I was at Symphony this afternoon to get some art supplies at the Utrecht shop there. So I took the green line back to Park. There was no attendant in the token booth, of course, and even though, as it turned out, I had exact change, I decided to buy a token from a machine there. Ha ha.

So one of the two machines that dispense tokens was unabashedly, undisguisedly defunct. The other was deceptively operative. It beckoned with the promise of tokens and change if I inserted BILLS ONLY!

You already know how this ends, don’t you? I did, too.

Step one: insert two dollars. The machine sucked ‘em right up, with a slurp and a belch. Did I hear a knowing chuckle in there, too?

Step two: punch the button that tells the machine feeding time is over. Now, here’s where it gets tricky. There is a sign on the machine that specifically says that if you feed it two dollar bills, it will shit out one token AND–NOT AND/OR, depending on its mood, but AND–75¢ IN CHANGE in the tray below.

I got my token. I did not, of course, receive my change.

Now, there were a number of ways it could have gone from there. Yes, I pressed button #2 five or six times, banged on the machine a little, and cursed it under my breath. But then I got to thinking, well, at least I got my token. The T has conditioned me to be grateful for small mercies such as this.

Then, too, there is this issue of rage. Should I let them get to me, for a measely 75¢? I mean, does the T really think they can push me over the edge for 75¢? Shouldn’t they have to work a little harder to elicit emotion from me? Isn’t my rage worth more than that?

Plus, what did I expect? Wasn’t it somehow–perversely–worth it to have my expectations so perfectly met? I mean, 75¢ to have my worldview confirmed in an instant? I didn’t even have to wait in line. These machines aren’t just token dispensors–maybe not even primarily token dispensors–they are, truly, fonts of wisdom. Boston’s own version of the Bocca della Verità.

On my way from Park to JFK there was an Asian woman in eghties-esque brightly-colored leggings. She shouted at the woman seated across from her: “do you need a T-pass?” The woman tried to ignore her at first, but the enticement of a free T-pass was too much to pass up. “A monthly pass?” the woman asked. It seemed too good to be true. What was the catch? The Asian lady cackled and delivered her punchline: “It is a February pass! Haw haw haw!” The woman across from her didn’t get it, so she explained: “It is the last day of February! Haw haw haw!” The Asian woman was totally amused with herself.

To her credit, she was still willing to give her pass to any taker, and it was a nice gesture, if anyone didn’t have a pass and needed to ride the T later that day. But the way she was cackling and carrying on made it seem like you’d be the butt of her joke if you actually took her up on it. So, in the end, no takers.

The car fell silent for a couple stops.

Then all the sudden she bursts out again. She’s holding out a crumpled Dunkin Donuts bag, presumably with a now empty cup in it and offering it to any takers, cackling like before. “You wanna cup of coffee? I take fifty cents for it. Haw haw haw!” This tickled her even more than the previous offer. She was cackling and stomping her feet and carrying on like crazy.

I was glad to be getting off at JFK, let me tell you. It’s a slippery slope.

Blimey. Looks like that fare hike’s a done deal. You guys obviously did not do your part in contacting your local and state legislators, but that’s OK. I contacted mine and they never got back to me. Could be that one of my representatives is–was?–Marie St. Fleur. She’s been a bit, erm, busy with other things, hasn’t she?

Anyway, read it and weep here.

Got a little bogged down in the funk there last time, didn’t we? Well, we’re leaving Dudley Square and all that funky shit behind!

On to the lovely, Concrete-Gothic Ruggles Station, where Bus #8 intersects with the orange line. Bet you didn’t know this: Ruggles is home to Avian Flyaway, inc.’s “bird relocation system,” which puts it in such illustrious company as the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials and the Treasury Dept. in Washington DC, The New York City Police Department, and Circuit City in Tampa Florida! See, the T cares enough about your pointed little head to keep birds from pooping on it.

And the great thing about Avian Flyaway’s system is it’s totally “harmless”. According to their literature, Avian Flyaway’s system is “based on Pavlov’s Theory of Behavior Modification - By ‘harmlessly’ training unwanted birds to Flyaway & Stay Away.” Pretty ominous, those quotes around the word “harmless” though, don’t you think?

But Avian Flyaway’s brochure assures us: “Birds contacting the System are ‘Reverse Rewarded’ - With a mild, non-lethal electric stimuli: ‘Don’t Land, Don’t Reap Reward.’ - After one or more events, birds associate reward with area & relocate.”

I remember being “harmlessly” “reverse rewarded” with ass-whoopins whenever I got into trouble as a kid.

But isn’t it funny the way they put it like that? I think it is. Disclosure: I’m not a big pigeon fan. But that’s hardly the point. The pigeons don’t care whether you call it a “a mild, non-lethal electric stimuli” or a “short, sharp shock.” It’s pretty much the same to them.

We think of political correctness as a liberal academic thing, but really it’s as much a function of a litigious society and the free market aversion to alienating anyone. I think it has a lot to do with the degree of conservatism in our culture, even amongst so-called liberals. Political correctness is, after all, an essentially authoritarian idea.

Which shows the inadequacies of the ways we conceive of and visualize our politics. Because in politics, beliefs and behaviors, ideologies and methodologies aren’t all lined up on the x-axis like so:

You want a more accurate picture, you’ve got to just bend it ’til it looks like this:

Of course this simplistic terminology comes from the simple fact that in the Congress and Senate, democrats sit on the left side of the aisle (facing the dais), and republicans on the right. This practice of sitting on party sides of the main aisle dates back to around 1877. (It’s a remnant of the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789). This has a practical purpose: allowing senators and congressmen to huddle with their “teammates.” But nowadays, as a metaphor for the people’s politics it’s lacking, and we continue to use it at our own peril.

Sure, there are a lot of different ways to conceive of and represent our politics, but to be even remotely accurate, they’d have to use more than just the x-axis. One slightly more complex way to visualize our politics can be found at politicalcompass.org. You can take the test and see where you come out.

My results put me rump-to-rump with Ghandi. And despite the illustrious company he’s in on this chart, I’m sticking with him. And I didn’t cheat, either.

Which brings us back to why there are surprisingly few pigeons in Ruggles Station. It’s the revolutionary reverse-reward system. If only Ghandi had known about this, he might still be with us today.

The Ruggles area is incredibly rich in history and culture. The old site of the baseball park commonly known as the old South End Grounds, which from 1871 to 1914 was home to Boston’s major league team, variously nicknamed the “Red Stockings,” “Beaneaters”, “Red Caps,” “Rustlers,” and “Doves” (they eventually hit on the “Braves,” and are, as you may have guessed, ancestors of the Atlanta Braves).

The old outfield is now an NU parking lot, and the former site of the grandstand and the infield is now a parking garage. There’s a commemorative plaque at the T station.

No reason to get off the bus at Ruggles, though. The #8 will drop you off at the doorstep of the Museum of Fine Arts, which is getting a behemoth new “Art of the Americas” wing. This is good news. Art is good, and more is better. But the slogan “Art for Everyone” being bandied about on the MFA’s website is nonsense with knobs on. In fact, if you ask me, it’s nonsense on stilts.

The current price of general admission is fifteen dollars and exhibitions can run to twenty-five bucks. Now that may be a lot of things, but it’s not “Art for Everyone.” “Art for everyone with forty bucks.” Yes.

The argument that forty bucks is nothing to pay, given the wealth of art, is made by people with forty bucks to spend. But never mind. Free museums have gone the way of the dodo. The British Museum is free to get in, but it’s in London. You can’t get there on the T.

Some months ago when students were coming back from Summer break, all the free papers did their obligatory “Welcome back to Boston” issue. In theirs the Phoenix had various suggestions as to where to meet people. Like for hook-ups. There were separate articles for girls and guys, girls and girls, and guys and guys, and for the latter, one of the places the author Kurt Malec suggested was the MFA, particularly when you don’t want to end up “later that same night [snogging, let’s say] in a bathroom stall.”

Psst, Kurt: the MFA has bathroom stalls, too.

Anyway, Kurt says that for “boyfriend” material, “The Museum of Fine Arts and the Boston Public Library courtyard are great places to find the intellectual type.” But I think this is an urban legend, like the one about the last car on subway trains being the gay cruising car. Somebody prove me wrong, please. But seriously, just go on the internet. That’s where the boys are.

By the way—a little off-topic, I know, but Kurt goes on: “If you don’t feel like putting on an air of intellectualism to approach those studying studs, I recommend bookstores like Trident Book Sellers. You’ll find scenesters, hipsters, and homosexuals reading, drinking, and lounging in the café. And let’s face it, it is a lot easier to make small talk with someone who is reading Paris Hilton’s latest than someone contemplating a Renoir.”

Is Paris Hilton an author now, too?

And what’s so hard about sidling up to a looker looking at Dance at Bougival, say, clearing your throat, and saying, “Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.” That’s a direct quote from Monsieur Renoir himself, by the way. Or you could just cut to the chase, poke him in the small of his back and grunt: “the men’s john, in five, bitch. Be there.”

Not that museums aren’t great places to cruise, but admission’s got to be free. Forty dollar museum trips and free love just don’t mix. But even artfag haute couture is no guarantee you’re gonna meet someone any more decent than in the reeds at the Fens. I mean, look at what happened to Angie Dickinson in Dressed to Kill.

Hmm. Hold that thought, gentle reader. Once again, our time is up…

I went to the dentist this afternoon. I went in for a cleaning and came out with two cavities. I have never in all my life had a cavity. They should have counselors on hand for this kind of thing.

When he saw my devastation my dentist first tried to minimize the damage. “They’re in the very early stages,” he told me. But you still have to drill, right? “It won’t hurt,” he said. And then added: “much.”

“Only if we hit a nerve,” he clarified.

Then he tried to assure me it wasn’t exactly my fault, because, really, it feels like a personal failing, especially when you’ve gone your whole life without a cavity and then all the sudden you’ve got two. He was like, “this one here is the result of a kind of congenital defect.” Oh, thanks, doc. Now I’ve not only got a cavity, I’ve got a freakin birth defect. I feel much better now.

“Wanna free toothbrush?” he offered lamely.

And then when I left the dentist’s office, it was raining cats and dogs. I’d left my umbrella at home, too. I can’t say as I mind the milder weather, even though I know it means death and doom for us all in the not so distant future (and make no mistake: it does), but I’d rather it was mild and sunny all day and only rained from, like, 2 to 4:30 a.m.

I think that’s a reasonable proposition.

There’s a lot of quality free reading material available to you on the T. Of course, you’ve got your daily Metro. I get a lot of grief from people who want Metro to be some kind of subversive samizdat publication calling for the overthrow of order and complete anarchy, but come on. Settle down. It’s what it is. And it’s perfectly fine for what it is. It’s your commute to work. Do you really want to be enraged or plunged into the depths of despair by your reading material at that early hour? And then what? Go to your cubicle and cry your eyes out?

But I sympathize. My aim in writing op eds for Metro is to get the blood pumping in the morning. Nothing more, nothing less. For those of you who desire titillation on the T, I wrote about sex ed in Tuesday’s issue (you can read it here, if you missed it).

Speaking of sex, the latest issue of Bay Windows, the free paper for the GLBTETC community has a good article by Ethan Jacobs on the Mr. Heterosexual pageant held Feb. 18 at Worcester’s Mechanics Hall, “part of an evangelical Christian event purportedly celebrating ‘God’s design’ of heterosexuality.” I would personally like to remind you all that God himself is not heterosexual. As far as I am aware God has neither sex nor sexuality. Abiogenesis and biopoiesis, both of which seek to show that reproducing organisms originated from non-reproducing elements, which, by the way, jibes with the Genesis account, argue that it took God a good long time to think outside the box as far as propogation is concerned. This suggests that God is probably a giant amoeba. I mean, amoebas don’t sit around all day thinking of sexual reproduction like the rest of us do, do they?

The Dig’s Michael Brodeur also crashed the Mr. Small-Penis Latent Homosexual Pageant, and lived to tell about it.

And of course the Dig’s got “Oh Cruel World,” and is always worth picking up for that alone. The Dig’s also got my current favorite comic, the delightful Lulu Eightball By Emily Flake:

The Phoenix has Hockney’s take on Divine on the front page, advertising the Hockney show at the MFA. Nobody from the Phoenix was at Mechanics Hall. But the Phoenix has Dan Savage of the syndicated “Savage Love” (which is almost as good as “Oh Cruel World,” and is my other weekly “must read”), and this week’s column has a letter from a dude who certainly could have been there. He wants to know if Enzyte for “natural male enhancement” really works.

He writes: “Not that I’m small or anything, but I’m a divorced, middle-aged, chain-smoking, overweight single guy who lives in a trailer park. I’d love to land a normal woman but don’t know what to do. I figure a few more inches downstairs wouldn’t hurt, especially if all I have to do is take a pill every day.” Now, ain’t that America? And what’s this “a few extra inches”? How many do you need? It’s either really small in that case, or you’re planning to use it as a lasso.

The savage Savage savagely answers: “Guys: the pills don’t work, the surgery doesn’t work — nothing works. There ought to be a law against advertising ‘cures’ for small dicks. It’s cruel and it discourages miserable, small-dicked men from the only real cure for their unhappiness: acceptance.” Ouch.

Of course, I don’t have this problem personally, but I think a more constructive bit of advice for this dude would have been to point him to this here website for sufferers of “penis phobia.” Just hook up with one of them. Presumably fear of something small would be less than fear of something large. Sometimes small ugly things are even cute (whereas big ugly things are just plain ugly, and menacing to boot). This could be a therapeutic match made in heaven.

Ah, Route 8. There are few routes so rich, yet so humble. You could live your whole life on route 8. Start out at the Obstetrics and Gynecology Ward at Beth Israel; get an education on the way at UMass, Northeastern, or Simmons College; check out an exhibition at the Fine Arts Museum; go to a game at the Fenway; plant a garden or have anonymous sex in the Fens; have a rapid HIV test at Project Trust at the Boston Medical Center, and then celebrate your negative results by buying smack in Franklin Square Park; and after loads of cool adventures, finally end up six feet under in Columbia Square Cemetery in Dot. All this and more, without ever leaving our featured route of the day!

Here’s my suggestion for a fun-filled and action-packed day trip. Hop on at UMass Boston after a trip to the JFK Museum on the harbor and hop off at Kenmore Square (yes, this route boasts perhaps the two greatest and best-known symbols of 20th Century Boston: JFK and the Citgo sign!) and enjoy life’s rich pageant along the way. WOO-WOOOO! All aboard!

Our first stop (though not THE first stop) is South Bay Shopping Center! Are you a subcontractor or just a do-it-yourselfer? Well, there’s a Homo Depot right here at South Bay Center, and Bus #8 will drop you right at its door. Need some cheap immigrant labor for that little gentrification job you got going on? Look no further. We’ve got Mexicans, Brazilians, Cape Verdians, a virtual 31 flavors hanging out in front of the Home Depot and Target just waiting to assist you for a fraction of the cost of legal day-labor! ¡Venga, venga, venga, muchacho! ¡Dese prisa! ¡El autobús se está yendo! ¡ariba ariba, andele andele!

Next, let’s hop off at the Boston Medical Center, a medical research hospital associated with BU! It has a slightly complicated history of mergers, but its various individual institutes were founded in the mid-nineteenth century. The former Boston City Hospital (BCH) was the first municipal hospital established in the United States. Nowadays BMC is THE place to BE if you’re afflicted by a STD!

Bus #8 runs through the South End, too. Of particular interest: the aforementioned historic Blackstone/Franklin Square neighborhood. There are two big parks there with big-ass birdbaths as their centerpieces. The parks seem to serve as spill-over for the Pine Street Inn, which is, surprisingly and unfortunately, not on our tour today. Those of you interested in visiting the Inn will have to tune in for featured routes #9 and #49, coming soon! Until then, feel free to get to know some of the Inn’s eccentric denizens in Franklin Square!

But I would be remiss if I failed to mention this area is now home to the trendiest, priciest, loftiest new neighborhoods in Boston: SOHA and SOWA, both very much in walking distance from the Blackstone/Franklin Square Neighborhood. But you are probably not taking the bus or reading this if you are living there. So I think it’s safe to say there is something slightly sad and wannabe-pathetic in these cutesy-chic, Manhattanistic loftihoods, which were not invented by down and out but devil-may-care artistes but by sleazy developers and snooty realtors who have by now priced all the squatters out (many now reside in the Pine Street Inn and Franklin Square Park). Yes, there were and are plenty of artist studios in the hood, but it’s been utterly defunkified in the process of luxury loftification. Not knocking it, just telling you. Because there are gonna be people out there who will say things like, “Oh, SOWA! That’s kinda funky!” But it’s Queer Eye funky, at most. Which means occasionally you’ll see someone using a vintage necktie for a belt.

One place on our route that is off the scale on the funkometer is the Dudley area of Roxbury/North Dorchester, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Boston. And this is why (as The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) informs us):

“This diverse community of African American (37%), Latino (29%), Cape Verdean (25%) and White (7%) residents has a per capita income of $7,600 compared to nearly $16,000 for the City of Boston as a whole. The median family income for the area is $20,848. The unemployment rate is around 16%. Approximately 32% of the area’s population falls below the poverty level.”

Now, no offense to anyone, but that 7% figure above is crucial to the funk factor of any neighborhood. Sorry. When white people think of something funky, it’s usually something like the “funky chicken,” a dance whose invention is attributed to Rufus Thomson, a rhythm and blues and soul singer from Memphis, which involves acting like a chicken; flapping your “wings” and flailing your legs around. All well and good, but is it really funky? While Thomson’s credentials are impeccable, he was never able to adequately explain how or why or under what specific circumstances impersonating a chicken is funky. Personally, I think it was an ingenious way of selling the idea of funky to white folks who haven’t got a clue.

The truth is white people have been searching for the meaning of funk ever since the word entered the slang lexicon. And it’s a word with a particularly rich etymology. The Oxford Unabridged gives some tantilizing hints as to the connection between funky and chicken. One possible origin is the Flemish fonck: “cowering fear, a state of panic or shrinking terror.” In 19th century English, as a verb, it was slang for “to flinch” or “to try to back out of” something. Horatio Walpole was quoted in 1886: “The last time I saw him here [Eton], was standing up funking against a coduit to be catechised.” As a noun it could mean “a kick,” as quoted in J. Halley’s Life (1842) here: “He placed his hand…unluckily just on the spot where Mr. Pony is rather touchy. Sundry vehement funks…were the immediate consequence.” Flinching and kicking, hmm? Maybe old Rufus was an etymologist after all.

But when it comes to the adjective “funky,” things get even clearer. It showed up in its more readily recognizable form in 1954, 170 years after its first sighting in English (”sweet or funky cheese”). But here’s the clincher, from the December 31st, 1960 issue of Melody Maker:

“Horace [Silver] recalls that the use of the word funk in the modern sense goes back to his composition, ‘Opus de Funk’. ‘When you put a lot of little blues inflections in the solos, people would say you were really funky, by which they just mean bluesy.’”

Which introduces another intangible into the discussion. But never mind. Even Cecil, of The Straight Dope has entered the fray. One of his faithful readers claims the following origins for “funky”:

“[It] seems to derive from the Ki-Kongo lu-fuki, `bad body odor.’ … Both jazzmen and Bakongo use funky and lu-fuki to praise persons for the integrity of their art, for having `worked out’ to achieve their aims…. This Kongo sign of exertion is identified with the positive energy of a person. Hence `funk’ in American jazz parlance can mean earthiness, a return to fundamentals.”

To which Cecil replies: “YOU SAY IT’S FUNKY, I SAY IT STINKS.”

As far as funk’s concerned, the only thing that’s for sure is this: if you have to ask you’ll never know.

The long and short of it is: any way you slice it, Dudley Square is funkier than SOWA.

Hmm, well we’re about halfway through our tour, and I don’t know about you, but I am BEAT, my babes. So We’ll have to finish this action-packed route another day. And if you have any suggestions for sights I may have missed so far in our journey from UMass to Dudley Square, feel free to toss in your two cents!

Took a day-trip to Salem yesterday to check out the Peabody Essex Museum. It was a blustery day, so my friend Robert and I didn’t end up tooling around Salem much. The museum itself has plenty to offer, so we weren’t at a loss for things to see and do.

Robert was looking forward to the “Artful Teapot” exhibition (which was delightful), and one on the Taj Mahal (which was somewhat less than spectacular, if you ask me). I myself was looking forward to the maritime paintings, and the PEM is chock full of ‘em. Its collection is world renowned. Now I’m a big fan of landscape, seascape and skyscape painting, but when you can get all three in one, well, that’s value, people.

I’m not a naval buff or a nautical history nut, or anything. For me, it’s really all about the paintings. The play of light and shadow, the drama of the composition. That’s what it’s about for me.

Some artists and works of particular interest: Fritz Hugh Lane, a contemporary of the Hudson River School, and a pioneer of what would come to be called Luminism, is well-represented here with the aptly luminous The Steamer Britannia in a Gale, 1842, and the mystical, transcendent Twilight on Kennebec , 1849 (both below).

Another Luminist, Francis Augustus Silva, is also well-represented at the PEM. His View of Boston Harbor near Castle Island, 1872 (below), represents everything I love about the Luminists. There is an element of the Romantic in their work–the quality of light, the colors, convey a mood, a spirit. Certainly Silva was well aware of this. He himself wrote (as J.I.H. Baur recollects in an article on Silva in the November 1980 issue of Antiques):

“A picture must be more than a skillfully painted canvas; — it must tell something. Some men can never paint from memory or feeling — they give us the cold facts in the most mannered way. Many of our artists learn certain artists’ tricks and then repeat them continually, with no idea of the deeper meaning of the art, but only of the outside of things, and very trivial things at that. All earnestness of purpose is lost, and with them art becomes a useless field of affectation where their tricks of color and handling are displayed. The subject must convey no sentiment — call up no emotion, awaken no interest.”

Of course, Silva’s outlined here everything the Luminists were against. According to Lane and Silva (and other great luminists, like Jasper Francis Cropsey, the incomparable Frederick E. Church, John Frederick Kensett, and the brilliant Martin Johnson Heade–click here for samples of their work) color and light were spirit itself. And their paintings were to be not merely seen but felt. I don’t know about you, but I feel them.

Aside from the odd Luminist masterpiece, which got me all panty and breathless (Robert was like, “Head between knees! I’ll go out and see if I can find you a paper bag so you don’t hyperventilate.”) there were plenty of works depicting great galleons tossed about by sea storms, shipwrecks, sea serpents, walruses and slaughtered whales, erupting volcanoes and other various and sundry natural disasters that were worth the price of the ticket by themselves.

But the PEM is so much more than nautical lore and gore. They had an exhibition called “The Owl in Art and Nature” in the interactive “idea lab” that was abfab. There was a whole wall of stuffed birds, and works that captured the uncanny nature of the creatures, like Passage, by Sachiko Akiyuma:

There’s also the Yin Yu Tang house which they moved stone by stone from the Chinese village of Huang Cun and rebuilt on the museum grounds. If that’s your thing. In fact, for any and all things Asian, this is the place. If you’re turned on by Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Asian “export art” you’re bound to go into seizures of ecstasy at the PEM. Just make sure you don’t swallow your tongue.

Salem’s about a half-hour by commuter rail from North Station, and the PEM is definitely worth the trip. Admission’s thirteen bucks.

On a tip from Jason I checked out the “missed connection” section of Craig’s List.

Hmm.

I have to admit the allure of electronic bulletin boards and chat rooms is totally lost on me. People post anonymous and innocuous enough comments and are then mercilessly slagged off by other chat room lurkers or denizens of the bulletin boards. People who would not dare speak up in real-life are emboldened to bite others’ heads off in cyberspace.

Aside from wingnuts who post treacly pop song lyrics and electronic chain letters a lot of the posts drift way, way, way off-topic. I mean, to the point it’s almost worthless having a “missed connections” category in the first place. For February 14th, of 25 posts, only 7 had anything to do with actual “missed connections”.

Sure, it’s amusing somehow. I mean, the guy who has to tell the world (and I quote): “I AM A LAW OBIDING CITIZEN AND I DON’T RESPECT THE FACT THAT I JOINED A BSC CLUB A FEW MONTHS AGO TO SHED SOME POUNDS AND ON A DAILY BASIS I HAVE TO DEAL WITH GUYS CHECKING OUT MY JUNK AND STARING AT ME IN THE MENS ROOM.” And wants to rally the troops: “LETS TAKE BACK OUR GUMS. LETS TAKE BACK OUR BCS GYMS ALL OVER THE AREA. GET BACK TO ME WITH IDEAS AND HELP KEEP THE LAW SAFE!!!” Let’s start a club! The He-Man Man-Junk-Lover-Haters Club of Boston!

I say just be happy anyone at all is interested in your nasty old “junk”. (I refer to mine as “jewels,” by the way.) This is a kind of paranoid double reverse voyeurism, isn’t it? There’s actually a lot of it about.

But to be honest, this kind of post is just what you expect when you log on, isn’t it? It’s the same psychology at play with reality TV. We don’t tune in to have our assumptions challenged, we tune in to have our misanthropy reinforced. I mean, this dude lurking on Craig’s List trying to stir up a shit-storm is just the kind of pathetic slob you’d expect to find there doing just that, isn’t it?

And, OK, sure, there’s something compelling about that, in and of itself, but it’s like when I was in college and I dropped acid for the first time. I was with this psych major friend of mine, and we were in the kitchen when I started to peak and I got totally lost in the litter box. And she rescued me. I mean, without her intervention I would have spent a night of revelations buried in the cat box, you know? A lot of things can be diverting, but not all are deserving of equal attention. Next time you’re about to dive into the litter box, think of your mental hygiene.

Anyway, none of this is to say that the concept behind “missed connections” isn’t a good one. I think there ought to be a section in the Metro dedicated to them. And I think people ought to cruise on the T. It should be encouraged. Anything that might facilitate a more loving underground.

Just came across this mention in the Globe, from Janury 29th.

I didn’t go off and look at porn after all. I mean, who would do such a thing on a special day like today, a day dedicated to love, not sex? Philistines. No, instead of rushing off to my standing date with porn, I went off with a big bag of Necco sweethearts, a bottle of Bull’s Blood, and a book of sonnets from one of my favorite sonneteers, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and bawled my eyes out. I mean, it is Valentine’s Day, after all. And it’s impossible, when you think of love, not to think of Millay’s sonnets, isn’t it? Sure, some prefer Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I love thee,” and blabidee-blah. Personally I’m not all that interested in the body count. But I’ll admit Browning is more appropriate than Millay. Browning is a Romance poet, and Valentine’s Day is steeped in the Romantic’s notion of love, although the tragedy has been wrung out of it for the most part. That’s the wee problem with it, in fact. Romance with a happy ending can hardly be called Romantic at all, can it? Even Browning’s sonnet ends “and, if God choose,/I shall but love thee better after death.” But, details, details. The thoroughly modern Millay puts it all in perspective, that’s for sure. (For some others who do, check out Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s list here.)

Anyway, it’s a pity sonnets don’t fit on your average Necco sweetheart. Guess we’ll just have to settle for “fax me” instead.

Here are four from Millay’s 1920 collection, A Few Figs From Thistles. Jot one down in your sweety’s V-Day card, if you dare.

I

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,
And drag me at your chariot till I die,–
Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts!–
Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie
Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair
Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr
Who still am free, unto no querulous care
A fool, and in no temple worshiper!
I, that have bared me to your quiver’s fire,
Lifted my face into its puny rain,
Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire
As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!
(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,
Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

II

I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.

III

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love’s self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now;
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger’s rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you–think not but I would!–
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.

IV

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,–
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.