A few random ramblings…

There’s a great many things in this world I don’t understand.

I don’t understand overweight people complaining about being overweight whilst they finish their third Big Mac.. meanwhile they do no exercise and sit around on their arses all day.

I don’t understand politics. And I don’t mean the usual bi-partisan representative government type… though i’ll freely admit I don’t get that. I’m talking about office politics and relationship politics and the kind of ‘you scratch my back and i’ll scratch yours’ bullshit that goes on in day to day life and stops anything from truly being achieved.

I don’t understand women… but then again, I don’t think men are meant to understand women. I think it would upset the natural order of things if we did.

But there is one thing that I’ll never understand that I don’t ever want to… and that’s hypocrisy.

Now, MX magazine (a free newspaper that’s given out daily) has been running a column where people can write in and vent their spleens about whatever get’s under their skin. For the past couple of months they’ve been running a series of letters about public transport and how peak hour has been a case of sardines on rails. There’s been comments made about the inequity of men and women, young and old and so on and so forth, each case someone going on about someone not giving up a seat and blah blah blah.

A few things have become blatantly obvious in all this:
1. This city is full of shortsighted hypocrites
2. Those hypocrites are full of shit and feel that they need to justify their tenuous positions publicly.

And the irony of my blogging all this is not lost upon me either, but I accepted my lot in life as both hypocrite and walking contradiction many moons ago.

Case in point of what I mean. The other day I was on my way to work via Cityrail… and being peak hour, the train is packed. It’s great, Cityrail increases ticket prices something like 4 times in the past 2 years and continue to squeeze us in to the point of it being unsafe. Little wonder people are choosing to drive instead… anyway, I digress.

Like I said, I’m on the train, and being a full fare paying passenger, exercise my right to occupy a vacant seat. I sit in one of the 2×2 seats (where you have 2 seats facing another 2 seats) next to a nice gentleman and opposite what can only be described as living proof that hell will refuse entry for some. Seriously, this woman (and I use the term liberally, not wanting to offend any of the wonderful women I know) had a permanently puckered expression that made a cats bum look relaxed by comparison. Now, what did this woman do to annoy me so much that I chose such a disgustingly colorful, yet apt description for her? Simple. Whilst others were standing and struggling to stay upright thanks to Evel Knievel being in the drivers seat of the train, this woman is occupying one seat for herself, and another for her handbag.

Now, I’ll freely admit… this seriously pissed me off. But what added to it, was the fact that she turned her back towards the aisle and thus anyone that would want to get her attention… as well as the fact that she constantly belted my inuured ankle with her shoes during the trip (injury from playing sport, not from the extreme sport of taking public transport in Brisbane).

The train ride is only about 20 mins into the city, but within about 2 mins, I was at what I like to call “Smartass Critical Mass”. This is where my sense of justice coupled with the urge to mess with ignorant wankers outweighs common sense and explodes in acts of indignant mischief.

Now, up to this point, i’ve been doing the right thing. I’ve tried ignoring her, i’ve tried having my bag on my lap… I’ve tried counting to 100 to stay calm. But since Ms Cats-arse-pucker 2007 is still being rude and parking her handbag on the seat whilst paying travellers are standing, I feel that it’s time to level the playing field.

So… i try to get my bag onto the floor, either between or next to my feet. To do this I must move, but as we’ve established, my ankle is getting belted about by said individual. That’s ok… since now I know where her foot is, I can drop my bag with the several kilos of lunch, books, and various items I take with me.

Pilot to bombadier… you may proceed with your run…. and BOOM! Score one direct hit.

Now, this woman shoots me a foul look, and so I feign an apology… to the guy next to me, making it look as though I think i’ve dropped my bag on his foot accidentally. “Sorry mate, I just hate how there’s no room on the train, especially when you have ignorant pricks placing their bags on the seats”.

This guy is pretty switched on, and I get the feeling he feels similarly about this woman (who, by the way, needs to learn a few things about the application of makeup… especially the less-is-more principle… seriously, a first year plasterers apprentice with a trowel and a tube of Sellys gapfiller could do better). The old broad is now shooting me deathstares that would make a Sith Lord tremble, but I stand my ground… besides, the fun is only getting started.

Now that my bag is on the floor, there’s no foot room… but just as importantly, there’s no way for her to keep belting my ankle. So I take a little advantage in this, and keep nudging my bag into her leg… not enough that she can blow her stack at me and all that… after all, the trainride is more and more like the Corkscrew Rollercoaster at Dreamworld by the minute… right up until she loses it, and puts her pen through the pages of her puzzlebook.

Swish! Nothin’ but net!

Of course, this would be enough to feel totally vindicated… but being that it’s a friday, i’m in casual wear and not my usual employer identified corporate wear, I decide to go for the Academy Winning performance at the end.

We arrive at Central, and before she has a chance to move, I stand, and promptly decide to let every other passenger on the train past to leave first, blocking her in. It seems only fair, after all, that she enjoy her seat that little longer since she went to so much trouble to keep not one, but two, all to herself. So not only is justice served, but a dose of chivalry towards all the passengers that had to stand because of her goes in there to twist the screws just a little harder. All that much better that my backpack is now on my back and is no doubt less than a few inches from her face.

Do I feel justified in this. Well, to quote a mate of mine…’Absobloodylutely!’

See, dear reader, any other day of the week, i’d have given precisely two shits about the situation… but having read MX the night before and seen everyone get so pissed off about their various view points, I was taking the point that it doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, old, young, black, white, pink with a sodding yellow stripe down the centre… as far as I’m concerned, we should all be held to the same standards. If you’ve paid for something, you’re bloody well entitled to use it. So, if you’ve paid a full fare, you deserve the right to sit, or at least decide for yourself if you want to. The conditions for riding on public transport are pretty clear when it comes to bags and feet on seats…

So, do I normally act like such an asshole? No, as a matter of fact, I don’t. But it shits me to tears to see people do the wrong thing and get away with it. Had it been a suited up businessman, or heaven forbid someone like me wearing sneakers, jeans, tshirt of some band, listening to my iPod, with their bag on the seat, security would have been all over them like fat kids on a chocolate cake. I’d have been treated like an enemy of the state, cuffed, capsicum sprayed and cavity searched… all without dinner and a movie first… and without even getting a phone number or finding out their name.

We are so ready to condemn people who rightfully use that which they’ve paid for… whether it be something as choosing to sit on the train when you’re a full fare paying customer, or enjoying lifes luxuries, such as driving a nice car, having a nice house, wearing nice clothes. Case in point, I drive a sports car… and damned if I’ll ever apologise for being on the roads in it. I’ve worked hard and it’s time to enjoy some of the fruits of my labour. Besides, i’d rather the engineered safety of a vehicle that can do 260km/h over a family car any day… even if I never take said vehicle to it’s limits. Should I apologise for having such a vehicle? Hell NO! Just the same as there’s no way I should apologise for sitting when I pay full fare on the train, and nor should I apologise for sticking it to some selfish prat that can’t have her handbag on her lap whilst travelling. If she wants two seats, let her buy two tickets. Airlines make ‘large’ people do it all the time, just like they make parents pay for an extra seat for their babies.

So tell me… how’s what she did fair? Sure, what I did could be considered a really poor act in retaliation… but it seems nowadays that more and more people are getting away with the very things that others are always getting nabbed for.

Damned if I’ll sit back and accept that or any other kind of hypocrisy.