Look, it's Linda's soapbox! oh, and there's Linda with it...

First off, I love Chipper Jones. I do. He often tells off the media or says surprising things refusing to kowtow to dumb crap. This time he boycotted the New York media after they twisted his words about A-Rod. Awesome! When the sports journalists all walked into the locker room before the next Mets game, he said, "I'm not talking to you if you're from the New York press" and he only talked to the Atlanta reporters. I love it!!!

OK I totally have something to bitch about. I am tired of people complaining about public transportation. If I hear one more person uselessly whine about how they WOULD BE so inconvenienced by all things mass transit that they HAVEN'T EVEN TRIED, I am going to throw them in an oil well.

In New York where I live now (kind of, and soon for real again) there are major subway issues from time to time, and they suck. There are also a lot of righteous things going on, subway-wise. You people with your shiny cars in your driveways who have never so much as passed by a turnstile except maybe at Disneyland would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a good subway day and a bad subway day. And the bus? There are many of us here in Boston and in New York who rely on the bus. There was a time in L.A. when I happily relied on the bus. But there are a million cities where people refuse to try to ride the bus, drive down demand, then bitch that the bus is not "worth it" to them.

And no this rant is not because Lindsay Lohan supposedly blamed her current mess on lack of public transit in LA. She probably didn't even really do that, and even if she had, it would get a big ol' "Yeah, right" from the collective universe. But the point is, people always pull this nonsense that "if only" the bus/train/subway/unseen forces of public transit-dom would do X-Y-Z, then and only then would they park their car and try to do a damn thing to reduce their consumption/dependence on foreign oil. (<----for the love of god read my tone here and if you can't then just move on because I do not say that the way your frightful leader does. I am replete with irony)

What the hell do you people want? It's mass transit! It has a lot with which to contend! People seem to want a bus to pull up in front of their very front door every five minutes. Ugh. I am so disgusted by people who won't even try. All this solo driving for commuting so your car can sit in a parking lot at work all day = such a waste. But all anyone does is bitch and whine and moan about how crap it is, and then they pour more and more money into roads, when widening highways will never solve the problem. Cars, like homework and internet surfing, expand to fit the time/space allotted to them.

And by the way, I LOVE the public transportation in Los Angeles. At least they have 24-hour bus service there! Unlike Boston!

I read the best article ever - seriously, it might be my favorite article ever - in either Time or Newsweek once. It taught me that traffic behaves like light. Which is to say that although it is composed of and behaves like particles, it also has the properties of and behaves like a wave. Therefore, it reaches amplitude and ebbs and flows and instead of throwing more space at traffic, we should study it the way we study the particle/wave behavior of light.

So until you have scientifically examined the situation, or taken even one small step of your own, quit your bitchin'.

"It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."
- i don't know who said it