The A Train is a Zoo.

I've been taking the A train every day this summer for work and let me just say...once those doors go "bing bong" and close behind you, welcome to the circus. I've seen the following so far:

-a big bald black guy SCREAMING Bible verses and telling everyone that he knows people get mad when he preaches, but he'll do it anyway

-a black woman sitting right behind me reading verses from the Bible in a weird monotonous voice while I'm trying to read at 8 in the morning

-multiple young men selling candy for $1 -- "NOT for any basketball team, but to have a little money in my pocket and stay off the streets." I actually like this one because they've stepped up their game and now stock Welch's fruit snacks. I can dig it.

-young men with a boombox playing loud music, clapping, announcing "It's showtime! It's showtime!" and proceeding to back flips and such up and down the train car

-the conductor saying, "This has been the A experience. Have an interesting day" as people exit when the doors open at the various stops

There's also this weird thing I see every morning inside the Chambers Street station on the A. When I get off the train and walk towards the exit, there are always these two women sitting on those gross wooden platform seats with one seat between them. On that seat, there's a spread of slices of pound cake, muffins, bread, and other random stuff and the two women are feasting. I came home really late last night from an event in the area and I'm pretty sure I saw one of those women sleeping on that same platform bench. What's the story there?

Anyway...be careful on the A, man. There's all kinds of ridiculous shit happening on there.

Extra Baggage

Today one of those kids was selling candy on the train and I bought some Welch's Fruit Snacks to support his entrepreneurial spirit. I opened the bag and it's less than a quarter full. We all know when we buy a bag of chips or something that it's gonna be less than half full, but why do companies do it? Like, the jig is up. We know how much is in there by now. It's just tons of extra packaging -- which, along with being nonsensical and annoying, is also bad for the environment. Is there anything we can do to get companies to size the packaging so that it's appropriate for the content?

Love & Texting

Provoking piece in the Styles section of the Times today. They've been doing this "Modern Love" series for a while and this column was one of the more interesting installments I've read so far. It's about an American student who moved to Thailand to teach English shortly after graduating from college. One of her students (college-aged) fell in love with her and the story is about their interaction while there and then after she returned to the States. An excerpt:

Text messaging and chatting are the modus operandi, and everybody seems to consider it a tragedy of modern romance that these forms of communication make it so frighteningly easy to say nothing at all, to forge a relationship out of little more than a few well-timed expressions: “Where r u?” and “Want to meet up?” Maybe...expressiveness seems strange to us, or pathetic. But it has something to teach us, too, about the note of cowardice embedded in our romantic culture, about the intensity of emotion we have a right to, about everything we could say, but don’t.

...Word.

Poor Parenting

It's been a while since I wrote a real post. Honestly, Twitter makes it a little harder to blog because you can just say what you need to say without going into tedious detail, which is nice sometimes. But they're two very different media and I need to start learning how to funnel information in those two different ways.

Anyway, I've noticed a trend lately. Maybe I've been seeing it all my life and just now really acknowledging it, but there are a lot of shamelessly terrible parents out there in the world. I went to the Belmont Fair a few weeks ago and had to start counting the number of kids getting yoked up by their mothers -- it was like I was standing in a circle surrounded by kids getting smacked/snuffed/yanked by IRATE women. Then I saw some kid getting cursed the fuck out by his Mom on the street the other day. I mean he was getting it. I was embarrassed for him. She was like, "Shut the fuck up! Just shut your fucking mouth! I don't wanna hear nunna that cryin' BULLshit!" And that was way less funny to me because I don't believe you should ever, ever speak to a child like that. I thought it was just a minority thing but then I was on the train last week and this little white kid gets on with his Mom and starts spazzing out hardcore, screaming like bloody murder about how he wants a seat and he "just can't stand" anymore. He was twisting and writhing and pushing himself into the people around him (myself included) and the woman was just standing there in this monotonous voice like, "Calm down. Everyone wants a seat. Shhh. Stop that. A few more stops. Just relax." I was like, are you kidding me?! THAT was probably the one kid that should have gotten the "Just shut your fucking mouth" treatment.

It's interesting to me that I only see women doing this. I mean I know children are taken care of by their mothers most of the time, so statistically it makes sense, but I wonder if there's something else behind it. Maybe it's the frustration of being a single mother that these women are forcing their children to bear the brunt of? Or that women are becoming more and more aggressive and angry these days (which I have read about). Or that men are less willing to be so public about their anger since it will more likely be viewed as abuse. Is this something you've noticed? Any other theories you can throw out?

Road Head

I find this illustration hiLArious for some reason. I think I found it in a Men's Health or Esquire article about things to do while driving that are illegal but forgivable. I dragged it onto my desktop and it's kind of been sitting here for a while. It's inappropriate to set as my desktop background and it was too funny to delete, so I thought I'd just post it. Enjoy.

Happy Anniversary, NYCM

I just realized that I started this blog a year ago. I can't believe it's been a full year! We've had some ups and downs, some lulls and some highs, but we're still here. I've wanted to give up a few times. More than I'd like to admit. But it's been a year! Anyway, here's my last web piece for Cosmopolitan magazine, ever. Enjoy! (sarcasm)

Facebook Kills Relationships

Throughout my time on Facebook, I've run into more than a few little mishaps and argument starters that are unique to this website alone. It's a purely generational thing, and I wonder if it's more or less universal than I think it is. Before Gen Y, you could go to parties, take photos, be in relationships, engage in harmless flirting -- and no one would be any the wiser. But now, there is a ridiculous amount of access to people, their social lives, their relationships, and other rather intimate details. Is this something that every generation after us will have to deal with? I guess with them it'll just be the way things are, since they'll have actually grown up knowing no other way. People get into fights about whether or not to post "in a relationship" on their pages, over sketchy wall posts, out-of-context photos, and much more. I think Facebook is great in terms of keeping track of people, staying in touch, being in the loop and all that. But in terms of relationships, I think it's totally detrimental. Thoughts?