The Bus Bench

This Week's Triptych—21 March 2008

So I skipped last week. So shaddup!

I been busy. And I got some interesting ones to show ya, so sit back and enjoy.

1- Los Angeles hosts New York via an ever-lame forensic cop show. Pardon me, but having a background in all the above, I cannot help bust tell anyone with a complaint to get fucken stuffed. Oh, and I hate Hollywood, especially the grey-haired motormen LAPD who get in my way while I walk round downtown Los Angeles getting shit done. Boys, just stay outta the way of the six-foot-some-inches, fedora wearin' New Yorker, and we'll all at least not be UNhappy, capiche?

2- I sent this shot to all my friends at 2600 and loads of other related rags. Roger, Tony, Wendy, et al—doan blame me when the windoze shit hits the fans. I'm a Mac man, after all, and I leave the hacking to my friends whose names are neither Kevin nor Mitnick, capiche? That way no one ends up on the inside of temple and Alameda let alone pushin' up the daisies at Rosedale nor Evergreen, capiche?

3- So I got on a lift that prompted all manner of innuendo? What the fuck am I supposed to do—fucken jump? Fuck you.

 

-BusTard

Fix-it Tips from the MTA

Metro CEO Roger Snoble has managed to find $22 million (more later, of course, MUCH more—just you wait, suckers!) of straphanger cash for turnstiles that no-one save his pals at Cubic desire be built. Perhaps the cash-strapped MTA is a literal problem these days, or maybe I am just milking a metaphor.

In any case, the giant support pole in the video below has been like this for a few months. The belt-held bits of rather large sheet metal can be seen even now at the 7th/Fig station on the Red lien platform's north end (near 7th Street) under the escalator and directly in front of the lift.

-BusTard

 

McBurger vs MTA Train

 

McBurger vs MTA Train
Video sent by shametrainla

 

Now you know why they are telling you to drink the tap water!

Or: "Hair today, yer gone tomorrow!"

For years I have read loads of arguments about clean and cleaner water, how tap water is becoming better and finally, how paying $1 for tap water will change the world. In any case, drinking ANY tap water will certainly change your world, most likely for the worse. Dig.

(For those folk unable to subscribe to The Economist, or whose sub expired over a year ago, read on:

"Telltale hairs"

Feb 28th 2008 (From The Economist print edition)

You can tell where someone has been from his hair

POLICE now have a new test to help catch criminals and verify alibis. By analysing the chemical composition of human hair, researchers can determine the source of the water someone has been drinking in recent months. And that can indicate where he has been.

The technique depends upon studying isotopes. These are naturally occurring variants of elements, which share the same chemical properties but have different weights because their nuclei contain different numbers of neutrons. James Ehleringer and Thure Cerling, at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and their colleagues collected human hair from barbers' shops in 65 American towns. They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that isotopes in hair closely match the hydrogen- and oxygen-isotope ratios found in the local water.

This research has obvious implications for law enforcement and is being used by Salt Lake county sheriffs to help identify a murdered woman. Isotope analysis of her hair revealed that she spent the years before she died in America's western mountains, which helps detectives concentrate their search. The new method may also help anthropologists understand more about the history and migration of ancient humans at sites where bits of hair are preserved.

The technique works because when water evaporates at sea, a combination of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes rise to form a cloud, which then releases rain when it moves inland. Heavier isotopes tend to fall sooner. So those living close to the sea, or in corridors suffering frequent storms, will tend to absorb more of the heavy isotopes in their hair.

For that reason, however, it is not perfect. In America, storms can come from the Pacific or the Atlantic. This creates regions with geographically similar isotope values. So, if a murder took place in Los Angeles and a suspect claimed to have been in San Diego all the time, hair analysis could not help, because the cities have similar isotope signatures. But if the suspect were in Las Vegas, which has a different signature, he could find himself nicked.

Go Metro? No, states Metro: "Go To HELL!"

The anonymity of the people who are behind the intercom of the Metro's single subway and measly few miles of light rail has never been conducive to courtesy. I have never heard a hint of politeness, and it is all too common that the attitude is one that, were straphanger to be the same way with a revenue collector, er L.A. sheriff, would most likely end in in somebody getting arrested. Metro needs to rectify this problem, so let me offer a word of advice to Supervising Manager Tom Horne (who invisibly supervises these people), Metro CEO Roger Snoble and any one else up there at the top of One Gateway Plaza: Get some personality training for these schmucks.

The following video will offer a prime example of the bad attitude. From the start, one can hear the woman having a conversation in the background, then reluctantly having to do what her job entails, then being inexplicably obstinate about how long the problem has persisted. Her attitude is that I must wait, and that's that. She implies, "Tough shit, go to hell," and then she hangs up. The second and third videos display the problem as well as how poorly metro handled it in the first place. (Napkins in lieu of a proper bit of signage? Is that how strapped the budget has become?)

 

Will the Sheriffs be as patient as Metro demands its patrons be while said straphangers are missing trains owing to 75% of its fare machines being down at one of its busiest stations during rush hour? Must I take the time to personally hunt down Tome Horne and Roger Snoble to get some answers for the asinine behaviour of these "civil" servants?

 

For those who require a date and time stamp and all that, see this corroborative video:

 

-BusTard

Pam from Santa Monica on Metro

When Pam from Santa Monica is not tooling round Australia for a month or more, or offering canned answers to questions that scratch the surface of the ridiculously deep corruption by Roger Snoble, Inc., that requires more than mere sword-rattling about a proper probe, class action suit and some serious prison time, she is wasting straphangers' time with crap questions put forward by morons. The following is from the Wednesday, 19 March 2008 Metro live chat. (If the question under review and posted below is not to be found, I have a PDF file of it in the case someone desires it.) It appears to be indicative of the idiocy that reigns supreme at One Gateway Plaza—or the seeming idiocy that is masking a duplicity that needs to be brought down by way of some serious civil action:

"Question: so you'd rather see this  forum be empty than post any questions that are a bit contented or  controversial? is that it?          

Answer: Hmmm....don't quite understand your question. The questions come in with peaks and valleys, some are more complicated than others, so on the fly, I grab a question to answer it. Of course, that takes a few minutes to compose and type the answer and then we post.
Happily, we get more questions than can be physically answered in the one hour...so all the questions that don't get answered "live" are answered, and posted, after the chat.
            So keep those questions coming and we'll eventually get them all  answered."

A Clockwork Orange renewed

Oh, my brother. Sir Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday. Not too many years ago, Stanley Kubrick kicked the bucket. Were either alive today, he would no doubt understand deeply the experiment engaged recently at three british prisons.

-BusTard

Thin

have been busy, and judging from the paucity of posts on BusBench, so, too, has been Browne.

Coming out of my weeks-long work, however, I elected to watch a documentary titled "Thin." Browne suggested it, and I reluctantly agreed. It is a recent doc about eating disorders.

I was not particularly impressed, and had less sympathy for anyone involved very quickly. This did not change throughout the viewing.

I imagine many folk have commented on the poor girls' plight. I will not weigh in on that aspect, but on the staff. The people alleging to help the girls at the rather pricey clinic are indicative of the very problems that have prompted the patients to seek thinness at any price. At least half of the staff are by a strict medical defintion morbidly obese. There is a propensity for wearing name-brand fashion crap such as Abercrombie T-shirts and Adidas baseball caps that should be abolished for reason only a complete idiot would fail to immediately comprehend. And there are at least two staff members whose middle-aged attempts to remain beach bunnies - replete with bleached hair, too much make-up and ridiculously girlish clothing - are hideous as well as pathetic.

It is outrageous that people who possess their own eating disorder are being paid good money to advisehow others should resolve their own eating disorders. There is a pear-shaped man in his late 20s or very early 30s who could easily be 125 lbs. less were he to eat healthfully. There are several middle-aged women who simply do not get off their collective fat arse. Why should someone with  the problem of binging and purging listen to someone with the same problem minus the purging part?

Must I explain the bit about name brands on apparel? Very well, since the staff of the clinic under review - Renfrew Center in Coconut Creek, FL - are too damned daft to understand the bleeding obvious. Is not the fashion world in the western hemisphere what is well known to have prompted the tidal wave of eating disorders? Would you give running shoes to a man whose legs were recenlt amputated? Would you give Jesus Christ a stump of dogwood were he to come back to save your arse? What the hell is wrong with you morons?

The two women who could easily be my mother - and note that I am 40 years of age - need to give up the bleaching of hair, wearing of heavy make-up and the entire "I'm still just a surfer girl on the beach at Spring Break" bullshit. Is that desire to be a sexpot not the same one that their patients espouse yet cannot handle? It is highly unprofessional not to mention pathetic, unless one is seeking to star in MILF videos on BangBros.

In the end, all I can state is that the one girl who was pushed out of Renfrew's little community (by the same fucked-up staff who would do well to stop raiding their refigerators at night) was apparently purged owing to lack of funds albeit under the auspices of the patient being problematic.

-BusTard