An interesting piece in the New York Times [$] this morning about being groped on the subway.

Here’s what I liked: women in New York have helped police catch flashers by snapping pictures of them with their cell phones. Ha HA! So, you wanna be an exhibitionist, eh?

Yes, when we say “no touching,” that means not only others, but yourselves, too, lads! At least in public. It’s hard, I know, because there seems to be something in man’s very nature that compels him to stick his hands down his pants. Mark Twain once remarked: “To a man all things are possible but one—he cannot have a hole in his breeches and keep his fingers out of it. A man does seem to feel more distress and more persistent and distracting solicitude about such a thing than he could about a sick child that was threatening to grow worse every time he took his attention away from it.”

Of course, mankind has a long history of touching himself, and modern technology, far from otherwise occupying idle hands has only provided myriad new and improved opportunities for bigger and better feats of onanism. The internet is a storehouse of phalluses in action. Is there any teenage boy alive today who has not waved his for the webcam? Craig’s List alone boasts a daily collection to rival Darwin’s barnacles. If there was any question that many more men than ever suspected were merely waiting for a chance to show their stuff in public without adverse personal consequences, the internet has answered it resoundingly.

It’s too easy, is the thing. Diogenes, the one who thought of himself as “a crazy Socrates,” would masturbate in public, saying, “I wish I could satisfy my hunger as easily.”

While Diogenes was making a philosophical point with his, Leonardo da Vinci liked the look of it, pure and simple. Leonardo was fascinated by the membrum-virile cupidum, even more so than the ordinary man is, as evidenced in his obsessive sketches of it. He wrote (as quoted by art scholar Kenneth Keele): “A man who is ashamed to show or name the penis is wrong. [Instead] of being anxious to hide it, man ought to display it with honor.”

Showing it off has taken various forms down through time. I’ve mentioned the phallocarp, favored by warriors in Papua, New Guinea, before. In the 15th and 16th centuries, as François Rabelais delighted in pointing out, the codpiece, molded in the shape of a permanent erection, was all the rage. Some have speculated that the power tie is the modern man’s phallocarp.

Of course, a phallus is not a penis, and the advantage of phallocarps, codpieces, and fat ties, is precisely that the thing itself remains mercifully hidden from sight. This is usually advantageous to all parties, by the way (though not always—I imagine that Mapplethorpe’s Man in a Polyester Suit would garner appreciative oohs and ahs, and even an approving head-nod or two were he to board a train as pictured in the famous photograph, so long as he minded his own business). Point is: most of us are perfectly satisfied in all but a very few cases, to speculate rather than be provided, at least proactively, with proof. In fact, in nine out of ten cases, as most adults these days know, actually seeing the thing in all its usually underwhelming glory may satisfy a native curiosity, but little else.

Some believe they can tell what it’s like without actually seeing it, thereby negating the need for proof—there’s the old fallacy that large noses are accurate predictors of a member’s mass. Not so! And I’m not just saying that as someone with a mid-size schnoz, either. “In dissecting cadavers,” one venerated anatomist once famously noted, “anatomists frequently observe the opposite.” Still, small noses on grown men are repugnant in their own right (Michael Jackson, anyone?), without any reference to this other body part.

But I digress. The pertinent question here is, are we seeing a resurgence of a primitive compulsion, obviously felt as an obligation by some males, to display their goods, variously, to the females of the species?

Meredith Small, in her fascinating study Female choices: Sexual behavior of female primates, provides what may be a clue to uncouth male behavior on the T: “Male chimps use their penis for display toward estrous females. Because a longer penis would give a female pleasure (note that the human male has the longest and thickest penis of any primate), female choice might have been a factor driving penis length to extremes among primates.”

Furthermore, as Helen Fisher reports in Anatomy of Love: The Mysteries of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray, while “[w]e do not know why men have conspicuous genitals,… a male chimp solicits a female by opening his legs, displaying an erect penis and flicking his phallus with a finger as he gazes at a potential partner. A prominant, distinctive penis helps broadcast one’s individuality and sexual vigor, which may lure female friends. In many species of insects and primates, males have exceptionally elaborate penises, and scientists think these evolved specifically because females chose those males with elaborate, sexally stimulating genitals. So perhaps as Lucy’s ancestors became bipedal some four million years ago, males began to parade their genitals in order to make special friends with favored females–selecting for those with large organs.”

Lucy’s ancestors are beyond bipedal. Today they take the T. But they are obviously still very keen to make special friends with favored females. Some of them, misled by ads on Craig’s List and the ubiquity of internet porn, perhaps, seem not to know that we have evolved a bit since the days when displaying an erect penis and flicking it with a finger are criteria for friendship–even special friendship.

Do men deserve pity or scorn? As David Friedman says in A Mind of It’s Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, “a man’s relationship with his penis…is the most enduring mystery in every man’s life.” Sad, but true.

The Times article concludes:

Many women said they were not so much frightened by the subway encounters as they were appalled that men would do something so pathetic.

Like Ms. Fairley, the actress. “All of a sudden,” she said, “this man moved into my frame of reference, and I was staring at a penis. I couldn’t believe it.”

Ms. Fairley said she was embarrassed, but felt even worse, in a way, for the man. “They need help, bless their hearts,” she said.

All I can say in the end is: ladies, I salute you (and not with my erect penis, either). What you have to put up with on a daily basis boggles the mind.

Where’s the story? That’s what you have to ask yourself, as a reporter.

I’ll admit I’m a little disappointed in Mac Daniels’ decision to highlight the “cancellation” of the T-boycott, an idea that never really got off the ground in the first place, instead of highlighting the rally itself which has definitely not been cancelled.

I think what I said to Mac about the boycott was, if people wanted to boycott, they certainly could. He told me he, himself, was definitely interested in the idea of boycotts–not because he wanted to participate in this one, or thought it would be effective–but because boycotts are so hard to organize.

Exactly. And who’s got time for the tears? Life should be a banquet, not a beggar’s ball.

But I don’t think that’s the story, here. And I tried to stress that moving beyond the boycott (I don’t think I ever used the word “cancelled,” myself) wasn’t some big bureaucratic decision in the Star Chamber—it was really just about the best way to get people mobilized to do something productive with this thing, hook people up, show the world we’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore, and blah blah blah, yeah, whatever. That kind of thing.

At least the headline in the Glob was somewhat informative: “T farehike protesters hold rally.” And just one little sentence in that first paragraph, detailing exactly when and where the rally would be held, and maybe even why, would have been helpful. But we’d all rather kick each other in the balls whenever the opportunity arises, so, yeah, whatever.

The Metro also ran the story, with a headline screaming “Boycott against proposed T fare hike cancelled.” Yes, the first paragraph mentions “a short rally before the first in a series of public hearings” (it’s the same exact story the Glob’s running, but with a more sensationalistically distorted headline, of course), but then the rest of the story is, again, about how it won’t be a boycott. Presumably, if you are reading the Metro in the first place, you are on a train or a bus and aren’t boycotting the T anyway.

Still there’s no doubt that a headline like that will confuse some poor Metro readers into thinking that the rally itself has been cancelled. They don’t provide any details about the rally, either: exactly where or when it’s happening, just that it’s not going to be a boycott. Which is very informative.

Of course, I woke up this morning with a dread thought: what if it’s just me and three of my friends and Dani B. who show up? It could be uncomfortable. We obviously should have stuck with the boycott idea.

I was at work all morning trying to hash out this tjustice stuff and nonsense–the specific recommendations for reform that I would like to present to Senator Barrios and his colleagues in the legislature. I was working from home, and had a sushi date for 2PM at Jae’s in the Back Bay. Eat at Jae’s and supposedly you’ll live forever, though I don’t know if they have proof of that.

Anyway, I was working, working, working, and rushed out, knowing I’d be late, but that it would be OK with my sushi date, who’s usually running late, too. I get downstairs to the building foyer where I usually put my bike, and it’s gone.

Someone stole my friggin bike from inside my friggin building. How ya like that?

I had a flash to Holden Caulfield seeing those “fuck you”s graffitied all over everything. That’s how I felt. Like, damn, “You can’t ever find a place that is nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any.” That bike was my place. One of ‘em, at least. I’m not about to reveal my others. Not on your life.

I missed my sushi date, of course, but my friend, bless him, had a bike to lend me. It’s not mine, but it’ll do until I can replace mine.

I’m not going to get into just not understanding at all people who go into other people’s houses and take things that don’t belong to them. I mean, this is Dorchester. I consider myself lucky. They could have stolen the bike and shot me in the head, too. So I guess I should actually be happy about all this.

From CBS4boston.com:

MBTA Police arrested a cleaning crew foreman for allegedly stealing from a fare box.

Surveillance video shows the suspect, 34-year-old Jose Arriaza, allegedly taking money from the fare box at the Harvard station.

Arriaza was arrested Thursday. He is being charged with Breaking and Entering into a Depository, Larceny over $250 and Possession of Burglarious Tools.

From PR Newswire:

BOSTON, May 11 /PRNewswire/ — The former Superintendent of Revenue Collection for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (”MBTA”) was sentenced today on tax evasion charges.

United States Attorney Michael J. Sullivan; Douglas A. Bricker, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Boston Division; Theodore L. Doherty III, Special Agent in Charge of the New England Regional Office of the United States Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General and Joseph Carter, Chief of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (”MBTA”) Police, announced today that MARY LEMPITSKI, age 48, of 58 Carolina Avenue, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, has been sentenced to a term of one year and one day in federal prison for tax evasion.

In addition, LEMPITSKI must pay a fine of $10,000 and serve a term of three years supervised release, during which she must make restitution with the Internal Revenue Service.

At the sentencing hearing before United States District Court Judge William G. Young, the prosecutor outlined some of the evidence: From 2000 through 2003 LEMPITSKI spent at least $314,000, all in cash — above and beyond any cash withdrawals coming from bank accounts or otherwise traceable to any legitimate source. LEMPITSKI spent much of that cash at high-end department stores and boutiques. At times, sales clerks would have to call for security assistance when LEMPITSKI came shopping; there was not enough room in the cash register for the stacks of bills she used to pay for her purchases. As noted in the Indictment, the bulk of the cash went for designer jewelry, clothing, shoes and cosmetics for LEMPITSKI’s personal use. None of this cash was declared on LEMPITSKI’s tax returns.

As noted in the Indictment, LEMPITSKI was the Superintendent of Revenue Collection for the MBTA. In that capacity, LEMPITSKI oversaw the operations of a facility known as the MBTA “Money Room,” which is the central cash repository for revenues collected by the MBTA daily. The Indictment alleges that, during the years 2000 through 2002, the MBTA Money Room routinely contained hundreds of thousands of dollars in uncounted and unregistered cash.

At sentencing, the prosecutor noted that the government believed — but could not prove — that the unaccounted for cash was stolen from the MBTA Money Room.

In sentencing LEMPITSKI, Judge Young noted that, although the government had not proven any theft charge, it appeared that LEMPITSKI’s extra cash must have come from some form of misconduct. Judge Young further commented that he thought LEMPITSKI was stealing from a public authority as a public official.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General, Office of Investigations, and the MBTA Police. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul G. Levenson in Sullivan’s Public Corruption and Special Prosecutions Unit.

SOURCE: U.S. Attorney