Thursday, November 29, 2007

"Unabideables": the MTA and winter

“At least he made the trains run on time.”

The number one joke about Mussolini is the above. Why has it stuck with people for so long? Well, if you live in New York City you readily understand why one can make a joke about being able to withstand a fascist administration (oops, I mean openly fascist) if you could just get to where you wanted to go in a smooth fashion. Doesn’t matter how good the book you’re carrying, how superb the music in your portable “device,” how many things you’ve got on your mind, and need time to process — when you’re at a local station and the train you’re waiting for chooses to go express and fly by in the darkness with horn blaring, or the wretched pathetic little tyrant that drives the bus decides to bypass you in the depths of winter (or summer), you might be brought in mind of a younger Benito, and figure that if you ever got control of a country, you’d damned well get the public transportation to actually follow the fucking schedule, any fucking schedule.

In winter, one wants, needs, would love to simply go home.

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