We're on to you, "Lyle Zapota"

I guess I haven't done my homework. I should have known something like this was going on. I'm glad my old friend Magpie brought this important study to my attention. How could I have missed it? It may be the most significant thing to come out of MIT's labs ever.

I hope it's not too late.

See, I've always taken great care to at least try to avoid or subvert the mind control and data collection efforts that more or less surround us nowadays. I don't have a television set in the house. I mean, who would? Haven't they read Orwell? Didn't they read 'Farenheit 451?' It took quite a lot to convince me that it would be OK to get a driving license and a social security number. I never complete warranty cards or send in any surveys. I shred everything. I still haven't decided whether things would be better or worse if I put my name on the 'do not call' list.

But sometimes I am too credulous for my own good. I've played right into their hands! I am such an idiot! I was so excited when I found out there was an effective, low-cost way to protect myself from mind controlling electromagnetic psychotronic carriers. Of course I have an aluminum foil deflector beanie! I even made AFDBs for my friends!

Imagine my dismay when I discovered that there is a high likelihood that one of my main information sources, one "Lyle Zapota," is a government agent. I bet that's not even his name. See, it turns out that not only do these AFDBs fail to protect the wearer, they fucking AMPLIFY the very frequency bands that are allocated to the US government, supposedly for radio location and other communication with satellites.

Read the study. Seriously.

Thank god I found out about this before I gave one to everybody on my Xmas list.

The AFDB I'm wearing in the picture at left is one of my favorites ever. I made it last year for a friend but there were some problems with the way it fit, so I took it back here for modifications. Now I don't even want it in my house!

My only solace is that there is one way in which my design differs from that bastard Zapota's: the multi-colored band around the edge, as well as most of the round dots decorating the top and sides, are made out of the foil coverings from the tops of wine bottles -- the old fashioned kind which are much heavier than even the heavy-duty Reynolds Wrap that I used for the rest of the unit. I think that they may even contain lead, which Zapota's site basically says not to bother with.

Yeah, right. That should have been my first clue.

The MIT study only examined tin-foil hats made out of 100% Reynolds Wrap, though. Maybe mine offers enough distortion to make a difference? I really can't say for sure. I'm certainly never putting it on my head again. Indeed, I noticed that in the time it took me to take the picture, the foil got noticably warmer. And not one of the 30-plus photos I took was in focus*. Not one!!! Not only that, my computer froze up THREE TIMES while I was writing this post!

Coincidence? You tell me.

[Added the next day: *Plus I got an email earlier from an old friend I haven't seen in a while wanting to know was that picture really me? It looks more or less like me, as far as I can tell, except the colors are all distorted now that I look at it on the big monitor at work. I didn't notice there was a problem on that crappy old thinkpad at home. So I tweaked the colors on the photo and re-posted it. You'd still never know that the wall behind me is sort of robin's egg blue and that my hair is pretty grey.]

[But wait, there's more -- my buddy Prolix responds to the above post here.]

Bobcats

I love the Dharma Bums. They posted some pictures of a bobcat here. What a beautiful animal, eh? They've been posting some really fabulous photos. Take some time and look, if you like that sort of thing.

Are you on the bus, or off the bus?

I've been taking the bus to work these past few weeks, and I keep meaning to post more about it here. I have to admit I got a little weepy the other day when we pulled into the central bus facility downtown and the driver asked us all to stay in our seats and offer a moment of silent meditation and prayer for Mrs. Parks.

I'll say 'amen' to that. This is the actual bus she rode that day. Click on the photo to learn more about its restoration from the Montgomery Area Transit System's website. Or here to learn more about the Montgomery bus boycott.

I've always loved taking the bus, but I've lived in this town for nearly ten years and before this month I don't think I've ridden it more than a handful of times.

When I came to town to find us a place to live, I checked to make sure that there were bus stop signs near the house I rented, and confirmed that the signs were all over town and near likely places of employment. I saw a couple of those nice little pockety racks full of schedules in convenient-seeming places. As an experienced bus commuter, I thought it looked good. It never occurred to me to pick up one of those schedules and look at it.

I might not have moved here if I had.

Accustomed as I was to taking a bus pretty much wherever and whenever I wanted to go, I was shocked when I found out after I moved here, carless, that the buses run every hour (30 minutes on the "busy" routes) between about 6:30 am and 6:30 p.m. There are a few evening routes, but not in most neighborhoods.

And every time I found one of those little kiosks, it seemed to be mostly out of the schedules I thought would be most useful. But it was hard to tell, as there was no system map posted anywhere. I finally got through on the phone to the transit folks, who were very nice, and told me that they were printing more maps. They'd been very popular, the nice lady told me. They'd run out everywhere within a few weeks.

Duh.

I finally found most of the route schedules and set about drawing my own transit map. It seemed comprehensive enough, though I didn't really have a clue where anything was.

Bus map in front of me on the table, I set about trying to find a job. A couple of HR goons at some of the bigger firms outside of downtown told me quite disapprovingly that they weren't anywhere near the bus line and one of them admitted she didn't even know there was one.

When I called a couple of the bigger temp agencies and asked about locations and bus routes, I got an exceedingly chilly response; one of them, knowing I was new in town, said flat out that they wouldn't send people out on temp assignments without a car, or at least a reliable ride. Few of their regular clients, they said, were located near bus lines. And they'd had too many complaints about people being late, or having to leave early, on account of the bus schedule.

So I stopped asking about it, but as it turned out, I had to turn down almost every temp assignment I was offered at first on account of I couldn't get there without a car.

Job interviews on the bus? Forget about it. I ended up renting a car every time I could schedule an interview.

Eventually I landed a series of temp assignments that led to an actual permanent job at the place where I still work. It was about a ten-minute walk from our house, but there was also a bus that took about three and a half minutes. It only ran every half-hour, so I usually just walked. Over the summer, though, I had an assignment that required suits & panty hose & all that professional office lady shit, and I hadn't yet discovered the on-site gym where I could shower and change.

It's really too hot here to walk around outside dressed like that, so I decided to give the bus a try.

The first morning, I stood at the bus stop, directly under the sign, in my crisp linen suit (plus hideously uncomfortable pumps), holding my briefcase and watched as the bus approached, failed to slow down, and passed me by.

"Wow," I thought as I set off down the hill on foot. That was sure strange, I mean, is this really a bus stop? The sign had the bus logo and the words BUS STOP on it. Didn't seem too ambiguous. I tried again the next day and this time I waved as the bus approached. The driver didn't even look my way. I was baffled, but tried again the next day -- in comfortable shoes in case I had to walk. It was my lucky day! The bus stopped to let someone out, and I hopped on.

The driver -- a youngish white guy with curly red hair and very friendly blue eyes -- looked at me in surprise and said, "I'm sorry ma'am, have you been waiting to catch the bus the last couple of mornings?" A bit taken aback, I nodded, sort of gesturing to the suit & the briefcase and said "I'm on my way to work. This is the right place to wait, isn't it?" He said yes, and added again that he was very sorry, but it just didn't occur to him that I was waiting for the bus.

Um, how on earth to respond to that? is what I'm thinking. "Do I need to make an appointment?" I asked him.

He thought I looked like I was waiting for a taxi, he said, or a friend to pick me up. I must have looked kind of cross with him, because he finally laughed and said, "You must be new in town, hon. I didn't think you were waiting for the bus because you're white. White people don't take the bus here."

I looked up. It was true! Everybody was staring at me, and every face was black or brown. And every person was listening and waiting to hear what I was going to say to that.

Not one to waste an opportunity for a cheap laugh, I paid my fare and said, "Well, I guess I'd better sit in the back, then," and I did. And they laughed & everybody was friendly and wanted to know where I was from. As I walked back there, I noticed the much more interesting fact that I was the only person in a suit. It's not entirely about skin color, though racism is obviously a huge factor.

But that is a subject for another post, and anyway, the point of this story is that -- nearly ten years after that incident -- I finally figured out how to catch the bus from my current neighborhood and get to work. I can get home from work too, but only if I leave my desk by 6 pm, which I rarely do. But maybe I could get used to it. It takes about 25 minutes by bus, compared to the 20 minutes it takes to ride my bike (plus I don't have to shower when I get there). If I miss the bus, though, it's still actually faster to walk the entire way, because the bus only runs every hour and it's only about a 45-minute walk.

It took me a little time to figure out which buses I needed to take and when, but once I put all the times into my own spreadsheet (and I finally got the system map) I was able to see the logic to it all. It's really quite an elegant little system, and does its work really well on way too small a budget.

I'm a big fan.

And this is really cool: all the buses in town -- every bus, on every route -- has both a bicycle rack and a wheelchair lift. And the fare is only a dollar, with no confusing Rush Hour or Zone Surcharges. And they even have a few Park & Ride locations for folks who don't live close to a bus line (i.e. most everybody).

So: Yay, buses.

And thank you, Mrs. Parks.