Hehe, SOPA and PIPA would probably obligate us to block access to online libraries like this one

I'm starting to suspect that Lamar Smith introduced this bill as part of his sinister scheme to force libraries to close so he'll be able keep that copy of Tropic of Cancer he borrowed from the public library in 1971.

The Author’s Guild as well as a bunch of other associations of authors including some Canadian, Australian, and Swedish groups, are suing the damned library over IP infringement.

I recently read The Ark Sakura by one of my all time favourite authors, Kobo Abe. When I added it to my LibraryThing book collection I noticed that it lists among the various editions of the book “Ebooks: 1 pay”. So I clicked the link and a window with a link to HathiTrust, an organization I had never heard of before, opened up.

Nonetheless, I could tell immediately that this was something I would like. I did a quick Google search and found out that it’s an organization that has been undertaking a massive digitization process of vast quantities of both public domain and currently copyrighted content in cooperation with Google Books and their army of scanner monkeys.

The coalition of whiners claim that HathiTrust has engaged in, “…systemic, concerted, widespread and unauthorized reproduction and distribution of millions of copyrighted books and other works” All of this, they allege, “…without the permission of their authors or other copyright holders”

Yeah, according to the complaint, they have (let me suppress the drooling) 435 TB of content and 73% of their content is copyrighted.

These folks also want to stop the “Orphan Works Project” by which orphaned copyrighted works would have been made available to college kids.

HathiTrust, in its defence, said what they were doing was fair use. I have to agree with the IP holders in their basic assertion of “that dog won’t hunt”. On the other hand, suing a library is really about as close as you can get in real life to the quintessential superman villain level of nefariousness.

Of course, you could say that what these libraries are doing is no different from what people do at thepiratebay and you’d be right. The difference between what HathiTrust are doing and what brick and mortar (I hate this neologism so much) libraries do is that somebody at some point on the supply chain did purchase each and every one of those books. I don’t know how physical libraries get their books, but I suspect most of them are either bought or donated. If they’re donated, then the donator probably purchased them or received permission to donate them at some point. Those books are paid for. If there’s only one copy of the Atlas Shrugged coffee table book in the whole establishment and somebody has already borrowed it when I visit the library, I’ll be forced to seek my casual brunchtime Tea Party propaganda elsewhere.

With a digital library, Google can scan the book from one physical copy (or several so they can scan more than one page at a time…I’d love to see the setup they use at Google Books) and then HathiTrust can make that available to countless students. Even if the library is not available outside the university network, that’s still many tens of thousands of people who will have free access to the content and there wouldn’t be any problem if 50,000 of them all wanted to borrow This is Herman Cain! at once because they could easily do so.

Indeed, they wouldn’t even have to “return” the books. According to the DMCA, libraries can make digital copies of copyrighted works in their collection without permission as long as the files are not used outside the library. This sounds, to me at least, like the law is basically saying that digital copies are fine as long as they’re burdened with uncrackable DRM or some phone-home mechanism that would prevent a library patron from “borrowing” the digital book and then printing it, making a copy, backing it up, sharing it by P2P, converting it to another format, etc… As long as the copyrighted digital content the library makes available is locked down enough so that it’s not possible to distribute or alter, it sounds like everything is fine and dandy.

I know that JSTOR violates this provision of the DMCA blatantly, but that’s another story, although I do approve of it in purely ethical terms.

In any case, I just thought that this was a pretty amazing thing that’s going on. I’m always surprised by all of the digital content that my university gives us access to just by virtue of being students. They’ve never met me before; for all they know I could be archiving all the stuff they allow me to access (DRM free, I might add) and redistributing it.

Make no mistake though; I say all of this not to discourage libraries and universities from doing this. I just want to emphasize that there really are bad apples out there. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t let the reality that some people will abuse the system deter us from having libraries and other nice things in the first place (teehee: I just got a mental image wherein Internet access was declared an inalienable right and hobos gleefully fire up the computers to watch pornography in the public libraries). What these universities do may be illegal, but I think it’s ethical nonetheless. I view it as an extension of the concept of a public library. Public libraries have been exempt from some aspects of copyright law for a long time. Before widespread use of computers, libraries were still allowed to make up to three copies of copyrighted works within the library without permission from the copyright holder as long as the copy was being made to replace an old or unusable copy that would then be discarded (or maybe it had to be destroyed…I don’t remember). The point is that only a fringe minority of people think that libraries should be condemned as IP infringers. Rather few people believe that we should outlaw public libraries. In that vein, I view scanning, OCRing, and making available for free download copyrighted works via the Internet or university intranetworks as a logical extension of the concept of a public library. Again, it seems obvious that it’s illegal, but I do not think this means it’s unethical. Just like how I applaud scofflaw Aaron Swartz, I support what HathiTrust is doing here. It’s courageous and just.

Blargh… midterms are hard (and days 6 and 7)

If only I could be more carefree and forget about highfalutin status symbols like good grades and literacy I could spend more time watching Enlightened, Bored to Death , and all the terrible anime airing this season that I can’t resist and I’d finally be able to buy and play Tales of Xilia. But alas, I’m stuck here trying to learn the difference between a taisha zukuri and a shinmei zukuri while keeping track of these loony characters:

With all these names, I almost feel as though showing them in kanji would actually help me learn them. Even if I don’t know how to read them, the kanji could at least help memorization, if only because it would allow me to devise some mnemonic devices. I don’t know who Sarutakhiko is, but if I saw his name in kanji and saw the 猿田毘古 I’d assume he was a monkey or if I saw Ame no Wakahiko, 天若日子, I’d assume he was some young guy sent from the heavens, which is actually partially correct since he came from “high up heavenly place”, 高天原, and married Shitateruhime according to the Nihon Shoki. Even if you’re like me and can’t read, if you know a few basic kanji you can make some bullshit guesses that might be good enough for an exam if you can see the names written out in Japanese. You don’t need to be able to know that it’s phonetically “Takamagahara” to deduce that it’s some kind of heavenly realm. In romaji though you can’t even take a wild guess like that except for the most obvious distinctions like the safe assumption that names ending in -hiko are probably male gods. Some of those names, moreover, aren’t even spelled correctly. Ignoring for a moment the differences between traditional and modified Hepburn, Taka-Mikazuchi no Kami should be Take-Mikazuchi no Kami, Sukuna-hikona no Kami and Sukuna-bikona no Kami are the same kami and thus shouldn’t be listed twice or separately, and I’m not sure who Tokoshiro nushi no Kami is supposed to be. It’s probably supposed to be Kotoshiro nushi no Kami, 事代主神, and may be the same as Ebisu in some contexts, who was a son of Ookuni nushi no Mikoto and is a god of fishing or something like that.

Thankfully I don’t actually need to know all these names, least of all Ame Nigishi Kuni Nigishi Amatsu Hiko Hiko Ho no Ninigi no Mikoto, who I think is supposed to be the father of Emperor Jinmu. I just enjoy complaining. I must know the important ones though. The question, of course, is deciding which are important. I think that any names that I hadn’t heard of before enrolling in this class are unimportant enough to not bother remembering; that’s just the kind of hubris I need to muster up to avoid getting melted hippocampus all over my shirt collar. Any name that’s famous enough for me to have known about the god or place before entering the class must be important enough to warrant focus. I didn’t know who Sarutakhiko was and he’s apparently pretty important.

If only there were a Chinese cartoon that could solidify their identities in my mind…that’s how I learned all about Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Eventually I’ll read Water Margin too. I can get a cheap copy of the nice boxset from Foreign Language Press from eBay.

Anyway, here are days 6 and 7:
Abstract here

Day #Offences for male students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for male students (inclusive)
6 0 0
7 3 4
Day #Offences for female students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for female students (inclusive)
6 7 12
7 8 11
Day #Total offences(Male + Female) %Offenders [%Offenders(adjusted)]
6 12 24% [40%]
7 15 30% [50%]

Masako is a more likable character than Ringo (and day 5)

I want to say sardonically, "Simpsons did it" but the irony is that it wasn't nearly this funny or absurd when they did; it was actually one of the most heartfelt and serious episodes in the series.

I like stalker characters quite a bit and really enjoyed all of Ringo’s episodes pursuing Tabuki. I also enjoyed learning about Momoka and watching her strained relationship with Shouma develop in the wake of the actions of the Takakura parents. It’s all very fun and the idea of being stalked by a high school girl never really loses it’s appeal, but I’ve decided that Masako is, nonetheless, a more endearing character. Her charm is how mysterious she is. The viewer is scared of what she’s capable of and, until episode 16, knows very little about her, which lets the viewer’s imagination run wild.

As for the table, it would get unreasonably long if I kept including all previous days. I don’t know how long I’m going to keep this experiment up, but, at the very least, I shouldn’t give up until I’ve recorded at least 10 days. At the end of 10 days I suppose I’ll make a table of all the results.

Abstract here
 

Day #Offences for male students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for male students (inclusive)
5 4 4
Day #Offences for female students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for female students (inclusive)
5 4 7
Day #Total offences(Male + Female) %Offenders [%Offenders(adjusted)]
5 11 22% [36.667%]

Day 4

These slouches are getting worse by the day.

I keep forgetting halfway through class to keep counting. I had to trash the results from several days since they were incomplete.

I do want to make clear though that I don't exactly object to the idea of slacking off in class on any ethical grounds; what I object to is the blatant scorn for the teacher and minority of students who are actively trying to enjoy the class that slacking off in so blatant a fashion as using a PSP, DS, or mobile phone reveals. It's like regifting. We all regift, but we don't tell the recipient when we do it.

Having said that, I, of course, am not one of those people actively trying to enjoy the lesson. I let my mind wander from academic matters all the time in class. But in any given class there’s bound to be at least one person who enrolled, not because he or she thought it would require a minimum of effort (the primary criterion by which I determine which classes to join), but because he or she actually thought it seemed interesting. Those are the people I feel bad for. Not myself.

Nonetheless, I slack off just as much as the next guy. What makes me better and more ethical than the rest of you louses, however, is that you can’t tell when I’m slacking off. I play mental games during class like counting backwards from 1000 by threes, counting how many people are using mobile phones, doing rough estimates of how much SP I’d need to fully farm a pure STR glaive character with maximum grasswalk, fire imbue, and heuksal skills, imagining Christina Hendricks as a catgirl chambermaid with glasses, smirking while thinking about the fact that I have a symmetrical 35Mbps connection, picking at my cuticles, trying to write kanji I’m on the verge of forgetting over and over using my finger on the desk, cracking my neck, thinking about rDNS, trying to mentally paint pictures of various national flags, trying to remember all the U.S. presidents, trying to name all 50 U.S. states, trying to name every province of China and its capital, trying to hide my bleeding cuticles, naming every Japanese prefecture from north to south, trying to name every country in a continent of my choosing, drawing a mental map of the trade winds or tectonic plates, thinking about what’s on TV tonight, and looking at my digital watch, Benoit Garibaldi, exactly when the minute changes and then attempting to count precisely 60 seconds before looking at him again. I can do all of these things relatively discretely. You cannot play with a mobile phone without it being visible. The key to slacking off while still appearing like an earnest sort of person is to enjoy yourself primarily by using the vivid imagination you’ve developed by playing Magic: The Gathering, Angband, and reading R.L. Stine books when you were a kid.

Abstract here.
 

Day #Offences for male students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for male students (inclusive)
1 0 0
2 2 2
3 0 2
4 3 3
Day #Offences for female students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for female students (inclusive)
1 5 8
2 9 11
3 6 11
4 9 12
Day #Total offences(Male + Female) %Offenders [%Offenders(adjusted)]
1 8 16% [26.667%]
2 13 26% [43.333%]
3 13 26% [43.333%]
4 15 30%[50%]

Day 3

Abstract here.
 

Day #Offences for male students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for male students (inclusive)
1 0 0
2 2 2
3 0 2
Day #Offences for female students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for female students (inclusive)
1 5 8
2 9 11
3 6 11
Day #Total offences(Male + Female) %Offenders [%Offenders(adjusted)]
1 8 16% [26.667%]
2 13 26% [43.333%]
3 13 26% [43.333%]

Let’s do a science!

I’m conducting a sociological experiment. On days when I remember, I’m going to count how many students in my class use mobile phones, portable game consoles, multimedia players, and other handheld gadgets during class. I’ll do it in only one class per day and not necessarily the same one. I’ll try as much as possible to do it in the same class each day but if I forget to do it one class I’ll do it in the next instead. My hypothesis is that, though young people today are, in general, uncouth, barely literate brutes unfit for middle school, let alone higher education, female students are more disruptive during class, at least, than male students.

The experiment will not, admittedly, be very scientific because I will, of course, be paying attention to the content of the class as well as looking out for slackoff behaviours. This means it’s almost inevitable that some students will whip out an iPod or PSP or something and it’ll slip under my radar. I expect this to happen. Whatever my results are, the reader should realise that the actual figures are probably much worse. It’s also not always possible for me to see everyone in the room from the seat I’m in. I try to sit near the back in the centre of my classes so that I can see everyone but there will surely be times when I won’t have a good view and will fail to spot offenders because of it. There’s also the fact that I don’t want to look like an insane person, so I’m not going to go nuts looking around the room like a psychoneurotic squirrel.

I speculate that if there were simply a sign at the entrance to the school that asked people to turn off cell phones and other electronic devices before entering most people would comply. It works for the most part in movie theatres.

I’m not counting kids with laptops or netbooks as offenders because it’s possible to use those things to type notes even though this is actually not allowed at my school for some backwards reason. I’m giving them more than the benefit of the doubt here since most students I see with laptops are playing computer games or otherwise goofing off.

The classes are all an equal length — 75 minutes — and are both supposed to be the same size. I’m not going to try to count how many students are actually present in the class though. The only calculation I’ll attempt to make is the percentage of students who used one of these devices at least once during class. To calculate this I’ll just assume nobody is absent and all 50 students are in the class. The fact is, however, that there are actually something like 20 students absent almost every single day. There are only about 30 chairs in the classrooms and there are usually one or two empty seats left over, so the reader should, by all means, assume that the percentages are much higher. I’ll also do an “adjusted” percentage of students present who are offenders based on the assumption that there are 30 students present every day. Obviously, this is not always going to be accurate.

I read somewhere that the students in my school are about 60% female and 40% male, which I suppose is its legacy as a former all-women normal school. This means there will be a tendency no matter what towards female students having a greater number of offences. I predict, however, that the unequal distribution of offences between the sexes will outweigh the bias introduced from the unequal distribution of sexes among the student population.

Because so many students begin using these devices as soon as class begins, I will be noting how many students who do use electronic devices begin their usage within the first five minutes of class as measured by my trusty wristwatch sidekick, Benoit Garibaldi. Since some students use these gadgets for nearly the entire duration of the class, whereas others only use them intermittently, it would be nice if I were able to measure the duration of usage for electronic devices, but I don’t think I could divert from the content of the classes the amount of attention required to record that information. Then I’d be just as guilty as the boors I’m observing. Yes, I’m not a particularly objective observer.

Days 1 and 2:

 

Day #Offences for male students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for male students (inclusive)
1 0 0
2 2 2
Day #Offences for female students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for female students (inclusive)
1 5 8
2 9 11
Day #Total offences(Male + Female) %Offenders [%Offenders(adjusted)]
1 8 16% [26.667%]
2 13 26% [43.333%]

I feel like they must have taught this in grade school

…on a day when I was absent. I can never figure out the etiquette on city buses. I was on the bus yesterday and a very uncomfortable situation arose. The way I see it, this is the type of situation that only a caring, sensitive fellow like me would even perceive as uncomfortable. The majority of people are probably too inconsiderate to even realise that this is an issue. But I digress.

The issue I refer to is that I still don’t have a set-in-stone code for where to sit when boarding a bus. Obviously, the seats marked as “priority seating” are for cripples, hags, geezers and the like, so I avoid those. As long as it’s not a particularly crowded bus, however, there’s still a wide array of seating choices even after eliminating the priority seating area.

The only consistent pattern I have when it comes to choosing where to sit on a bus, when given the choice, is that I usually avoid the double window seats. Of course, like everything I say, there’s a good reason for this. The reason is that it’s a lose-lose situation. First of all, it’s always more pleasant to have a seat to yourself than to share it with a stranger. Therefore, if I get on the bus and the double window seats each have one person in them while the rows of seats towards the back of the bus are relatively free, I will almost always choose to sit in one of the longer rows of seats in the back of the bus so that the people in the double seats can have as much space as they want. Plus, there’s always that instantaneous panic that manifests itself immediately before sitting right next to a stranger on public transportation. What if he or she emits a foul stench? What if he or she has luggage? Do you offer to let the stranger put some of his or her luggage down by your feet if he or she has too many bags to fit on his or her own side of the double seat? What if he or she is drunk? What if he or she is eating a messy food? It could spill on you. What if he or she is someone you have once met but don’t recognise? Not saying hello will surely come back to haunt you at some point in the future. Any of these things — or a combination thereof — could easily happen to you if you sit in a double seat.

This is a different bus model, but the double seats are almost the same

The second reason not to sit in a double seat is that if you’re sitting in the seat closest to the window and someone sits down in the seat adjacent to the aisle, you have no choice but to awkwardly excuse yourself when you need to get off. One of two things can happen, both of which are mildly uncomfortable. One possibility is that you politely excuse yourself and squeeze past the person. This is awkward for both of you. The other possibility is that you politely excuse yourself and the person stands up and moves into the aisle to provide you with an easier pathway. This is also unpleasant because it arouses guilt in you for slightly inconveniencing the stranger so that you could get off the bus.

Now let’s consider the possibility that you are sitting in the seat by the aisle, rather than the one by the window. The same problems arise, except this time in reverse. If somebody is already sitting by the window when you sit down by the aisle, then you will at some point have to let the person through so that he or she can get off the bus at his or her stop. It’s unpleasant for you because if you stand up, you’re being accommodating to an unusual degree. On the other hand, if you don’t stand up you’re being an asshole. You lose no matter what.

The only way to avoid unpleasantness when sitting in a double seat is not to have anyone sit next to you for the entire duration of your trip. This is precisely why I never sit in a double seat if given the choice.

Even if there is nobody in any of the double seats, I will take a seat in one of the longer rows in the back of the bus or, depending on which bus I’m on, in one of the single seats on the driver side of the bus because someone could eventually sit next to me if I sat in a double seat. Of course, if there are double seats that already have one person in them, I will not sit in them if there are other seats available because I don’t want to have to let the person past me when it is his or her stop.

The only time I will sit in a double seat is if there are no other seats available and there is nobody standing on the bus. If there is one person standing and one seat available in a double seat, I will not sit in that double seat. However, if there is one seat available in a double seat and nobody else is standing, I will take the available seat because I am even more of an obstruction to people trying to get off the bus standing in the aisle than I am while sitting in a seat.

Now, you may ask yourself why I don’t simply always sit in the single seats on the driver side of the bus. The reason is almost completely irrational, based mostly on my own experiences, but I tend to avoid those seats because when a lunatic boards the bus he or she inevitably hangs out around the front of the bus, which is where the single seats are located. The bus I most often take is very popular with lunatics. On a related note, I should mention that I actually only take buses very rarely, since the subway is adequate most of the time. There are only a few buses I take with any degree of regularity, since the subway really is faster and more convenient most of the time (incidentally, I do have a set of battle-tested, iron-clad rules for seating in subways, with separate editions for both MTA and PATH trains). For some reason, I have never been on a bus with a lunatic in the back. They always hang out in the front because they like to harass the driver. That’s not to say that lunatics don’t harass passengers — they certainly do — but in my experience, their primary target is usually the driver. If the driver ignores them that’s when they harass the passengers. But they stick near to the driver to prod him or her every so often for a response they find satisfying or to criticize the MTA, give advice on route changes, suggest shortcuts, recite a shopping list, ask for directions, complain about the VA or to mess with the railing thing by the MetroCard reader.

Anyway, if I’m on a bus that doesn’t get very many lunatics I actually do try to sit in the single seats on the driver side. During morning and evening rush hour as well as the time when schools are getting out there are usually no lunatics on my usual bus, so it’s worth it to take a single seat.

I got onto a bus yesterday just a few minutes before 3:00 PM and I was the only passenger. Though it was, in fact, close to school closing time I went straight for the back of the bus. I knew that the stop immediately after the one that I got on at was right in front of an elementary school. I figured that there would be many parents and children waiting for the bus. I estimated that there would be a number of duos of one adult and one child, so I figured that they would quite nicely fill up the double seats by the windows. It must have been 2:59 PM or something and school hadn’t quite let out yet because only one trio got on the bus. It was what appeared to be a mother and two very young kids. I guessed they must have been first graders or something. I was proud of myself for sitting in the back since I assumed the two kids and the mother would take a double seat and either one single seat or one seat from another double seat. Instead, the two kids got on board the bus and immediately ran to precisely where I, the only other passenger on the entire bus was sitting and sat down across from me. It was a minute or two before the mother came after them since it seemed she was having trouble with her MetroCard. She came back and sat down next to the two kids, who were sitting in the row of three seats directly across from me. I was sitting in the seat farthest towards the back in the three seat row opposite from them.

I was pissed off. Of course, I wasn’t pissed off at the kids so much as I was pissed off at myself, for what seemed to a be a total lack of foresight. Of course, groups of three people would want to take a three-seat row to themselves. There were three rows of three seats on the bus, but one of them was the collapsible row of three seats that has straps to secure a wheelchair in place, which I always try to avoid sitting in, when possible. One of them was the row I was sitting in and the last was now occupied by the two kids and the woman who I took to be their mother.

That wasn’t the end of my failure though. I had agonized before leaving my landfill over whether to bring a book to read on the bus. Generally, I always bring a book to read when I anticipate taking the subway. The reason is that when someone comes on the train asking for money to pay for their rent, lunch or insulin, it’s much easier to pretend you didn’t notice their request if you’ve got your face buried in a book or newspaper. It’s possible, though unlikely, that you could be so deeply engrossed in your book or newspaper that you didn’t notice the guy talking about how he lost his fingers in a bomb explosion and if you don’t have any money to give him then at least show him a smile. If you have a book or newspaper, then for all anybody else knows, you could simply have your attention focused very narrowly. If you’re just blankly staring at the floor though you end up looking like an uncaring miser.

I didn’t have any sort of bag with me yesterday though, so before leaving I finally came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to bring a book and just carry it in my hands the entire time I was out, especially since it’s a relatively short bus ride. Moreover, I didn’t want to bring a bag for the sole purpose of carrying my book, a book that I didn’t even have much desire to read, whose only value was its capability to make it look like I was distracted.

I regretted that decision immensely as I sat there, trying vainly to avoid eye contact with the two first-graders sitting across from me while disguising the considerable effort that it took to do so.

There are windows behind the three-seat rows. For the sixty seconds or so between the time I initially sat down on the bus and the time the children got on the bus I had been happily looking out the window immediately across from me, watching the familiar scenery of my neighbourhood drift by, proud of myself for my excellent choice of seat for the additional reason that it had an unrivaled view, adding to its value as a relatively shielded area from lunatics.

Once the children and their mother got on the bus, however, I could no longer stare straight blankly ahead, as I had hoped to be able to do for my entire ride. Staring straight ahead would force me to make eye contact with one of the small children. 3D children are not to my liking. 2D is all fine and good but 3D children pose 3D risks, so the last thing in the world that I wanted to do was make eye contact with a 3D first-grader, especially in the presence of this woman who I took to be its mother. Looking slightly to my left was the second first-grader. Looking even more to my left, but still not so far so as to make my neck turn in an obviously unnatural position to the observers across from me, was the mother. I certainly didn’t want to make eye contact with her either. She was stout and fearsomely protective in both appearance and deed. Looking to my right would have been unnatural as well, since there are no windows in that direction, only a row of seats perpendicular to our three-seat rows. My only choice was to crane my neck in an obviously strained manner to look out the next window over, which was in the middle of the bus. I stared for a while in that direction, but I could feel that to an observer, it was quite obvious that I was trying very, very hard not to look in the direction of the trio across from me.

I rolled up my sleeve dramatically and looked at my watch. I wear a high-tech, waterproof-up-to-200-meters, digital watch with a stopwatch, world clock and date display. It doesn’t take long to read a digital watch. It takes even less time to read mine, due its undeniable superiority over all other watches. I pretended like I had an analog watch though and furrowed my eyebrows as though I had forgotten how to tell time. I held that position for as long as seemed believable. Since I was looking at my watch while doing so, I can say that it only felt believable for about two seconds, after which any idiot could have read the time on their watch. I rolled my sleeve back down with less dramatic emphasis than when I had rolled it up.

I looked at the ground. The aisle is actually very narrow, unlike in my little drawing down there, so looking at the ground requires you to tilt your head pretty significantly downwards. I realised that this was also unnatural-looking and twisted my body around awkwardly to resume looking out the window up in the middle of the bus.

After what felt like an endless nightmare but was actually only the time it took to pass by one stop the mother took out two bananas, one for each of the kids. This bothered me even more somehow. Here I was, inhibiting their banana-eating plans. Who did I think I was?

I couldn’t get up and sit somewhere else though. If I did that it would be obvious that the only reason I was getting up was because I was uncomfortable sitting so near to children, and that would be downright unusual. Being a very usual sort of person, I knew I had to stay seated exactly where I was until it was my stop. Only an unusual person would get up before the bus had arrived at his or her stop. Only an exceedingly unusual person would get up and switch seats before the bus had arrived at his or her stop. I had to bear it with good will, so to speak.

At the next stop a mother, father and little girl, about the same age as the two that were already on the bus, boarded. Again, the mother and father seemed to have some trouble getting their MetroCards to work. Or perhaps they were paying with exact change and had to count it out? I was too mortified to notice how they paid at the time. In any case, the little girl bolted to the back of the bus and sat down in the seat furthest to the driver side in the row of seats against the back of the bus, perpendicular to the two rows of three seats each that the trio and I were sitting in. Having successfully paid, the mother and father followed about a minute later. The situation was now thus, where the three Wendells represent children, the two June Cleavers represent mothers and the one Ward Cleaver represents the father:
bus

There are windows behind me, the gardevoir, as well as behind the trio across from me. There are no windows behind the newcomers. The new girl starts looking out the window that I’m sitting in front of. From another perspective, she was looking directly at me. Things had gone from bad to worse.

At this point, I couldn’t even look down at the floor now, since the father, represented in the diagram by Ward Cleaver, was leaning very far forward in his seat so that he could make eye contact with his daughter while he tried to get her attention. Had I tried to look down towards the floor of the bus it would have just looked as though I was staring at the father. My only choice was to continue looking towards the front of the bus, which probably made me look like I was trying too hard to not to make eye contact with them.

As though things couldn’t get any worse, the newly arrived mother extracts a banana from her bag and gives it to her daughter. The father, for his part, produces a muffin from his bag and passes it to the mother who hands it to the girl, who proceeds to tear it to bits and make a mess of the place. In general, I think that people who eat in public who don’t have an actual medical reason to do so (eg. hypoglycemia) are in the wrong and should be encouraged to eat in designated places, such as restaurants, cafeterias or in their own homes. Children, however, can’t be expected to be that considerate, especially not children as young as these, so my frustration wasn’t directed at the children. To some extent, it would have been proper to be angry at the parents who, in each case, were the ones to produce the foods the children then ate. But I wasn’t even angry at them either. I was just angry at myself for ending up in such a situation.

I had already told myself I would not get up or switch seats. That would be too unusual. I had to bear it. So I spent the rest of the bus ride alternating between looking out the window and checking my watch every thirty seconds. Nobody else ended up getting on the bus. It really wouldn’t have been so bad if the bus were actually crowded, as I had expected it to be based on the time of day.

I think that part of what made this situation so agonizing was the mysterious way in which it was the kids themselves who chose to sit right next time, rather than the parents. When I was a first grader there was no fucking way I’d sit next to a stranger on a bus as long as I could avoid it. I would sit in the seat closest to the window in a double seat and have the adult I was with sit in the aisle seat. I wouldn’t have to sit next to any scary strangers that way. But those kids yesterday must have had some kind of a complex. I mean, I’m not even a typical stranger; I’m funny-looking. If given the choice, I’d never sit next to, across from or even on the same bus as me. All the more so if I was a little girl in first grade with a delicious muffin that I didn’t want stolen.

All in all, I blame society for this development.

I thought of doing this myself once

When I went ahead and bought this stupid domain name I considered using fake contact details to prevent spam and also avoid paying for “private” registration (where the domain registrar’s contact details are posted in the whois data instead of the registrant’s). But I used my real email address at least. Anyway, I know it’s common to use the postal address of your company headquarters and some email address such as [email protected] for abuse contact, instead of the actual contact information for the person who registered the domain, but I rarely have seen contact information that can properly be called fake.

In any case, this one was downright silly.
usw-dunderhead
Looking at the details for the organization “DUNDER”…
usw-dunderhead

Also, I can’t believe someone else already had taken “smilecitrus.com”. It must have been one of my various nemeses. If only I had had FiOS back then I’d surely have beaten that scoundrel to the punch.