Public Transportation Bingo!

I saw a man wearing a kilt earlier this week.  I did a classic double-take: from the waist up he was dressed like any other man, with a half-zip up black fleece sweater.  On the bottom, though, was the kilt and his stout, pale, slightly hairy legs.  This was on the train.  I didn't see any other people wearing kilts that day, or even in this month.  What are the chances of seeing a guy in a kilt on a non-holiday?  This question made me want to come up with my own version of BINGO based on the typical and the unusual people and events I've witnessed while riding public transportation:

B Be my friend?	I Icky habits	N Normal, not atypical people	G Go.	O Oh the things you can hear!
Man wearing a kilt	Person sitting next to you reeks	Tourist couple	Delay due to inclement weather	Stranger attempts to engage you in a serious conversation
Someone reading a book on an esoteric topic	Someone eats something smelly	Woman applying makeup	Delay due to police action	Uncomfortably loud and personal  conversation takes place
Person with dog too big to sit in lap	Nose-picking	Free Space!	Unexplained delay	Loud baby
Musician carrying an instrument	An uncovered sneeze	Field trip school group	Someone almost falls due to sudden jerking movement of vehicle	Can hear every word of the song someone’s listening to on headphones
Someone who has almost completed the daily crossword	Someone who leaves trash behind	Man in business suit and sneakers	People cluster around exits rather than moving all the way into the vehicle	A mumbling vehicle operator

I think I'll see how close I get to a BINGO this week, and see how well I fare for the next month.

Odors on the train

Today the lady who sat down beside me on my train ride smelled like cumin, like curry powder.  No, she was not Indian, she was a white lady with blonde hair and brown roots and enormous buggy brown eyes.  Really.  When she sat down I wondered, "Why does this white lady smell like cumin?"  She looked sort of like she was coming from a workout and carried this enormous backpack.  I have nothing against that scent but it is jarring to smell it from someone on the train, and an intimidating-looking white lady at that.

There was this one time about two months ago when a tall shiny-headed black man sat next to me and I sort of fell in love with how good he smelled.  It was distinctly masculine but not gross pisswater cologne or any cloying Axe spray.  It was faint but perceptible.  And kind of heavenly.  He didn't stay on the train long and his scent did not linger after he left.  Actually, I haven't thought of that moment until today, when I was just thinking about odors and public transportation.

Usually you deodorize or fragrance yourself for yourself-- because you like the scent you purchased or because you smell bad.  Or you spray yourself to make yourself scent-astic to those around you, because your girlfriend/boyfriend bought you that eau du toilette or you think that the Old Spice guy Isaiah Mustafa was onto something with the "man your man could smell like" thing.  The problem with scents is that they can be so personal: what smells great on someone else might stink on you, depending on your body chemistry and natural body odor as well as your skin.  Also, what your nose can tolerate might be insufferable to someone else.  The smell of roses makes me want to gag, gives me headaches-- roses really smell like poo-oo-oo.  I'm currently trying to decide whether I want to purchase a certain fragrance: it smells smoky/wood and floral at the same time.  It's unique, not sweet, and doesn't smell like something an old(er) lady would wear.  I'm just worried that I'll buy it and then decide I don't like it, or find out that it comes off too strong and I'll subject my fellow commuters with my weird odor.  If there's one thing I really cannot tolerate, it's lack of respect for others while riding the train.

Things that drive me batty, part III

Typos/misspelled words

MORONS!
If I were a Moran I'd be insulted.  "Moran" automatically makes me think of Mr. Sebastian Moran, featured in The Adventure of the Empty House. According to Sherlock Holmes Moran is the second-most dangerous man in England (Prof. Moriarty is/was the most dangerous).

I'm no Scripps kid but I was always pretty good at spelling.  I was a bookworm-- still love to read but can't do so as voraciously as in the past. I value it (good spelling and grammar), and must admit that it irks me to see words misspelled or misused, e.g. "hear" instead of "here"; "there" instead of "their" or "they're", etc.  It's not completely fair of me, though, because American English is fraught with sooo many inconsistencies; there are just as many loopholes as rules when it comes to how and why a word is spelled the way it is.  Even the word "spelled/misspelled" can also be written "spelt/misspelt".  Why?  Well, why not?

(I just contradicted myself there, didn't I? Hmm.  Well, there's nothing concrete, no real rhyme or reason as to why certain things drive me batty, but it is what it is.)

Terrifying Movie Cakes

I'm sure that there are other cakes in movies that are more memorable, but I feel like most of the time cake is used for comic relief.

1. Congratulations cake from Black Swan.


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This cake is the reason I made this list.  When it--the cake-- first came out I gasped, and shrunk into my seat when I left the theater it stained in my mind as one of the scariest scenes in the film.  It's pink.  It's heavily frostinged.  It's too big, and presented to the wrong person by the wrong person.  A nice gesture, I guess, but I'd like to know how many ballerinas would appreciate this extravagant dessert as a celebratory gift for an accomplishment as major as getting to play Odette/Odile in Swan Lake.  Ach, I just can't get over how much frosting is on that thing.  I'm biased because I'm not big on frosting in the first place, but just...look at all those roses! Like the size of golf balls, they are.  Really.  Unnecessary.  But even scarier is when the mother gets angry with her daughter's reaction to it and threatens to trash it, throw the entire uneaten cake in the trash.  Even if I find it unappetizing I still hate to throw food away, especially if it's almost completely untouched. And I'd do almost anything to avoid the wrath of that mother.


2.  Chocolate cake from Matilda


Of course I was going to put this on here.  An easy pick from childhood.  This cake looks absolutely delicious but screams for a glass (or half gallon) of milk.  This cake isn't just big, it's obscenely enormous, a chocolate colossus.  The kid whose punishment it is to eat the entire thing looks like he'd be up to the challenge, and ultimately he triumphs!  But it's sort of a lose-lose situation: if he didn't finish the cake he'd get further punished; because he finishes the cake Mrs. Trunchbull smashes the empty platter on his head AND he probably gets severe indigestion AND he still gets punished, along with his peers.


3. Welcome back cake from The Fighter

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 (Warning: slight spoiler ahead)
This cake is:
- a big sheet cake, meant to be shared with many people
- frosted just the way I like it
- pregnant with potentially dangerous implications.  At this point in the story Dicky has gotten released from prison and is ready to make a new start.  The family brought this cake and made signs to surprise him with a "welcome back" sort of celebration party, but tensions are high when Dicky realizes that his brother Micky wants to train without him.  I think he doesn't say anything as he picks up the cake and walks it over to his crack house.  It's a tense moment: will Dicky's anger drive him back to his old crack addict ways, after he's gone through withdrawal and been clean while in the big house?  What will he do? And what's going to happen to the cake-- will he share it with his addict friends or what?


4.  Dessert from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

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Okay, so this is a cheat because the dessert featured is a pudding and not a cake.  But it looks like a cake-like and it's terrifying in its own right so I decided to include it.  Here the dessert floats (house elf Dobby uses a Hover Charm) and threatens to fall on the heads of dinner guests if Harry disregards Dobby's warnings and attends Hogwarts.  Frightening stuff, fraught with bad consequences.  Additionally, for me, that thing is decorated with (too) many maraschino cherries.  I abhor those cherries and hate to associate with them.  And again, there is excessive frosted decoration.

Things That Drive Me Batty, part II

If I ever got a one-off from behaving properly I would probably take that chance to stand outside a tanning salon and punch people as they come out, fresh from their tanning session.  It's mostly the tanning beds that I rail against, and I completely support any and all efforts to ban them.  Too many people-- especially young women-- have been diagnosed with skin cancer and malignant tumors and it makes me sick to think that this type of disease is one of the most easily preventable.  Lying in a tanning bed is so much more UV exposure than just spending a summer day at the beach without wearing sunscreen. Gah! And for what?  For skin that is temporarily darker, for the fleeting opportunity to look slightly slimmer or whatever.  And I doubt that it's cheap.  And in the long run these same people will be shelling out loads more money to counteract the wrinkles and age spots they wrought because their excessive exposure to skin-toasting treatments have sped up the aging process of their skin!  I feel myself launching onto the broader issue of The Beauty Myth, a topic for another day and time... I have only slightly less acerbic feelings toward spray tanning.  But mostly I take umbradge in the use--nay, the existence of tanning beds and the salons that own them.

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Things That Drive Me Batty, part I

Sugar/sweeteners sprinkled on fruit

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Fruit has sugars in it, so why add sugar?  It's already sweet, a fat-free dessert designed by nature (and modified by scientists) to taste good on its own!  And if the fruit isn't sweet then maybe it hasn't ripened properly, in which case one should wait and not smother the flavour with added sugar.

Now I understand the appeal of chocolate-dipped fruit-- anything that has chocolate in it is fine in my book-- but otherwise I find it an abominable practise to dip fruit into sugar.  I know this attitude seems hypocritical but it makes sense in my (oft-illogical) mind.  If anything, the cover of a box of Truvia should be coffee or tea or something that is not sweet on its own.