sidetracked ...

going postal

2007-07-08T13:55:00.000-05:00

Over a two-and-a-half-square-foot surface, a woman meticulously built perfect rows of 39-cent relics. One by one, she transferred them from their roll to the package. Thankfully, the postman took the next couple customers in line while the woman simultaneously decorated and paid the shipping for her gift.

It's a good thing postage stamps come in the self-stick variety.

"Howminnny stamps d'yah need fah that?" someone behind me asked.

As the woman turned to answer the old man, she revealed her UPS store staff T-shirt and apron.

"About $75 worth," she said. "It's going to the U.S. Virgin Islands. I just want to get rid of these old stamps since the rates went up to 41 cents."

She resumed the stamp relocation process after recounting the rows and columns. I knew I wasn't going to make it to work on time.

"We jus' figyuhd ya were a li'l' crazy," barked a woman in front of me.

"Maybe a little," the woman laughed. "I just have so many old stamps." She double-checked the count on the rows she built in a rectangle around the address. "OK, I think this is ready," she said to the postman after adding three more stamps.

He slowly counted and canceled each of the 193 stamps, one by one. After the woman helped him move the large box into a cart, she grabbed her UPS hand truck and headed for the door.

"Next," the postman said, looking at me.

"How much to mail this regular mail?" I asked, handing him a brown-paper wrapped book I was sending to my mom. "I have some old postcard stamps I want to get rid of..."

break-in success

2007-06-02T16:25:00.000-05:00

I awoke to a leg swinging across my torso. It was coming from - the window? Something was amiss.

"What the fuck?" I shouted. I elbowed Mike in the ribs. He didn't wake up. Great. Here I am, naked in bed, with some stranger climbing in the window over me. I instinctively pulled the sheet up over my breasts and sat up.

"Nicole?" the intruder asked. He pulled his leg back out of the window and replaced it with his head.

"Who the fuck are you?" I elbowed Mike again. He rolled over and noticed the latest addition to his room.

"Oh. Sorry. I'm Nicole's friend. Nicole got locked out. I was just going to let her in." The intruder swung his leg back up through the window frame. Clearly, this intruder was inebriated. Or just an idiot.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mike said.

"I'm going to go let Nicole in."

"Get the hell out of my window," Mike said.

"But what about Nicole?" he asked, as if he were the only one capable of walking down two flights of stairs to open the door.

"We'll let her in. Just get out of here."

The intruder slunk back onto the third-floor deck, over the railing and, I assume, back down to the ground. Or at least Mike didn't encounter him in the hallway or coming out of one of the downstairs neighbors' apartments.

Nicole apologized about the intruder. She had sent him home. Or tried to. He clearly wasn't very good at following instructions.

She thought we'd changed the locks. We thought she was some obnoxious kid ringing the doorbell repeatedly an hour earlier. Like those pesky car alarms, we cursed at the doorbell irritably, dismissed it as simply an annoyance, and went back to bed.

Moral of the story, kids: Don't assume every 3 a.m. doorbell will draw you out to a bag of flaming dog poo. It might bring an intruder through your window instead.

escape from big apple

2007-05-09T18:30:00.000-05:00

Under the cover of darkness, the carnies packed up and skipped town last night. And I think I know why.

Not long ago I passed by the circus tent in Government Center on my walk home. It was late - around 3 a.m. - and as I came upon the outer perimeter, I heard some sort of commotion. Low and behold, when I rounded the bend, there were two humans making a break for it. The first specimen, a male in his 20s, had just finished scaling the fence and made it to the side of freedom. His cohort, a female, screamed from inside that she wanted out. The male jumped up on the fence so he could see over and coach her in her climbing skills. But she was panicked and cried that she was unable to make it all the way up. The male opted for another tactic, lifting the fence from its anchors, and the female successfully crawled underneath. The pair then stumbled away into the night.

All of this I watched from the shadows. I don't think they saw me, and of course, I didn't report this crime to anyone. Clearly these humans had been abused - perhaps kept in small cages, malnourished or forcefully inebriated. But the carnies were too cowardly to warn anyone about the danger of the escaped specimens and too proud to declare their inability to put on more shows without them. And they needed all of their resources to hunt down the missing pair. So the carnies left, swiftly and quietly in the night.

I just hope those two humans made it to safety. And that I can get some sort of refund for these tickets to next week's show.

under surveillance

2007-05-01T15:54:00.000-05:00

The Eye of Mordor relocated to a shiny new plastic home outside my kitchen window. I think (read: hope) it's firey gaze is directed at the alley below, as all the new (read: additional) "no trespassing" and "under video surveillance" signs would lead passers-by to believe. But even if the camera belongs to my landlord and not to unloved-by-his-family guy or loud-masturbator guy (read: my neighbors), there's something creepy about having a camera right above my second-floor window.

If it's not capturing everything I cook on my trailer-home-sized gas stove (mmm, steamed greens - scintillating footage), surely there's some video of me blocking its view of the alley. While my fire escape turned out to be a deathbed for plants rather than a charming container garden - even before the Eye of Mordor made its home here - it does serve as an occasional makeshift porch/smoking lounge. So anyone reviewing the tapes (or, even creepier, a human operator watching in real-time) has surely seen me climb out my window and sit on the steps with a newspaper or the occasional smokey treat.

Perhaps I'll finally get to make my debut on YouTube.

unidentified object

2007-04-05T17:42:00.000-05:00

I needed to retrieve something from an old friend I hadn't talked to in a while. One evening, I figured he'd be sleeping at his girlfriend's house, so I decided to go over in the middle of the night to grab it. Luckily, he always leaves his house unlocked. Now, I can't tell you why this object was was so desirable or why I couldn't just call him and ask for it. But logic just doesn't apply during REM, now does it?

I let myself in, walked up the stairs, and began my search. I found the object. I took a call on my mobile. No clue why I was getting a call at four in the morning, or why I bothered to answer it, but I did. On the way out, I found a pair of my shorts I didn't remember leaving there. No matter, I grabbed them and made my exit. The door slammed. I ended my call. I began walking down the driveway, over to the parking lot where my little blue Subaru GL was. But then the front door creaked. I crouched down and peered through the bushes. Damn, it was the downstairs neighbor (and mother of one of the kids whose apartment I'd just been in). I couldn't get to the car without being seen, and it was late, so there wasn't really any place else I could go without obviously having been the person who just left their house. In my panic ... I woke up.

laughing with myself

2007-03-28T16:59:00.000-05:00

There's probably a number of people who see me in passing and think I'm mentally unstable because I'm laughing out loud, gesturing, or making some ridiculous face while sitting by myself in a cafe or walking down the street. So be it. Without the context of my thoughts, these things don't make any sense to anyone else.

But for a change: some context. I've been reading the papers in the local coffee shop, and as is typical in newspapers, there's often some gems buried in the stories that are laugh-out-loud funny. Or maybe I am crazy. Judge for yourself.

In today's Boston Herald, regarding what is done to an invasive species of toad in Australia:

"We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process that renders the toads nontoxic," [Frogwatch coordinator Graeme] Sawyer said. "It turns out to be sensational fertilizer."

Perhaps it's the image that comes to mind. Or the use of the word sensational. Or the fact that the type of person I imagine using the word sensational isn't the type of person who would partake in liquifying toads.
And in yesterday's Herald:

"The city of Boston is under siege from armed teenage marauders and cretins with chromosome damage who have paralyzed Boston," [Curtis] Sliwa told the Herald yesterday. Sliwa was announcing his intention to bring his Guardian Angels to Boston after yet another murder here.

Must be the alliteration. Or that it sounds like it could be the beginning of some lyrics. Or maybe it's just that my sense of humor is a little twisted. But I'm okay with that.

maybe i should go into sales

2007-03-06T12:25:00.000-05:00

The dark side is failing.

Every time I ride the T, I stare in confusion and amazement that the people behind the Special K print ads thought they were a good idea. The ads are crisp and clean, with an image of one of the company's new products (the snack bar I understand, but Special K water? Really?) and the word unsatisfying. Now, I understand that the pouring water or part of the snack bar are supposed to be obscurring or making the un in unsatisfying disappear, but really, what you have is a large photo of your product and the word unsatisfying. And the un is just too clear for me to think anything besides, "Yuck. I better not try this new Special K product. It's going to taste terrible, and I'm not even going to feel full after I eat it. In fact, eating a bowl of Special K cereal is reminiscent of eating a bowl of shredded paper that was liberated from the office recycling bin and soaked in the communal coffee creamer during a moment of desperation. Not that I've ever done that. But I'm sure the taste is similar."

But maybe that's what the folks at Special K HQ were going for.

In other marketing missteps (and in a search for tastier recycling bin contents), I discovered a job ad that includes the phrase, "Work environment involves only infrequent exposure to disagreeable elements." This makes me wonder what is so occasionally terrible that the job poster felt the need to advertise it. And just what are these elements? It rains in the office? Drunken Red Sox fans sometimes riot in the employee parking lot? You have to lick and seal your own envelopes? There's an employee who masturbates in the bathroom every day?

If you're going to go so far as to tell me there are disagreeable elements, you might as well lay 'em out on the table. Take a cue from Special K - the world would be a much better place if everyone could be as upfront and honest.

the walls have ears

2007-02-20T14:27:00.000-05:00

I have thin walls. So for better or for worse, I hear a lot of my neighbors' goings-on. But I'd rather not.

You see, I know more about one neighbor through my bathroom walls than from in passing in the hallway. I don't know his name, but I think he might be the Incredible Hulk. Either that, or he's the angry-at-city-hall maturbator whom Charlestown comedians the Walsh Brothers once encountered, pants around his ankles across the street from Government Center at 3 a.m. Except normally he's just angry at his bathroom sink for not draining properly. Or maybe he just keeps a loud, angry zombie in his shower.

My other neighbor was uninvited to Christmas dinner at his sister's house and habitually raps his fingers against our shared wall at odd hours of the evening. We've never introduced ourselves, but he frequently appears wherever I am - from Downtown Crossing to one of the local coffeeshops. Maybe he's the zombie from the other guy's shower and my brain is on next week's menu. Maybe that's why his sister uninvited him - she couldn't come up with something appropriate for him to feast on.

Come to think of it, just the other morning I awoke to the two neighbors having a conversation. Unloved-by-his-family guy was telling loud-masturbator guy how he was going to twist a knife into someone's abdomen and bite off his balls. Gee, how pleasant.

But again, I'd rather not know these things. Aside from the fact that it wouldn't surprise me if these men had zombie-mafia ties, it's just not as interesting to hear the sordid details of strangers' lives as it is to know salacious details about friends and acquaintances. And teasing a roommate about his orgasmic bathroom adventures probably has less severe consequences than bringing it up with someone who keeps company with the violent undead.

Also, if I know these things about my neighbors, then surely they have heard my phone conversations with my mom and know when and how often I partake in sexual relations.

Well, if nothing else, maybe they'll at least be able to write an entertaining blog post about it.

let kids be kids

2007-02-15T13:43:00.000-05:00

I think I was born without the gene provides maternal instincts. I'm just not the that into kids. I don't get excited when I see babies. Even as a teenager, I found the idea of babysitting appalling.

But there are too many people out there who don't know themselves well enough to know they either aren't ready for parenting or aren't interested in parenting. And they go ahead and make babies anyway.

Take Michael and Carolyn Riley, who've made headlines for the past couple months after their 4-year-old daughter Rebecca died from a prescription drug overdose. At age 2½, the girl had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactive disorder. She was prescribed several psychotropic drugs for all these ailments. Her siblings had similar diagnoses and prescriptions.

Kids at that age are just learning to talk. They've just starting walking. Everything they encounter is new and exciting. They have more energy than any of us ancient 20-somethings and beyond. They've probably eaten too much sugar and have already been exposed to our instant-gratification, ADD-inducing media culture.

Of course these kids are hyperactive and have short attention spans. Has our society really forgotten - that's what being a kid is all about. You run around and do crazy and fun things and hurt yourself and eat lots of candy and have not a care in the world.

Family of Rebecca have come forward to say that her parents routinely gave her drugs to sedate her. Preschool workers and other aquaintances described the girl as zombie-like. And the parents, who had a history of run-ins with DSS over abuse and other troubles, seemed to keep "losing" prescriptions for Rebecca and needing them refilled early.

It's just depressing. If the facts that have come out in the news are true, if Michael and Carolyn Riley drugged their kids to get them to shut up and go away, then they really weren't emotionally ready or available to take on the responsibilities of parenting.

I wish more potential parents would take a serious look at themselves and honestly answer whether or not they are financially and emotionally ready to take care of a child, to put someone else's needs above their own self-interests. And if the answer is "no," that they find something else in the world that is fulfilling for them. There's nothing wrong with that.

vile day

2007-02-14T23:51:00.000-05:00

If there's reason to hate Valentine's day, surely it's due to the women who peddle gendered crap. Take, for instance, a story titled "Cracking the Cupid Code" in today's Boston Globe. Monique Doyle Spencer clues us in on how "women" see Valentine's Day:

[W]omen use V-Day as the crystal ball of your fate. They peer into it and look for the Three Signs of Your Doom. First, the gift you give is gravely less expensive than the one you were given. Second, your gift is not wrapped. Third, you give an Idiot gift. My own husband gave me a duplicate pair of cheap earrings I already have "because you like them so much."

She also gives us such gems as:

If you send her a dozen roses, be sure to send them to her workplace. Making her female coworkers feel bad will delight her.

and

Do not, under any circumstances, put any gift in a ring-shaped box. Even if you buy her the biggest diamond earrings in the solar system, you must still remove them from their ring-like box. Otherwise, you will hear the words Y-E-S, Y-E-N-T-A, A-I-S-L-E, and V-E-I-L. Avoid taking her to N-E-V-A-D-A for the same reason.

Ugh. this is supposed to be humorous, but it's just nauseating. Spencer then proceeds to advise against shopping at Victoria's Secret unless you're at least engaged (huh?), but says you still have to give a "romantic" gift if you give lingerie, like a book of poetry.

Folks, not all women delight in romance novel trash, being petty and making others jealous. All this after an oh-so-enlightening story yesterday ("Hooking Up Is the Rage, But Is It Healthy?") about how hooking up is bad for girls because they are more emotionally attached to sex than guys (that story also would have you believe that the hook-up trend is so prevalent that no one young has relationships, yet the only people interviewed are two women in *gasp* relationships).

Oh, Globe, you really don't know what the kids are up to these days, do you?

Anyhow, more power to people who enjoyed a happy, sappy day, today or any other day, regardless of gender (I'm so sending flowers, giving lingerie and putting something in a ring-like box for some boy next year). But me, I'd prefer a pleasant surprise any other day of the year. At least tomorrow brings the joys of half-price chocolates. Mmm, chocolate.

so much for the solar

2006-11-20T23:08:00.000-05:00

The city of Boston is going green. Well, greenish.

After putting in extra-large curbside trash cans with solar-powered trash compactors, the city added solar-powered parking meters. No more do you have to dig around under your seat for quarters. These machines take those dreaded dollar coins - you know, the bulky gold coins that roll out of the Charlie Card machine en masse after you buy one ride on the T with a $20. If you've only nickels and dimes to spare, too bad. It's a solar-powered parking meter, not a CoinStar machine or a wishing well. But these meters do take plastic.

And it seems by green, the city is more focused on getting the green than going green. Gone are the days of getting some free time from the previous parker - each of these meters serves half a block's worth of cars. Instead of the meters displaying the time remaining for each corresponding parking spot, these babies spit out a sticky note with the expiration time printed on it. Yep, a "green" machine that uses hundreds of sticky notes a day. Sticky notes that inevitably end up in the trash. Well, maybe if people are nice they go from car window to secret communal stash of extra meter time to different car window to solar-powered trash can. But it's still a bunch of rubbish in the end.

FURTHER THOUGHTS (21 NOV 2006 | 11:30 PM): Nevermind about the plastic. The Boston Globe reported today that you can't use credit for the meters in any increment of 15 minutes (or 25 cents) - you can only use credit to pay for two full hours (that's $2). But there's hope yet. The news hook was that mandatory minimum payments actually violate the terms of several credit card companies.

a series of unrelated events

2006-11-04T14:21:00.000-05:00

These are old but kind of funny, and I haven't posted in forever. Theoretically I might have developed any one of a longer form, but I'm lazy and if it hasn't happened yet, it ain't gonna.

• Nothing says responsible employee like running into your boss on the train the morning after a night of drinking. Especially when you still smell like a combination of alcohol and cigarettes and are only on the train because you crashed at a friend's place and got up early so you could go home and make yourself presentable before you saw anyone from work. Also, it's even funnier when you only work two days a week, and you've clearly chosen to get blasted on one of the few work nights.

• Homeless guys panhandling will do remarkably better if they tailor their pitches to the types of people who are passing by. Therefore, asking for donations to assist with the research and development of alcohol consumption while in Downtown Crossing should yield good returns. Or at least smiles.

• Sometimes a trucker who wants to drive through a road that's blocked off with a sawhorse will stop his truck in the intersection, get out and move the barricade so he can pass through. What's better is when he drives ten feet further, stops again and moves the sawhorse back into the middle of the road behind his truck. This is especially funny when the sawhorse was put there as a joke in the first place.

• "Indoor voices" are underrated. You may learn this the hard way, when you hear someone laughing in the alley below your window after you blurt out something to the effect of, "Yeah, I'm annoyed. I'm horny and I've always fucked you everytime you wanted to be fucked." Of course, if you've said this at normal decibel levels, it makes you wonder what else people in the alley or neighboring apartments have heard. And you thought paying more in rent to have a studio provided some semblance of privacy.

• It's weird when someone wakes up angry at you because of something "you" did to him in his dream. Don't worry, he'll get over it, once he makes you promise not do in real life what you did in the dream (even though it is unlikely in real life that you would have a threesome with him and his roommate and then go fool around with just his roommate after he's fallen asleep).

• When a car full of strangers honks at you while you're crossing the street and then someone shouts something to you out the window, you'll be happy when instead of asking for directions the driver says, "You're beautiful, that's all," and the woman in the passenger seat next to him says, "You're sexy." Still, you will not have a threesome with these people, because the light turned green before you could say anything more than "thanks."

i feel safer already!

2006-08-27T17:37:00.000-05:00

The woman across from me snapped her gum and tapped her foot impatiently. Two college students bitched about their upcoming class schedules. A curly haired hippie-looking guy rocked out to his iPod. Everyone avoided eye contact and looked generally unhappy to be there. Just a regular night riding the T, by all standards.

But then I noticed to my left, a man was highlighting passages in a magazine. Okay, so he highlighted an entire sidebar piece in bright yellow. And, wait - he was starting to highlight the entire article that surrounded it - line by line, every line. He must be a little crazy, I thought. That can't be helpful - how is he ever going to find anything if he highlights everything? Definitely crazy.

I shifted my gaze back, toward his face, then shoulders. Oh, dear. Is that a real TSA uniform? Yep, that looks like a genuine ID hanging from his neck.

I feel safer already with someone so attentive to details being in charge of aiport security.

future bizarroworld

2006-08-27T09:34:00.000-05:00

BOSTON (08/27/06) - Mother's milk is now bad for your health.

Last night the Transportation Security Administration added breast milk to the growing list of items prohibited in airline carry-on luggage after authorities at Logan International Airport thwarted a terrorist bomb plot; breast milk was a key component in plans for a homemade explosive device.

Acting on an anonymous tip, security officials detained four people - two Middle Eastern men and their wives - just moments before they were to board an American Airlines flight bound for Milwaukee. TSA officials said the two couples were in posession of iPods, allegedly to be used as detonators, and that the plot also would have made use of in-flight magazines or other available paper. All four suspects were arrested and are being held without bail.

"This was a very sophisticated plan and operation," said Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff. "It was not a circle with a handful of people sitting around and dreaming."

According to the new TSA restrictions, pregnant women and nursing mothers will no longer be allowed on domestic or international flights. Chertoff said the restrictions will remain in place indefinitely, and all women will have to undergo special screening to ensure they are not currently capable of lactating. Women should allow an extra hour and a half of time to clear airport security. Breast pumps also have been added to the list of prohibited items.

"This is outrageous," said Jamie Smith, a mother of two who was turned away from her flight to Los Angeles. "This is bad for business. Can it even be legal to ban someone from flying because of their gender?"

Smith was unable to obtain a refund, and most airlines are not waiving rebooking fees for passengers who can not currently fly.

Still, most passengers agreed that the new regulations were necessary.

"Whatever we need to do for national security is fine by me," said Bob Jones, a financial analyst who travels frequently for work.

"Our freedom is important," said Jeb Stratford, whose pregnant wife was turned away at the security checkpoint at Logan. "Whatever the government needs to do to preserve our freedom I support 100 percent. These are really small sacrifices when you look at the whole picture. What are we giving up, really, other than some small conveniences? Our freedom is at least worth that much." © IHTFBS News Service

But seriously - just wait for it ... what else could be next?

bits and pieces

2006-08-13T19:33:00.000-05:00

• There are next to no Boston Herald newspaper boxes in the city. Every few blocks there is a cluster that includes a Globe box, Weekly Dig and Phoenix boxes, various dispensers of free classifieds, and the obligatory Improper Bostonian and Stuff@Night boxes. The two Herald boxes I found during a stroll from Harvard Square to downtown Boston were empty, of course. What's up with that?

• There is graffiti on the side of a building on Mass. Ave. that reads: "owned by no one but still illegal." It would be a good point, except for the fact that someone inevitably owns those bricks.

• Commonwealth Books on Boylston Street downtown is celebrating its 10th anniversary. The sign in the window is priceless:

Our 10th Year*
*despite Emerson College

• I have perfected the fuck-off-and-die look such that MassPirg canvassers don't approach me. But I was happy to see several anti-MassPirg flyers along Mass. Ave. that direct people to NoMassPirg.com. It's nothing fancy, but you can buy an anti-MassPirg T-shirt if you haven't perfected your look of death.

are we there safe yet?

2006-08-10T11:48:00.000-05:00

It's official: toothpaste is a threat to national security.

Count it among other frightening gel and liquid products such as soda, makeup, shampoo and sunscreen that are now prohibited in carry-on luggage. Nothing says security like a major inconvenience.

It all happened after a flight headed to Boston's Logan Airport was sent back to London's Heathrow Airport midflight on Monday, when it was discovered that a passenger on the ever-so-trusty "no-fly" list was on the plane. I was hoping that passenger would turn out to be a Kennedy, or maybe Cat Stevens again. But to maintain a good-old-fashioned culture of fear, you can't have too many of such embarrassments, so I knew it was unlikely.

So, a bomb plot was of course discovered and thwarted, many people with brown skin were arrested, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush enjoyed their vacations, and their respective governments were quick to create new restrictions on what's allowed in carry-on luggage.

The Brits have it worse than American airline passengers, as mobile phones and iPods are among the items banned. Actually, people in the U.K. basically can't take anything onboard except a few essential items, such as identification and those pesky boarding passes. How thoughtful of British officials to at least include tampons in that list.

But I think my favorite example of how absurd and pointless these new restrictions are comes from an article in the San Jose Mercury News:

Julie Hayes of Armdore, scheduled to fly to Chicago, didn't want to check her carry-on, or dump cosmetics worth $100 or more, but got help from another waiting woman, who was flying to Kansas City.

That woman agreed to put Hayes' beauty aids - lotion, hair spray, makeup, shampoo and more - into the bag she planned to check in. Then after getting to K.C., she'd mail the products back to Hayes.

Security officials, it should be noted, often warn passengers never to carry items given to them by strangers.

Absolutely brilliant.

FURTHER THOUGHTS (2:45 PM): What of all the perfume, makeup and alcoholic beverages travelers might purchase at a duty-free shop in the airport or inflight? Does this render the duty-free industry dead? Either way, I'm still going to be angry when the airlines lose my luggage and I can't brush my teeth or call my mom.

no exit (or: observations on the mbta's handicaps)

2006-08-05T13:25:00.000-05:00

Say you were in a wheelchair. You're riding the subway, get off at your stop and see a stick-figure-in-a-wheelchair sign posted by the sliding exit doors. Is your first thought, "This sign clearly means there's no elevator on the other side of these doors, so I should roll right through them so I have to turn around and pay to get back into the station to get to the actual handicapped-accessible exit"?

If not, the MBTA really needs to work on its communication skills.

As the T has moved from turnstiles to the sliding-door model for its entrances/exits, it seems to be making more of an effort to be accessible for the disabled. But not really.

I noticed today while riding the T that these handicapped-accessible doors are being installed at Central and Kendall Square exits that only have stairs. Oops.

It's no surprise, really. I've come to expect handicapped service from the T, certainly not adequate service for the handicapped. But the least the T could do is remove the misleading signage.

new and unfare service!

2006-08-04T14:39:00.000-05:00

Now you citizens of Boston, Don't you think it's a scandal that the people have to pay and pay. ... Fight the fare increase! ... Get poor Charlie off the MTA. - from the song "Charlie on the MTA"

Poor Charlie's never getting off the train. Hell, with the MBTA's proposed fare increase, he'd be lucky if he could get on the the train in the first place.

You see, Charlie paid cash for his T ride. And if the T has its way, paying cash means you will pay a premium - 55 cents extra per subway ride and 40 cents extra per local bus ride, to be exact.

Here's the rub: Under the current proposal, if you buy a Charlie Card, the subway will cost $1.70 per ride and the bus will cost $1.25, with free transfers between the two. But if you come bearing cash or a Charlie Ticket, you'll pay $2.25 for the subway and $1.65 for the bus - and you get no free transfers between the two. That's $3.90 if you need to take the bus and the train somewhere - more than double the $1.70 you'd pay with a Charlie Card!

Of course, you won't be able to get a Charlie Card from the new self-serve machines that are being installed in every train station (though theoretically you will be able to refill the cards there). This means unsuspecting, unprepared locals will inevitably pay the higher fare, as will tourists. Granted, tourists already get ripped off with the Visitor's Pass (a seven-day Visitor's pass is $35, more than double the $16.50 it costs for a Weekly Combo Pass). And I'll be honest: I couldn't care less about the tourists.

But given the privacy concerns, why would you want to buy a Charlie Card? Right, you only want it because you don't want to fork over more money to a public transportation system that's more concerned with implementing a crappy new fare collection system rather than improving services people have been asking about for years.

Forget about the fact that everyone wants the trains to run as late as the nightlife. Forget that Roxbury residents wanted train service again - not a 10-years-later, too-little-too-late bus replacement. Forget that most everyone would simply love for the existing services to work well and run relatively on time. No, the T just had to figure out a way to get rid of the tokens that no one had a problem with - and do it in a way to penalize customers who would prefer to use good, old-fashioned cash or retain some bit of anonymity.

Charlie, it might be time to buy a bike. Or start making an RFID blocking wallet to hold that Charlie Card.

liberation through loss

2006-07-28T17:16:00.000-05:00

I make lists. Lots of them. Lists of things I need to do someday. Lists of things I need to do today. Lists of things to get at the grocery store. Lists of books and films and music I want to check out. Lists of people to call. List of things I want to write about. Lists of lists of lists.

It's an endless parade of scraps of paper and tiny post-it notes that clutter my table, my calendar, my bookshelf, my pocket. Half of this compulsion is driven by a certain satisfaction in being able to cross things off, crumple a little sticky note and throw it in the recycling bin and feel like I've accomplished something. Of course, half of the lists are composed of such obvious, routine tasks it's silly. But I fear I might forget them, or neglect to do such obvious things as laundry or grocery shopping or even eating.

But when I reached in my pocket to pull out my well-worn, crumpled to-do list, it wasn't there. I was momentarily panic-stricken, until it hit me: I'd been liberated. If I couldn't remember what was on the list, then it must not be that bloody important in the first place. It just wouldn't get done.

I better go make a list of the things I remember.

none of my biz-ness

2006-07-27T15:06:00.000-05:00

You should probably be worried about job security when your boss tells you the company can't afford to give you business cards.

Unless you work in my office. Then it's just standard operating procedure.

Instead of providing new employees with basic tools for communication, the company makes workers beg for such bare necessities as voicemail, email, and those all-important business cards. It's like the bosses think we're going to use these things for nefarious purposes.

So the trouble, of course, is that employees feel like they aren't valued or trusted. Nevermind that it doesn't reflect well on the company when employees have to scribble a Yahoo address on a napkin, explaining that the company is too cheap and bureaucratic to provide lowly workers with such simple things.

It took over six months to get my boss to sign the paperwork so I could have voicemail. It took over a year to get another boss to sign the paperwork so I could have a company email address. I'm still working on the business cards.

One of the biggest hurdles has been the condescending questioning, including this classic: "Well, why do you need that?"

Um, so other people can recognize me as a legitimate employee of this company? So I can represent the company in a positive and professional manner? Because I don't live in a bubble and I might actually meet people who, say, want to do business with the company?

Or at least they did before I scrawled my personal email address on the back of an ATM receipt for them.

ch-ch-ch-changes

2006-07-05T19:13:00.000-05:00

Somehow, impending change is almost always worse than the change itself. It's the anticipation, speculation, the thinking too much about circumstances beyond your control. But life goes on. We roll with it. Out of sight, out of mind. Then it's easier to be open to the most outlandish possibilities. Hey, it never hurts to dream, and anything is possible when you're unconcious, uninhibited, unrestrained. Because when you wake up it's the work-sleep-eat-meetings-bullshit-work-work-work-burnout routine. You need the job to make the money to pursue the dreams. But to pursue the dreams you need the time and the energy that the job sucks away. And then you know: It's time for a change.

if only

2006-07-04T16:45:00.000-05:00

There's something simultaneuously energizing and depressing about the hoards of people that filled my street after Italy won the World Cup semifinals. On the one hand, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement - the singing, the fireworks - and the sardine-can-like confines of Hanover Street. But damn, it's depressing that this many (and this set of) people wouldn't be out in the streets fighting the good fight. Granted, there's something vastly different about celebratory, spontaneous street gatherings and street protests. But still ... I wish people actively cared about their world and their rights as much as they care about a sports team.

which way the wind blows

2006-07-02T13:28:00.000-05:00

While most of the sensible world agrees global warming = bad, Lonely Planet (the travel guidebook company) surprised me with its take on the subject matter. From the Iceland book:

There's an old saying: "If you don't like the weather now, wait five minutes - it will probably get worse."

But don't be put off. In recent years, Iceland has benefited from global climate changes, and summers have been relatively pleasant - the summer of 2003 was the warmest on record, and the previous winter was so mild that the ski season was a disaster.

And that's a benefit? Yes, when it gets so warm the gulf stream changes and Iceland is more like its name implies (whatever's still above sea level, anyway), that'll be just wonderful.

Then again, the book later blames a recent recession on fishing quotas, but it apparently didn't occur to the writers that had the overfishing (which is mentioned) continued, there would be no fishing industry left.

Capitalism, of course, isn't concerned with sustainability, and people tend to forget that both supply and demand are, in fact, finite. And I guess I momentarily forgot how Lonely Planet is a corporation trying to survive in a world run by capitalists, despite my perceptions that the company's writers were more in tune with those of ecotourists and travelers who vow to leave no trace behind.

ole!

2006-06-30T16:40:00.000-05:00

The snap-pop-bang-pop-pop-pop of fireworks fills the apartment. From the fire escape, where I can usually see the double-parked cars on my street, all I can see are people packed into the street. I can't tell where the fireworks are coming from, because the people seem too dense to be able to have them right there, yet there's smoke rising from the center of the street. It's amazing how the pop-pop-pop continues without pause for ten minutes, and people sing-chant ole! ole, ole, ole! ole, o-le! and chatter in italian. i guess it's clear who won this game of the world cup, so here's to many more days of my neighborhood exploding as the games continue.

dream no. 5,768,542

2006-06-28T08:08:00.000-05:00

It's the day of my birthday, and I'm cleaning up the yard of my mom's house. Of course, this is not the house that I grew up in, nor the house she lives in now. But here, it's perfectly clear to me that this is home. The yard is huge, sprawling, with shrubbery acting as a fence. I'm barefoot, zipping about the yard, trimming the shrubs, and brushing the snow off of them and clearing the snow out of the yard so there's space for people to hang out without having to stand in the snow. Wait, yes, I did say I was barefoot. And wearing a tank top. But for some reason I'm warm. Must be all the work. I'm expecting lots of friends over, hoping many people will show up. Despite the fact that this house clearly would be in Colorado, it seems perfectly logical for Boston people to be able to just stop by.

There's someone I've been missing, but who kind of disappeared, and I'm not expecting. [If you know me, this is probably not who you assume it is.] In the back of my mind there's a tiny bit of hope that I'll see him, but I've supressed it; I'm not even thinking about this in the dream. And then he rolls up in a car with a few other people. I drop whatever tools I'm carrying, walking up to him, hesitant at first, but then sort of give in to it and break into a sprint that sort of turns into a leap right into a wrap-myself-around-the-kid hug. There's an overwhelming sense of happiness and fulfillment in the dream, something I haven't necessarily felt in real life lately. I woke up, wanting to hang on to the feeling, sink back into the dream and not have to go to work. Or to just replicate the emotion in real life. Add that to my ever-increasing list of things to do.

nonmarital bliss

2006-06-07T23:58:00.000-05:00

I was editing a profile of Sandra Bullock today (sorry, I know, I know), and there was this quote in which she was talking about how there's a real expectation that women get married at 22, start having babies, and that there's a lot of pressure from other people to sort of adhere to this "norm," and what bullshit that all is.

It occurred to me right then how happy I am to be surrounded by a supportive community of friends and family who would never even think to say something as stupid as, "So, when are you gonna get hitched?" Apart from my grandfather, no one's ever even suggested I need to get on with my life and start a family (as though there's no real direction or point to another type of existence).

Even my nonpolitical friends back home, most of them are single, and those who are paired off have done so in more nontraditional ways. None of my good friends there are married or have kids, but it seems like everyone else we went to high school with has had at least one kid, and half of them are single parents (a recent discovery when I found a whole slew of people on the voyeuristic time-suck that is MySpace).

So, I guess a big up to all the people in my community. Sometimes I'm kinda down on a lot of aspects of it, but then there's these reminders that snap me back into the reality of how much more it sucks out there in the larger world (some guy poked his head under my umbrella today and called me "baby." It caught me so off guard, all I could do to was just scream "fuck you" at him as he walked in the opposite direction. Ugh - do people ever actually respond positively to this sort of behavior?).

So here's to the never-gonna-get-married crowd and all the people who aren't interested in having kids and agree that the world is overpopulated as it is. Cheers!

sticker shock

2006-06-07T00:42:00.000-05:00

You know you've lived in Boston too long when ...

You see a flyer for a condo open house. You read it. And when you see it's for a two-bedroom with a roof deck in the North End going for $459,000, your first thought is, "Damn, that's awfully cheap for a two-bedroom in the North End. I wonder what's wrong with it?"

trashed ideas

2006-06-06T17:39:00.000-05:00

Today, while I was sitting in a coffee shop trying to be productive and do some writing (my apartment being too distracting a place at the moment), I was sad to see the art on the walls was the very photo project I've had in my mind for a long time but haven't gotten off my ass and done. Right there, on the walls of the cafe, someone beat me to it (and hanging in a place I would consider asking to display my work, nonetheless!). Sigh.

T-ed off

2006-06-05T00:13:00.000-05:00

Dear MBTA,

Your proven ability to infuriate customers is commendable. From replacing rail service 10 years too late with a big, slow silver bus to providing our children with the lifelong gift of asthma, it's clear that the customers always come first.

So it should have been no surprise the last two times I tried to board at Government Center and Park Street that you no longer saw fit to actually employ fare collectors to work in the booth and provide change for fresh-from-the-ATM $20s (which, by the way, are conveniently not accepted at the token machines in these stations). No, your fare collectors were dutifully positioned at the turnstiles, telling customers, "exact change only." A noble idea, if only it were feasible to expect customers at two major hubs of transportation to have exact change or be willing to sacrifice a $10 bill in exchange for eight tokens (which aren't even legal tender at area bars or half the other T stations).

I guess it would make too much sense to demand exact change only after you install those new CharlieTicket machines, which take $20s and allow you to actually decide the number of rides you get and amount of cash back (or $1 coins, anyway).

But perhaps this is a brilliant plan, this making customers walk to the next station in frustration and disbelief, hoping to find a real fare collector. Because if you start now, there will be less backlash from how much people hate the new fare collection system and resent the fact that their money is being spent not on service improvements but on crappy, unnecessary turnstile replacements.

Here's to those fare increases you announced - I can't wait. Keep up the amazing work!

Sincerely,
Sabine Strohem

you can't pee here!

2006-06-03T23:54:00.000-05:00

File under: odd observations.

I've recently discovered that Boston's pay toilets aren't even open for half the day. That seems odd, given their proximity to bars and given every place shuts down at 2 a.m., leaving drunken revelers to flow out onto the streets and wander home. These are the type of people who might pay a quarter for a place to piss at 3:37 a.m.

But the diplay on the pay toilet at Government Center clearly states that it is closed from "1800PM to 700AM" (yes, indeed, complete with those superflous AM and PM labels). Seriously? What's the point of having pay toilets that shut down at the same time as nearby offices? It's not like you're going to pay a quarter for a toilet when there's one at work that doesn't cost a thing.

I hope somewhere there's a homeless person who's learned to time the toilet closing just right to have a semi-warm, dry place to sleep. Because someone should be able to make use of the thing during its 13 hours of downtime.

silence is sweeter

2006-05-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

Note to Boston's street musicians who insist on playing "Sweet Caroline" every time I'm at Government Center or Park Street: If the people in the station aren't singing the "woah-oh-oh" part anymore, maybe it's because we've all been hearing "Sweet Caroline" a little too much lately. It's a popular number, but it's growing tiresome. Seriously, it's the only song I've heard the past five times I've taken the train. Share something original for a change.

spare me

2006-04-24T12:08:00.000-05:00

I don't usually put effort toward buying things that are available for free. I can't imagine most people would.

So when I passed a man selling papers outside of the Whole Foods in Central Square, I felt more justified in my typical response, "Not today, thanks." Instead of the usual Spare Change News hawker, there was a man trying to sell copies of The Student Underground, which is widely available for free, on purpose.

But if he manages to get some cash from wealthy yuppies, and those yuppies actually read The Underground, I'm not going to complain.

big brother

2006-04-20T23:33:00.000-05:00

As I was looking for tickets on the Paradise Rock Club site, I was prompted to accept a cookie. But not just any cookie. No, this seemed more obviously the big brother of cookies than most of the oddly names little treats that plant themselves on hard drive everywhere. But for such an ominous-sounding server, the cookie doesn't last very long. Peculiar indeed.

99 68 bottles of wine on the wall

2006-03-23T00:03:00.000-05:00

If you're wondering what it takes to get on Massachusetts' Most Wanted list, the answer is not much.

I always assumed such lists were for murderers, rapists, people whose actions might fall under the category of violent crimes. But apparently all you have to do is steal fine wines - one bottle at a time.

Yes, that's right. According to an article in the Newton Tab, store owners are just catching on to a thief who went unnoticed for slowly depleting the wine racks of various liquor stores in this posh Boston suburb.

I'm just thrilled to hear that the Bay State's finest don't have better things to do. No, really, I mean it.

bitter morsels

2006-03-18T21:46:00.000-05:00

Dis.gust.ing. That's pretty much all I have to say about Yahoo usurping del.icio.us.

But how did I not hear about this until just days ago? Have I been hiding under a rock? I mean, it happened not too long after the Flickr purchase, but I heard nary a word. With Flickr, it was obvious because of the login page change. But del.icio.us never stopped looking, well, delicious.

And users who bothered to read the del.icio.us blog (oops) are concerned about just that - Yahoo splattering ads everywhere and generally messing everything up. Can't say I'm not concerned about that myself. (And I guess I'm a dumbass for not ever reading the del.icio.us blog, because the news was right there. But why Yahoo decided not to disclose the terms of the agreement and kept it pretty quiet is a tad mysterious - not a peep on the press releases page.)

*Sigh.* So many good little services on the web are gonna get swallowed up by the big guys. So long, anonymity (and probably many open-source projects).

However, if someone offered me enough cash-money to retire right here and now ... I would be tempted to take the money and run. So I can't say I blame them. But still ...

she blinded me with science

2006-03-15T01:07:00.000-05:00

I'm one of those people who never goes to the doctor.

It's not due to any fear or anxieties people normally associate with the doctor's office. It's that I've come to realize doctors can't really do that much a lot of the time.

And I don't have health insurance.

But Massachusetts might soon require me to purchase health insurance. Just as drivers have to buy car insurance in order to cruise around, people would have to buy health insurance in order to live around here. Or, at least live around here without getting screwed on state income taxes and without having their driver's licenses rendered unrenewable.

This idea begs a lot of questions, but there's one that's been on my mind lately: Will scientologists be required to buy insurance policies if their bosses don't provide health care?

Seriously, think about it. Why in the world would people who generally reject the modern medical system shell out money for health insurance? It's not like scientologists are going to accept pretty much any treatments in a hospital or drugs that any physician might prescribe.

Not that I'm a defender of wacky religious nutbags. But, probably, the state would eventually cave to a religious objection and exempt scientologists from the mandatory health insurance.

And where does that leave me? Still screwed.

Religion can be played as a get-out-of-jail-free card (evidenced in everything from refusing vaccinations to receiving vegan meals in state-run institutions). But atheists and agnostics can't seem to get ahold of that card. Or, rather, we just don't have the money to buy our freedom back, whereas certain religious groups can afford a good old-fashioned lawsuit. Hell, I won't even be able to afford the insurance itself, despite whatever the government claims about my being over the so-called poverty level.

At least I still have an out-of-state driver's license.

the continental

2006-03-05T23:08:00.000-05:00

Every now and then, I come across a gem of knowledge while editing. I trim down a syndicated TV Q&A column every week. One question, in particular, stood out:

Q: I am trying to remember an old TV program back around the early '70s where some lover-type guy dressed in a smoking jacket and a white silk scarf would come onscreen and just talk sexy to the ladies. All the females loved this guy, but I can’t remember the name of the show.

A: It goes back further than the '70s, bub. The show was "The Continental," and it ran on CBS in 1952 and then on ABC from 1952 to '53. Renzo Cesana played the guy, and he was the whole show. He spent the entire 15 minutes cooing sweet nothings to the camera. The show’s sponsor was a stocking company, which led to a funny incident one night (the show was live) when Cesana was telling the ladies that nice stockings were just as important as good makeup. He got mixed up, though, and ended up saying, "What the powder does for your legs, the stockings do for your face."

Holy fuck! I didn't know that Saturday Night Live sketch was based on a real show from the '50s. This one shouldn't have surprised me so much, given that SNL has always satirized shows and world events. But "The Continental"? The sketch always seemed too bizarre to be based on something real. A photo I found of the original romeo had a network-supplied caption warning men that if they came home from work and found their wives swooning or fainted on the couch, never fear for their health, it was probably just due to those 15 minutes of The Continental that just aired. And in the photo itself: Mr. Cesana was decked out in his best martini-swilling, silk paisley robe (with said martini in hand). Wow.

invisible insanity

2006-02-22T18:50:00.000-05:00

A shriek echoes through downtown. Like a soprano's vibrato, only applied to a trilled R - a letter and sound on which you'd never hear a singer hold a note. It stops. And starts again. On and off, repeating at irregular but frequent intervals.

As I walk around the corner, I see a scattered crowd of business people, their gazes all pointing in the same direction. For a moment, I imagine the sound is an emergency whistle. Someone is in trouble, but all the passers-by stop to watch instead of help - cold "professionals" who can't be bothered to ease someone else's suffering. After all, it's not their job.

But as I cross the street, I see the whistle blower - a 30-something man, pressed slacks and dress shoes showing beneath his black peacoat. He repeats the shrill call again and again and again, his eyes fixed on the street, the whistle between his lips, both hands at his sides.

And all those business people? Their gazes are actually fixed in the opposite direction, as if they don't have to acknowledge the man's existence if they refuse to make eye contact with him. Or, as they say, out of sight, out of mind.

crumbling to the ground

2005-12-08T02:24:00.000-05:00

Everyday there's a news article or few about another U.S. corporation that's laying off its workers, cutting its budget, and struggling to turn higher and higher profits each quarter. The problem, of course, is not that these companies aren't making money, but that the companies aren't continually increasing their revenues. But it doesn't take an economist to figure out that there's no infinite amount of demand to continue to drive profits up. And when you continue to give raises to executives who make four-hundred-and-some times as much as the average worker (all the while when the stocks are falling), well, who's going to be able to afford the products? The system's about to implode despite all their efforts to stay on top. Like dwindling supplies of natural resources, there's no consideration to fixing the problems (okay, so "fixing" here would really mean abandoning the capitalist system) and taking preventative measures to protect the earth and the majority of its inhabitants...a real struggle for survival is going to emerge. So the people at the top are starting to round up the people they think might be troublemakers - better to jail them before anything drastic happens. Better to get that PATRIOT Act into permanent effect, better to make sure those air marshals shoot to kill. Better to make sure the majority of the people in society are scared and asking to give up their rights in lieu of the illusion of security.

sidewalk rage

2005-11-12T16:36:00.000-05:00

BOSTON, Mass. - A suburban woman caused a five-pedestrian pile up on Hanover Street yesterday when she stopped dead in her tracks to seach her handbag for breath mints before meeting her fiance for a romantic dinner at Lucca. No one was seriously injured, but several pedestrians, all of whom live in the North End, fled the scene angrily, and witnesses say one pedestrian verbally assaulted the woman who caused the accident.

This isn't the first reported case of sidewalk rage. Over the last few months, this New England city has seen an alarming rise in reported cases of the pedestrian equivalent to road rage. While experts say no conclusive research has been completed, there seems to be two common factors that cause road rage and sidewalk rage: cellular phone usage and stupidity.

"I don't know what's wrong with these people," said Norton Endre, 36, of Boston's North End. "It's [Hanover Street] a busy street - the main drag - and the sidewalks are narrow. Just move to the [expletive] curb if you're not gonna move down the street."

Sal M. Prince, 25, agreed.

"It's bad enough people drive like idiots on Hanover Street," she said. "I mean, between the double parking and the six-point turns in the intersections and the subsequent screaming matches from car windows, we've got enough idiots in the neighborhood. The last thing we need is is this idiocy moving out of the cars and onto the sidewalks. I mean, when I get off work, I just want to walk into my building without having to battle my way through a congregation of people ooh-ing and ah-ing at that stupid life-sized chef statue my landlord puts out in front of his restaurant."

Meanwhile, members of the local business association are concerned about the way neighborhood residents treat visitors here. They say the visitors - largely tourists - are key to the economic health of the area.

"We need to keep the tourists coming back," said Dan Corpratore, the association's vice president. "Sure, it might be a nuisance to always come home to heel-to-toe traffic and Joe Schmoe holding up the line to answer his cell phone, but it's the price we pay for living in a neighborhood as beautiful and historically rich as this. The tourists support our economy, and we need to treat them with respect."

That's why Corpratore said his organization is going to start a public awareness campaign urging people to be nicer to others around them.

But in this city known for its residents' icy relations with everyone around them, it remains to be seen whether the business association's campaign will garner any support.

"It's a nice idea," Prince said. "But we're not known for being nice. That guy stopping foot traffic because he can't walk and talk on his cell phone at the same time - if he's in the way when I get over there, he's getting shoulder checked and getting a mouthful. I got places to be - I don't have time for that kind of BS."

extras in the movie of life

2005-11-08T14:17:00.000-05:00

Upon exiting the Government Center T station through the turnstiles, I hear it:

"Animal rights. Sign the petition."

The shout is monotonous. The speaker's face, expressionless. If she were a stand-up comedian, I would call it deadpan. But I think she's serious. I think she really wants people to sign the petition. With a complete lack of passion or enthusiasm, though. It's like she's been put up to it.

Rather, it's like my life is a movie with bad extras. Where do they find these people?

nature: only in mexico

2005-11-07T14:15:00.000-05:00

The wind rushes through downtown Boston, and the air is cool enough to necessitate use of a scarf. It might not be snowing, but it feels like it might. Right near City Hall Plaza, in front of the Holocaust Memorial, a woman is walking, barefoot and bikini-clad. Some green palms provide her shade. A man in board shorts is nearby; he's got a volleyball net set up and is looking for someone to step up to the challenge.

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.

And I just might join these beach bums if I weren't on my way to work. Oh, and if they weren't enclosed in fiberglass "promobus." Yes, these are real people. But while my ears reddened in the wind, they were on display in a heated U-Haul truck with transparent walls, sand lining the bottom and tropical plants scattered throughout. The lower rear of the truck had a slogan painted on it: "Nature: Only in Mexico."

OK, so that isn't entirely true. I don't remember what the slogan was exactly, but it was along those lines, and it was that absurd. Clearly the U.S. is going to destroy Mexico's ecosystems while it's working on obliterating its own. So even in the future, if there's only one place left to find nature in the world (aside from that fact meaning we're entirely screwed), it certainly wouldn't be Mexico. But it's a nice idea.

Though I can't say such nice words about the means of advertising. There's something just creepy about a life-sized snow globe with real humans inside (or sun cube, as the case may be). But apparently these are award-winning sun cubes, and they're traveling to a city near you. (You can also find the press release here.)

On the plus side, they're too big to shake. But they're just the right size for gawkers and frat boys with cameras.

new news

2005-11-07T01:44:00.000-05:00

Misanthropicity isn't getting updated anymore because its creator now has better things to do, namely his brand new daily newspaper in Cambridge, Mass. For city dwellers here, we've now got a free Monday-Friday paper that beats the hell out of the Metro when it comes to, well, any original content. This isn't the place to get your national or international news; the articles are written by locals for locals, part hard news and part features, and there's an hour-by-hour events calendar with easy to find categorical tags such as "rock," "lecture," "comedy" and "art," among others. The design is clean, the editing is tight, and I just hope it takes off, because it's filling a gap and filling it well. Oh, yes, the important parts: it's called Cambridge Day, and you can pick it up only in Cambridge, mostly in retailers and restaurants (think local businesses such as convenience and grocery stores, 1369, Rosie's, etc). You can go to Cambridge Day online if you want to check out submission and advertising policies, but the content is restricted to print at this time. Oddly, none of the local media has yet caught on or done a write-up or mention in a media column. Get on the ball, people!

make the bosses pay

2005-11-02T23:55:00.000-05:00

After attempting to read some of the actual proposed healthcare legislation (Health Care for All has all the necessary and updated reading) as well as news coverage, something strikes me as interesting: how employers play into all this healthcare discussion.

You see, businesses that provide employees with healthcare will get some perks, and businesses who don't provide healthcare will have to pay a tiny bit of money to the state. All this after a lot of lobbying and politicking, of course. But it appears we're only talking only about employers who provide healthcare to full-time employees. This is significant because people who work in retail often would glady take the company health insurance - but the bosses prohibit them from working over 39 hours and thus keep them in part-time status, denying them benefits they deserve. Of course, this means big corporations that provide heathcare to their few full-time employees and otherwise carefully plan ways to keep everyone else classified as part-time would be exempt from paying money to the state to cover all those uninsured workers ... those uninsured workers they created.

healthy appetite

2005-11-02T22:14:00.000-05:00

Finally, a story that addresses what Massachusetts residents might actually get from any one of the mandatory healthcare plans being discussed at the statehouse ("Is a $200 policy for healthcare realistic?" Boston Globe, 11/2/05).

Anyone living in Boston knows that the federal poverty level is laughably out of touch with the actual city poverty level. And I'm skeptical the state's subsidies will be enough. People whose income falls between the 200 percent to 300 percent FPL range are barely scraping by in Boston. I know because that's where I fall. After payroll taxes, student loans, rent and utilities, I barely have a total of $200 left for the month - let alone $320 to cover the premium that would be provided under the House plan. Those subsidies would have to be amazing, because when it comes down to weighing the decision between eating (and maybe having enough left over to see one show or movie that month, if I'm lucky) or paying for a healthcare plan (and one I can't even use because the co-pay would put me over-budget and in debt), the choice is simple: I choose food. It certainly has nothing to do with feeling invincible, it's just practical.

same old shit

2005-01-15T02:15:00.000-05:00

You'd think after weeks of not updating, I might have something verbose to say. But it's short and sweet: I hate cops. It isn't enough to be a powertripping asshole. You have to make up laws, detain people unnecessarily and waste taxpayer money to boot. Fuck the police.

above the law

2005-01-08T15:15:00.000-05:00

In June, Roxbury resident Bert W. Bowen was shot three times from behind and killed. In July, mentally ill Luis Gonzalez was shot dead by intruders who broke down the door of an apartment he barricaded himself in. In October, Victoria Snelgrove was shot in the eye with a "less lethal" weapon and died.

Their killers will never be held accountable because the killers were "doing their job." The public doesn't even know the murderers' names; the media has not printed them. But we do know Bowen and Gonzalez's murderers are on the streets - a spokesman for the police confirmed that much about his co-workers.

The public and the press largely ignored the deaths of Gonzalez and Bowen because they were perceived as criminals - men of color who posed a threat to police, despite witness accounts to the contrary. But since Snelgrove - a young, white college student - was accidentally murdered, apologies have been made, and perhaps the coverup - er, internal investigation - of her death will be completed. The promised internal investigations of Bowen and Gonzalez's deaths have never been done.

What sort of unjust world do we live in that allows these fatal encounters - and many nonfatal ones - to go unnoticed?

If I accidentally killed someone, even if I felt terrible about it, I wouldn't get trauma leave from work. I would get handcuffed, taken to the police station, roughed up, interrogated, maybe bailed out, and charged with - at the very least - involuntary manslaughter. My name would be in the press along with the names of those who died.

But these killers are above the law because they are the enforcers of the law. And it's tragic that there's no one willing to hold them accountable.

bringing the war (closer to) home

2004-12-24T21:47:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's Boston Metro (mysteriously not in the Metro PDF archives) induced a smile - not a rare feat for the 24 hours in 24 seconds rag. For those unfamiliar with the Metro corporation, it publishes daily papers in cities across the globe. It's popularity and high circulation are largely due to the fact that it is free, staff are hired to hand out copies to people boarding the T, and the format is a tiny tabloid that has tons of two-inch stories. It's a paper full of wire briefs, and you can read the thing cover to cover on a short train or bus ride.

Today, the lead headline said "20 killed in inside job," referring to the bombing at a army mess tent in Mosul, Iraq. It's not that I'm a sadist, but the only way the U.S. occupation is going to end is by force, and if people on the inside choose the side of the oppressed and occupied peoples, or if infiltrators do the job (or both), then it's going to bring about the end of this clusterfuck sooner. U.S. soldiers should have never invaded Iraq in the first place.

For people who think the U.S. needs to kick some ass and take names and can't understand why people in places such as Fallujah are fighting back, let me try to put it into perspective: If France decided the U.S. (or whatever country you live in) was a threat to its security, and tomorrow French soldiers parachuted into your hometown, rolled in the tanks and started patrolling, setting up checkpoints and generally denying you access to necessary resources, how would you react? If groups of men who speak only another tongue came in with guns, searched you at every major intersection, interrogated you with the assumption you were a terrorist; if they stole your food and bombed your power and water supplies and hospitals (and your home, which was "within range" of the blast [read: an unadmitted target]), would you smile and let them do it? Or would you fight back for the ability to control your own destiny and keep control of your neighborhood? Perhaps you would flee for safety in a neighboring country or state, hoping one day to return to life as you knew it. But even then you probably would know that life as you knew it was being annihilated.

just deserts

2004-12-23T22:26:00.000-05:00

Some corporate whores finally might get what's coming.

I'm not holding my breath, of course, but the case is being handled outside the United States, so it stands more a chance than the usual comical theatrics of "charging" U.S. corporations for their crimes.

The Associated Press reported today that U.S. mining company Newmont Mining Corp. admitted that it released tons of mercury in Indonesia. That's 17 tons of mercury into the air and 16 tons into the water over a period of five years.

Internal reports obtained by the New York Times indicated that the company didn't abide by public claims that it was adhering to U.S. environmental standards. But the company still denies that its toxic dumping had any effect on the health of the people.

Five corporate whores face trial next month in Indonesia for the pollution - an American, an Australian and three Indonesians. A guilty charge carries up to 15 years in jail.

Meanwhile, villagers filed a $543 million lawsuit against the company. I hope they get their money, but money really is no compensation for the destruction of their health and their land.

It's interesting, too, because recently there has been coverage of a study on herbal remedies imported from South Asia (full study published in JAMA). The study found toxic levels of lead and mercury in the medicines. I wonder what this Indonesian village does to survive in the international capitalist market. It really wouldn't be surprising at all if traditional medicines were becoming toxic because of the polluting U.S. corporations that moved in next door...

unaffordable housing

2004-12-21T23:08:00.000-05:00

The U.S. dollar has lost a lot of buying power over the years; the value of wages has declined, and still we have nowhere to look but at a continuing downward spiral.

One piece of this ever-widening wealth gap is housing. "Affordable" housing is not really affordable if you're a family (or an individual, for that matter) supported by someone working full time at minimum wage. This is self-evident if you use the federal standard: Using more than 30 percent of your income toward rent and utilities is considered unaffordable. But of course this "standard" is meaningless in the context of other federal standards: the poverty line, food stamp eligibility, welfare eligibility, the minimum wage, et cetera, et cetera. These figures are all based on national averages, not on calculations of the cost of living in the particular place where a person is living.

Also, housing can be deemed "affordable" when it is affordable (by the 30 percent standard) for people who earn 80 percent of the median income in that particular area, which completely excludes the people who have the most need for genuinely affordable housing.

This may all seem pretty obvious to anyone who cares to think about it, but of course people in positions of power either don't think about it, don't do anything about it or know that they have to keep people in poverty to retain their power and wealth.

In today's Boston Globe, there was an article about a study on the cost of living across the United States. In Massachusetts, a wage slave needs to earn $21.24 an hour at a full-time job to afford a typical two-bedroom apartment and pay utilities there (based on the 30 percent standard, of course). The minimum wage in Massachusetts is $6.75.

at peace

2004-12-18T01:20:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that I cannot stand some people's inflated sense of of self-importance, in spite of the fact that it's cold as hell and daylight ends at 4pm, irregardless of the fact that I'm broke as ever, even if I'm spending the holidays in dreary New England, in spite of everything, I'm in particularly high spirits for no obvious reason.

This season of frigid air and quiet, dark mornings, hot chocolate and feeling restless and out of shape - this season usually makes me feel discontented. But right now, for some reason, everything feels right.

nyc library: just a type, point and click away

2004-12-14T21:26:00.000-05:00

Some years down the road, anyone with an internet hookup will be able to go to the New York Public Library, the Harvard library - or maybe you'd rather peruse Stanford or Michigan University's offerings. Hell, you'll even be able to go to England's Oxford University library.

Last night Google announced that is embarking on a crazy journey, scanning the stacks at these libraries for its search engine. Google Print results already have been popping up in my online research. The project has amazing potential, if only those damn copyright laws weren't in the way. According to the Associated Press, the NYC library is letting Google scan "a small portion" of its books no longer covered by copyright; Oxford wants all its holdings published before 1901 in the system, while Harvard is limiting its participation to 40,000 books and waiting to see how well the process works. Otherwise, copyrighted results in Google Print return the cover, pubishing info, and the first few pages of the actual text.

Of course, this isn't terribly different from the exisiting Gutenberg Project, which already has amassed a decent collection (of e-books (13,000) through a lot of work with people who have a more open-source, collaborative attitude, including the volunteers who proofread GP e-books, Distributed Proofreaders.

Uber-mainstream Google may have the funding and resources GP does not, and thus will probably get a lot more books online a lot faster. But that just means better access to information for folks across the world, and PG can focus its efforts on texts other than the collections at the libraries Google is working with. Hooray for accessible information!

marriage vows to be only means to healthcare

2004-12-08T20:18:00.000-05:00

Domestic partner benefits were pioneered in Massachusetts; it's a natural progression that Massachusetts also is the home of the first state-sanctioned gay marriages (in this country, anyway).

But "state-santioned" is the operative phrase here - and the problem.

In today's Boston Globe was a story about the inevitable fallout of gay marriage: namely the loss of healthcare benefits for unmarried partners. Because both gay couples and straight couples in Massachusetts now can be married, companies are cutting the ability for employees to share health insurance with unmarried partners. They say this is a move to re-level the playing field.

It's a move in the wrong direction, but it was the inevitable side effect of gay marriage. Unfortunately in this society, marriages are sanctioned by the state (and often a church), and with the state's blessing come privileges.

At this point in history, it was a more reasonable goal to move toward equality by allowing gay couples to participate in existing establishments rather than to try to dismantle those establishments. But it ends up being a "one step forward and two steps back" situation. On the surface gay marriage appears incredibly progressive, even radical. But it means we give up some benefits gained by unmarried people. Regardless of whether those benefits were initiated for people who could not legally marry, they also served those people who consciously chose not to marry, including polyamorous people (who also can't legally marry); atheists and pagans who see marriage as a function of the church, historically sexist and patriarchal; and people who don't think the government has any business sanctioning their relationships.

People shouldn't have to be married to get heathcare benefits, hospitial and jail visitation rights, rights to court-protected privacy in conversation (wife/husband conversations are treated like doctor/patient and lawyer/client conversations - they are confidential and the court normally cannot make you discose such conversations), tax benefits, pension benefits (if the receiving member dies, pensions almost never would go to a homosexual partner of the deceased, let alone an unmarried heterosexual partner, and of course not any combination of partners) ... the list goes on.

The privileges are an obvious incentive to get married, and the government has an obvious interest in offering privileges to people to maintain the expected and "desireable" societal norm. So if you were wondering what that second step back was, this is it. So long as people feel they are being accomodated and that the government isn't preventing them from doing this thing that is normal in society, so long as their life is comfortable enough (and probably insular) that they don't have to see society's ills, they will remain complacent and the structures of power and domination will remain. We can't break the chains if people are under the illusion that there are no chains.

eracing spilled ink

2004-12-04T13:12:00.000-05:00

Journalists always used to report race in crime stories. To put it more accurately, they always reported when the accused was black, but made no such specification for whites. The trouble was (and is) that people made associations in their mind - black:thief, black:murderer, black:rapist, black:drugs, et cetera. For the writers, race always was assumed to be that of the dominant culture, and if that wasn't true, they pointed it out because it was different to them. The problem being that when race wasn't specified in crime stories, many people just assumed it was another black criminal.

Media stereotypes hit us in the face years after origination. Polls have shown that people are more afraid of black folks. Meanwhile, crime statistics showed more white male criminals than black, and violent crimes were being committed by people the victims knew. But the fear factor was an indicator that the messengers were doing something wrong.

Nowadays, professionals and educators - including the Poynter Institute, a respected organization that sets a lot of standards - have reached consensus: Race generally shouldn't be mentioned in stories unless it it crucial to the story (race relations, redistricting, hate crimes et cetera). In crime stories, the race of the perpetrator should not be mentioned unless it is a keystone to the crime (hate crimes) or unless there is a description of the perpetrator so complete that anyone could identify the person walking down the street. Thus, a "black man in his 30s, about 5'8" and 200 pounds" describes too many people to be able to clearly identify him. But a "white man in his 30s, about 5'8" and 200 pounds with brown hair, a mustache, a large, diagonal scar across his left cheek and a tattoo of a black heart on his right upper arm" would be specific enough to recognize the guy on the street.

Still, Fox News and the Boston Herald repeatedly indentify race in crime stories with little to no other identifiers aside from gender. In most cases, it's black guys. In one Herald story I did see a suspect labeled as a white male, but that was just once.

Some might argue that with media ownership concentrated in the hands of so few, and those few having a vested interest in retaining power and structures that support their power, it is an intentional but subtle effort to divide the working class along race lines. Or some might argue it's as unintentional as it probably was for a lot of journalists 50 years ago - and that we simply have forgotten history. Neither collective amesia nor the corruption of power is a palatable option.

pressing issues

2004-12-03T19:12:00.000-05:00

In a country where free speech and freedom of the press are so praised, it's ironic how censored these freedoms are. All you have to do is read mainstream media, and it's evident something is missing in U.S. newspapers and news programs. But if you're curious to know what's really happening in the world, it is easy to seek out alternatives.

The U.S. government has a vested interest in keeping American journalists away from the action: Vietnam and Walter Cronkite are evidence of that. Media still have a powerful effect on public opinion. The truth of war ain't pretty, and the government's better off if people think everything's going according to plan and see a "clean" and "sterile" war.

The few owners of mainstream media have a vested interest in turning a profit. Entertainment is cheaper to produce than news and seems to hold people's attention in this ADD era (however, I would argue people only watch the crap because they a) still expect that networks deliver timely and important news and b) that's all that is available - they'd still watch the 10 o'clock news if there were actual news included). Sending reporters overseas or into dangerous situations are costly endeavors for a news organization. While there are plenty of journalists itching to go to Iraq, media owners instead rely on wire services (limiting a diversity of perpectives); they'd rather save (and make) money.

With U.S. journalists at home and unable to confirm firsthand information on the situation in Iraq, the government is all too willing to take advantage and "help" them report fallacies. Welcome back, PSYOPS. Then again, it's hard to take advantage of those already eager to help out.

Deceitful behavior is expected from the government. But people hold news organizations to a higher standard. If only the government and media monopolists would get out of the way.

don't look!

2004-12-02T01:19:00.000-05:00

Ah, the allure of a train wreck.

I know I won't like what I see, but I creep up to the scene as close as I can get.

At the end of the day, I return to see what remains. Over time, the damage is covered, the tracks rebuilt. The scars never disappear; these wounds draw me near again and again.

I've walked away whole, alive, but everything's changed. Some trains I still board. Others I view from afar and wonder what went so wrong. But still I return to look.

torture this

2004-12-01T23:34:00.000-05:00

Most of the time I can laugh at the Boston Herald's feckless opining. But today's editorial was over the top. The hack editorial team at the Herald has decided that there is not really any torture taking place at Guantanamo Bay, despite a report by the Red Cross.

The Herald smugly takes the soapbox to say that humiliation, solitary confinement, extreme temperatures and psychological mind games are just part of standard operating procedure, nothing to see here:

A photo accompanying the Times story even shows this nightmarish torture chamber: a solitary metal folding chair in a clean, white-walled room with a metal ring in the floor on which to attach a detainees' leg shackles. Oh no, not that!

It gets better with this non sequitur regarding healthcare workers:

The most damning allegation is that the facility's medical staff was feeding information to the interrogators about detainees' mental health and vulnerabilities. Hmmm. Who would you rather involve if you were being "tortured," Uday Hussein or a highly trained healthcare worker?

Nevermind that the healthcare worker in this instance is not looking out for the well being of the prisoner, but rather helping the screws exploit his weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Torture and fear are methods the state has, is, and will continue to use to extract information. Torture can be as simple as deprivation from basic needs - food, water, clothing, warmth - to playing psychological mind games to physically threatening behaviors to actual physical abuse. Different people have different breaking points.

If the Herald editorial writers were held incommunicado with limited (if any) access to basic needs; were kept in rooms without natural light, kept in rooms that were so cold that they had to hunch in a fetal position on the concrete floor to try to stay warm (the bare steel "beds" are too cold to sit on, let alone lie down on), rising only to stretch tense and tender limbs; if they were being examined by mental health experts watching for their breaking point, constantly being verbally and physically abused by guards, then would they see it as torture?

How about if they were held under such conditions as long - almost three years now - as prisoners have been held at Guantanamo Bay? It took me less than three days in jail to recognize torture techniques.

I guess you just had to be there.

where it all began ...

2004-11-30T23:44:00.000-05:00

Arbah is one of the six Sicmon Islands in the Hafmon Sea in the Pacific. The other five islands are Katie, Katin, Ta Fin, Quepol and Typ. You probably won't have heard of the islands - they're no more than specks of dust in standard atlases.