Last post wasn't very interesting, was it?

I've been busy. Had another job interview yesterday--not writing-related, but a step up (or down, depending how you look at it) from trucking. I'd be moving into the dispatch office. Yes, I'm applying to be the Devil.

It's not 100% bad (or good, depending how you look at it). I'd still be spending approximately 25% of my time on the road. The job seems to entail hazardous waste hauling--possibly biohazard or medical waste. This might all look like a reversal of fortune, but I'd be getting a good price for my soul: $44k per year. No benefits that I can tell.

I'm really torn. The S.O. has just quit teaching ESL and we need cash. At the same time, I'm petrified of spending a year outside my chosen industry and having the shine fade off my qualifications.

But then I think that $44k is a lot of money, and I could still do fiction work in my spare time. . .it's tempting. Of course this presumes I'm going to get the job. And that it's really what Manpower says it's going to be.

In other news, I just sent my first magazine subscription to Geist. Wish it luck.

And in other late news we have what was apparently the single most important issue of yesterday:

Bridges

My Fair City has a not-entirely-unforseeable problem: Three million people--and three bridges. Every morning roughly 1.5 million of those bodies heave themselves from their beds and try to cross one of those bridges. This causes a certain amount of slow traffic. But being Canadians, we don't tend to actually shoot each other (although seeing a single driver in the car pool lane always makes me reconsider), and traffic tends to mosey along at no less than 60 Km/h.

However, once in a while this changes. Sometimes, just for drill, some kind citizen will decide we need a reminder of what gridlock really is. Said citizen then goes about demonstrating the concept. This usually involves climbing a bridge and threatening to jump off.

Naturally the police, ambulance, fire, and social work personnel close the bridge (I'm not entirely certain why this is. Do they think anyone in this town would notice a mere airborne pedestrian?) for however long it takes to fetch the chap his ice-cream sundae or whatever it is that will bring him inside. Apparently this often means feeding him or her fizzy drinks and waiting until they ask to use the bathroom.

This sort of affair, rare-ish though it is, goes by the name of a "police incident"--a name that in the US often involves one or more firearms. Here it's just another damn hassle on the commute to work. Particularly unkind people are known to chant "Jump, jump, jump" while parked on the highway approaches.
But yesteday was bad. First there was a three-car accident in the eastbound lanes at the major junction in the city. Then another on the westbound side. Then the fertilizer really hit the windmill.

A distraught man managed to get the highway bridge closed for five hours--from about 9 AM until 3. Then as he was being escorted off, another man was found on the second of our three bridges. Yeah, really. Personally I think the second man had chosen a far prettier place to End It All. He didn't stay quite as long as his compatriot.

I was very impressed with the number of people who just sat in the traffic and waited. Myself, I would have driven back into town, parked, and taken in an art gallery, or a film. After the first hour or so anyway.

But as always happens when this sort of incident takes place, the debate reignited: should we build more bridges? A survey a few years ago found that 75% of residents favoured a new route into/out of the city. The options are:

1) A toll tunnel. Advantages--theoretically self-financing, and our Province tends to do reasonably well with toll roads. Disadvantages: Costs--ever tried to engineer a tunnel under a major shipping seaway? No matter what they charged for tolls, they'd need about firty years to make back the outlay.

2) A new bridge. Advantages: Cost--cheaper than tunneling. But on the other hand, do we really have room? Both a tunnel and a new bridge would have to be located either in some of the finest city parkland ever occupied by squatters, or on Native land, or possibly on someone's new urban home. And let's not mention the number of lawsuits by people who will now have homes "convenient to transportation" who were looking for a "million-dollar view".

3) String a new deck on one of the existing bridges. Of all the engineering options, this one is most attractive to me. Cheaper than a new structure. The major disadvantage would be closing the existing route for construction for an entire season. But it's been done before.

But I have a solution that is elegant, simple, and cost effective. In fact I have two complimentary solutions:

1) Nearly every car crossing the bridge yesterday had one person in it. How about a public transit link from the North Shore to downtown. Or why not close one of the bridges to non-car-pool traffic? Our highways are perfectly adequate to capacity. We don't need more of them. We just need to start making proper use of the ones we have.

And 2) Nets! From Wikipaedia on the Golden Gate Bridge:

A unique aspect of the construction of this bridge was that a safety net was set up beneath it, significantly reducing the number of deaths that were typical for a construction project such as this in the early 1900s. Approximately 11 men were killed from falls during construction, and approximately 19 men were saved by the safety net. The bulk of the deaths occurred near completion when the net itself failed under the stress of a scaffold fall. Those workers whose lives were saved by the safety nets became proud members of the (informal) Halfway to Hell Club.

Cost-effective, simple, and it seems to me very likely to reduce attention-getting behaviour such as bridge-mounted suicide attempts:

Scene: A fog-shrouded bridge-top, near dawn.
Distraught Man: Hi. Suicide hotline?

Solicitous Counsellor: Yes.

DM: I'm standing on the Memory Bridge and I'm going to jump.

SC: Hmmm. I see the problem. Look, if you're just crying out for help why don't you drop by our offices during working hours? We'll be opening up in about forty minutes. I mean, if you just jump, you wind up in the safety net, and then you get all embarrassed 'cos they have to close the bridge while they fish you out. I mean, have you thought about what you're gonna say at the water cooler at work tomorrow when someone brings up the horrendous traffic jam yesterday because some fool got caught in the net again?

DM: Um, yeah. You're right I guess. Maybe it is a rather silly idea.

SC: Yeah, it is. I mean why not just vault off the cliffs at ships beach? Wait till the tide goes out and you get a three-hundred-foot-drop onto solid rock--Boom, no problem. And three hundred feet, well that's just enough to kill you for sure, but not enough so's you get time to think, change your mind on the way down, eh?

DM: Uh, you're right--I gotta think this through.

SC: Well could you hang up and call back later? You're blocking a lifeline for some poor desperate soul, y'know?

DM: Okay, uh, 'bye.


. . . Of course that's just my vision.

I'm desperately trying to avoid thinking of food. I'm fasting for a blood test. Yes, I know, we did all this last year didn't we?--well I have a different doctor now.

Once again I consider the discipline and willpower of those who are fasting--in this instance for Ramadan, and last month for Yom Kippur. I'd make a lousy ascetic.

I keep intending to blog about my vague and less-than directed investigations into religious faith, but so far I've managed very well not to get around to it.