookmarked the site into their favorites, and click over that way. Another common way that people have looked at it is through a signature I have that has the link to it at Soxtalk.com. A few others have gotten to PWP through my profile on Blogger. Now all of those ways are relatively normal, well let's just say that 4 people have gotten here a way that cracked me up to no end. 4 people placed a search on MSN with the keyword being "Gorditas", which brought them here. This got me to thinking, could our very own gorditas have been hungry from running to the bus, gotten to work starving, MSN searched "Gorditas", and then found my blog making fun of them? Granted it seems mighty unlikely, but I have to laugh at the fact that people were looking for some Taco Bell, and ended up here because of some fat commuters who piss me off.

Good Times indeed.

A King on his throne

As you well know we here at PWP don't pull punches, so if bodily functions bother you, you might want to check out a place like this today.

A Nice Little Shiney Happy Sissy Site

Anyways, now that we have ditched the crybabies, this week at work I got the misfortune of having one of the supervisors off, so they asked me to come in early and cover the guy at the desk. This means that I have to be at work at 6 am sharp, which also means that I have to be on the dreaded 4:07 am train aka "The Tombs". About the only bright point of being on the "Tombs" is that the Conductors are usually kind enough to turn off half of the lights to make it a little darker on the train, which makes it easier to sleep. Well this morning I had the urge to move the mail, and so I went into the bathroom to take care of business. Well I learned that the one hang up with having half the lights turned off is that the bathroom lights are all off. This made it quandry time... Should I stay or should I go now? (or should I stay AND go now, might be the better question) Well when it is time to take the Browns to the Super Bowl, it's time. So lucky me got to experience dumping in the dark. I must say that there was a quiet relaxation aspect to it, which I would have never imagined. Needless to say, business was good, and I finished up and went back to my seat and finished my morning nap.

Volume Theory

Have you ever noticed that the worse someone's taste is in something, the louder they have to play it? Its almost like they are over compensating for a lack of taste by getting in your face with the crappiness of what they like.

Friday I was lucky enough to sit next to some dope who decided that some crappy death metal wasn't cool enough for just him to hear, he wanted to buy the whole world a Coke, and teach then a lack of harmony. The nice thing was that he was only going to the first stop, so I didn't get tortured with his horrible music selections for too entirely long.

I WANT MY $7.15

So Monday we pretty much have the whole gang on the 4:01 train-ride home. We get spread out a little because some muggles decide to take one of the other 4 seaters. We cruise right along until we get to Kensington, when all of the conductors and collectors converge on our car. Turns out there is some kid who has been claiming he was 13 years old for years, in order to get a free ride home to Michigan City. Finally the conductor had enough of this and locked him in a vestibule and called the Transit Police.

Now to put this in perspective a ride on the South Shore to Michigan City costs all of $7.15. So for that seven dollars and change, we sat in a station for 15 minutes. Then instead of taking the little bastard off of the train, the Transit cop makes him pay his full fare, and then they let him stay on the train. Quality work again done by the rent-a-cops there. They should have either kicked him off of the train, or had the Transit Police meet us at a forward stop so we wouldn't have to hold up a train of 800 people for one amatuer scam artist. Good work guys.

What's grosser than gross?

Well High Maintence and I got a special "treat" (I use that term loosely) today after getting off of the train and starting the walk to work. We got to see a couple of the gorditas make a run for their respective buses.

I have a few of thoughts on this.

#1, I am glad that I don't eat breakfast, or it would be currently residing on a sidewalk of Jackson Blvd.

#2 for big girls, a couple of them can really move quickly when it means having to walk to work instead of riding. Ironic huh? Running to catch a bus that takes longer to get to work instead of just walking there at a leisurely pace.

#3 Was it wrong that I was rooting for the bus to pull away from the stop right as the gordita got there?

Future therapy canditate

The typical trainride home for me consists of sitting in the 5 car out of 8 for the trip with the usual troublemakers, until we get to Dune Park. Then I move up to the 2nd car so that I can get off at my stop. As I moved up on Friday I ran into another person who gets off where I do, we'll call her Eck. She proceded to tell me a story about where she was sitting...

It was a 5 seat train, which consists of 2 seats on one side and 3 seats on the other. Eck sat down on the side with two seats and managed to have the whole seat to herself. Across from her sat 3 mini-muggles who were fairly well behaved for their type. In front of them was more of their group, which included the resident mini-muggle hellian. At one point he looks at one of the adults and asks if he can go and sit next to the other 3 kids, which would be in the empty seat next to Eck. The mom saids this to the kid.

"You can't sit there, it is dangerous."

LMAO. Dangerous? She must know Eck personally or something... We all are afraid of her too.