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This past weekend PJ and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth with our friends (you know who you are). You can check out the official website at www.climatecrisis.net.

What does the word “inconvenient” mean?

The following is the entry from Merriam Webster’s online dictionary.

Entry Word: inconvenient
Function: adjective
Text: 1) causing difficulty, discomfort, or annoyance; i.e. the unexpected visitors showed up at an inconvenient time 2) hard or impossible to get to or get at; i.e. for some reason, they placed the dishes in an inconvenient cabinet
Synonyms: awkward, discommoding, disobliging, incommoding
Related Words: bothersome, burdensome, onerous, troublesome; annoying, exasperating, irritating
Near Antonyms: acceptable, bearable, tolerable; advantageous, desirable, good, helpful
Antonyms: convenient

It seems to me that the meaning of the word inconvenient is subjective in some regards. What is convenient for me may be inconvenient for you and vice versa. So, how do you determine if something is convenient or inconvenient for you? Is there an internal set of criteria? Does it just depend on how you feel that day?

PJ hates crowded buses. PJ has to transfer downtown and take yet another MUNI to get to work, so his frustration with MUNI is easy to understand. If you have lived in San Francisco, you know that taking the MUNI downtown is a necessity as the parking is near impossible and will cost you a fortune. So, everyday we trudge to our bus stop and take the local MUNI downtown to work.

Today was a classic example of the our daily commute. We were packed in like sardines and the bus driver kept stopping at all the stops to let people abroad through the back doors. I love looking at other driver’s expressions as they look over and notice how crowded our bus is as they nonchalantly drive downtown in the morning. I can almost read their minds as they shake their heads–poor bastards. This morning, however, as PJ grumbled about the mass of humanity on our bus, I just smiled, leaned over and whispered in his ear, “it’s inconvenient”. My comment at least made him laugh.

We loved the movie and recommend it highly to anyone interested–and even those who aren’t interested! We are ashamed to admit that we still don’t have the energy efficient lightbulbs. They are now on our shopping list. We also bought a TerraPass. But, that’s another article.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 8:26 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.