07 April 2009

Dear Upstairs Neighbor

Why has your stomping gotten worse?! For all the complaining I do on the Internet, I am wholly certain you have no idea that this blog exists, much less that I'm your irritated downstairs neighbor, and therefore your elephantine stomping can't possibly be retaliatory.

The only explanation I can venture is that you went away on spring break (which was sweet heavenly silence, you should go out of town more often. Like, permanently), where you spent the week eating cheeseburgers and small children.

And now you're eating trails of Cheetos that have been laid across your apartment (J's contribution to the theory) for exercise, since you clearly weigh 350 lbs, but I have to say - you would benefit more from a stationary bike, and so would my sanity.

Signed,
Please Sweet Jesus do not renew your lease.

03 April 2009

“Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol is working like a charm!”

I found this article today concerning the overwhelming number of pedestrian deaths in LA: http://www.citywatchla.com/content/view/2148/

I wish I could say I thought there was a solution, but as long as people rely so heavily on their cars to transport them from place to place, this is going to be a problem. I can't count the number of times on my hands that I have nearly been hit by cars while I'm in the middle of a crosswalk, and once I nearly struck a kid while I was in my car because he darted into the street unexpectedly - in a crosswalk. For that reason alone, I can't blame the drivers any more than the authorities can, but at least I wasn't eating a sandwich when I nearly hit the kid

Long story...somewhat shorter: Some woman once came so close to hitting me that she actually tapped my leg with her bumper while I was coming home from the supermarket, just a block away from my house - in the home stretch if you will. It wasn't until long after she'd sped away, screaming at me to go fuck myself that I realized how close I had come to being sprawled out in the intersection, a bloody mess, with the eggs I'd so carefully packed smashed all over the pavement. The woman who blamed me for being in the street while I had the walk signal? She had been eating a fucking sandwich when she shit her pants realizing there was someone in the crosswalk. I didn't even have an opportunity to respond, I just stood on the street corner, jaw slack, eyes wide, while it sunk in what had just happened. For all the care I had taken to look both ways twice, she probably wouldn't have been held accountable, anyway - it was a sandwich, but it could have just as easily been a cell phone or a noisy child in the backseat, or she could have been rummaging for a CD. It still would have been my fault for being in the street; just as much consolation to a dead pedestrian than an injured one. If that's not a WTF realization, I don't know what is.

Let's please keep in perspective that this is in Cambridge, of all places - one of America's most walkable cities, not that traffic cesspit we call Los Angeles. To make matters worse, they seem to have been channeling Homer Simpson to come up with a solution. FTA:
Meanwhile, traffic engineers argue for the removal of crosswalks in Los Angeles, pointing to a study performed several decades ago in San Diego that indicates that less traffic fatalities occur without a crosswalk than with a crosswalk.
“By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.”
“Hmm; how does it work?”
“It doesn’t work; it’s just a stupid rock!”
“Uh-huh.”
“... but I don’t see any tigers around, do you?”
“Lisa, I want to buy your rock...”