Wednesday, May 18, 2005

uno, dos, tres, NUEVE! (to be said in a bono voice to the tune of the i-pod commercial song)

it's been a tough few months as a regular rider on the IRT. mad delays. when the A train broke and the MTA wasn't trying to fix it (which was one of the most absurd things ever - five years!), it got really bad. two and three 1/9s would pass and you couldn't even get on.
this afternoon, however, was almost poetic.
i take the 2/3 from wall up to 96th and transfer the to the 1/9 up to 110th street - usually that's where things get all fucked up. (in case you are not familiar with the new york city subway system, here's a map: http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/nyct/maps/submap.htm.)* today, however, the 3 train came pretty quick and then at 96th the 1 was just pulling up. it was dope. i was home in thirty-five minutes, a-mazing.
it brings me a fleeting but nonetheless real moment of joy when i catch the transfer train right away. conversely, there is a real but not quite as fleeting moment of despair when you're pulling up and your connecting train is just pulling away. sometimes, if i'm late, it's like a slow motion scene - "noooo" (to be said in deep slow-motion voice).
by the way, if they would put digital clock or something telling you how long until the next rain came it would make the wait much less taxing. how much could that cost? certainly less than the $200 million dollars that MTA felt they could afford when they sold the rights to the railyards to woody johnson for half price.


*in this sentence should the period go inside or outside of the parentheses? or is it just so grammatically wrong to have an entire sentence in parentheses that it doesn't matter?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, Luke, the period does go inside. If you write a full sentence, always put a period no matter where it is. Grammatically, it's fine to use parentheses--just remember that you have to follow the same rules as you would in a typically framed sentence. You also used them right later in your post, describing how to say "noooo."

--Chris Chaberski
Head Proofreader,
Cigar Aficionado magazine

Anonymous said...

I have the "noooo" moment when I get off the train at the wrong end of the platform at 96th and, while I'm walking, another 2/3 and 1/9 pull up simultaneously. Walking down the platform when everyone is jumping from train to train is like a real-life version of Frogger. People just sort of come at you from all angles.