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    Wednesday, August 30, 2006

    Encounters with assholes

    Two days ago I was nearly killed by some jerk opening his door in front of my rapidly approaching bike. I was on a busy street, moving with traffic, maintaining as much distance as possible from the parked cars without actually taking up a whole lane (ie. I was biking along the white dotted line that delineates the parking lane from the rest of the street). I was trying to be vigilant. And the mo'fo just opens his door right into me, crashing into my handlebars and sending me sprawling right into the path of moving cars. Luckily the people driving stopped before I was killed.

    So I shouted at the fucker who had opened his door, "Can you look before you open your door?!" And he just shrugged and made a pained expression, and said the following:

    "I did look. I saw you. But you know, the cars have to be able to open their doors. I mean - c'mon. You were biking too close."

    So he did look. So he saw me. So he saw me, saw that I was biking past his big-ass beige van which sticks out maybe a third more into the street than any of the other parked cars, and he decided "what the hell?". Even though it was entirely probable that he would hurt me, or even kill me. That was worth not having to wait the three seconds it would have taken to let me go by.

    Did I scream at him? Did I ask someone on the sidewalk who had overheard to be my witness, and threaten to press charges against his ass for assault? Did I bite my lip, but then go back twenty minutes later and key his car and slash his tires? No, I just glared at him in shock and indignation and then got on my bike and pedaled off. I wasn't badly hurt or anything, just midly traumatized by having been laid out across the tarmac with a motor vehicle driving toward my head. In his mind, I'm sure it was nothing. But he could, in fact, have killed me. Quite easily.

    This is the problem with these biker/driver encounters, typically. Because the person on the bike is almost always the one who is hurt or in shock, and then we are just not in the position to think clearly. And so the driver always wins.

    * * *


    I want to find this fucker, and knock him to the ground, and hold a tire iron to his throat, and explain in no uncertain terms what I think of him. I want to have him arrested for assault and for that to be on his permanent record. I want to have tea with his mother and explain to her what a piece of shit her son his. I want to drive by his van in a tank, scraping off the entire side, and hopefully taking off his door and mirror, and then say, "Oh, c'mon..." with a dismissive shrug and a pained look.

    * * *


    The second part of this story is that after leaving the scene of the crime, I was feeling really shaken and angry and so I tried to channel that anger into something positive. I imagined ways I could try to make things better in the city, like events I could organize, bikers taking back the street, stuff like that. I was starting to feel more composed by the time I got where I was going.

    And then I arrived at the house of this couple I clean for, and I walked in the door, and the woman said, "how are you?" and I started to cry.

    And then tonight, all these hours later, I was doing the dishes and just started crying again. I don't know why I am so upset. I feel so powerless, and upset with myself for not doing anything. I don't feel fierce at all. That man didn't give a shit, not a shit for me. I was a nothing, a smudge on the paintwork. There was nothing I could have said that would have made him see that it is wrong to treat another human being so. All I could have done would have been to hurt him back, make him shocked and angry in turn. And it would accomplish approximately nothing at all.

    Sometimes other people terrify me.

    Tuesday, August 01, 2006

    Oh the excitement!

    Oh my, I can't believe how much I love youtube sometimes. The stuff one finds. This is an old Sesame Street segment that pops into my head sometimes, and which I never thought to see again - but here it is! And it's so very deep. Truly, we all live in a capital I. In the middle of the desert, in the centre of the sky.




    And then there is this classic:



    M and I often quote this to each other, when we are trying to remember a list of things. Funny how this stuff sticks in your head.

    This one used to intrigue me a lot as a kid:



    Anyway, Sesame Street used to be awesome. I wish someone would anthologize this stuff. I would watch it every time I felt restless and sad. Nostalgia is such a calming drug.

    UPDATE - Oh look, speak of the devil.