MBTA signs up MBCR again

The MBTA signed a three-year contract with MBCR (Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Co.) to run the commuter rail for another three years, even though they had the option to sign for two years while looking for a new company to run the commuter rail.

MBCR has been having serious problems of late with service, including running chronically late trains.

The contract will require MBCR to submit quarterly progress reports including reports on on-time percentages, refurbished coaches, and increased workplace diversity.

Okay, first weren't these reports already being done? Who does anything in the world of business without constant monitoring of a project?

And another thing, having MBCR do the reporting is akin to the fox watching the chicken coop. The MBTA should be doing the monitoring and the reporting. Good grief. And we wonder why the trains aren't running on time. Does this state know how to do anything in transportation??

Days Aren't Long Enough

another year has come and gone
another circle 'round the sun
another thousand tears have fallen
i don't ever count 'em 'cause
i'm surrounded by your love
and days are never long enough

The desert

So, what have you been doing? What have you been up to? We haven't seen you in so long? Those are the questions I get now. I've pretty much intentionally dropped out of society. Why not? I don't seem to fit in any way, anywhere. When I do get out I find myself lapsing into my old way of being quiet, watching, attempting to be bemused by what's around me but it's just like watching reruns. You know where it's all going to end, so what's the point? Life's a lot of wasting time...

I've been living life, is my answer, the real answer, the true answer, with all its joy and sorrow and hurt and hope and disappointment and maybe even a little bit of wisdom thrown in for good measure, and that seems to throw people even more than a well-intentioned lie meant to spare their feelings.

So I try to tell them. Tell them about the desert, someone urges me. Tell them about the wolves. There were no wolves. They were coyotes, I correct them. And elk and deer and antelope. I tell them, because the limelight is shining on me, though I wish it weren't, but how do you explain it anyway? You don't. You can't. It's either in you already, or it's not, and it's not my job to try to get you to understand. There was a time, not too long ago, when it seemed all I ever did was try to explain things. But no more. You either get it--got it--or my time is futile.

How do you explain waking up to nothingness and everything at the same time? And wandering in the emptiness without knowing where you're going, or where you'll be that night? How do you explain simple food, and how good it tastes because you're hungry, and not because it's the time society tells you it's time to eat? How do you explain bathing in a gas station restroom or not shaving or living in clothes with yesterday's or three day's ago dirt on them? Or when you pull into a town, of being in a crowd, so pretty and dressed out in their rugged outdoor gear, and being separated by the way you look and scruff on you jaw and the dirt on your well-worn traveling clothes and boots? How do you explain the visceral electricity of rounding a bend, looking up, and seeing a hundred hand prints painted on a wall hundreds of feet up by people a thousand years ago? How do you get someone to understand that's how you felt weeks ago and how you felt just yesterday? You can't do that in an office or standing in someone's kitchen at a party or even in an email or on a blog.

It's time to move on. It is so time to move on...

If the world really were logical

We run on coffee, and if the world was really logical we wouldn't be fighting in Iraq. We'd be occupying some place like Columbia where they grow coffee beans.

To live is to fly

Living's mostly wasting time
And I waste my share of mine
But it never feels too good
So let's not take too long
Well, you're soft as glass and I'm a gentle man
We got the sky to talk about
And the world to lie upon.

Again, and again, and again...I wish I could write like this...

Wreaths Across America

See it here

Thanks, Karen, for these links...

Send a vet a card

When you're writing cards and lickin' stamps this season, save one for this:

A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20307-5001

Dashes and Splashes

Great post today on Juan's blog.

Check out the YouTube video he uses for reference. It's a hoot, particularly if you spend a lot of time in the computer/software/digital space like I have most of my life.

I heart country music. Now I'll kill myself.

From C and the Columbia School of Journalism, there is a direct correlation between country music and people who commit suicide. Actually, Columbia just reported on the study, which actually was published in 1992 by the University of North Carolina Press and written by Steven Stack at Wayne State University (Motown!) and Jim Gundlach at Auburn University.

Common themes like marital discord and disharmony among the sexes, lyrics that promote drinking as a normal and necessary method for dealing with life's problems, and a sense of bitterness and hopelessness pervade country music.

Holy crap...and here I thought I was just tapping into the soul of america...

but i was just playing with fire.
just me and my old six-string, throwing myself on the funeral pyre
not knowing which way to turn
while the fires just burn, burn, burn...

Hmmm...yeah...that's true. Sort of. But I've always liked the way country music addresses the common experiences of American life. Like the blues and the Corvette, country music is uniquely American. It's something we all invented coming out of the American experience. And good country music, like all good music, can take you away from all the suffering that the authors seem to think puts us on the ledge or our heads in the oven.

But it's gotta be good. I've always said that a lot of country music just picks at the sore. A lot of it is really good at nailing an emotion, but then it just wallows in it. Sometimes that's good. When you're broke, either in the heart or the wallet, country music can let you know you're not alone. But good country, like good blues, nails the emotion then takes you somewhere else.

But a lot of the stuff people call country I wouldn't be caught dead listening to. I was just reading a reviewer the other day (shoot, can't remember where) who said that the big names out of Nashville are talented indeed; it takes a real talent to make something shallow sound deep. That's a lot of the crap that coming out of Nashville. Corporate-sponsored music. The Faith Hills and Toby Keiths of the world are manufactured products made and branded to appeal to a common denominator and fill large stadiums with expensive seats, eight-dollar beers, and forty-dollar t-shirts.

The really good stuff is happening where country, rock, the blues, and punk are all merging with truthful lyrics (not cliche-ridden crap about pickup trucks, drinkin', the bills not getting paid, and my broken heart) and musical passages that knock on the soul whispering to let me in.

Just the other day our paths crossed with a guy who went to school in Austin, and SXSW came up, and he confirmed my worst fears, that SXSW is really nothing more than a big corporate trade show. So where's the next SXSW? I asked. I dunno, he answered, Boulder, maybe. I can't even believe that. Where's there's money, you can't be birthing good music. It has to happen far, far on the edges of the solar system, like where comets and asteroids are born.

But, as far as suicide, I'm not so sure. Yeah, I've wallowed in it in my time, but I also think to some degree, in some weird way, that it also saved my life. It was always comforting to know that there was someone out there who had experienced the same suffering that I had. I think it kept me off the ledge as much as anything.

Good Blog: seananderson-myjourney.blogspot.com/

C passed this along to me--My Journey, a touching, insightful blog of a platoon leader currently in Iraq.

Outfit

Don't ever worry about losing your accent
Southern men tell better jokes.

Issues

Some people have issues. I am an issue.

Playing catch-up

I'm playing catch-up in just about every aspect of my life. The songs I'm writing are about stuff that was in my head two years ago. I wish I could pull out what's in there now. I was showing Kathryn just the other night a little bit of a tune I wrote, a little three chord thing that starts with D and then goes to G and it goes back and forth like that three times then it swings over to A and it all reminds me so much of Kathryn on a swing when she was little. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, then sail away with the A.

There's another song that I wrote the music for, about George Mallory of all people, and about living life hard and to the fullest and giving it all you got. Struggling with the lyrics. Baxter has compared me to old George, saying I, too, made it to the top but died on the way down. It was more that I was left for dead, but that's neither here nor there. I've got nothing to be ashamed of. I didn't turn back. I didn't look down. I didn't lie and say I made it to the top when I didn't. I made it, was left for dead, but I gave it all I had and that's all that can be expected of us.

I'm living life again out on the fringe, simplifying my life as I go along, wanting to simplify it as much as I possibly can, and in doing so things become so clear. You don't have so many obligations and responsibilities hanging over you, forcing you to do things you don't necessarily want to do, compromising (to my way of thinking "The Big C" isn't cancer, it's compromise.) You can think and do and feel as you please. It's like hiking alone up in the mountains, with everything you need on your back and the freedom to go where you want.

Austin vs. Nashville

Well, two whole votes were unanimous: it's Austin...whoo-hoo!

Got to Go

Hey Sweet Pea ain’t there somewhere you got to be
Do you really have to sit there on that bar stool bugging the hell out of me?
Can’t you see I want to be alone just playing my guitar
Do you really think that’s too much to ask after I’ve been able to come this far?

Hey Sweet Pea ain’t there somewhere you got to be
Do you really have to rattle around in my head bugging the shit out of me?
There are so many places you could go:
There’s California, Texas, or even Mexico

Hey Sweet Pea, I’ll flip you heads or tails
Heads you win, tails I lose
I’ll even pay the bread to put you on a cruise.

Hey bartender, it hit me there’s someplace I gotta be
And it's not sitting here with Sweet Pea bugging the hell out of me
There’s so many place I could go
There’s California, Texas, and even Mexico
Hey bartender, you know it’s time for me to go.

Hey bartender I think I’ll be settling up my tab
Why don’t you keep a little extra for yourself things ain’t that bad.
And when I walk out that door I won’t be coming here no more
It’s not that I don’t like your place, it’s just I’ve just got other place I could go

There’s California and Texas I could even go to Mexico
I’ve got a little redhead waiting for me
Yeah she’s a nice little handful and pretty as can be
No, I can’t stay I’ve got so many places to go.
Yeah I’ve got so many places to go.

The Internet is changing who we are

The Internet continues to fascinate me. I truly believe it not only is changing how we live and work, it’s changing us on the inside. It’s changing who we are, and it’s getting closer to our souls. Don’t believe me, huh? No, I haven’t been drinking again.

First, understand when I say it’s getting closer to our souls that I don’t mean that’s a bad thing. It’s not like primitive people thinking a camera steals their souls, but they were on the right track, weren’t they? No, we want to get closer to our souls. We want to shed this skin, this shell, this body here. Jesus Christ understood this. JC would have been a way-cool Internet user.

Here’s the deal. The Internet…technology overall…is rewiring us. It’s hotwiring new stuff inside us. When you put your debit card in an ATM, and touch the key to do a transaction, there is a certain amount of time, only a few seconds, that we expect that transaction to take. And we all know how long that time is. That bit of time period is hotwired inside us. And if, after touching that button, those gears don’t start whirring and money doesn’t start dropping within those few seconds, we get tense. We all know about that. But if there is an emotion that we feel, in this case the anxiety of not getting our dough, and because we feel an emotion that means there’s something going on inside us.

When we’re showing pictures of our vacations, we’ll say, here’s the house we stayed in, here’s Linda on the beach, here’s the mountain we climbed. This is so everyday for us that we don’t even notice it anymore. But those pictures aren’t a house or Linda on the beach or a mountain. They’re two-dimensional pieces of paper with ink on them. They’re really old pieces of technology, and they have changed something inside us to the point were our language reflects what’s going on inside us (language is just a reflection of our thoughts, the thought has to come first before there can be language.)

When emotions and language come into play, that means there’s something going on inside.

What the f**k is with these asterisks?

I used asterisks in my previous post. We all know what f**k and s**t stand for. Blogger may let me get away with it. But the Puritanical nature in us (me??) says, ah, don't fight it.

It's colder than s**t in Boston

The weather has finally arrived that made me so depressed back in October. I love autumn, but knowing what's right behind really gets to me. Over the weekend the ice and cold hit. Death to the planet. It's cold and painful and I hate snow and cold. Sue says to me, I was born here, but you chose to move here. Good point. If it weren't for the kids I'd be long gone. Not sure where, though; that's been a burning question of late anyway. We're still trying to figure out where's best for us just in Boston for the next couple of years while my kids grow a bit more and Sue's mom settles. C at work says I don't belong on this coast, and I know from our trip to the desert (my first ever) in September that I was bitten. I always thought I'd need an ocean near me; my moon in Pisces needs that calming water. But there's something about the enormity of the desert that is the same/same as the ocean.

And Boston continues to just moulder away for us. We looked at an apartment in Somerville this weekend, and one in Harvard Square. I don't want to say Somerville is the armpit of Boston. There are some really nice parts of it. But a large part of Somerville over by the McGrath Highway and Broadway and Main is like a rotted molar that needs pulling. The Harvard Square apartment was $1,500 for something so small it was almost ridiculous. Gorgeous, and location, location, location. It would have been cheaper and more cost-effective to become homeless and live on the streets of Cambridge if we so sorely desired the location.

Again, after almost thirty years of living here, more and more I get it why people are leaving Massachusetts in droves. The weather sucks. It is too damn expensive. When your rent is over half your monthly income, it starts to remind you of the stories of the Soviet Union where a pair of shoes costs a month's wage. Who can afford to live here? Who would want to, because frankly, it's not that great of a city.

Yesterday was Sue's birthday, and we ended up spending it at my house where I cooked lamb chops, probably better than we ever could have gotten them from spending a fortune dining out. I was looking for something special to do, and like I've said, everything was been there/done that. At one point I was considering buying tickets to the Neil Young concert at the Orpheum for seats in the last row of the balcony on the far house right for $230.00. If the woman who was selling them on Craigslist didn't stiff me, I still would have backed down. Sue and I are pouring every penny we have into a travel fund. Neil Young is an all-time favorite of both of ours, but the way Sue and I can live and scrape, $230 would go a long way in Poland.

Do you want your BFF to know you're into leather?

Been spending some time on Facebook, just trying to figure out what all the fuss is about. Social networking is a trend on the 'net; I saw a definite drop in the amount of email I was receiving, then when I started using Facebook, and Gather, I realized that's where everyone had gone.

Again, I'm still trying to figure out what all the fuss is about. It's a lot of work to keep your Facebook presence alive, and I really don't see why I want to know why so-and-so is happy today, or just added the Boogers and Snot application. It's an interesting concept for keeping in touch with your friends, but like so many things on the Internet, it has a long way to go, and it's going to depend on a lot of intense technological advances to keep it alive, along with a lot of creativity.

But, for all of you Facebook fans/users, here's an interesting little tidbit that C passed along to me from Salon.com. Facebook is using its users as shills, and maybe there's a few things you may not want your BFF to know, like you just ordered that black leather bodice, size XXL.

The link is a little weird, so I just grabbed the text. Just so I don't break any copyright infringement laws, I'm attributing this to Salon.com. Go Salon.com. Visit Salon.com today. Name your first-born kid Salon.com.

Here's the article:

Facebook caves on privacy-invading ads, kind of

Along with many other Facebook users, I've been agitating for the social network to shut down or improve Beacon, the ad program that sends your friends Facebook alerts about your activity across the Web.

Yesterday Facebook made some changes to the program. They go far in addressing the worst aspect of the system: Now if you do not give Facebook permission to alert your friends about your activity on one of Facebook's advertisers' sites, Facebook will not send out an alert. Previously, if you did not give Facebook permission -- that is, if you did nothing -- Facebook assumed you were OK with Beacon ads.

But Facebook did not completely address critics' concerns. Specifically, it still is not allowing users to completely bow out of Beacon. Critically, this means that if you do something on a Facebook partner site, Facebook still gets information about your actions, whether you like it or not.

Beacon is a form of what marketers call "social ads." It's sort of the Web equivalent of word-of-mouth. When you do something on Fandango -- buy a movie ticket, say -- or one of Facebook's other advertisers' sites, the companies try to send out alerts, through Facebook, to your friends, in the hopes that they will follow your example.

Initially, Beacon gave people little choice over whether Facebook's advertisers could send messages from you.

Now, says Facebook, the first time you use a Facebook partner site, you will be given a choice to opt in to Beacon alerts for that site.

Say you buy something from Overstock. When you next check your Facebook page, you'll see a note asking if you'd like to send an alert about your Overstock experience to your friends. If you do nothing, Facebook does not send out the message.

That is progress. MoveOn.org, which had launched a campaign against Beacon, says that the move represents a "victory" for the program's critics.

But because Facebook is not allowing you to completely shut down Beacon, there are still privacy problems with the program, as developer Nate Weiner points out on his blog.

Weiner says that when he visited to Kongregate, a game site that advertises on Facebook, he got a notice asking him if he'd like to send a Beacon alert to his friends. He clicked "no thanks." But when Weiner analyzed what his browser did in response, he noticed that Kongregate sent data to Facebook anyway.

Weiner notes, "I'm not saying that Facebook is storing this data, there is no way for me to know. But they are without a doubt receiving it."

Is there a way to prevent Facebook from learning what you do on its partner sites? Indeed, there is. Use Firefox, and install a plug-in to block Beacon.

Quarterlife

Quarterlife is a nice surprise. A nice diversion when you want to take a break at work, and good insight into those Generation Yers.