The daily all
The right to read
Yesterday, in Romania, something amazing happened.
It was a protest meeting, right in front of TVR, the Romanian national television station. About one hundred people, give or take, gathered there, sat quietly on the sidewalk, and read.
Yes. Each and every one brought a book with him (or her), and read quietly, thus protesting the termination of two cultural shows on the national television — “Lumea citeste” (The world does read) and “Nocturna” — due to be replaced by political talk-shows, these being much more interesting in the current leadership’s views. The protest was initiated by well-known cultural Romanian blogger Lucia T. and was attended by bloggers in Bucharest, as well as a few well known authors. It took only five days to organize, and the word was spread exclusively through the Romanian blogosphere.
So bloggers met. So what? You’re presenting this as if this was a huge deal, I mean, flash mobs have been seen before, and what’s so special about people reading on the sidewalk anyway? Yes, except for the fact that:
- it never happened in Romania before
- it was a flash reading mob, the first of its kind, as far as I know
- it was about culture, people. Culture!
This East-European country, fresh member of the European Union, has known its fair share of protesters. Come to think of it, there’s always something to protest against, from the price of daily necessities to the meager social protection to the low income of certain members of society (such as teachers, the ones who are supposed to lay down the foundation for a new society… but I digress). This was a benign demand for culture, a spontaneous, grassroots, completely apolitical way of asserting one’s country’s need of something more than the famous Roman recipe “panem et circences“1.
It may not be much, world. But it’s a start. This news managed to put a big smile on my face.
- means “bread and circus”, if your Latin is a little rusty [↩]
The daily commute
Having a company car is one of those double-edged perks that a decent job delivers. I mean, it’s great, don’t get me wrong: the gas prices are at most an indifferent topic for you, ditto for insurance, and you don’t get too mad if someone puts a dent in your door. Ok, I lied. Pick two out of those three.
But it’s not car ownership that got me thinking today. It’s that personal hell, that home-away-from-home (at least, if you were born in a caravan, that is), that quality time you get to spend with your fellow nine-to-fivers, namely, the daily commute.
Thinking about it in pure practical terms, it’s an absolute waste. You get to drive daily for an unspecified amount of time (x2), burning fuel and wasting away those minutes with nothing more intelligent to do than holding a wheel and dodging fellow commuters. An occasional trucker may liven up things a little by overtaking on a two-lane road, but all in all it’s a pretty dull experience. Oh, it WAS fun, at least for the first couple of months, while you learned the best time to leave home or work in order to miss some of the worse jams, or, say, those little-known shortcuts that you just had to share with half the office. Yes, they do seem more crowded nowadays, wonder why… But I digress.
After a while you even get tired of the little games. Like calculating in your head the statistic probability that the driver that’s tailgating you is actually a woman. 12.57%. Of which there’s more than 86.12% chance that she’s a lesbian, or a man trapped in a woman’s body as a dire consequence of weird transcorporalization exercises. Unproven, of course. You even get tired of playing around with the cruise control (did you know that you can actually engage cruise in 1st gear? Eat this, creeping traffic!). Reading books or gaming are both out of the question, being either to dull or too dangerous for early morning traffic. So… what to do?
Fortunately I compiled a list of things that may liven up your commute, and help you survive those dreaded, creeping minutes (that feel like hours, really) when you’re stuck in a jam and doing a stepping workout with the clutch and gas pedal. Here it is:
- Rock-paper-scissors. The easiest is to play with the fellow motorist driving alongside you. Especially great when negotiating right-of-way. Only applicable for traffic jams.
- Random radio. Listen to every station you have on your presets for exactly one minute. You can use the car’s digital clock to time it. If you don’t have one, use the car’s odometer, and listen to every station for exactly one kilometer. For extra points, try it on the hour (DJ News).
- Legal road warrior. Most drivers mentally add 5 to 8 km/h to the legally allowed speed limit on a given road, because they know they can get away with it. Don’t be corrupted by these speed demons! Drive legally! (And watch them boil in frustration in your rear view mirror.)
- Math-fu! Calculate the highest power of 2 that you possibly can IN YOUR OWN HEAD! For bonus points, recite the value to your coworkers once back in the office, and ask them to check its accuracy. This one I stole from Orson Scott Card — he uses it in Ender’s Game.
- The driver’s salute. During my years as commuter I noticed an intriguing phenomenon: it seems that certain people do notice that they’re being watched (when overtaken, for instance), and they actually turn their heads to look at you in turn. Honor these people with an Army salute. If you don’t feel confident enough to perform the salute, start with a courtly nod and work your way up. Don’t do this in a mocking manner though; people are easily ticked off and serious consequences may ensue from the subsequent road-rage attack on their part.
There are undoubtfully other, more interesting ways of livening up your daily commute. They may or may not involve water pistols, cue cards or masks of dead presidents. All I’m asking is that you check if whatever you decide to use is legal in your place of residence. I hear math may soon be outlawed in certain states, along with the theory of evolution.
Drive safely!
I’m doomed
Yes. Doomed. The great dude in the sky is watching, and he’s mighty pissed, let me tell ya, boy. Wait till he gets his hands on you, they said. Boiling for eternity can be a pretty gruesome pastime.
Who’s “they”, I hear you ask? They’re your only hope, Obi Wan. Apparently it’s what they’ve witnessed that makes them so bloody righteous — or at least it’s something that some dude witnessed some hundred years ago. Then he told someone, who told some other guy, and pretty soon you got some serious serial witnessing going on. And yesterday they came to witness my sheer ignorance of what the first dude said.
I must admit, I’m a sucker for clichés. Ranging from the mild “what, you’ve lost HIM again?” to the obscure “I’m not sure my religion is legal in this country”. Like you, I’ve read them all and laughed about it, while secretly wondering whatever could motivate these guys to get up in the morning and go at it, knowing full well that they’ll encounter mostly laughter and scorn. However, when facing the golden opportunity, I cracked. I was all polite and stuff, the smiling and firm heathen stereotype, if you know what I mean. I even managed to dodge the complimentary brochure and sent them on their way in less than two minutes. It was a great show of civil behavior. Man, how could I miss such a chance! I’m still cringing inside.
The question remains though. How do they do it? Is it a form of penance, being verbally abused all day long? Or are most people like me, missing their chances, and the ones who are actually doing it are few and far between? Talking about it, I hear that religion can offer great support in times of need — and seeing these guys on the street, I tend to believe it. Is it the right kind of support though? Good question.
In the mean time, I’m doomed. Toast. Marshmallows. Can you grasp the sheer size of it? I mean, even HE won’t forgive me for missing such an opportunity. Oh man.
