These old shit cans

It's a little bit like bringing out the dead with State Transit for both customers, carriages, and cars whenever cold weather rears it's ugly head.

As I sit here in this railway shit can, a man to my left vents his frustration by glaring in my direction and flexing his shoulder, a move that cracks his joint back into place. He once had full reign of this small piece of seat but I've forced his hand and he doesn't want to share.

Not when he has his important photocopy to read on SQL streaming, anyway.

To my right is a couple who have more space on their right but are hiding from the cold metal wall of this carriage. The man on my right side and his girl on his right, they sit far enough so that they still squish me even with their room to move.

Should I mention that they're French? Or is it too important not to note for fear that their snobbish ways on this rainy day could be misconstrued or interpreted as that typical Parisian attitude which seems to forge the stereotype.

This old shit can is packing up now but it's still better than the shit can I took to get here.

A bus down Bondi Road, I don't even know where they're grabbing them from. Junkyards I suspect as the only qualification must be "roof" and "four wheels" because the term "functional" seems missing from the equation.

I would sit in the middle of this unusually cold bus on an unusually cold and wet day in October, a heavy jacket day for Spring. Thank you El Nino, danke La Nina.

I would sit on that bus and be glad I'm bundled up tight, my arms sitting in a polyester furnace while the bus decides to show how impoverished it really is and drip droplets of merciless rust-and-grime stained cold onto our hands, heads, and anything else we were for some reason foolish enough to leave bare.

These old shit cans don't care though. They merely function and they barely function at that.

Poetic justice for a crumbling state.

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