Blogging in real time.

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Once again I am running late this morning. I blame this on the Mexican food I had this weekend from a place out in Corona, Queens. It’s been rated the best Mexican food in the city and we just had to try it. Unfortunately, my intestines didn’t agree with “Yelp!” and I was up half the night re-writing the reviews I read.

Not many of them were favorable.

I made it to the bus stop just as a bus was pulling out. But rather than dash two blocks to catch it at the next stop, I apprised the situation with bourgeoisie diffidence. “Another one will be along soon,” I reassured myself. But my assessment was wrong by about 20 minutes.

As an homage to modernity, my phone holds two apps that tell me when buses will be coming and where they are at any given moment. It’s an advance, to be sure. We are no longer in the dark about such things. We can live a quantified life when it comes to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

That said, we can do nothing to speed the arrival of one of those languid behemoths. We have no app that eliminates traffic and lets the M31 cover its four-mile route faster than its usual 75 minutes.

So as I write this, it is approaching 9:00 and I have just passed Sixth Avenue—Avenue of the Americas—as we used to call it. Before, of course, half of the Americas were the United States’ immigrant problem and we turned our noses up at our neighbors because they are dark and poor and don’t speak our language. It looks like I won’t make it in until 9:15 or so, which for me, who prides himself on a timely arrival is the perfect way to start a week off like shit.

It’s okay, I tell myself, pretty much no one else will be in before ten. But I have old-fashioned ways. I feel remiss, even derelict if I get in late. Much the same way I feel about shaving.

I know life isn’t like this anymore, that by the time I’m an old man, even US Presidents will show up for meetings with other heads of state with three days growth, uncombed hair and their shirt untucked. But I can’t do it. And I pray I don't see Hilary like that.

I have to shave every day or I feel like a bum. You’d have to give me electroshock to get those 1950s voices out of my head.

We’re at 11^th Avenue now, about at the end of the line. From here it’s a short walk to work.

At least I wrote my blog entry.