Do Not Cross

I just found out this morning that 2 Skinnee J’s will be playing a reunion show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC on Wednesday, August 6th. Tickets go on sale tomorrow (6/19) at 10 am online at the 9:30 Club’s website. Cheri and I will definitely be in attendance. If you never witnessed the phenomenal awesomeness of 2 Skinnee J’s then I suggest you seek out some of their videos on YouTube.

Man it has been a long time since I’ve written anything here. I guess I’ve just been busy the last month. There must be some kind of correlation between the amount of blogging I do and having a full time job.

The semester is beginning to wind down. I’ve only got a few exercises left in Photography and just a bunch of readings to do for Criminal Law–and then finals. I’ve signed up for my courses for next semester. I’m taking Forensic Pathology, Firearms and Toolmark Identification, and Homicide Investigation. Since the classes haven’t been too demaning in this program, I’ve decided to bump up my course load to three per semester. I’m really excited about my classes next semester, especially Firearms and Toolmark Identification. This is one of the two fields I think that I might want to go into after I graduate. I’ve been considering going into Questioned Document Examination as well.

This week Cheri and I will be travelling down to C-peake for Thanksgiving. I’m looking forward to the visit, especially since we haven’t been home since June. The only thing I’m not looking forward is the drive home. Since I have to work a whole day on Wednesday, I won’t get home until 4:30, so we probably won’t be able to leave here until 5ish. And this being NOVA, traffic in every direction sucks. So we’re going to try to experiment with some alternate routes to try to find a way home while avoiding the heaviest traffic.

Hopefully I’ll get back into blogging here a little more frequently. Its definitely something I’ve been missing.

I’ve been curious as to how people sleep on the Metro. I’ve never managed to pull off this feat myself, mainly due to fear and paranoia, not because of the noise. In fact, the noise is fairly soothing. If I would let myself, I would probably let the soft clanking of the train lull me to sleep. And if I’m with my wife, I’ll go ahead and let myself go. But if I’m by myself on the Metro (which is most of the time), then I can’t let myself fall asleep. It mainly has to do with my fear of missing my stop. If I’m asleep, then how do I know when to wake up at the correct stop? The operators mumbling the names of the stations over the loudspeaker wouldn’t be enough to wake me up. Even if I am awake, I can barely discern what is being said over the loudspeaker. Normally, I rely on looking out of the window to see the station name at each stop to know where I am. And if I’m semi-unconscious, then how would I be able to see my station name? I’d probably wake up frightened and confused, in the place where they keep the trains overnight when they aren’t running, desperately looking for the camera telling me I’m on America’s Funniest Home Videos.

On Monday night, there was this one guy that was dead to the world. I actually couldn’t tell if he was dead or sleeping. He was sprawled out over the seat, head tilted back and leaning against the window. Mouth agape and eyes shut and completely still, I wasn’t sure if I should let him be or check his pulse. Everyone else on the crowded train seemed to not be bothered by this gentleman. And being the kind of guy I am, I went with the flow. He must be alive. Otherwise someone would have moved him. If anything, at least to take his seat.

So I turned back around to avoid staring at him my entire train ride. Once I arrived at my destination, I looked back to see if this guy was still there, and behold, he wasn’t! The coroner must have arrived and taken his body away to the morgue to determine his cause of death while I wasn’t looking. While performing the autopsy, the examiner would ask, “Why didn’t anyone help this man?” Newspaper articles would spring up and news exposés would haunt the television. “I wasn’t on that train,” one interviewee would respond. “But if I was, I would have done something.” The Metro would get stigmatized as being unsafe and Metro riders would be blamed for being negligent and apathetic. Tourists would quit using the system on the weekends to avoid being “killed and left for dead while others idly kept to their Blackberrys,” as one tabloid would state.

I’m obviously just exaggerating. The guy probably just woke up at his stop and got off the train while I wasn’t looking. But how did he know when to wake up and get off? Did he have some kind of mechanism in his brain counting the stops? Were his dreams littered with occasional announcements? In between fantasy touchdown catches and unimaginable sexcapades, he would hear the occasional “Clarendon, Virginia Square, Ballston”. As he would be addressing the United States during his fantasy presidential inauguration, he would hear “East Falls Church,” apologize to his crowd, open his eyes and step off the train.

Perhaps he wasn’t asleep at all. Maybe his posture and stillness was just a ploy to keep the seat to himself when the train got crowded. I’ll have to try that next time.

While riding the metro the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a number of unspoken rules that most of the regular riders follow. And when a n00b is breaking these rules, the regulars get quite pushy. I’ve probably broken these rules before when I first started riding the metro, so I apologize to anyone who I’ve upset in the course of their daily rush to get to work or wherever.

One of the rules I’ve noticed is that when you are on an escalator leading to or from a platform, if you wish to not walk up the escalator (i.e. ride it like it was designed) then you need to stay on the right side. That way the left side is left free for the rushers to speedwalk up (or down) the escalator to get to their destination. You mostly notice this rule happening during the weekdays, when most of the tourists aren’t around. But during the weekend you will notice people blatently ignoring this rule.

Now, if during the weekend a person is blocking the left side of the escalator because they don’t know better, I don’t give a crap. Its the weekend, no one should be needing to rush anywhere. But I’ve seen people fuss at others just over this. Who cares? If its during the rush, then most people are observant enough to know to stand on the right side, but on the weekends there are considerably less people riding so there isn’t enough rush to warrant a need for this rule. I just don’t understand how someone can get pissy about the fact that people that don’t live in this area aren’t magically aware of the unspoken ettiquite about riding the metro. Get over it and enjoy the fact that it is the weekend!

This is actually the only unspoken rule I can think of at this moment. So I guess I lied earlier. If I think of another one, then I’ll post about it later.