NE933
Conductor
I just noticed that Rollerblade skating has almost disappeared in its former popularity. So I read various sites to find out why, after all, it's no more dangerous than a bicycle, or skate boarding. The answer was a surprise, yet familiar one: it's not 'cool', it's 'dorky'. How many times has this argument been used against train travel, especially overnight journeys. Sleeper cars are outdated, and the social norms propagated by leadership examples in Wisconsin and tea party baggers took it upon themselves to establish social norms on my behalf. Taking a train 24
+ hours is stupid, unamerican, socialist, communist, anti-democratic... you'd think they're talking about something that causes diabetes for Christ's sake. So that's how some decisions are made, in policy and budget. Screw the merit parts of it, if it's uncool or dorky, it's doomed. Lines of divisiveness are drawn on who should pay for someone else's passion for something dorky, or too outdated. If that's the case, why don't we get rid of kite flying, baseball, and frisbee too? Let's have a popularity contest of who can get hunched backs the fastest by the overuse of smartphones and portable laptops? Maybe life itself has become too dorky and all of us should just take a couple of cynaide pills and let our creator settle it?
+ hours is stupid, unamerican, socialist, communist, anti-democratic... you'd think they're talking about something that causes diabetes for Christ's sake. So that's how some decisions are made, in policy and budget. Screw the merit parts of it, if it's uncool or dorky, it's doomed. Lines of divisiveness are drawn on who should pay for someone else's passion for something dorky, or too outdated. If that's the case, why don't we get rid of kite flying, baseball, and frisbee too? Let's have a popularity contest of who can get hunched backs the fastest by the overuse of smartphones and portable laptops? Maybe life itself has become too dorky and all of us should just take a couple of cynaide pills and let our creator settle it?