Pussy Riot

“During the San Francisco Forty Niners victory celebration, a guy threw a lit flare on the hood of my car and yelled, ‘Niners!’”     -Bobcat Goldthwait

    As it turns out, despite all evidence to the contrary - lack of firearm ownership, little interest in shoulder punching, complete ignorance as to whether or not that thing has a Hemi, and an irrational fear of horses -  I’m a man. And being so, I’ve spent hours upon hours in the company of men.  I’ve experience what it’s like to be with them in both public and private venues.  I’ve have had friends, family, and co-workers who are men, and continue to be.  So I’ve been on the inside.  I’ve seen how men behave when they believe they are surrounded by those of a like mind, and those who believe that what happens in locker rooms stays in locker rooms.  And I’ve heard how they talk.

    First off, there are the words that are uttered at these times.  Words like bitch, pussy, and Niners.  As to the secret handshake, that will remain a secret.  

    Niners is a harmless and familiar nom de plume of the aforementioned, in the above quote, football team. It’s primarily used as a shortcut in place of the horrendously cumbersome and time consuming “Forty Niners.”

    As for bitch, as a young man making my way in a confusing world, I was amazed to find it is not only used as a term of insult, but also as a simple gender identification technique, and for the middle of the back seat of a car.  For instance, when a gentleman is among a group of his peers and wants to express his feelings for a woman who he feels is acting particularly unpleasant or “bossy” he will refer to her as a bitch.  As an example, “That bitch of a boss wouldn’t let me leave work early even though she knew the Niners game was starting soon.”  But later in life I discovered that a woman can earn the title bitch, in some men’s eyes,  just by existing in those men’s field of view, as in, “There were some fine looking bitches on the beach this morning.”  These women have not only not treated a man with what he or anyone else sees as “bitchy” behavior but in fact have not interacted with him at all.  They simply were unfortunate enough to need labeling by a man who was far too manly to use terms like girls or women.  Of course for these gentlemen the word ladies doesn’t even enter into the picture.  Finally when subjected to sitting between two manlier men in the back seat of a car, you’re riding bitch.  I don’t know if it’s because you are acting bossy or because you look fine on the beach, so I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

    So now it’s down to pussy.  I rarely used this word, most likely because I never heard my dad say it.  And by rarely I mean I don’t.  But recently an actual nominee for President of the United States, the one in America, was seen and heard making use of this word on a video from 10 years ago.  I’ve heard men use it as an insult to another man, “You’re afraid of horses?  What a pussy,” as a designation for acquiring sexual intimacy with a woman, “Gonna’ go get some pussy tonight,” and for describing a cat.  Actually I’ve never, ever heard anyone refer to a cat as a pussy unless he was trying out a poorly developed double entendre.

    Pretty much all the words and how they are used that I’ve put in the blog today can fit in the the deplorable basket that is locker room talk. So when someone says that something they said that has upset someone else is just locker room talk, can we disagree on that?  Oh yes.

    That brings us to what was said in the video years ago, by a man who wants us to select him to represent 300 million of us as President of the United States.  He wasn’t besmirching someone’s manliness, he wasn’t speaking of accomplishing sexual congress (although there was hope in his heart), and he certainly wasn’t talking about cats.  He was using a fourth definition of the word, to describe a woman’s genitalia. I’ve heard that fourth definition during “locker room” events too, but not in the way this man used it.  He basically said, as you all know, how delighted he is to be able to use his celebrity, his wealth, and his power to commit sexual assault on women without consequence.  That’s not locker room talk, that’s more like admission of guilt.  Again, if I were in a room with a bunch of other guys and one said, "Hey, you know what's fun?  Grabbing women you've just met by the short hairs and kissing her with you fancy Tic-Tac breath." I'm pretty sure I or someone else would suggest that he's heading the right direction for a night in jail and a court date. 

    Men can be vulgar.  Men can be clueless about their words. Men can do stupid and dangerous things when trying to impress their contemporaries; see the flare on the car quote.  Men can also be kind and caring, and goofy and stupid and heroic and strong and the list goes on.

    But this man that I at first considered to be both a lousy, unqualified presidential candidate and a lousy person, and later when he mocked the physical disability of a journalist considered to simply be a pig, has given me pause on what I should call him now.  Since he has bragged about what at the very least is a misdemeanor that is just a few steps from a felony I guess I have only one choice left.  Criminal.

Are The Stars Out Tonight?

              

                  So I was reading about this star named KIC8462852.  It sits out there some 454 parsecs from our cool blue home.  A parsec, which is a unit of distance and not a measurement of time regardless what my sister’s boyfriend Harrison Ford says, is around 3.25 light years.  So that puts this star 1,476 light years away.  That means that if you had planned to arrive at KIC8462852 today, and could travel at the speed of light, you would have had to leave Earth in 540 A.D.  But don’t wait up for news that Romans have arrived at KIC8462852, because it seems that Emperor Justinian didn’t invest in their space program back then but preferred instead to spend Rome’s treasury waging war on the Ostrogoths.  I guess it paid off; the Ostrogoths lost.

                Even though we won’t be visiting KIC8462852 any time soon it stills holds interest.  You see KIC8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star – named after a Yale researcher - has been getting dimmer.

So what’s the big deal Mark?  Nothing last forever.  Eventually all stars will get dimmer until the just fade away right? 

Right, sure, maybe.  But KIC8462852 dims and then brightens back up.

But Mark, isn’t this dimming and then brightening back up the behavior that observers use to determine that a star has planets orbiting it?  A planet goes by and the star dims, then the planet moves on and the star’s light returns to normal?

Yes, but most stars dim less than 1% when that happens.  Tabby’s Star dims 20%, and there is no pattern to the dimming as there would be when an object passed between it and us in an orbit. 

Okay, but maybe it’s something besides a planet.  Could there be something else that would cause this behavior?

There is speculation.  Maybe a huge cloud of space junk/dust.  It floats by and really, really dims the star, and then moves on.  Or perhaps it’s something some scientist call comet swarms, breaking apart (and you thought bees were bad).  But infrared observations show there is no cloud of dust and a reexamination of the data suggests that comet swarms were far too unlikely. 

Okay, so what is causing Tabby’s Star to fade and return?

Another idea began to orbit those who were studying this star; mega-structures.

Wow, that’s amazing!  Wait…what’s a mega-structure?

A mega-structure is something that is very, very large and is built by someone.  I mean really huge.  They are suggesting that someone has built or is building something the size of the orbit of say Earth.  Maybe these folks out there by KIC8462852 really like the star but found that there are no planets orbiting it that fit their definition of supporting life.  So they build one, or a ring in the orbit of where they want one, or a sphere around KIC8462852 the size of that orbit, shutting it in.

Is that what is happening?

Probably not.  At one point SETI, the people looking for extraterrestrial life, pointed their ears at Tabby’s Star and listened for “deliberately produced radio signals.”  They say they found none.

But what does a “deliberately produced radio signal” from an alien species sound like?  Especially from someone who could build a building the size of Earth’s orbit? 

They really look for patterns and found none.  If we’ve missed it we can only hope that they’re not asking how the Ostroghths are doing.

So now what?

Tabby’s Star is acting strangely and no one has a good explanation as to why.  But that’s okay.  Scientists know they won’t solve every mystery and they seem all right with that.  They know they are using tools invented by someone else while standing on the shoulders of those who came before them, and I believe they hope that someday, someone will figure out what Tabby’s Star is doing while standing on theirs.

KIC8462852 is in a group of stars somewhere behind the Northern Cross.  Unfortunately it can’t be seen with the naked eye so those scientist will be our eyes.  By the way, who wouldn’t go to a concert if the bands were named Naked Eye, Comet Swarm, and The Ostrogoths?

Sometimes I wonder why we’re allowed to view things that are impossible for us to ever have; like twinkling stars or Jennifer Lopez.  But I’ve come to the conclusion that we are disallowed nothing.  The fading and glowing stars are put there to make us look up.  To force us to imagine…well to imagine pretty much anything, including mega-structures.

Someday, if we don’t quit trying, we’ll visit KIC8462852 and see in person if there is a giant ring built around it, if comet swarms exist, or if the star has long ago simply died out. In the meantime enjoy the view, vicariously of course.

Harambe Must Die

     Harambe was a male gorilla who had never shown any aggressiveness toward the other gorillas in his habitat during his 17 years.  But when a boy fell into his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo, it sealed Harambe's fate. Although it didn't look like the gorilla was trying to hurt the boy, it was determined that Harambe was just too powerful, and therefore too dangerous, to the boy's well being.  Even without malice, inasmuch as a gorilla can show malice, he could have caused great harm or worse to the boy.  Tranquilizers would have taken too much time according the the Dangerous Animal Response Team, something I was unaware zoos had.  So it was a sniper's bullet that flicked the switch that ended Harambe's life in the zoo that was his only home.
     Hopefully lessons will be learned.  Maybe fences will be made less porous, because a child in an enclosure with an animal that powerful is just too dangerous. I think most of us will agree that steps should be taken to ensure a child locked in with a powerful animal doesn't happen again.  But it does all the time.  Every day.  Maybe thousands of times an day in this country alone. 
     
     Yesterday an even younger child than the boy at the Cincinnati Zoo found herself in an enclosure with not one, but two very power animals.  This time however, one of the animals was know to be aggressive.  The two animals eventually attacked and killed the child.  This time the "enclosure" was the living room of a home in Fresno and the animals were dogs.  Shar Pei-pit bull mix.  
     I won't go into the details of the attack because frankly I didn't read them and will try not to imagine them.  You may be thinking that pit bulls are unfairly maligned.  That they have been singled out by the ignorant masses and media as the villain when it's the owners who bear the responsibility for the animals. I agree, it is the owners.  Owners are responsible for harm caused by pit bulls to children, and sometimes adults, but not just the owners who make sure they have aggressive dogs, perhaps to fulfill some macho bullshit fantasy, but also owners who put a pit bull and a child in the same room, yard, or even house together is sending that child down an path that could lead to great harm or death.  If simply having a child and a gorilla in an enclosure together means the gorilla must die, how is it that having a child and a pit bull together in an "enclosure"is okay?
    From dogbite.org, "In the 11-year period of 2005 through 2015, canines killed 360 Americans. Pit bulls contributed to 64% (232) of these deaths."  Out of the over 300 breeds of dogs, one accounts for 64% of fatal attacks.
     I tried to find statistics for fatal gorilla attacks for the same time period but there were none.  So I went back 20 years; none.  50 years; none.  100 years; none.  110 years; a zookeeper was attacked and killed by a gorilla in the Marseilles Zoo in France.  Obviously gorillas pose a greater threat to our children than pit bulls, so Harambe must die.

Post: Yes there are homes where pit bulls coexist with children and adults alike for their entire lives.  Then there are the the 232 homes that will never be the same.  Why take the risk?

The Two Towers

           Rule Forty-two in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "All persons more than a mile high to leave the court"

           Let’s talk about the number 42.  Sure there is the rule above, and of course it’s the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but it’s also the number of children God sent bears to maul for making fun of Elisha’s baldness.  You can look it up; 2 Kings 2:23-24 (Much like Donald Trump, I don’t know if it’s pronounced Two Kings or Second Kings.  Plus to add more muck to the rake, for some reason, it’s sometimes referred to as Fourth Kings).  But putting aside how much God likes bald people and how convoluted the numbering system in the Bible is, I’d like to point out that 42 is also the number of seconds that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake lasted.

            The 1906 earthquake was the big one for San Francisco.  Hell is was a big one for anywhere.  Had it been invented, it is estimated that the Richter Scale would have registered it as a 7.8.  Making it nearly 10 times more powerful than The Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, which lasted around 10 seconds.  Although there weren’t as many buildings or bridges in 1906, there was damage; in the Mission District the ground dropped 8 feet.  That’s the common height of a room in our construction, which sort of means if you were on the second floor of a building in the Mission on that day in 1906, you were on the first floor when it was all over.  Loma Prieta collapsed an Oakland freeway, many of the buildings in the Marina District, and broke the Bay Bridge.  The difference between these two earthquakes is like the difference between being punched repeatedly by Duane “The Rock” Johnson for 42 seconds and punched by me for 10.  What would have been left standing after Loma Prieta if it had been 10 times stronger and lasted 4 times as long?  I dunno, how much damage would The Rock’s Howitzers inflict on you as compared to my lady Derringers?

            So with that in mind, people who build things in San Francisco understand that earthquakes are the elephant in every room of those designs.  They can happen, they do happen, and they can be terribly strong.  So I hope it was the right decision to construct a 1,070 foot tall building called the Salesforce Tower on Mission and First Streets. - Salesforce of course being a company that does some stuff with some people in relation to some things. -  When finished, next year, it will be the tallest building in the city, surpassing the Transamerica Pyramid by 217 feet, although it will not be as pointy.  If fact it’s right flat on the top, and with the “ribbed” design, it kind of looks like an erect sand worm from Dune.  I’m secretly hoping that San Franciscans will nickname it House Atreides (Or House Harkonnen depending on your opinion of Saleforce).  You can look that up too.

            If you’re thinking that only those crazy San Franciscans would construct such a tall building in earthquake central, don’t call the Loony Patrol just yet.  Down in Los Angeles, where earthquakes are certainly as common, they are further along on an even taller building.  Although not much taller.  When completed the Grand Wilshire Tower will top out at 1,099 feet, perhaps as tall as House Atredies would be if it stuck out its tongue.  Do worms have tongues?  To me the Grand Wilshire doesn’t look like anything from Dune or any other science fiction movie.  But it will be covered with thousands of LED lights that perhaps can recreate the advertisements on the Los Angeles buildings in Blade Runner.  To me it just kind of looks like the world’s biggest thumb drive.  Unfortunately, regardless of what it resembles, the Grand Wilshire will have to start its life under a cloud, seeing as how a worker committed suicide by jumping off it in March.   

            Since these two building are taller than anything previously constructed in California, you’re probably wondering if you get to the top of one, can you see that other?  Sorry, but at nearly 400 miles, they are far too far apart for that.  If you wanted to see one from the other, you have to move them closer, something like…wait for it…52 miles.  I know you thought I was going to say 42, and I did consider putting that, but I thought that was something you might actually look up.

P.S. In all the Sundays I spent at Mass in my youth, why did no priest ever tell the story of God’s attack bears?  

The Final Winner of the Blue Riband

The garage in my childhood home was the unfinished kind.  Sure, it had exterior walls, a floor, and a roof, but no interior walls.  Instead there were exposed studs in front of the lath, which was in front of tar paper, which was in front of the chicken wire of the outside stucco.  At some point horizontal boards were nailed in between the studs here and there to provide convenient shelves.  These “shelves” held an assortment of family relics like old patina door knobs, ancient duplex-headed nails rusted in their boxes, and for some reason used spark plugs that Dad would slip into the little boxes of the new ones.  Other items were stacked on the shoulders of the chimney or stuffed in the spaces between the 2x4’s of the one window frame.

One of those things stuffed between a couple of boards near the window were some drawings that looked like the blueprints of the SS United States.  How, or even why the blueprints of that ship were there escapes me, and they were likely not actual blueprints you might use to build a ship, but more likely more of a floor plan drawing of the ship someone might frame and hang in their den, and then gaze at while holding a cigar in one hand and a brandy snifter in the other.  I know our great-grandfather invented some type or propeller system for ships, but seeing as how we are not gazillionaires, it’s unlikely that the United States or the United States employed them.  I don’t remember a lot of what the drawings looked like, in fact, I only remember the name of the ship, which is why it caught my attention when it showed up in the news this week.

But first some history.

The SS United States was and ocean liner jointly built, in the early 1950’s, by an American shipping company and the U.S. Government.  The government wanted a ship that could be easily converted into a troop or hospital ship in case another big war broke out, so they paid for most of it.  Maybe they got to choose the unimaginative name too.  Perhaps “Ship Built in 1951” was already taken.  Uncle Sam also had specific requirements; more compartmentalization to make it harder to sink, almost zero wood in any of it to lessen the chance of fire, and strong engines and a light weight for speed.  It was more of a cruiser than a cruise ship, and she could move.

Before airliners between the U.S. and Europe replaced them, people took ships, but they still wanted to get there quick.  Don’t forget, even though it was spectacularly elegant, the Titanic was going pretty fast when she traded paint with that iceberg.  There was an award was given to the fastest ship to make the crossing but only going west, something to do with the Gulf Stream.  Going east you could break speed records, but not get so much as a bowling trophy for your  troubles.  It’s complicated.  The United States broke the speed record on her maiden voyage heading east, and was awarded the award, the Blue Riband, when she returned.  She was the last ship to do so, so technically she still holds it.

Over the years since her decommissioning she has traded hands from shipping company to shipping company, has been ported in both Turkey and the Ukraine, and has been proposed to be used as a everything from a floating hotel to an island-hopper in Hawaii.  Currently she sits in Philadelphia Harbor, where, while still looking as proud and regal as a ship named after a democracy can look, she has a death sentence hanging over her.  She is owned by something called SS United States Conservancy.  This group wants to save her but the cost of just keeping her at her current level of disrepair is prohibitive.  Which is why she was in the news this week.  I guess all that Blue Riband money got spent.

The United States didn’t sink tragically in a famous maritime disaster, she wasn’t torpedoed to prompt us into joining our allies in war, she had no movie featuring a couple of flavor-of-the-month teen actors made about her.  She simply did what she was designed to do, and did it better than any ship that came before, or after actually.  She just isn’t famous enough to save.  She will probably end her life as a pile of unrecognizable pieces of steel and aluminum that will be melted down.  I guess I’m just not a fan of throwing something out just because you don’t have a use for it right now, or because it’s been replaced with something newer.  Maybe I’m starting to understand why Dad kept those old spark plugs.     

Photo is the Google Street View of the United States in Philadelphia Harbor.

Painted Dogs and Useless H's

 

 

Most of the events took place months ago.  No names were changed to protect the innocent because it seemed pointless and silly.

 

 

Andrea texted me as I was walking up Forth Street toward BART, “Find us a place for a cocktail.”  Quickly I went through my go-to list of great places to have a drink in San Francisco.  Very quickly actually, because I have no such list.  But being attracted to shiny things I soon found Annabelle’s Bar and Bistro, because 1) I walk past it every day and it has a large neon sign and 2) neon is shiny. 

                When I entered the place I grabbed a seat at the only empty table in the bar; a table for five.  The waitress’s raised eyebrow drew an assurance from me that my wife would soon be joining me, but she still left the drink menu with a side of surly glance.  I ordered a Stella Artois, not because I think it’s the best beer ever, but because I like saying Artois (ar-twa).

                It was only a few minutes later when an older gentleman came in and asked if he could share my table until the rest of his party arrived.  Thinking that his presence would help soften the waitress’s unease about seats sans butts, I pointed to a chair and said, “Please.”  He was dressed in tan cargo pants, a denim shirt, brown leather jacket and a baseball cap with Gigantes stitched across it.  He had a shock of gray hair and the natural-looking tan of someone who spends time outdoors for reasons other than getting a tan.  He said his name was Jon, “Without the H, I hate the H.”  I decided not to tell him that I have an H in my last name that I don’t even really use.

We fell into a conversation about books when I noted he was using a Kindle.  He was reading a book about the Selma and I one about William Tecumseh Sherman; both about people who performed an important march in the southeastern United States in the sixth decade of their respective centuries.    I found out he had been in Marin visiting friends who he had graduated from a New York high school with in 1963, which puts him at about 70-years-old.  I also learned that later he was going to head out on a multi-hop flight to Africa to meet with some people he was working with to stop the poaching of what he called The Painted Dogs.  Later he would be speaking to people about saving the Northern White Rhino.  Basically I was sitting across the table from Indiana Jones (Notice, no H in Indiana or Jones).

The Painted Dogs, also known as African Wild Dogs, are an endangered animal whose numbers used to be over a half million in 39 countries.  They are hunted (illegally) for food and sport.  Now there are about 6,000 left, mostly in Zimbabwe, yes that Zimbabwe, the same Zimbabwe where if you’re wealthy enough you can hunt lions right out of a zoo.  Seeing that these animals can only be found in a country so corrupt and so poor, means when American dentists and beauty queens have finished killing all the lions and giraffes respectively, not respectfully, the Painted Dogs will undoubtedly fall into their crosshairs next.  At least they may prove more difficult to hit since they are faster than giraffes who are basically very tall cows, or a lion with an arrow sticking out of him.

Painted Dogs are basically extinct in every place that isn’t Zimbabwe.  So when they are gone from there, they are gone.  Painted Dogs live in packs and their social bonds are considered stronger than those of lions; solitary living/hunting is almost unheard of.

Jon, without the useless H, said that when he retired he decided that instead of golfing or watching FOX “News”, he would go to Africa to help protect endangered animals.  Why rhinos along with dogs?  You see rhinos have nearly been hunted to extension too, but not for food or even sport.  They are hunted for their horns.

In fact there is just one male Northern White Rhino left.  One.  There are three females.  Our male is under constant guard by armed rangers, and his horn has been removed to discourage poaching.  Let me repeat that; his horn has been removed yet this animal is still under armed guard.  Perhaps the poachers think it will grow back, or maybe some people just like to kill things.  So, why do poachers want the rhino’s horn?

Because…in some parts of Asia the ground up rhino horns are believed to reduce fevers and seizures and sell for $30,000 a pound.  Unlike ancient tradition and superstition, medical research (research that passes testing and peer review) says that taking ground up rhino horn for any reason -reduce fever, stop seizures, cure cancer in Vietnam, or get better boners, yup it’s used for that too- is about as affective as chewing your fingernails.  Because that’s what rhino horns are, fingernails.  If these poachers were smart, they would collect the sweepings from manicure/pedicure shops, grind them up, and get their $30,000 a pound that way.  Plus it would be hilarious to see some old fart snorting up what he’d been told was rhino horn and pretending it was making him healthier or giving him a better…you know, when in fact he was snorting up ground up toenails from the Curl-Up-&-Dye Beauty Salon.

On a side note; Annabelle’s has closed and been replaced by a place called Keystone.  The cool neon sign is gone, along with a name that seemed friendlier and more personal than Keystone.  I have no news on the surly waitress.

Head East

There is something very basic about waiting your turn.  I remember all the way back to kindergarten when we would line up to to get into class, line up for our milk (Producer’s-Hoppy’s Favorite), line up to go out to recess, and line up to get back in when the bell rang.  Who can forget lining up for the drinking fountain while the kid in front of you pretends to drink, smacking his lips and making loud Ahhh sounds just to make you wait? There has to be a reason that waiting one’s turn is one of the very first things we are taught.

You can argue whether or not to pull over for fire trucks but the “no cuts” rule is internationally recognized as one of the basic tenets of civilized society.  It is set in stone.  “First come, first served” should be the motto on every country’s seal or coat of arms, and every sermon in every house of worship on every Sunday should include a reference to Queuing Theory.  

Waiting your turn as logical as red means stop and green means go (which may be logical in two ways).  I’ll bet that more people know that you should wait your turn for things than know how to swim or remember to set their clocks for daylight savings time.  It’s ingrained, it’s more than habit, it’s in our DNA, the same as fight or flight, and The Buffalo Bills will never win the Super Bowl.  

So is it any wonder that the very fabric of the universe seems to be rent asunder when someone does the opposite?  When a person cuts to the front of the line, whether we are queued up for clean water in an earthquake ravaged country or for a free sample of cheese at Costco, we can conceive of no punishment too severe.  

Cut the line to the movies?  Off with his head!

Slip to the front in the grocery line?  Tar and feathers!

Crowd ahead in a restaurant?  Forced listening to the entire Yoko Ono discography.

It is a known fact that line-cutters throughout history have caused immeasurable suffering; Hitler’s tanks cutting around traffic on the Bzura Turnpike in 1939, Captain Smith zooming past other ships to see who could get to the Atlantic ice fields first in April of 1912, and Angelina Jolie being fast-tracked past better movie ideas to create Maleficent just last year.  Seriously, have you seen it?

 

On Monday, March 9th there was a robbery in San Francisco.  The alleged perpetrator, hoping to avoid apprehension, escaped down the BART tunnels.  Not the best escape plan when you consider that the third rail has about a 1.21 gigawatts of electricity in it. This shut down the BART in all directions like someone flipped a switch.  We arrived at our station to head home at 5:20, but we didn’t get on a train until 7:00.  But delays are just part of the system and don’t happen, at least not like this, every day.  We chatted with other riders, looked at our smartphones, and generally waited our turn. Except for this one guy.

With about 60 or so people lined up for each door, one guy milled around the front of the line, pretending to be listening to the official announcements.  Then when a Fremont train finally showed up, he slipped in ahead of everyone.  To make it worse he was an “Upstreamer.”  Upstreamers are riders who get on BART going in the opposite direction they want to go.  They leave a crowded station and get off at less crowded one.  Then they cross the platform for a train heading the direction they want to go that is also less crowded, hoping to get a seat.  This usually works, except when all stations are crowded like on Monday.

So Upstreamer MaGee, I’m pretty sure that was his name, got on that Fremont train and was gone, heading east before those of us either too far back in line for the Fremont train, or waiting for one also going east, but to another destination could board.  When the Pittsburg / Bay Point train showed up, we crowded in among the end of the workday armpits and those guys in spandex biker shorts.  It moved very slowly and at each station had to stop to let people off, where more people squeezed on.  

Seven stops down the line, at an outside station, there were still so many people on the train that some of us had to step out to allow those who wanted to to disembark.  When who should appear to my wondering eyes but Upstreamer MaGee.  He had jumped on the Fremont train just to get outside in the fresh air and now here he was getting on a Pittsburg train, my train.  Technically he was still crowding ahead of all those people behind us and since he was now getting on my train, he was actually crowding ahead of me, albeit just by a few feet.  I wanted to call him out, I really, really wanted to.  But I held my tongue.  This is until a couple of stops later when that tongue was released like a South Carolina Confederate doing the rebel yell.  

When we stopped at that station I, along with Mr. MaGee, stepped off the train momentarily to allow offboarding passengers to...offboard.  As I returned to my spot on the train, I guess I was going too slow and he said, in a shrill voice like a panicked 17th century French nobleman when he finds a tear in his bicycle shorts, something along the lines of, “You must let me back on the train!”  

I said, “I am.  Just wait a second.”  Once on the train the Confederate tongue-wagger in me couldn’t hold back.  Standing just a foot or so behind his head, I said in a loud and booming voice, “I can’t believe the guy who cut in line at Civic Center gave me shit about getting back on the train too slowly.”  He never turned around. Childish I know.  But oh so satisfying.

When he left the train for good I never noticed.  I wanted him to take a parting shot at me and had several sharp retorts in my quiver, but he slunk away.  Of the quips I had prepared, I think, “Enjoy smoking turds in purgatory” may be my favorite.