Wonkette
Hey Communists! You have many reasons to love your super-pricey gas, and not just because it helps the environment. You are less disgustingly fat because you actually have to walk some places these days, and your taking the Communist Express to work enables your neighbor to drive his Ford F150 down wonderfully traffic-free highways. Remember this the next time you are stuck on your T or BART or Metro or El or “New York Subway” next to the guy who complains loudly about his sweaty balls. America salutes you. [Foreign Policy]
R.I.P. Road head
Hey! Soon we’ll all lose weight because we won’t be able to afford electricity to power our refrigerators either! This whole letting the oil companies run the country thing is working out great!
Will they make Subway or Bus Nutz?
ManchuCandidate: For our friends at the Pentagon, I suggest SlugNutz!
ManchuCandidate: oh, I love it! [DC] MetroNutz, color coordinated for the lines.
MoodProcessor: where do they attach them? To the slugs or to the ride-providers? Or both! You could have your PersonalSlugNutz and then accompanying car SlugNutz. I see great opportunity here.
Thank you, may I have another! I shall assume the position with joy in my heart or somewhere.
More people on NYC subway cars means more groping for the lonely.
If God didn’t want men to have sweaty balls, he wouldn’t have covered them in fur. So stop your complaining and learn to enjoy them in all their sweaty goodness.
I’m taking the ferry *smug*. Did I mention people in SF have excellent smelling methane?
I love how the bio-fuels, which are one of the biggest reasons for the current food crisis around the world, are listed as a positive.
…the hilarious thing about mass transit is exactly how anti-social us so called called social creatures are. No one wants to sit/stand next to anyone, no one wants to talk to anyone, no one wants to make eye contact and GOD FORBID if someone actually makes physical contact with you!!! Then again it always seems like I’m the one sitting next to the incoherent bum that wreaks of urine and insist on talking 2 inches from your face with breath that would attract flies and vultures!
AngryBlakGuy: I just sort of relax into it and consider it anthropology field study.
A fellow who drives an F-150 is working on my house. He commutes 60 miles each way. He said he would stuff harp seals and spotted owls in his gas tank if he could.
AxmxZ: But the food crisis is a plus, too. Less food = less babies = something of a sporting chance at leveling off the human population at a viable level. Or the global zombie war will break out. W/E.
Oh, and you don’t actually have to stop driving, if you already live close to work and drive a car that gets 30+ mpg, which is really easy to do. Repeat after me: Get a small, cheap car. Problem solved.
Now, selling your monster SUV, that may be a bit trickier. You’re on your own there.
He’s not complaining about his sweaty balls, he’s braggin’ on them.
WadISay: this is like my husband’s parents who used to drive a huge car so they could fit everyone (children, grandchildren) in it on Christmas. One day of the year. I see countless huge SUVs driving to work around here with one person in them, and totally spotless, of course. They are not needed for the space or for hauling. People want them for lots of other reasons, but not practical need. (yes, I know, there are exceptions, some people haul stuff every day for work, their farms, etc)
Lazy Media: I’ve always said that the best way to solve two global problems at once is to feed the homeless to the hungry.
AngryBlakGuy:
I sometimes get the crazee religious freaks sit next to me.
Godnutz: “Do you accept (some cult of christ)?”
MC: “No”
Godnutz: “Then you’ll burn in hell!”
MC: “I’ll see you there” followed by knowing malevolent evil grin. I kept intensly staring at him and grinning what I though was an evil grin till he fled the subway at the next stop. The look of terror on his face made my day.
For some reason the people around me looked kind of strange.
Doglessliberal:
I always think of them as the creatures in the Star Wars cantina.
ManchuCandidate: Rest assured that real, live, full-frontal nudity is in no short supply on America’s public transit systems.
Trains to avoid!!!
NYC: A, D, F, 1
DC: Green Line
Chicago: Brown Line
LA: hahahahahaha
Lazy Media: I’m not sure people will stop having sex becausr they are hungry. Plus, if you are sitting around in the dark because the power is out for failure to pay or lack of fuel, what else is there to do but read by candlelight or have sex?
In DC the metro riders don’t smell bad, but sometimes there’s an idiot who doesn’t think to bring any reading material, so out comes the cell phone. Once I told a 20-something woman, “You should dump Ron and stick with Larry.” She seemed appalled that I had invaded her privacy.
WadISay: Ya know, as much as I try and take the Metro and bus, restrict my use of energy, recycle, and drive reasonably in order to cut down on my gas usage…. We lost power two weeks ago for four days when it was about 117 degrees outside, and if you told me I could get back power (and AC and hot showers) if I took a flamethrower to a colony of spotted owls, I might have seriously considered doing it.
Servo: perfect!
Some Wonketteer named “Jessica” has convinced me to give up my gas-guzzler car for an oat-guzzling horse. Love the ride, but can’t find the clutch. Any tips?
At least I’ll have the money to stock the bomb shelter with enough ramen noodles to last a thousand years.
MathewBrooks: DC Blue line at rush hour in tourist season. I have spent many a ride with my face pressed into someone’s pit. And I am tempted to feed the tourists to the hungry this time of year. They act like sheep, anyway….
ManchuCandidate: I once encountered a zealot on the El. She was giving the standard “turn to God or burn in hell” speech, Bible in hand, dancing, etc. Train conductor finally comes on the PA to tell her to sit down and be quiet. Her reply: “Shut up Satan, I’m talking ’bout Jeeesus.”
Doglessliberal:
However, playing that cantina music in your mind is essential for the full effect.
Yes, expensive gas is awesome, but the best way to lose weight is through hunger and disease.
AxmxZ: …God I hate to nit-pick, but bio-fuels have very little to do with the increase in food prices around the world. Ethanol is traditionally made from either corn or sugarcane not rice, wheat or any of the other food stuffs that are spiraling out of control. The reason for higher food cost are spiking demand in southeast Asia, decreased production(drought and natural disasters), higher fuel cost, SPECULATION(sounds familiar?) and export moratoriums by producer countries. More or less food is the new “oil” in the commodities market.
AngryBlakGuy: I thought you lived in FL - there’s public transportation here? Do I have to take a jet-ski or a jacked-up pickup to get to it?
MathewBrooks: Green line in Chi is also no picnic. Frankly, I prefer the bus - there’s construction every ten yards on all the tracks in the city. Went to Chinatown from Sheridan last weekend. Straight ride on the Red Line took an HOUR one way. x_x
NoWireHangers:
The conductor should have said, “This is God. Sit down and silence thyself. Thou art driving all others on the subterranean conveyance batshit crazy.”
AngryBlakGuy: It’s all of those things too, but there’s the small matter of land being used for bio-fuel crops not being used to food-crops, which reduces the US food exports.
AngryBlakGuy:
Unfortunately, our Bandwagon Congress gave farmers a huge incentive to grow corn instead of other crops. A lot of that corn is also used to quickly fatten beef cattle.
The New York Subway actually has pretty good AC, so we don’t have to deal with sweaty balls. (I’ve just jinxed myself by saying that, and the entire subway system will promptly break down when I’m trying to get home today)
shortsshortsshorts: Ferries burn diesel. Why don’t you just rape Mother Earth and shit down her neck instead? Real environmentalists row, row, row their boat to work.
ManchuCandidate: Philly can have SepNutz.
jagorev: sweaty balls come from other things than temperature, like the tension caused by worrying about the mental patients taking out their machetes and going on a mid-train chop-spree.
jagorev: funnily enough, there are actually a bunch of boat commuters in this area. People kayak up/down the Potomac. We also have tons of bike commuters because there are places to ride.
Whore Diamond in the Rough: that sounds like diseased balls!
Walter Sobchak: …yeah in Miami we have the “Metro-Rail”, its like a subway car that isn’t underground instead its on stilts. We also have this half-ass abortion called the “Bus Way”. The Metro-Rail in particular has a very pesky(and smelly) infestation of homeless crazys. Im still wondering why someone with nowhere in particular to be, has to ride the Metro-Rail for hours at a time? I dont sit on any of the seats because the ones that ARENT wet with some mystery liquid all have mystery stains!
For those commenters with thick glasses, if you stare hard enough at the map around the 5th avenue station, you can see me waving.
Whore Diamond in the Rough: Elitists can import UK’s TubeBollocks.
NoWireHangers: When I was a student, I would bus into the U. The stop nearest my home was right next to a low-security halfway house for the mentally ill. Some of my fondest memories of that time were of waiting at the stop with a guy who would wear clothing over every inch of his body (long sleeve, heavy pants, gloves, you name it) whether it was 20 or 120 outside. On his head, he always wore the same batting helmet. And he never, ever spoke.
Good times.
MathewBrooks: Northbound Redline on a weeknight when there’s a 7 o’clock cubs game.
jagorev: It’s not your sweaty balls you should worry about in NY….it’s the balls of the guy next too you getting just a little too close.
Doglessliberal: Well, depends on how hungry we’re talking aboutCanuckledragger: . And if the babies die from malnutrition, it’s almost the same as not being born, eh? Somehow I’ve started channeling Dick Cheney here.
AngryBlakGuy: Yeah, when my fiancee interned at some fancy firm down there I took Metro Rail a few times. I thought the actual train cars were pretty good, but the park-and-ride lots were sketchy in the extreme. Living in the wilds for so long, I sometimes forget we have actual big cities here.
Atlanta actually has swell public transit, if you’re going to the airport from Buckhead. Otherwise, plan on an hour to all day to actually go anywhere on the bus that runs every half-hour during peak times. The poor people here take taxis, cause they got shit to do.
I feel all elite-like riding the Marc Rail. I’ve seen nary a vagabond, vagrant, rover, gambler or evangelist(and these are never far apart) or noted the presence of any mysterious fluids; of bodily origin or other. HURRAY SOCIELITISM!
I once went to a convention in SLC. THey have the nicest public transportation system I have ever seen. It’s clean, efficient, and free when you’re downtown. Even their homeless are tidy, clean, and organized. It scared the hell out of me, and is one of the primary reasons I’d kill myself before there was a Mitten’s presidency.
AxmxZ:Servo: …we are the only country in the world DUMB enough to use corn in the production of ethanol. Corn actually has a negative energy return when it is converted into ethanol, meaning it cost more energy to produce than it makes. Most countries use sugar cane which has an entirely different growing habitat to corn, wheat and rice. Australia one of the world largest wheat and corn exporters has been experiencing a 10 year drought and expects not to meet its export goals this year. India and China 2 of the largest rice producers are loosing farmers at an alarming rate as their countries become industrialized and everyone wants a better paying less back breaking job. In regards to animal feed cows will pretty much eat any kind of plant matter, chickens however are much more dependent on corn as feed. Bio-fuels do have and effect on the market but no where near what lobbyist and special interest will lead you to believe.
…I think I just completely NERDIFIED this thread! Apologies!
Gopherit v2.0: The only problem with SLC’s traincars is that they are pretty quiet, and can therefore almost kill you if you’re walking back to your hotel drunk in a -10 degree snowstorm. They need to put a barrier down or some shit. Or maybe I just need to pay more attention.
The Subway in Baltimore is one line and doesn’t really go anywhere I or anyone I know wants to go. The light rail is becoming more popular because of gas prices, but it breaks down all the time. The buses are scary scary places full of toothles old heroin addicts and in the summer are full of sweaty balls.
Gas is not high enough until I stop seeing Hummers and Escalades on the road.
damn…I’m glad that I bike to work now. So many things are terrible about LA mass transit that it suddenly becomes OK when traffic is the worst of your worries.
AngryBlakGuy: Have you seen any info about converting Kudzu? Isn’t it possible to literally watch this stuff grow?
Lazy Media: …I remember one time when I was in Atlanta on business they shut down the 285 because a bear ran across the highway and into a shopping plaza. You know I was pissed after sitting in a rental for 2 hours while they searched for the damn thing!
Whatever. I saved gas by getting fired.
Hey suckas. I’m the smelly, urine covered, bible toting nut who sits next to you on the metro.
I welcome all youse new riders so I can snuggle up close. More the merrier.
Am totally lovin this high gas price you suckas have to pay.
Canuckledragger: No, but the pull-start is underneath and towards the back. Once you get your horse started he will love you and follow you like a puppy.
RaptorAvatar: I would rather walk to work than use LA mass transit.
Doglessliberal: Can I get some Segway Nutz?
jagorev: It’s true that the AC in the trains works (sometimes), but WAITING on the platform is pure hell. At 100 degrees and 100% humidity, I am glad I am ball-less.
AngryBlakGuy:
Actually, ethanol has a small gain, depending on what is used to cook it, but nowhere near sugarcane as you stated. Trouble is, Congress thinks that ethanol is the silver bullet for energy needs. I have yet to see anyone suggest using ethanol or bio-diesel to heat homes ( McMansions are greater energy hogs than any SUV ). It would be a better starting point because your not requiring ethanol to convert heat to mechanical force, which it cannot do as well as petroleum. It will only be required to raise the temperature of a household during the winter. Grow/process in summer, heat in winter.
I recommend the documentary “King Corn”. Pretty sickening.
Excuse MY nerdiness.
stankfest: A machete spree has not taken place in the New York subway system since the late ’80s, at least.
MoodProcessor: It grows fast, but it’s not a particularly high-energy-storage plant. So you have all this tons and tons of biomass that converts to, like, a quart of fuel.
MathewBrooks:
I lived a few blocks from the Kedzie stop on the Brown line in Chicago (then the Ravenswood EL). Bad enough just taking it to Belmont Ave to catch the real subway downtown but staying while it wanders around the near north side is strange.
From a very dull website, the Brown line in all its glory
http://web.presby.edu/~jtbell/transit/Chicago/CTA/Brown/
MoodProcessor: You must ride the Penn line. Brunswick line is full of smellies and god help you if you sneeze within ten feet of the quiet car, they’ll go postal on you.
RaptorAvatar: I ride Foothill Transit from the San Gabriel Valley into downtown LA. It’s not as bad as Metro and not as expensive as Metrolink. LA’s transit isn’t necessarily bad; it’s just tricky to make work for you.
When I visit other cities, I usually can’t stop laughing at their “mass transit” systems. Most are woefully inadequate to serve anything approaching a “mass” of people. I mean, the Boston T trains are barely half as long as your average NYC subway, and there’s usually room to sit in the cars (which are impeccably clean). It’s like a cute little toy train in a pretend city.
jagorev: But I don’t have to know that! I can just sit back and act like I care!
And what’s wrong with complaining about my sweaty balls? I mean, they’re SWEATY, you know? Any idea what that feels like, Mr. Tightass Dry Balls? They kind of slosh around in there, and when you walk down the street for a while they rub and rub and then you get a rash and it really really hurts. So you put on baby powder or some damn thing and then the sweat mixes with the powder and you get like a white glue and now your balls stick to the side of your thigh. I mean, it may sound funny to you, but it’s a big pain the balls to me. And that’s nothing compared to the smell. Let me tell you how my sweaty balls smell– like a cooked artichoke that’s been left out in the sun for a couple of days, that’s how they smell. No wonder I can’t get a blow job anymore, not for $200 goddamn dollars. Otherwise I could tell you how they taste . . .
MARCdMan: You’re right on - and this train is full of sleepers.
I do believe “Brunswick” comes from the Olde English. Translates as “Ball Sweat.”
weirdiowasculpture: Try Gold Bond Medicated Powder. It’s like a breath mint for your balls.
It’s a spare the air day in San Francisco. Which means:
1. We will soon have a fare-hike.
2. Nothing else.
3. See No. 2, above.
Stupid enviro-tards.
MoodProcessor: …I havent heard anything about Kudzu. The biggest leap in biofuel will be when cellulosic ethanol is viable(all that switch grass “W” is always yammering about). Because at that point you would literally be able power your car with your yard clippings.
weirdiowasculpture: Thanks for the education! A friend recommends Gold Bond Medicated Powder for that special tingly sensation. (But he’s an idiot!)
MoodProcessor: Guess that’s why they put all those old double decker cars MARC got from Chicago for cheap on that line, they don’t have air conditioning.
I think the future will be a combination of green energy (wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, bio) augmented by natural gas with some oil and coal with CO2 sequestered and nuclear for infrastructure energy and hydrogen fuel cell for portable that will be created using the power from the green infrastructure.
What is clear is that the sooner we get off the crack the sooner we solve about 3 or 4 major issues to include terrorism, climate change and foreign policy based on natural resource exploitation all of which will help with health and worldwide food and water issues.
Of course all of this will take time even with an apollo-like FEDERAL program to develop all of this and this will be a great time for a cultural shift away from unchecked consumption. I think the best policy for the Big O to promote with respect to gas prices is to let Americans truly feel the affects of the GOP Geo-political policies instead of pandering and applying short-term fixes to win elections. I think Americans are at a tipping point and frankly a one-term Presidency would be worth it to give them a push.
This is why I love Wonkette commenters: for the concurrent discussions on biofuels and sweaty balls.
AngryBlakGuy: Oh, no argument that corn is inefficient as hell. We should be developing vertical algae farms, that’s what I think.
Sara K. Smith:
Sweaty balls ARE bio-fuel.
I kinda agree having to sit in the sweaty ball puddle left on the seat is much worse. Unless it’s being stabbed repeatedly with a screw driver.
Servo: How can we make chaffing for sustainable than it already is?
jagorev: DC’s is incredibly clean compared to everyone else’s because, in theory, the no eating and drinking minimizes trash and rats. I still see people eating and drinking, but not that many. It is a pain not be able to finish b’fast on the train, but worth the trade off when you don’t have to avoid spilled coffee on seats or piles of food wrappers.
jagorev: I just almost choked on lunch. You should try to sell that slogan to Gold Bond.
AfghanVet: …if the government was serious and stopped worrying about special interest(like that will ever happen) all of the U.S.’s power needs could be supplied from Solar thermal, wind and solar panel technology. Not half, not 3/4 ALL! Can you imagine if the government subsidized these industries the same way they subsidized the energy companies? Being that all of the technology required to switch to alternative/green energy already exist its not a matter of research and development, its a matter of our “leaders”(and Im using that term loosely) growing a pair of balls and gaining some morals. Maybe its wishful thinking but hopefully Barry will take blow torch to the energy companies and end this nightmare.
Sara K. Smith: this truly is a comment thread for the ages. I am laughing so much, I might have to shut my door.
Servo: OK, that’s it, door closing or I will be fired.
Doglessliberal: The El is “no eating and drinking” but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen people eating McDonalds, drinking booze out of paper bags, and snorting cocaine on it.
NoWireHangers: did they at least offer to share?
Canuckledragger: “Some Wonketteer named “Jessica” has convinced me to give up my gas-guzzler car for an oat-guzzling horse. Love the ride, but can’t find the clutch. Any tips?”
Yes. The level underneath is not a gearshift.
Doglessliberal: “people” = NoWireHangers
Whore Diamond in the Rough: With increased ridership, I’ve seen a definite jump in the number of SEPTA trains that catch on fire. I’ve had two in the last few months - before it only happened a few times a year.
septa blows, but NJ transit is way worse
Canuckledragger:
Further savings: If it’s not a filly, you’ve likely saved yourself the cost
of a set of Truck Nutz.
AxmxZ: It’s been suggested before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal