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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Busses (or Buses) Bussing

There is a post... in a blog... on a site... in the web... that caused me sort of a fibrillation of the OCD, but all is well. It is at http://theoddneighbor.blogspot.com/ and it deals with the public transportation system in Missoula, Montana: http://theoddneighbor.blogspot.com/search/label/missoula "Missoula buses talk to us now... They caution us: Remain seated until bus comes to a complete stop. Do not talk to the operator while bus is in motion. And they tell us where we are: Now approaching Russell and Wyoming. Now approaching Missoula Library - Front and Adams. Listening to this for 20 some minutes is incredibly annoying, I can't imagine what it's like for the drivers who hear it all day long... This morning, I was on route 1, and the bus I boarded was in an especially chatty mood. For every stop along the route, we were reminded twice of its approach. And then we started approaching Brooks and Sussex. A good 4 blocks out, my helpful bus made sure to tell us. Then, about 2 blocks out, it reminded us again. And then a block out, and then yet again, when we were caught at the traffic light at the corner of Brooks and Sussex, it told us twice more, "now approaching - Brooks and Sussex. (Maybe Zeno had a point.) I asked the driver, "does it ever approach orgasm?" He didn't skip a beat. "Only if you rub the seats." " This works on so many levels for me. First, there is the spicey latakian mixture of sex and janitorial procedures. I mean, the very notion of "rubbing" seats whereon thousands of people have sat morning, noon, and night; in good weather and bad; feeling tip-top and half-seas-over; constipated contraltos and flatulent flautists; and all in a setting of quasi-foreplay and do-it-yourself-love-making is a truly Goyaesque creation, not to mention a Durer-like invocation of the Sexual Apocalypse!! (The Sexual Apocalypse followed on the Sexual Revolution.) Secondly, talking machines are rather fun. Thirdly, from a When Harry Met Sally perspective, we could think of it in terms of Rob Reiner's mother saying "I'll get off where she's getting off !" (Getting off the bus, that is.) This approach is reminescent of the music hall and filled with double-entendres of the keenest sort. Fourthly, it brings to the fore again the terrible problem of "bus" versus "buss". I mean, "buses" should rhyme with "fuses" and "busses" should be the plural of "buss" ( kiss), so where does that leave the plural of "bus", the vehicle? Context. The native speaker relies on context. Fifthly, this business of Zeno and whether there was a point, after all, to his philosophy is inspired. To wit, the entire validity of any philosophical system should include a run through with video and audio. For millenia, Zeno's Paradoxes have stumped the chumps and thrown a spanner-or monkey wrench-into the works of natural philosophy. However, once one becomes aware that by adding Images and a Sound Track, one may reduce pompous Zeno to no more than an annoying yenta ("Don't forget your bags! I told you the number 7 bus, not the 10! Your stop's coming soon. Pay attention!"), we see that what we took for a critique of the continuum was nothing but kvetch, kvetch, kvetch!

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