Have you seen anyone evade in the new automated system so far? Have you heard of anyone doing it? Share!

Well, when I heard the rain wasn’t gonna let up until NEXT Thursday, I finally broke down and got myself some proper raingear and have been cycling to Back Bay and back every day. Monday I got up and thought, I’m gonna get just as wet walking to the T station from home, and from the T station to “work” and back again, as I am just riding my bike to “work,” so why not just ride? You know, get it over with quicker.

Plus, in the first scenario I’d have to stand, packed into a humid, mobile bird-flu incubator for forty minutes, with scenes of near-Dickensian misery all around me, the train lurching and rocking to the collective gnashing of teeth. You know the drill. No thanks.

And it’s been drizzle for the most part, albeit a steady drizzle. Still, as for rain, it’s no biggie.

On my way home in the afternoon, I even dilly-dallied a bit in the South End. Stop-and-smell-the-roses type stuff. Where on the T can you do that? I don’t dare to take my noseplugs out the whole time I’m underground.

Yesterday I took a different route so that I could stop and admire my hands-down favorite piece of public sculpture in this, or any city, really:

Clearly alluding to the underbelly of the Fontana di Trevi in Rome, this postmodern anti-fountain on the corner of Pembroke and Warren was an early attempt, before extensive gentrification, to increase property values in the then-blighted area, by adding top-notch public sculpture that reflects pride of place. It now stands as an heroic monument to asphalt and scrap granite in the heart–or, actually closer to the liver–of our fair city.

After admiring that for a spell–really recharging my aesthetic batteries–I proceeded along the intestinal tract of Mass Ave. on my way home. I saw this poster advertising the ubiquitous Da Vinci Code on a T lean-to outside of the NStar facility across from South Bay Shopping Center:

I haven’t read the book, and have no intention of doing so, and if I see the movie it will be out of the same dull desperation on a rainy day that drove me to Mission: Masturbation III. But I liked this poster. It’s a little different from some others I have seen. I particularly like the looks on the actors’ faces. Like they’re being confronted by something both awesome and distasteful at once. Like a full-scale Lucien Freud nude. In fact, I imagine the photographer probably flashed a couple Freuds at them to get that shot. There’s more than a hint of “ee-yooo” there, don’t you think?

Tom Hanks, who has finally turned to marshmallow, looks concerned for humankind on the verge of a revelation that obviously horrifies the scrumptious, fiery-eyed, nostril-flaring Audrey Tautou, who nestles in his marshmallowy breast for comfort.

Hmm. Honestly, I don’t understand what’s the big deal about The Da Vinci Code. Many other deities have married mortals, after all, and no one batted an eye. If gods become flesh and then don’t mingle with the fleshly, how can they really be said to have understood what having flesh is all about in the first place? Why not just stick with being a burning bush? I mean, to go to all the trouble to get fitted with a body, and all tricked out with the tackle, and then…? It’s like taking a Carnival Cruise and never leaving your cabin. It’s like going to Vegas and staying holed up in your hotel room. Can you really say you’ve been to Vegas? Sure. But have you really been to Vegas? If you haven’t done anything that needs to stay in Vegas, as the ad says, then you might just as well have stayed home, really, and watched the series on TV.

But having said all that, it should also be said that whatever a god does when he manifests in fleshly form should really be his own business, don’t you think? QOTD.

I was asked today what would make the proposed fare hike worth it for me. And I am giving it some thought.

This morning the commute was horrendous. I mean, I left home a little early, but not as early as yesterday, and it was one of those mornings when everything went wrong that could, T-wise. You know what I said about the weather, and how people freak out whenever there is any? I don’t get it. I mean, it’s not like this is even real weather we’ve been having. Drizzle is not weather, people. Rain is weather. Drizzle, not so much.

So I got to JFK just after eight, and I’m assuming I just missed an inbound train, because the station was not too crowded. It was nearly a quarter after before an inbound train finally pulled verrrrrrrrrryyyyyy, verrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyy slowly into the Braintree side of the station. The windows were all fogged-up, of course, and by now the crowd on the platform was thick, but the crowd in the train was even thicker. Some people on the platform squeezed in, but, look, just because I’m taking mass transit doesn’t mean I have no dignity. I didn’t even bother to try.

Then they announced that there was another inbound train coming on the Ashmont side (they have these new automated announcements telling you a train is approaching), so, of course, everyone ran up the stairs, across the station, and back down the stairs on the other side to get on the inbound from Ashmont, only to have a conductor tell us that the train was going out of service. So now, in addition to the crowd already on the platform, there would soon be a whole train deboarding onto the platform to join us.

This is when I came up with an idea that would make the fare hike more palatable to me, personally. I was so incensed–it was almost half-past eight by now–that, while I am not generally a violent person, I really wanted to do the slob who’d announced the train was out of service some kind of harm. These were the idle dreams of violence typical of impotent bourgeoisie. I’ll admit it.

And frankly, my friends, I’m just not sure the revolutionary moment is yet upon us. If I lunged, would anyone join me–or would they maintain their ironic distance? Damned irony! You will not find in the whole history of revolutionaries one ironic one! I thought it unwise to risk it myself. But then in my reverie of impotent rage I pictured the story on the evening news of some kind of spontaneous old-school uprising against the T–a “Boston T-party” if you will–something that would send an unmistakable message to the powers-that-be, and would make the original colonists proud.

But it’s not going to happen. At least not spontaneously. So what I was thinking was maybe that as part of the improvements in service that should accompany a fare hike (although, to be perfectly clear, the GM has said the hike is necessary to maintain “basic services” NOT to improve them) there should be an institutionalized T scapegoat placed regularly on certain designated platforms in stocks, to receive abuse from long-suffering passengers, like so:

Is your train delayed? “Schedule adjustments”? Well, here, finally, is your chance to express your frustrations to a real, live T employee. And the employees would rotate, so that they would all have an opportunity to develop their listening skills and expand their capacity for empathy, and we would all have the opportunity to, erm, help them grow.

If you’re a little queasy about pillorying actual people, each station could be provided with an effigy of GM Danny Grabauskas, or an anonymous dummy in a T uniform, or maybe the T needs a mascot (I’ve been saying this for years) whose effigy could be beaten like a piñata, cursed, sodomized, burned, stomped on, whatever. You know, something to do while you wait for the next inbound train in the a.m.

Which did finally come, by the way. But we all had to run back up the stairs, through the station and down to the Braintree platform again and stuff ourselves in like sardines.

So, QOTD: What would make it worth it for you?

Still have yet to emerge from my wireless crisis, so I was back at Bates Hall yesterday when in came a most annoying woman in head scarf and sunglasses. She was either one of these Western women who choose the veil or an overstuffed unglamorous version of the late Audrey Hepburn. I am guessing the former was the case. And the fact that she was clearly a convert was annoying, because when people are born into a religion, it’s somewhat understandable that they would continue to practice it, but converts are always out to prove something. And, as my dear old dowager friend, whom I met and mooched off of years ago in Budapest, Madame von K– used to say: “stridency in anything is unattractive.” I have not found all of her maxims to be true, nor even many of them, but this one definitely is.

Anyway. So she was annoying right off the bat. And I want to make it clear that it has nothing to do with the scarf. I have nothing against scarves. I have a colleague who is an authentic Muslim from the Middle East, and she wears the loveliest scarves. And she is really the loveliest person. See, so some of my best friends wear headscarves.

But people have an aura as surely as they have an odor. And this woman’s was rancid. She was conspicuous in the first place, but made herself even more conspicuous by the way she behaved. Bates is clearly a reading room, which means most people are reading in it. It’s a quiet place. Well, she sits down—at the table across the center aisle from mine—and starts ripping single pages out of her daily planner. One by one. R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rip. R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rip. R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rip.

OK, whatever. Clueless, right? Unfortunately, it just happened that this was the day I left my headphones at home. Meanwhile she busied herself very self-importantly ripping out the pages of her planner, and then ripping them up.

By the way, there’s a custodian going through now. He just paused, looked around, and then threw a bottle into one of the little metal waste paper baskets here. It made a huge sound, reverberating through the hall, which seemed to satisfy him. He sauntered to the other end of the hall, repeated the gesture, and then sauntered out. And they say the working class male is inarticulate. Well, people get their point across, don’t they? One way or another.

So back with Jameela the Ripper. I got used to it. I’m very adaptable like that. Then, after about forty-five minutes, this nutty-looking wiry little woman with a mop of frizzy grey hair came scrambling in, and went right up to Jameela—I thought sure we were gonna have a Bates Hall bum fight—and asked her if she minded her sitting down right across from her! Right across from her! It’s unheard of! Especially when there were free seats that were not right across from her! But The Friz had a laptop, and the tables only have outlets on the inside aisle-side, not the outside wall-side. It’s just one of those things. I mean, it made some kind of sense, at least.

And the Friz was nice enough about it. I mean, she could’ve just sat there. There’s no rule that says you have to ask someone’s permission to sit RIGHT FREAKIN ACROSS FROM THEM in a library reading room, after all.

But, check this out: Jameela the Ripper didn’t even acknowledge her, but immediately—without a moment’s hesitation she started very violently, noisily gathering her things up. I was like, damn, girl. Chill. Ol’ Friz is not that bad. You’re lucky Mohamed’s not here. (But, come to think of it—I have never seen Jameela and Mohamed in the same place at the same time—could it be a sort of wacky “Krippendorf’s Tribe” type thing, where Jameela actually IS Mohamed? The mind boggles.)

So here Jameela is gathering up her stuff in a noisy huff, and Ol’ Friz starts waving her hands in Mohamed–er, Jameela’s face (she still has her big, mysterious Audrey Hepburn sunglasses on, by the way) and Ol’ Friz is shouting, “Hey! Hey! You in there? Miss? Miss?!?” But Jameela refuses to answer, or even to look at her. “Yo! Lady! Can I sit here? Do you mind?!? Hello! He-lo-o-o-o-o!” Ol’ Friz is still waving her hands in Jameela’s face, until finally Jameela’s got all her little scraps of ripped-up paper gathered up and stomps off to another table, like, three tables away.

So was it a real victory for Ol’ Friz, or just by default? QOTD. I’ll tally all votes and get back to you.

Anyway, I got a little chuckle out of the whole spectacle, at least. But Ol’ Friz got the last laugh. That’s the thing about crazy people. So she ended up watching some kind of video, without headphones, on her laptop. It was just louder than whisper volume, which was the perfect volume to bug the holy hell out of anyone in her immediate vicinity.

Another day in Da Hall. Gotta love it.

Hey, it’s Earth Day! Hooray for Earth! (Disclosure: I’m rooting for Earth to win.)

I’ve been wanting to ask those of you who cycle in Boston if you have ever noticed that no matter what direction you’re traveling, there’s always a headwind? QOTD.

A little shout-out to Charlie D., regarding livablestreets. I went to a forum at the Museum of Science recently that they co-sponsored. A lot of great ideas being implemented elsewhere, definitely worth looking into for Boston.

I should say that when I lived in JP I enjoyed having the greenway right outside my door. JP is fairly bicycle-friendly, but still, I think, focused more on “leisure-cycling,” not actually getting from A to B in a timely fashion. It’s a start, but Boston is the perfect size for a comprehensive network of bike trails that could get you anywhere you wanted to go. We should aim higher.

Anyway, thanks Charlie D., and I encourage everyone to check out livablestreets.com!

And a shout-out to dsaklad, too, who wrote to ask: “How would you compare Bates Hall with other reading room areas around the Boston Public Library buildings’ floors?…” I’m assuming this is a rhetorical question, dsaklad, and if so, it’s a very, very good point.

I don’t really have any major complaints with Da Hall. Even the crazies are well-behaved there, mostly on account of the proactive security personnel, who don’t take no guff. But the truth is you don’t have to be crazy to act the fool in public. In fact, I’m sitting right now in that little cafe-type place in the McKim Building–Sebastian’s–and there’s a perfectly normal-looking fellow in the corner reading something very lengthy on his laptop aloud to himself. Now, in and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with that. I always read what I’ve written out loud before I send it off for publication, for example, because, for some reason, I think it should sound nice. But I wouldn’t do it in the reading room, or in the middle of a cafe, unless I had been asked to a reading, or something, y’know? It’s a matter of sharing public space. It’s about mutual consent as to its uses.

When the students are in their exam period, the library and this little cafe are just crawling with people who seem to be on a mission to outfreak each other. I’ve seen some stunningly pretentious performances, let me tell you. Young people trying to shock with their put-on personae. Sad, really.

It’s like Berklee School of Mucus over on Mass Ave. I pass through the area on my way to the Fens, and all I’ve got to say is they’re all so different they’re the same. Looking freaky is easy enough these days. Doesn’t impress me. It’s an extension of adolescent acting-out. Nothing more, nothing less.

(Meeeeowww! You can tell I’m getting old and crotchety–in fact, yesterday I went shopping and was in the fitting room trying on shirts. I came out to ask the twenty-something clerk if she thought the fitted shirt I had on fit, and she said, “well…” It was snug, but that’s how it’s cut. She was like, “that’s the style, but…” I was like, “but what?” She didn’t want to say it, bless her, but the “but” was something like “but for people half your age.” I bought it anyway.)

What you’ve got in the youth of today is a kind of moral oreo: deeply conservative on the inside, but freaky on the outside. They’re joiners—but so were the hippies and the beats and so on. It’s always been about belonging. To a tribe, sure, but having your face stapled is no different really than wearing a suit everyday. A different team, sure, but essentially the same game.

I remember when Vans were really cutting-edge cool. That’s when the skateboarding subculture was going mainstream in the most obnoxious way. About six months later, everybody was wearing ‘em. I mean, old bag-ladies and bums were tricked out with their double-tongues. Vans are very comfortable. I admit I bought a pair and wore ‘em out, though I have never in my life been on a skateboard.

Point is: you’ve got to put a lot into staying ahead of the curve these days. That’s why tattoos and piercings have gained popularity. Because you have to really want to be part of the tribe to get ‘em.

But it’s all good. When you think about it, how much true originality can one society take?

Anyway, everyone knows the real freaks are the ones everybody says “seemed perfectly normal” before they bit off the heads of ninety-seven live chicks and left them lined up on little toothpick stakes on the State House lawn, or whatever. And no, that wasn’t me.

But back to Bates Hall. The great thing about this brave new world we live in is that, actual schizophrenics are really the least annoying of the lot. It’s a great time to be stark-raving mad, if ever there was one. Because nowadays, it’s those who are mad who often seem most sane.

And “sane” people are always taking advantage of the license we grant the insane in public. It’s like, “well, if crazy people can talk to themselves in public, why can’t I?” Or, you know, “if nutso there on the internet can kidnap his neighbor and cannibalize her, why shouldn’t I be able to, too?”

Manners are memes. It’s all monkey-see-monkey-do. What’s conventional is arrived at by a sort of silent consensus. It’s not what someone says should be done, like the Catholic Church or the Bush Administration would like it to be, it’s what people are actually doing, and when enough people get to talking to themsleves in public or eating their neighbors’ children, then you’ve got what they call a critical mass. Manners don’t always make the best sense. But I do think morals are intuitively obvious to anyone with a little good sense. (Under no circumstances do I condone cannibalism, by the way, in case you were wondering.)

And the monkey-see-monkey-do factor is why it’s even more important to proactively—preemptively—spread positive memes. On Earth Day, and every day!

“Boston officers shoot at suspect who fled stop in stolen SUV” and “MBTA officer, suspect exchange gunfire at T stop”.

Now, there have been times I have been tempted to stand up and fight for the rights of decent, well-behaved commuters, and say something to some young punks who are acting up on the platform. But you know that part of what’s going on in any such situation is a kind of dare–it’s a potent if primitive combination of intentional provocation and intimidation, and the fact is, a lot of these thugs are spoiling for a fight. And if they’re looking for it, they’re likely armed as well.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned the time last summer I was on the Orange line and a big gang of thugs busted onto the train, staring people down, and I ended up standing next to one, who muttered to his buddy, “I just wish someone would bump into me—I just want to beat the shit out of somebody.” I quietly made my way to the opposite end of the car.

You can bet not a one of them paid their fare, either. That’s just one of the many perks of membership in a band of marauding thugs.

Of course, there’s nothing you can do about this sort of thing, except move quietly to the opposite end of the car if you can. You do the math in your head when they storm in. You’ve got ten minutes to your stop. You can endure it. And why give them what they’re looking for? They travel in packs—or sometimes “swarms” as they’re calling it in the news now. I mean, did you see the security camera footage of the guard getting “swarmed” by a gang of young thugs on the news yesterday? If you stand up to them, who’ll back you up? Nobody, is who. Nobody wants trouble, except the troublemakers themselves. But who wants to sit there in silence and be intimidated like that?

I would say that the problem is probably not as bad as the press makes it out to be, but the numbers don’t lie. In every category, Boston crime rates are worse than the national average. Everybody knows the murder rate was up 34% in 2005. Aggravated assault, which is something much more likely to happen to just anybody in the wrong place at the wrong time, is off the hook.

Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times about the “bewildering” nature of the new surge in violent crime. I know I have banged on a good deal about eye-contact, but you’ve got to be careful these days: “mean mugging,” which, according to the article is ghetto slang for giving someone a dirty look, could get you killed.

When I was visiting my Aunt Mindy from Indy on St. Armand’s Island a couple of months ago, she told me to write an op-ed piece about conscripting petty criminals. I was like, uh, OK. You know, it goes against some of my gut convictions, but I do think a compulsory national service corps could help with the problem of youth violence, which often results, I think (perhaps simplistically), from lack of purpose, direction, connectivity with a positive community and cause, and plain old garden-variety boredom. Plus lack of prospects and hope of a better life, particularly relative to what we see on TV or in the movies, which also seems to some with violent tendencies to justify violence towards others unlike themselves.

I’m not pinning this on minorities, either. Take this thing at Duke. Whatever happened between that stripper and those Lacrosse players, one thing is for sure: it was sordid. Neither party is coming out of it squeaky clean. I heard yesterday one of the guys, who’s gone to the best, most expensive prep schools, and whom everyone says is a great student and team player, was arrested last year on a trip to Georgetown for assualting a man after taunting him with homophobic slurs. Then there’s the email from one team member, sent the day after rape accusations were made public, “announcing that the following night he planned ‘to have some strippers over’ and would be ‘killing the bitches’ as soon as they walked into his dorm room….The e-mail…notes that, after the strippers were killed, they would be skinned while the author was ‘cumming in my duke issue spandex.’” None of which proves that the young woman who claimed to have been raped was. But it would not surprise me. I certainly don’t doubt for a minute that the players taunted her with racial and misogynist slurs, though.

The picture that arises of the Duke Lacrosse team ain’t pretty, no matter how you slice it. It reminds me of the culture of “careless people” of privilege F. Scott Fitzgerald documented in Gatzby. Sometimes we forget: privilege leads to forms of violence just as surely as privation. It’s not poverty that’s to blame in our time.

Anyway, I think a real, functioning national service corps without the missionary overtones of the Peace Corps and Americorps, could do wonders. Nowadays the volunteer service corps, unfortunately, tends to draw people of privilege who sometimes go into it for the wrong reasons–to bolster their resumes, for example. And working abroad for many years, I ran into my share of Peace Corps volunteers whose attitudes towards their host cultures was downright insulting. As for Americorps or City Year, or whoever they are, whenever I see those kids on the T with their bright red jackets I feel like, what the hell? I think they should ditch the jackets, personally. Doesn’t it make you feel like “the natives” with these brave souls in their bright red jackets risking life and limb to “civilize” us, or something? We know you’re from the suburbs, but, please, try to blend.

I’m from the school of, if you’re going to do good in the world, skip the bright red jacket or the hairshirt, drop the megaphone, and just do it.

I could see the usefulness of uniforms with a conscripted army, of course. And I’m all for it. And if you made the uniforms cool enough–have Piggy-D, or Po-Diddly, or whatever the fuck his name is, design ‘em–a little beret for the lads, a sash for the ladies–you’d have a movement on your hands. The trick is to give them something real to do, not to exacerbate the problem by piling boredom on boredom. The danger is that pinheads like the pols in Washington, would get ideas about using conscripts to clean their houses, cook their meals, and chauffeur them around. Gotta make sure the rich don’t abuse it.

At any rate, I have a feeling it’s going to be a long, hot summer, and probably a senselessly violent one, too, unfortunately. What to do?

I saw not just one, but two of the most beautiful babies in the world today. There is almost nothing in nature as unsightly as an ugly baby, but nothing more beautiful than a beautiful one, or so it seemed to me today when I thought about it.

So my QOTD is for the ladies: can guys catch baby fever, too?

Went to see Yo-Yo Ma last night at Symphony Hall. There were actually three featured composers, but only one cello concerto (by Schumann), so Yo-Yo was there for that. Originally, he was to play a work for cello and orchestra by Osvaldo Golijov, written expressly for the BSO’s 125th Anniversary, but Golijov is having writer’s block, so we’ll have to wait until August for that. Schumann was sandwiched between György Ligeti’s Concert Românesc and Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben.

We sat in the student section way back in the back, and were treated to a lively and at times revelatory conversation before the show and during intermission by the two young ladies sitting right behind us. It seemed there was one who was rather worldly, while the other had never been out of the sorority house.

Before the concert the first one, reading Ligeti’s bio in the program, says to the second one: “Ohmigod, his dad, like, died in Auschwitz.” Her friend was like, “ich, what’s that?” The first, betraying no surprise at the question, answered matter-of-factly: “It’s, like, this big concentration camp.” The second one giggled, and sounding somewhat relieved said (I shit you not): “Oh, I thought it was, like, some disease.”

That was the grand-prize jaw-dropper. But there were plenty of other gems throughout the night. Second place: “Ich! Who’s Yo Ma-Ma?” (this was my friend’s favorite). And third: when the lights came up for intermission and people were getting up to stretch their legs, the chick turns to her friend and says: “Is it intermission?”

I don’t want to sound like a cunt, here, but (and here is your QOTD): am I wrong to think there should be a minimum of cultural literacy, particularly among our middle classes? Am I wrong to be appalled by this young woman’s obliviousness? I mean, it’s perfectly possible she was just rescued from a basement where she’s been locked in a box since birth. But if not, what does it say about us, about our society and culture, when someone can reach adulthood and the reaction they have to “Auschwitz” is “Gesundheit!”?

What a world, what a world! We’re doomed, WE’RE DOOMED!

I received this anonymous query from a reader recently. I have some thoughts on the issue, but would like to know what you all think. And please be gentle.

“You hear a lot of people making fun of people who mouth the words when they read to themselves. I was reading the newspaper on the train the other day and realized I was doing it! I felt sort of ashamed, because people seem to think it reflects a low IQ or something. I have been paying attention since then, and I don’t always do it, but it seems like reading in an environment with a lot of distractions sometimes causes me to. Should I take a speed-reading course?”