The Commuting Cannibal's Succulent Sidekick & the Ringtone of Doom

I’ve never been one to embrace public transportation; this commuting cannibal prefers his territorial bubble to extend beyond two feet in either direction, something that a transit tube cannot hope to accommodate during peak periods. Unfortunately, this cannibal also likes to have dollars in his denim and with parking costs approaching $20 a day in the downtown core; I was most certainly feeling the penny pinch. I had to succumb to sardine-dom, swallow my pride for a ride on the ol’ bullet bus and prepare to breathe the recycled air of those around me. I wasn’t ecstatic, but on the bright side, this meant that I would no longer have to crawl my way through rush hour traffic and that I could more or less just coast along in relative comfort with little to no commute related stress. I would travel in a wheel bound coffin followed by a jaunt on the light rail train – joining the ranks of the caffeinated dead on their journey to add souls to the money machine – like so much coal or kindling to the fires of function.

My experience this morning was surprisingly smooth, unlike that of my succulent sidekick who found out that public transit can not only rob you of patience but it can also re-establish why $20 a day isn’t a bad price considering the transit toll on your sanity…but I’ll turn it over to my cannibal correspondent to elaborate:

“Christmas has come early.

This morning, like most woeful workdays, found me squeezed into a train compartment with 150 of my favorite strangers. The ride is always an unpleasant experiment in pushing the boundaries of personal space, but this morning was especially offensive.

While scanning the compartment my eyes settled upon one woman. She was looking at her cell phone with such glee I wondered if she had not just received a naked picture of her internet boyfriend (I thought I stopped sending her those quite some time ago – cannibal). I let my mind wander and began making up a story about why she had chosen to wear that jacket with those shoes and I wondered where her oddly colored purse fit into the mix, just as I had settled upon her mind set, IT HAPPENED.

I heard Christmas music.

Not regular Christmas music, but the offensive off key processed cell phone ring version. To my horror I realized that Dame Edna's cell was making the noise. I shot her a look that could have killed any assortment of shambling zombie or fast approaching foe but she seemed unfazed by my hatred. She continued. I thought I was going to cry out against her. I looked around for support from my fellow commuting dead, but nothing. I tried to will her to spontaneously combust, but again my mind must have been elsewhere because not only did she not burst into flames but she continued to scroll through each and every ring tone the phone had to offer.

Finally she settled on Jingle Bells (after listening to it 3 times) and gave us all one more piercing earful before she glanced around to train to see if anyone else was as pleased as she was.

We were not.

I am not a Grinch (though I do look great in green) but I think Christmas is going to weigh heavy on my small black heart this year.
I have resolved that I will keep it simple. Christmas will be grass roots for me. A Small tree, popcorn strings, surround myself by people I love and eggnog (surround yourself in eggnog, sounds like a photo opportunity – cannibal). Lots and lots of eggnog (sweet).

To the tone deaf commuter with terrible taste, I thank you. You have reminded me what the season is not about.”

So please folks, if you are a commuting soul in the festive mood, please be considerate to those charcoal souls around you and limit your ring tone experimentation to the bare minimum, especially when in the close confines of a train/bus. You wouldn’t want to ruin Christmas now would you?

iPod played "Dame Edna - Jingle Bells" while posting

Killing Halloween – Post Pumpkin Observations

The Great Pumpkin has come and gone, leaving you all with nothing but a gory Grinch. Allow me to explain.

Underneath the naughty nightie of North America, the Halloween merchandising machine (or Magic Bullet if you prefer) extracts an estimated 3.3 billion dollars in royal revenue from our rosy red rectums (this does not include “treat” sales from what I gather). Knowing this, it’s easy to accept that the bloated bean counters and cattlemen of currency will never truly bury All Hallows Eve beneath the land of the leaves - not until the day after its no longer profitable of course - so why do I feel so used? Sore like a morning prostitute left with nothing but a sock full of pennies and a bad case of rug burn on my forehead? On Halloween night, we were "visited" almost 100 glorious ghosts and gory goblins howling up at us from the veranda, prompting two trips to the local convenience store to replenish ghoulish goodies for the kiddies. Halloween is most certainly undead in our suburban neighborhood, but there was something wrong. It was as if someone had tipped the casket to reveal that it wasn’t Uncle Fester inside, it was bags of fake snow, spools of red ribbon and uneaten fruit cake added for weight.

I slipped out over the weekend to purchase some last minute Halloween horrors to amp up the sweet scares on the front porch and possibly snag a few bags of back up bars for the spooky specters (which still wasn’t enough). It was there that I was confronted by something truly frightening – Christmas crap – and not just a light dusting of it either. That right, October 28th and there I was, lost in an aisle of ornaments, snow blinded by old man Santa stuff and Frosty the Snowman’s charcoal stare. Halloween items were pushed to the clearance bins or hidden away at the back like unwanted step children at a fine family gathering. I guess that when the granddaddy of money making holidays is but two scant months away, they have to amp up the presentation, wouldn’t want us to forget now would they?

I was oddly offended. I grabbed my full sized plastic skeleton (when I could’ve just used a real one from my cellar anyway) and casually made my way up to the check out counter, chewing it all up as a cannibal often does. The cashier was pricing miniature snow globes featuring the red menace himself, perched high atop his crimson sleigh - setting up shop in the white washed winter sky like a drop of blood on colorless cotton sheets. I await for her to shuffle her chores from the counter top and mention that I found it funny that it’s not even Halloween yet and I was being assaulted by Christmas stuff like it but a fortnight way. She nods at me like cashiers often do and presents me with her best pacification smile; “I know, it’s crazy, hey?” I wonder if she thinks that “fortnight” means spending an evening in a wooden shack, but I choose to carry on.

To truly test if she was paying attention I consider telling her that it probably meant less work for the marketing man-machines in head office to redesign/reprint signage stating “Welcome Santa!” instead of “Welcome Satan!” but she wouldn’t have found it funny even if they do both wear red suits. Christmas spending this year is expected to surpass 450 billion bucks, that’s enough get any son of god out of bed in the morning much less some corporate whore eager to beat us to death with him.

I left the store feeling like I had been bled dry and thought that maybe next year we’d be expected to hand out Christmas candy to Halloween kids at the door dressed like elves, snowmen and even the big red whore himself.

Ho Ho Ho... indeed.

iPod played "Tom Waits - Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis" while posting