I did fulfill textquest last night. One of my books was $55 and the other was $66.75 � why, it�s just like being back in college! Then I ate falafel, not at the Cremaster place but at Aladdin across the street (not as good), and did in fact go to Espresso Roma, where I sat on my ass for almost two and a half hours, thank you very much, and put together application packages for two jobs and also the portfolio for the Philadelphia experiment, which I sent off as soon as I got home. Sent off the applications too, and weirdly one of them got bounced back to me this morning address undeliverable, which sucks because it was the much better job and the second one has "Assistant" in it, but I will confess I did tell some fairly fragrant lies on the resume I submitted so maybe the occasional undeliverablity is meet reward for my probably more occasional unscrupulousness. Got two more packages to put together ideally this afternoon and on the government clock � it�s snowing here in Seattle, cars skidding into lampposts and buses idling by the side of the road and almost no one here at the office and freezing rain anticipated for sometime this afternoon. Oh, and Carrie just passed by and told me that the UW is closed as of 12:30, so no class for me tonight. Those in the know suspect that a similar closure announcement affecting this institution is imminent. Personally I�d rather get a per-hour wage to write in my diary, balance my checkbook, apply for jobs, and read "White Teeth" (what in the world can I have been thinking, it is wonderful), but I likes me a snow day and would agreeably do the same things at home if I had to. Also, there are vegetables there, and no cream-cheese brownies.

Oh oh oh I don�t seem to have anything substantive in me today � literally and figuratively. Last night, coming home on the 48 bus from the U District, I was making a January calendar (no lie!) when I got the heebie-jeebies of someone looking at me, so I looked up and indeed someone was, a pale balding guy with a ski jacket and yellowy blue eyes. Not too much eye contact on public transportation is the rule, so I went back to what I was doing. Several moments later I still had the creepy feeling and I looked up again and he was still scrutinizing me with the same intensity. I looked down again but the next thing I knew he had left his seat at the front of the bus and walked back to the one directly across from me. "Excuse me, can I ask you something?" he said. I had been concentrating so I flinched and squeaked. "I�m sorry," the man said, sounding so normal that I thought maybe he was going to to say that I looked familiar and suggest that we may have met someplace before yada yada yada, "I didn�t mean to scare you, I just wanted to know: WHY THE FUCK WERE YOU STARING AT ME JUST NOW?" And it really was like that, his voice shifted in seconds from mild-mannered public transportation rider to full-on cuckoo�s nest, this was so sudden I heard myself gasp. And then I stammered, Oh, no, I wasn�t staring, I just looked up from what I was doing, I�m sorry if I offended you� and the guy is still apoplectic and yelling at me, "Don�t give me that shit, don�t try to deny it, you were motherfucking staring at me and I want to motherfucking know why! Why? Can you tell me that, can you? Huh? Don�t you think you�re one rude fucking bitch, staring like that?" I was paralyzed, but a woman who was sitting in the seat in front of him yelped and ran up to the handicapped seating by the driver and something in me thought, Yes, excellent idea and I followed her. By the time I sat down she was talking to the driver, in a mournful rhythmic tone almost like she was reciting something. She had a strong Caribbean accent. "Driver, he�s doing it again, that man is harassing women. He did it to me the last two nights and I came up here and I complained to you, that man is scary, he�s sick in his head and he needs medicine but that�s no excuse for harassing women and I don�t understand why you won�t do something, why you won�t say something to me, why you pretend you don�t hear anything I tell you about him. Driver, I�m scared, and it is not right I should be scared on your bus route, scared of a man who is sick in his head who yells at me and I think he�s going to hurt someone and now he is yelling at other women, and you are not a good man, driver, for ignoring the harassment of women..." And now I am thinking, Jesus Christ. And: Uh-oh, what if that nutcase follows me off at my stop? And: Well, I guess that�s it for me and the 48 bus. And all the while the driver was totally impassive, not looking in the woman�s direction nor glancing back in the mirror at the angry psycho when she gestured at him. Angry Psycho pulled the cord and got up to leave at a stop at least a mile before mine, I was much relieved, and as he stood in the aisle waiting for the bus to slow, the woman, perhaps emboldened by proximity even to what might as well have been a plastic model of a bus driver as authority figure, kind of spat at him, "You are harassing women! You must stop, you need medicine for your head!" And my eyeballs were fixed to my lap so I didn�t see him point at me but I imagine he did because what he said was, "You fucking stay out of this! It�s not about you, it�s about her � *this* bitch!" The door opened and he got off the bus. The woman resumed her keening to the bus driver � Driver, won�t you listen, please, driver, we women are scared, it is a danger and I don�t know why you pretend you can�t hear us � and a few blocks later I got up the nerve to raise my eyes and a few blocks after that was my stop. I liked the eight-block walk home because, obviously, I needed to settle myself. I got home and Steve was there and he asked how I was and I said Much better now, though I did have an misadventure on the bus. I told him about it, growing increasingly resentful and angry myself as I described the bus driver�s inaction, and he was not unsympathetic but he said, You know what, something like that probably happens to him every day. Every bus driver has to see something like that at least every day. And I bet he�s right.

I was so scared, though, when that guy was sitting in the seat next to mine and leaning across the aisle at me I was terrified that he was going to hit me or something. And should there be no place for that, is that immaterial in the context of the tedium-with-a-side-of-psychosis that constitutes a bus driver�s workday? I also realized, talking to Steve, that before I had my car I relied on the bus to get me everywhere, and I was privy to or part of scenes like that as a matter of course and eventually became more inured to them than it seems I am now. I have a vague sense of being depressed about this, that I�ve become a yuppie or a pussy or someone who would secretly be happy living in the homogenous suburbs where bus service doesn�t reach so the underclass cannot venture � have I? would I? � but then again am I supposed to feel virtuous, mommy and daddy�s good obedient leftist walking the talk, on account of living a bus-riding, �hood-living, consistently car-burgled life in which I am likely to be menaced like that on a regular basis? Because no offense to all the leftists in the house, but that�s pretty sick.

Steve told me a few days ago about a sign he saw on a motel that weekend we went with Stephen to Port Townsend:

CLEAN
REASONABLE RAT�S