Wtf: A Study in Murphy's Law

[black_sluggard]

This has seemed to be a nothing-goes-right day for everyone I've come across. First day of the new quarter for me, so unused to a schedule that starts an hour earlier than it did last quarter, I got so caught up in writing the newest interlude for Black Edelweiss (#13, no less) that by the time I finished I looked up at the clock and realized I was supposed to have left for the bus stop half an hour before. Fortunately, my sister's friend was helping her drop off a computer for Tony to fix, and was able to give me a ride to the lightrail station.

While I was on the train, I noticed one of the guys who goes to my art school (I had a class with him a couple quarters ago.) But when I got off downtown, I realized he wasn't there. It seemed odd, since I thought he was headed to school, but then figured maybe he was headed elsewhere anyway and really didn't think about it... It wasn't a long wait for my next bus, but the 88's sign had gotten stuck on 13. I really should have taken it as a warning. The bus driver wound up turning off before we got on the freeway... Apparently he had started taking the wrong route. It took several minutes for him to get us turned around and back on track.

I forgive him, though, because when someone pointed it out to him he did this sad little apologetic, embarrassed head-dip that was really kind of endearing. I mentioned how it seemed to be one of those days for just about everybody, and wished him a better day.

Most of the rest of my day was pretty decent. Taking algebra this quarter, and I'd been worried about getting the same teacher whose class my sister failed twice. Thankfully that didn't happen. My teacher seems like an okay guy, kind of an oddball. Really, really thick Vietnamese accent, pretty funny guy. I'm not a fan of math, but I don't usually have a problem with it when the teacher engages with the class, so I'm optimistic.

Got off an hour early. Killed some time browsing in the library. Finally decided to get around to reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I've only read one other book by Michael Chabon, but I really enjoyed Summerlands, and I've heard only good things about this one. Haven't started reading it yet, though. Oddly, it took like...four or five minutes to actually check out the book, because while it had its stickers and barcodes, somehow it hadn't actually been put into the catalog... Go figure.

Oh, and the school had a free "Sundaes on Monday" thing for the beginning of the quarter. It's pretty shameless when it comes to bribing its students...

Waiting at the bus stop for the 88 for the ride back, I saw the guy from earlier that morning. Apparently he wasn't used to being carded for his RT passes, and hadn't realized the fare he was used to paying was the student discount... Which probably meant the reason he didn't get off the train downtown was that he'd probably gotten ticketed. Poor guy.

Got a chance to catch up with another guy who was in that same class two quarters ago. I'm not overly social out here in the meat universe, but he sat across the table from me, so we had a nice chit-chatty acquaintance. So that was nice.

Got home to be told by Tony that Dave was coming by. Long story not-really-short: Dave gave Tony two laptops to fix. Tony gave Dave an Xbox to sell for him. Tony didn't hear from him for almost a month, so Tony sold me my "new" touchpad-doesn't-work-but-at-least-it-won'-explode-using-firefox laptop. Dave shows up last night. Still hasn't sold the Xbox. He and Tony get into an argument about Tony thinking Dave had ripped him off, and Dave accusing Tony of ripping him off by selling the laptop. Dave says he's going to bring his "homey" by, who the laptop apparently belongs to. So, when I got home this afternoon, Tony said I shouldn't let Dave see the laptop when he came by, so I decided to stick it out in my sister's room (where there is no cat or dog to try and sit on the keyboard).

I had already started writing this post when I heard my mom swearing. I got up and went into the kitchen to see if she was okay. Turns out she was fine, but she had dropped a full bottle of cooking oil and it gooshed out all over the floor. We put down phonebook pages to soak it up, but I'll still have to clean that up properly later. I promised.

Then yet another shitty thing happened. I got up to close the window and looked into my sister's rat cage. I found her pet rat, Gus, lying on the floor of the cage, dead. So I got to call my sister and let her know about that...fun times. He is now in a tiny box in the garage, wrapped up in yet more phonebook paper, awaiting burial in the side yard once the sun is up.

Gus was a cool little guy. He was a rescue, but not of the normal type. He wasn't adopted so much as he adopted us.

The rats around here are not afraid of people one little bit. Several months back, my parents had one start coming into their room (which is actually a remodeled greenhouse in the garden, but anyway...). A pretty huge one, maybe 8" not including the tail, but fat and brown and super musky. Not only was this rat not afraid of people, though, he apparently had no problem snagging a bag of cheez-its from right next to my dad while he was playing Fallout. One time, my sister went to shoo him with a fly swatter and he actually sat there while she just...poked him with it. She and my dad both felt kind of bad for him, so she got him into a trash can with some food and dropped him off in the bushes on the center divide. He came back. He came back from her doing this twice, and each time he took up residence in the greenhouse with my parents and their scaredy little dog (I love Pinky, who believe it or not was "adopted" in a fairly similar fashion to this story, but seriously, it's like he pretends the rats don't exist...).

As time went by (and my parents couldn't really use traps or poison out there, that could wind up bad for Pinky), this rat got more and more brazen. It eventually got to the point where he would climb up on my dad or my sister's shoulder, crawl over their hands while they were playing Xbox. He even let them pick him up and pet him. We finally decided he had to be a hybrid domestic rat, or else a pet that had gotten loose, because he was really very docile.

We finally wound up trapping him again, only this time he was removed to a long snake aquarium we had. Later, he was moved into a two-story ferret cage. We eventually noticed that one of his teeth had grown very long, curving about an inch out of the right side of his face. We took him to the vet and found out the poor thing was probably fairly old, but also that he had a broken tooth-socket on the right side of his face, meaning that the tooth we'd seen was growing from the left one. Poor thing.

I like to think he had a pretty nice life with us. Not perfect, but definitely far better and longer than he would have had if he'd stayed on his own. He wasn't given a lot of attention toward the end since my sister lives at her apartment most of the time now, but he had food and water and shelter and pasta. God, did that little dude love his pasta. He was a fucking fiend for it...

So yeah.

(To clarify: I like rats. My first pet was a rat. Fred was cool. Gus was cool. The little shitbirds that keep populating our kitchen and steal kibble out of Pinky's bowl while I'm sitting there trying to write fic are not cool. Ergo, they were the inspiration for Life!Javi's midnight snack scene, not poor Gus.)

Oh, and I'll update if Dave shows up with his homey wanting to bust a cap...

Comments

[adja999.livejournal.com]

I'm not a fan of math, but I don't usually have a problem with it when the teacher engages with the class, so I'm optimistic.
Guh. How I wished I'd had more of those.

Aww... Sorry about Gus. I remember when Amy died I was so sad. I felt so guilty because she was young and I'm still not sure if it's something I did wrong. I never dared having another one since then. But someday I will.
(I grew up with the example of a family friend that had a rat. Said rat slept between the cat's paws. And said cat slept between the dog's paws. I want my own family to look like that. ^^)

I giggled to tears at the flyswatter poking bit. ^^


Oil on the floor. Awesome. I remember the time a bottle's bottom dropped as I was filling my grocery bags after checking out my items. All over the floor, me, my groceries. So great.
It's easy to clean, too. :/

So, um... I hope your house doesn't get burned down by a gang... or something. :/
*wishes she had a gangsta!Javi icon to match comment*

[black_sluggard]

Yeah, looks like Dave and his bud are a no-show. They might show up sometime over the next few days, dunno.

If I understand Tony's characterization of the guy, Dave's not a gangster, he's a tweaker. So, a lot sadder and much less scary. Doesn't mean he's not capable of starting shit, but still...

[adja999.livejournal.com]

Depends if you use the term tweaker to say general 'junkie' or if you're implying a certain kind of drug.
My face can attest to you that even pot can give you violent episodes, so... I mean, you've seen the guy, so you'd know best, but I've seen different kinds of junkies that were usually the kind to look about brain dead and unmoving go into fits of rage when they needed a fix. Not pretty. I'm lucky I'm kind of small and short and always evadaded their focus (or lack thereof).
Ah... the subway. It's like a social sudy.
Still. I may be the only twisted person that when I come back to Paris, and smell the subway, I smile and I know I'm home.

Probably cause I know the story?
Wanna know the story? I can go in Castle mode and give you the secrets of underground Paris so you can act all knowledgable. :P

[black_sluggard]

By tweakers I usually specifically mean methheads. And not the most stable bunch (especially compared to pot users), but having grown up around many I usually feel irritation and pity before I feel afraid in most cases. Depends on the individual 'tude. The vibe I've gotten from this guy the few times I've seen him is that he's a bullshitter...

And I'd love to hear any stories. I'm a habitual patron of public transit as well, though for a much smaller city (and because it's California, its impossible to get on a train without someone trying to sell you either bootleg DVDs or "trees").

Underworld Paris - p.1

[adja999.livejournal.com]

Ah, Tina's friends can look like living corpses indeed. I feel compassion for addicts. I mean, at the very first, they were just stupid enough to touch the stuff, but once you're hooked, it's an addiction and I think it's mean to say they're just dumb to go back. It's like a disease. So, yeah, like you. Pity.
Irritation because they can be quite poluting.

As long as you feel safe, I guess it's somewhat okay.

"Trees"? What are trees? Huh.

Alright. Well. I'm gonna assume you don't know much about the Parisian Catacombs.
So... Paris used to be a lot smaller. It had a whole bunch of cimetaries, and they grew and grew and the city spread around them. As the city got bigger and the dead didn't rise up again and the living kept dying, the cimetaries became more and more crowded.
I don't know if they still do that, but back then, when that happened, they tended to dig up the oldest graves and put the remains in mass graves. It worked for a while but it eventually started to become unsanitary.
When the mass graves started to burst into neighboring caves or underground levels of houses... They thought they had to do something.
Weirdly, the concern for public health (and smell, bleh) happened at the same time as the revolution, when it was customary that excuted people were hung and were supposed to be left until their corpses rot enough that the head would detach and the body fall on their own. Which would take anything between three days and three weeks. And where were those public excutions held? On the market place. Picture people shopping for fresh meat or fruit or bread, weaving around the alleys of the market and side stepping cadavers. Grossed out yet? (I think back then, even if there were pandemics at time, like the plague, they used to have a much stronger immune system probably in spite and because of that)
Anyway... The cimetaries were either destroyed or confined to a certain number of spots, the mass graves were empties and they chose underground places in and around Paris to stack what now remained. So, bones.
We have celebrities down there, phisolophers, the guys that made our constitution or the Human Rights charter (do you say charter in English? We say 'Charte' so I assume), etc... And the commoner as well. All we know, is that when you walk along the halls, there are plaques with the cimetary of origin. Sometimes the cimetary section.
They have doomsday messages, too. Very LoTR like. "Here rest the dead that never shall be woken." "Life is futile and we all end up here." etc... All gloomy and creepy. (I love it.)
You can visit the catacombs. They have really had fun with it. They made it a beautiful setting. It's a cave like underground, mostly dug into the stone, sometimes they added a stonewall for support. And then the rooms walls are lined with bones. Litterally. And they tried to make it harmonious. The skulls sometimes draw a figure. Or they're gemetrically pleasing. I honestly never knew we were so stackable in death.

Underworld Paris - p.2

[adja999.livejournal.com]

There are only a few pics in here. But that gives you an idea of the feel of the place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris
If you go here. http://www.catacombes.info/ (sorry, site in French) and click on the sewer plaque to enter, then on photos, it shows you a map of how wide it is under the City. (then you can click and see pics (with the arrows once you've reached text))
You can only officially visit about a mile of them.
Unless you do it like I do, and use an actual sewer trap. It's like the abandonned metro (subway) tunnels. We only use 13% of them. (To give you an idea, 13% is that: http://www.loomji.fr/i/plan/metro/plan-metro-paris.gif Just imagine how big what's unused is.)
There are people living there that never see the light of day. There are the best raves down there as well, where you can see stuff that rivals the Burning Man. Oddly enough, if you go to party down in the tunnels and catacombs (that sometimes meet up due to the fact that it's just one whole maze), you'll find tie wearing lawyer types next to a guy dressed like a cat and held on a leash next to your basic cokehead.
That, my friend, you will never find on a tourist guide. ^^

I have read somewhere that NYC is twice as high underneath the earth that it is above. Twice the WTC in tunnels? Wow. I've always wanted to find the data for Paris and never could. But I'm pretty sure it'd be about the same. One day this whole thing will collapse. :/

So that's for the catacombs. Now.
The subway obviously goes around town. Some stations, or the distance between them, are known for a smell they have. (Not the usual 'inside, bad ventillated, pee smell') It's like a sewer smell.
When i was a kid, it used to be a lot more present, now they've worked at it a lot with ventillation system and you can only make it out in some place if you *know* and there's only a few places left where it can actually bother you.
Any clue yet as to what it is?
The subway tunnels go through the eart. Earth which was made by millions and millions of decomposed bodies put in mass graves. The smell is present where the tracks go through those.
Sexy, isn't it?
A lot of people would be disgusted by this. This just gives me a Castle-like 'It's so cool' impression. Because I am aware of the history around me when I find myself smelling it. and it's so awesome that youc an smell something that dates so far back and just won't stay in the past. It's also likely that I like it cause it's gross and creepy and involves dead bodies and it makes me feel like I'm in a movie or something.
But I blame growing up with Buffy for that. :P



Oh, one more thing. If you ever get around to visiting Paris and are interested. Visiting the catacombs is awesome.
However, if you are invited 'off the beaten path', be very careful that your 'guide' knows where they're going. There are 350km of tunnels for the catacombs alone. So, if you get lost, even if you find a sewer out, you can't be sure it'll be open. Every year we hear of search parties by cops and stuff that last for days. And that's for the people they know disapeared down there. :/

A few more pics.
The 'official version of the Catacombs'
http://www.worldhotelplan.com/wp-content/gallery/paris/catacombes_de_paris.jpg
This guy has beautiful, high quality pics
http://denisetinparis.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/i-see-dead-people-part-deux-les-catacombes/

'Another' version
http://kyanisaurus.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/catacombes_de_paris_catacombs.jpg?w=640&h=426
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jd_images/6728712115/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandrafaure/

Re: Underworld Paris - p.2

[black_sluggard]

"Trees" is slang (not sure how local) for pot.

That's really cool. (God, reply complexity failure...)

Have you seen this before: http://www.sedlecossuary.com/Photo-gallery.html?

Who even thinks of that? "We've got all these bones... How about a chandelier?

Re: Underworld Paris - p.2

[adja999.livejournal.com]

OMG, no I didn't!

I get it. We're in an economical slump. Raw materials are expensive. You know what we've got no shortage of? Dead guys. And dead guys don't wanna get paid. (usually, i'd beware nontheless)

People are weird. Thanks for the link, I didn't know of it.^^