itsachat Writers Ave

Well it so happens that I am on the bus again. I am hoping that I will get my car back soon, but until then I have to take the bus to work and I thought I would just write about what happens on the bus because, this is some pretty freaky stuff. I’m really starting to get a better look at the people on this planet. So I am on the bus and its just after 10pm. I take a seat near the center and read my book. I am reading this book called Hush about a serial killer. The bus rolls up to a stop and lets on a man in a wheel chair who has two kids with him probably aged around 4 and 6 I would guess; Pretty young children. The kids are calling him uncle and seem happy and I watched as the bus activated that hydraulic thing that lowers the bus to the curb, then this ramp flips out so the guy can roll on in. He appears to be very nice to the children, smiling and making jokes with them as he gives them the fare to put into the cash deposit for him. He rolls over to the section where the seat pops out of the way for his chair, and the kids take the horizontal seat in front of him. The bus driver yells back “you all settled in there?” Wheelchair guy says, “yep” and all that gear starts rolling back up and the bus starts to move again. A little while later a drunken couple stumble on the bus. They are coming from a notoriously scummy bar in a bad district that this bus drives through. Not a happy environment for any child. Unfortunately for wheelchair guy and the kids, they sit down across from them. Most likely because they couldn’t possibly have walked any further down the bus and just stumbled into the first seat that was available to them. The woman was grotesquely over-weight, sweaty with runny makeup covering a haggard face. The unshaven man had greasy hair, smelled bad and was dressed in unwashed clothing that looked borrowed from a street hobo. The seat they chose put them two seats in front of me. I cringed back and wished I had one of the surgical face masks to put on. I think those people smelled of solvent along with the beer and alcohol smell that was emanating from them.
As soon as they sat down, the greasy drunk man looked across to the wheelchair guy and said loudly, “Hah! Hey look there sha cripple!” to which the wheelchair guy responded in a very calm but clear voice, “Hey, watch what you say bitch.” The drunk then laughed nervously and the fat lady then smacked the greasy drunk really hard across the head and said, “Yah, watch what you say bitch.” She then started talking to the wheelchair guy. “how yah doing” she says. Wheelchair guy tells her he’s doing well. Drunken grease boy starts yammering about why the wheelchair guy is stuck babysitting two kids. It becomes clear to me that maybe these people know each other. WC guy says, and I was quite proud of him for saying this, “I’m not stuck with these kids, I am watching them for their mother. It’s no problem.” The fat lady hit the drunk again and told him to shut up. This is when the greasy drunk announced that he is making the fat lady his wife. They are engaged, and when he said that, they both started laughing really loudly. She started slurring she was going to become the next Mrs. Morgan and he cheered her on. Wheelchair guy just stared at them without saying anything, then I saw him look at the kids and roll his eyes to them with a reassuring smile that he’s got everything all under control. I found myself thinking about what kind of wedding these two maniacs of life could possibly have. Would they serve solvent for their guests? The drunks kept yelling about their wedding plans until they started arguing about ringing the bell for their stop that was coming up. Thankfully for everyone on the bus, those two departed shortly thereafter. At the stop where the drunks got off, a young trendy looking dude gets on. He appears intoxicated as well and he starts talking to the bus driver and telling him that he has no change for the bus and could he please just catch a ride downtown for free. The bus driver obviously said yes because he started driving, but the trendy dude started digging in his wallet and pulling out bills. He slurs out, “do you have change for a 20?” I can’t hear the bus driver, because he sits behind that booth and his voice travels forward, but I imagine he says, “Trendy dude. Its okay, have a seat, rides on me. Pay next time”. However. Trendy dude is just not having any of that. He digs again for another bill, and pulls out a pink 50. How about change for a 50? No response from the bus driver. Trendy Dude swaying at the front of bus tries to put his 50 back into his wallet and it drops to the floor. Now he tries to lean over to pick it up and Whooops, down he goes. Face flat to the floor he’s reaching towards the 50 like he’s swimming or something. Very strange behaviour; withering along down the aisle of the bus, on his stomach, reaching for his money, looking at everyone on the bus to see if they were watching him. Typical attention seeker. The bus driver keeps driving and swerving in and out of lanes and coming to stops he’s not making it easy for Trendy drunken dude to get his cash. But he eventually does get the money and struggles to put himself into the same seat the drunken couple just left behind. Wheelchair guy and the kids are just staring at him. In fact, everyone on the bus was staring at him. Noticing this, Trendy guy addresses the people on the bus. “I have money! I just have no change.” No one answers. He shouts again. “Really, I just have no change. I only have bills!” From behind me someone responds. Why don’t you just put in a 5 then? Trendy guy chose not to answer that question and at that moment manages to turn himself around and get positioned into his seat. He started mumbling but I couldn’t hear what he said. Next thing I heard was the guy from behind me say. “What a Loser.” Trendy guy heard him too, and twisted his head around from in his seat and yelled, “Hey! I’m not a loser! I’m Gay!” Oh Great, I thought. Now this is going to be a gay debate. Laughter from the back of the bus. Here it comes “Don’t laugh at me because I’m gay!” from Trendy dude. More laughter from the back of the bus and some random comments such as Loser, and Drunk, and Idiot. Then wheelchair guy offers some advice. He speaks up and says, They are not laughing because you’re gay. You being gay is not the issue here. Do everyone a favor and just wait for your stop quietly okay? I saw trendy dude say “okay” and resign himself to his seat. Then he looks at the wheelchair guy, and I swear he got a glimmer in his eye like he wanted to hook up with him. “So what’s your name guy?” he asks him. This was when I was lucky to be able to get off the bus to catch my cross. Yep, some pretty freaky stuff happening on the buses. I found it funny that the bus driver just ignores all these drunks, the slurring, the yelling, the name calling. He just drives along, oblivious to his passengers. *cries for my car*

I don’t like to think that I am a chronic complainer; but who doesn’t complain every once in a while? I’m going to complain now about this awful bus ride experience. Buses really are the most dreadful form of transportation and this here is a perfect example of why. I had to take the bus to work one night; for reasons I wont complain about here lol, and was needing to get there by 11:00 pm. Let me note here, that I am never late. I don’t like others to be late when I am coming off a shift, and so I never ever do that to a co-worker. The trip to work is a 15 minute car ride. I figured catching the bus an hour before hand would give me plenty enough time to get there. I started looking at the bus schedules at 9pm and planned my route. I was going to take the 10:05 bus downtown. This bus was to arrive downtown at 10:15. My cross bus leaves downtown at 10:36 and would get me to my work at 10:45, giving me a 15 minutes to play with.

So, off I go to the bus stop. I guess it will take me 2 minutes to walk there, so I leave at 10:00 pm, 5 minutes before it gets there. As I turn the corner, I watch as the bus drives away! I run back home and quickly look at the schedules again and wonder if my clocks are wrong or the bus driver left his stop early. It lands up another bus comes at 10:30, and I can cross with a different bus downtown at 10:50. Taking this different bus means I will have to walk 5 blocks farther once I get off it, but I can run that in a few minutes so I can still get to work on time. I head back to the bus stop to catch the 10:30 downtown. I get to the bus stop at 10:25, just as the bus is pulling away – missing this bus means I have to pay for a cab to work so I chase it down. I catch it at the light and get on. I look at the time on the bus; it reads 10:26. This bus driver is leaving early to? Was I reading the wrong bus schedules online where it said current bus times? I take a seat and watch the bus clock as this bus starts zooming downtown. He’s going really fast and I’m thinking “Yay! I’m not going to miss my cross downtown.” I kept thinking that right up until the bus driver stopped at an intersection halfway to downtown, got off the bus and ran across to street to partake in a 5 minute conversation with another buddy bus driver. It makes sense to me now why he was going so fast to get to this point.

I wasn’t really concerned though, because I knew I had a 10 minute window once I got downtown. As it landed up, I barely made it downtown to catch the cross. Chitter chatter lets not get at her bus driver got me there with 1 minute to spare; I dashed across the street and waited for my cross which was due to arrive in 1 minute. I watched the electronic bus announcement thing, and the clock on it. I watched different buses coming and going and my bus which should have arrived, which had already shown up on the schedule board as being “due” was no where in sight. Some street person asked me what bus I was taking, as if I was a long lost pal, and I told them one that wasn’t there yet. Finally at 10:56 my bus pulls up. As my luck this night would have it, its time for a shift change. The new bus driver gets on and tells the old driver she’s late. The late driver laughs and now these two take a few minutes to chat and then she finally leaves. I figured we’d be getting going by now but the new guy takes a few more minutes to adjust his seat. Then take a walk up and down the bus to check on windows, saying hi to the people on the bus. Dear God im thinking. Can we please get going? Why is he making an event of this? Doesn’t he realize he’s hella late now? LETS GO. Im watching that bus clock like a hawk now, counting the minutes that I’m going to be late for work. When the driver finally puts it in gear for us to get going, I’m happy to see he’s giving her nails and not dilly dallying. Okay, I breathe easier. He knows he’s late. About a ¼ of the way to my drop off point, the driver picks up a very loud Russian security guard, and Oh look. My luck would have it – he knows the bus driver! He now stands up next to the driver and starts reminiscing while the driver slows his speed to half of that which he was going, because he can’t pay attention to the road anymore; he’s busy chatting! It’s now 11:08 and I only have 6 more stops to go before I can run like hell to my job. This is when the 6 young adults came on from a local bar. They clearly had been drinking, so it was nice to see them on a bus and not driving, but they rang the bell for every stop. The bus driver, who was still enjoying his convo with the Russian obliged them and stopped at every stop. Doo doo doo. No ones getting off! The young adults laugh. The driver goes. The drunks ring the bell again. The driver stops. No ones getting off!! The kids laugh, the driver goes again. This goes on for 6 stops, and I sat there wondering why I got caught up in this chaos theory loop but didn’t worry for too long, I was almost at my stop.

I rang the bell and was hoping it wasn’t at this moment the bus driver would realize those kids were playing him and decide NOT to stop, but he did and because the Russian was blocking the front exit, I had to use the rear door. So I “touched” it like it says to and it wouldn’t open. So I touched it again, and it still wouldn’t open. I gave up on touching it and starting banging on it; it still wouldn’t open! Then the driver starts driving away! So I yell WAIT! Back door please! But he can’t hear me because he’s having too much fun with the Russian and the Russian laughs really loud. Thankfully, an older gentleman near the front of the bus got his attention and the driver slowed to a stop. I was able to get the “touch me” door open and thanks to the negligent bus driver only had another block added to my run to work. Did I mention that as soon as I got off the bus it started to pour rain? Yah well it did. So, without an umbrella I started my jog to work. I took one last glance at the bus clock before I got off; it said 11:15. I started jogging.

This only lasted for about 10 feet before the pants that I was wearing started falling off me. AS my luck would once again have it, I was wearing pants without a belt, the kind that will fall off when I run in them. So, I walked in the pouring rain and arrived to work at 11:22 pm. Twenty two minutes late because why? I think it was because I was trapped in some kind of chaos theory vortex. Something, I don’t know what it was, wanted me late for work that night. Yah, so anyways, Moral of the story, Buses suck. I didn’t even get into the smell, the germs, the view.. gaaah.

Lan out.

I know this irish lad named hankventure and I asked him if i could interview him for my H article. It occurred to me to ask him for an interview for several reasons. The first and foremost would have to be because Hank is probably the friendliest, easy going, non offensive and respectful,chatter that i know.

To me Hank is one of those people who is so non-judgmental he can see the good in any person, and treats them as such. I see Hank treat all equally with the same consideration. He just is the kind of pixel who makes you want to be nice to peeps.Yet at the same time he can hold is own in a battle of words.. so to speak. Hanks not a wimp or a whiner; and he’s not nice in any kind of annoying way; he’s just.. nice!
He was one of my first greens at wirecrap (thats what we call it here hehe)

The second reason I wanted to interview Hank was because he is interesting. A musician/ songwriter/ poet /artist.. that’s all I know at this point, but I am sure there is more. He has a myspace page and I wanted anyone who read the interview to check out his collection.

Here is Hankventures myspace page. myspace.com/infonationdlr. the bands called infonation btw.
So, I went to Hanks myspace page and its not all decorated with any codes for flashiness or hype. Its very straightforward. cough*plain*cough (psst. Hank, can i decorate your myspace page for you? why is it plain? grrr. Is that an Irish thing? lol)

Here is a picture of the place where Hank gets to smoke his greens. He was so kind to allow me to use it. I sure wish that was my backyard…. Well. its not exactly his back yard, but pretty close to his backyard. Ireland is such a beautiful piece of earth!

hanks quarry

Lets get to know Hank a little better. Here was the interview =)

—–

Lan So, tell me a bit about your band?
HankventureWell, its not really a band anymore. there was a group of us that started this shit back in the day. We were all graffitti artists who moved on into music and our name came with us. (FLMFAM = The Faceless Men Family) Over the years everyonefell by the wayside either taking separate record deals or just following another path.

Lan And if we didn’t have any clue as to who you were, what three words sum you up?
Hankventure Hmm 3 Words?…….Serious (about my lyrics) Generous (To my people) and Misunderstood (In everything lol)

Lan If I gave you some weed where would you hide it?
Hankventure lol i wouldnt hide it id smoke it in a blunt there an then

Lan If you could meet anyone in the world dead or alive who would it be and what would say to them?
Hankventure Hmm lots of names spring to mind when i readthis question like Jack Herer and Terry Pratchett but i think it would have to be Jim Morrson. He was the whle reason i started to write lyrics/poetry or anything else in the first place. Not many people rated Jim Morrison as a poet when he was alive or after his death but i read a lot when i was younger and i just seemed to “Get it” for whatever reason it was i went on to try and emultate him in the way he expessed himelf. Obviously ive matured more now andmy writing is my own but i still owe a lot to MR Mojo Risin’.

Lan If you were a car, which would you be?
Hankventure I’d be a Toyota Pick up. Gets the job done an dont take no shit lol

Lan What is the average temperature where you live?
Hankventure Fucking cold haha… i dunno really but it aint gonna be high co its Ireland lol

Lan What’s the longest you’ve gone without a shower?
Hankventure Hm well i’ll be brutally honst id say about a week maybe 2. There were times when i was homeless an shit so i was lucky if i ate. I spent 4 days at a rock festival using baby wipes lol

Lan What is your favourite colour of socks to wear?
Hankventure Im not fussy about socks really but i guess i subconciously buy white socks a lot…does that mean something?

Lan If you were stranded on a desert island, what three items would you take with you?
Hankventure 1 Music of sme form. 2 a picture of my son. 3 Wireclub lol

Lan Do you prefer Coca Cola or Pepsi?
Hankventure CocaCola all day man. Im actually phyically addicted its not good haha

Lan Who was the last person you called / text and what for?
Hankventure The last person was my ex gf Niamh to see how her an my unborn boy Jake were doing

Lan If you were to send someone to prison for crimes against music, who would it be?
Hankventure Nobody really. I bitch an moan as muh as the next man about various pop acts an shit but at the end of the day everyone just wants to get heard an make money its just that some will do things others wont do. Thats the same in the music indstry as it is in anything in life. Some will sell crack, some wont but envy the ones that do. Some will paint pictures an so on an so..

Lan What song do you wish you’d written?
Hankventure Oh thats easy straight off the top of me nut “All by myself” By Haystak. I relate to it so much every word is like “Damn i wish i wrote this” It’s be a good fuck you to the haters and people who jumped ship so damn quick. I firmly believe if we’d all stuck together we’d be making some serious money now. But thats life i guess.

Lan If you were a superhero, what would be your superpower?
Hankventure Lol me an my ex have actually talked about this many times so i can say straight The ability to stop an start time an shit. If you had that you wouldnt need anything else ever lol

Lan What were you doing last night at 11?
Hankventure I cant remember exactly but i waseither at my friends house smoking a few or i was home logged into wire by then lol.

Lan What was the last thing you bought?
Hankventure A PS3 game called “Dantes Inferno” ………It was crap

Lan What do you most hope for?
Hankventure Easy. Happiness and a good life for my son Jake. Nothing means more to me than that

Lan Well said Hank, and thank you again for giving us the opportunity to get to know the man behind the recorder (myspace pic ref lol) Thanks again Hank. You’re a good friend and you are going to be a great dad! *hugs Niamh*

This is Lanfearinc for itsachat.com
~No One Here Gets Out Alive~
You Rock Hank!

Here is the VIP avatar that I made for Andy Rocks. He wasn’t sure what he wanted his avatar to be, so after numerous attempts at bugging him to come up with something, he finally said he wanted his avatar to be of an avatar.. So here that is!

andyrocksVIPavatar

its cold out there

This is a little quick doodle i made for sloany last night because she was cold.. which i find kind of hard to believe considering where she lives!! hahaha but anyways.. he can warm ya up sloan. not sure who he is, but he probably looks like someone out there! probably a canadian since its red and also, he’s wearing a hood <3 Lan