I've said it before, so why not say it again ...

I don't know how to take time off. Sure, there's the getting of the time off, which I excel at. I've found that if "Hey, can I have a week off" doesn't work, you could always try "Hey, can I have a week off or I start shaving people's necks with a grapefruit spoon" will for sure work. Granted, if you choose the latter over the former, you're pretty much going to have to go in for the whole hog and start walking around with your underwear on your head or spontaneously yodelling into the phone. I've also found that, if you go with option B, it's always best to keep asking people (even better if it's during a staff meeting) if anyone else can hear the noise/see the bugs/understand the gibberish coming out of the walls.

As to what I do with my time off, well, this is pretty much it. Oh, and of course, eat more than usual and sleep more than I like, but I read or heard somewhere that this is called 'recharging my batteries'. I can dig that concept, fully and without reservation. I should note, though, that if the whole battery thing lasts longer than one weeks, two at the outside, you are no longer on vacation, but are unemployed and run the risk of eating your weight in ding dongs (whatever you do, don't actually google ding dongs, you get way more than the snack cake...). I demolish my d/l rate by at least a factor of 10 (I'm allowed 10gigs a month, like most people ... last time I took time off I downloaded ... 1000gigs. Yes. In one month. It is possible, and no, not all of it was Russian pornography. Some of it was good old homegrown Canadian.) I play video games and treat myself like a bad funhouse run by that creepy clown from the Rob Zombie movies.

In short, I reintroduce myself to me.

Having divested myself of a brief synopsis of what I do when I'm left to my own devices (and I can't get access to semtex), let me move on.

Among the vast horde of reader (did he drop the 's' on purpose, or is he making some kind of funny joke), someone asked for my views on homeless people on buses. I gotta be honest with you on this one, out here in the ass of the suburbs, lovingly sandwiched between a real, semi-city and the honest-to-God Okeefenokee swamps of Maple Ridge, there aren't a whole lot of homeless people who ride public transit.

They are far too busy hiding from me. Now, I know what you're thinking. How on earth could this be? Well, simply put, the homeless goons out here aren't as militant as the ones in the city. A couple of 'I'm not a motherfucking bank machine' and 'Get a fucking job you fucking hippy' shouts and you pretty much get left alone. It does help you're a big guy with a bald head, but you should try it. The first couple of times out the gate it's rough, you feel like shit for talking to another person, another human being, that way, but you get over it pretty quick. especially since the guilt you feel over tellin' 'em to fuck off once or twice (they will get to remember your face) is easier to get rid of than the guilt you invariably feel when you tell them you got no money and you just came out of the fucking bank machine where they watched take out a hundred bux so you could go to the Doc Maarten store. Just because they're homeless doesn't mean they're stupid, and these mofos can hear dropped change sixteen blocks away. It happens like in the Highlander teevee show when another immortal comes along; they look all distant for a moment, and then they're off.

The occasional time I do see a homeless person on the bus, they're busy making the rounds. You know what I mean. Asking for change, asking for food, asking for what-the-fuck ever it is that they need to get done with their day. After working downtown and having to use alleys as a means of getting from A to B quickly, I am completely innoculated to the way they dress and the way they smell. So when Captain Commanda and the All-Hankie Accordion Choir sits down next to with breath like Hai Karate and stank like he rubbed some funk on it first, I do what I am immensely skilled at. I ignore him/her/it. If they are especially frantic with their funkified demands, I turn and stare at them. I don't say anything. At all.

I

Just

Stare.

Now, I imagine homeless people have seen all kinds of things. Hell, I imagine they've done all kinds of things. The life of a person on the street cannot be an easy one, for all it's worth. I can tell you now, without doubt, that even the most hardened homeless person/panhandler/grifter will think twice about continuing on in the face of sheer disinterest. It helps if you make eye contact. It really does. Now, again, if you're three foot two inches and weigh eighteen pounds, this might not be the best approach for you. You might want to try something like yelling 'FIRE' or 'Why is your dick on my leg!!'. Homeless people do not want any attention at all. They know the score. Mr or Mrs Upstanding Citizen can call the po-po on Crazy Joe the Salami Snorter in less than two seconds, and thus ends the whole day.

The weirdest encounter with one of these guys? Back in the day, I was what you'd, um, call a freakin' hippy weirdo. Yeah, it's true. I had the hair, and the penchant for black, and had friends who were bona fide Wiccans (both the Dianic kind and the normal, garden variety kind ... who were essentially ... sorry for this ... incredibly out of shape men and women who were and probably still are seriously unhealthy who thought that sitting around on the weekends and talking about the latest article on Math Mathonwy was cool). So there I was, on some downtown bus somewhere thinking the deep and morose thoughts that only a pagan teenage boy can possibly summon (can you say angst, motherfucker?) when this homeless dood starts talking to me. He's got this crazy frizzed out white man's homeless fro thing goin' on and this whole, soup and cigarette stained beard action happening, you know what I mean, and those gnarled old yellow fingernails that you know can claw through concrete and alla that shit.

This was before I learned how to deal with freaks. I still attract em, of course, but some kind of underground stories pass about me. He says somethin' like ...

HIM: They lookin out for you boy.
ME: I'm sorry?
HIM: You got nothin to worry bout.
ME: What?
HIM: You can't hide from em, but you got nothin to worry about, they gone look after you, keep you in the headlights.
ME: ...
HIM: I seen you, I seen yer gift, I seen you in my dreams ...

I'm sure the conversation would have gone all night if I'd stayed on the bus.

Stupidest encounter with a homeless person? Well, we've all been asked for food before, right? Hey buddy canya spara dime for a bite to eat? I ain't eat nuthin since day before, and so on and so forth. These are the people I am nominally more inclined to at least treat like people because they're asking for food. I had one guy, and this, I cannot make up; he asked me for food when he had:

1) A Big Mac in one hand
2) two hot apple pies in the other
3) a scorching case of lip herpes.

I told him if he was going to ask someone for food, he should damn well make sure that he wasn't eating something. The lip herpes had nothing to do with my answer, although it did make me run away from him pretty quickly, because I think one of them was trying to talk to me.

And, that's pretty much it ... oh ... wait ...

HEY! Bus driver!! How much longer are you gonna have a fucking conversation with the assmunch there? He doesn't HAVE THE MONEY to get on! No one here is going to give him money! Shit! If we actually measured the amount of brain power actively being used to pretend that stink ass hair pile doesn't exist we would be able to launch the shuttle into space! Isn't there some kind of LAW that prohibits air pollution? THAT guy smells like he crawled through a latrine with Johnny Knoxville! You're letting him ON? WTF? JEEEEZUS ... oh man, if he sits next to me I am so seriously gonna fuckin' freak right the fuck out! Sit in the back sit in the back sit in the back ... OKAY! We have been cleared, I repeat, the situation is over, the nutbag with the cardboard shoes and the Aqua Velva breath is in the back ... oh man ... was that close ...