How to compound my already low opinion of you

Not sure if you can see it in this picture or not, but if you're gonna be the guy sitting with his legs spread wide open, taking up the 'man space' you seem to think you're entitled to, you might want to do up your fly.

Boots or booty?

It doesn't matter how many times I see this (and I see it enough that I'm pretty sure this is my second blog post about it), I still don't get it. Is this the younger generation's version of socks and sandals?

"I wasn't sure if it was a shorts day or a boots day today ...so I wore both! Problem solved." I realize that Vancouver has basically 2 seasons, cool & wet and warm & less wet, and that the transition between them can be confusing at times, but on no day EVER have I been conflicted between wearing fur boots or booty shorts.

It's really amazing that I managed to keep my clothes on the whole ride

So I'm eavesdropping on the bus this morning (not actively, but they are right beside me and I can't help but hear them) when I hear two things that I'm certain mean this conversation will be good fodder for later mocking. They are talking about "relationships" and "high school". Oh boy. I stop to actively eavesdrop. I wish I had just recorded the whole conversation, but alas you will have to settle for the Cliffs Notes version, mostly of what he said; she wasn't that interesting.

The first thing I hear is him mocking his own view of relationships in high school. I suppose that's fair, especially given that his view was "I just thought that if you had a crush on someone, you tell them that you like them and then you're like boyfriend and girlfriend. No dates; no compatibility checking; you just tell someone you like them and then you're in a relationship."
From here the conversation takes a turn to pre-Facebook social media (Facebook didn't even exist when I was in high school and even I sometimes have trouble imagining there was life before fb!) They are now talking about MSN messenger, of which I am old enough to have fond memories. She is reminiscing about its eventual decline and he pipes up that he basically only used it for video chats.
Her: "Oh yeah, I remember those video chats."
Him: "Oh, you don't know about my video chats, do you?"
He says this like they were some epic legend that most of his friends are already aware of. (Going out on a limb here before he gets to explain, I'm guessing his video chats are actually only legendary in his own mind and that I can guess exactly what was involved in these "chats".) Sure enough he goes on to explain that girls really liked to strip for him. (I would say that any of a variety of non-PC slut-shaming adjectives apply here, but I'm pretty sure legendary is not one of them.)
Him: "I wasn't even popular in high school. But a lot of girls just wanted to do me. I don't know why they liked me so much."
I don't know why either. Strangely I'm feeling no desire to take my clothes off...

Now girl goes on some rant about how people found out your email address/how they got in contact with you/being added by people you didn't know. I dunno exactly. It doesn't really matter what she was saying; the important part is that it spurred Mr. Self-declared chick bait into talking about how "this one girl added me and I didn't even know who she was. But she started video chatting me all the time. Then one day I accepted a chat with her and she just started taking her clothes off. This was like grade 9."
Cue more self-deprecation.
"I don't even know why girls liked me. I was a skinny little Hindu kid. I had nasty little curly pubes on my chin."
Alright humble-bragger, we get it. You were a loser and yet had a magical ability to make girls' clothes fall off. Taking a huge stab in the dark here, but I'm guessing it had less to do with you and more to do with the girls. I know it's been a few years since I was in high school, but I don't think it's changed much; for that matter, I don't think people change that much.

At this point the bus is coming to the last stop. The conversation (or at least my passive participation therein) concludes with the girl asking if his current girlfriend knows about said video chats. He is quick to respond that she doesn't, which seems to please the girl. Too bad I didn't get a picture of him; otherwise I'd say, maybe she knows now...
Opportunity missed.

Emergency brakes

If you've been on skytrain lately, you may have noticed they have started to make random announcements telling people to make sure they are holding on to a handrail at all times while on the train. Now let me tell you why this is important. It's because sometimes you'll be just outside a station and a track intrusion alarm (not audible btw, so you don't know it's coming) will go off causing your train to slam on its emergency brakes. The train will stop very suddenly. You will probably go flying forward or sideways and practically crush the hand of the poor girl next to you despite holding on to the rail (my apologies to that girl). If you weren't hanging on, well then her whole body may have been crushed.

Added bonus: when the transit officials come to check the track and make sure it is safe to send your train on its way, if you are lucky, there will be a guy on the train with a bike during rush hour who will be informed that this is not allowed and that the train will not be allowed to leave until he gets off. He will say he's not getting off and that he's only got one stop left. No one will care if he stays because the train is far from full, except of course the angry transit lady who will not let the train go until he takes the bike off the train.
Now I'm certainly all about having rules on transit, but the spirit of the "no bikes in rush hour" rule is hardly being broken when the train is not full.

This story doesn't really belong here

I was at Columbia this afternoon waiting to change trains. I was standing just outside the open doors of the train I wasn't taking when I spotted a guy running up the stairs obviously trying to catch the train, and he was not going to make it. So I stuck my arm in the train door to hold it open for him. Now the transit officials don't much like when you do this sort of thing, but they weren't around, and besides, by now, the number of times I wish someone had done this for me is probably higher than I care to count. He made it onto the train, and I choose to believe his day was better for it.

Now if I was a proper feminist, here is where I go on a rant about how he called me "sweetheart" as he got on the train. However, I'm not a proper feminist, so it didn't really bother me; also, I am a jaded transit rider used to dealing with people who are frequently rude and obnoxious, and what really caught my attention was that what preceded that "sweetheart" was "thanks". There's a word you don't hear nearly enough on transit. He also sounded genuinely surprised that someone would hold the door for him, which he shouldn't be if people would just follow the ultimate transit rule: "Make transit suck less for others, not more."