Thoughts on a Train

She looks like every other ex-hippie-wannabe come suburban housewife and doting mother dressed in multiple shades of earth tone green, a pair of fairie wings slung casually across her shoulder and a small ball of energy attached to her hand, dressed tooth to toe in pink, purple, and princess with stringy brown hair matted to her head, a long, loud tongue wagging screeches too high for me to process at such an early hour.

Resembling something like an Ancient Greek Archaeology professor at a local university, he waddles around the train station in his unpressed slate grey slacks, brown rubber soled shoes, red patterened bow tie and dark suede panama hat. He's carrying two overstuffed bags, one a briefcase with manilla file folders protruding and bent, the black leather looking older and more worn than Joan River's skin, the other a forest green traveling bag with distinguished leather accents and handles. His grey hair pokes out from under his hat and out from his ears, and his wire framed glasses sit on the end of his nose as he peers over them to read the board announcing the train arrivals. He's late, or so he thinks he is for his 12:25 Amtrak to DC. Bustling past me to the ticket window I can see the liver spots on his face and his cheeks folded down over his jowles, and his busted capillaries on the end of his nose creating an omnipresent pink glow from a few too many sips from his brandy snifter. Plenty of time to catch that train, Doc. I imagine he has a palatial lisp or some other speech impediment that keeps anyone from taking him too seriously except for himself. There is no band around his left finger, just the imprint of where it used to be, where it sat for so many years before his wife passed away or up and left him because she was sick of being less important to him than the unearthed sarcophogus featuring Mycean fertility goddesses.

Overtired and addle brained, I sit on the edge of something great or a vast nothingness wondering whether I should shut my eyes and let myself tumble into the abyss or hold out for the attitude, aptitude, or eptitude of forward motion. My heart is cold, glacial almost for lack of love, loss of love, lick it and your tongue will stick, love. The train horn tears through me ripping my body in half at least, leaving me in blood soaked fleshy bits all over where I once sat.

At 12:26 the Acela barrels past my Providence local train, hopefully everyone is on board.

Who the Hell is St. Valentine anyway?

Due to my background in classic history, as well as my distaste for most things of Christian influence, paired with my general pessimism, I'm here to write just one of the many available, annually produced, anti-Valentine's Day scriptures. Like most "religious" holiday's celebrated in Western culture, Valentine's day has become a sales holiday to get chocolates and flowers into consumers hands; to fill up restaurants to sell their overly priced prix-fixe menues; to use the extra red construction paper, or candles, or cake decorations, or table clothes one more time before next Christmas; and to make sure every second grader get's their fair share of Necco Valentine's Day Candy Conversation Hearts and "choo-choo choose me" cards promoting romantic love and physical relationships far before puberty but if you look back into the history of the holiday or who exactly St. Valentine was, there are far less Whitman's chocolate heart samplers and personalized talking plush teddy bears than one may imagine.

The Catholic church can't even agree on precisely who St. Valentine was, as there were numerous Valentine's, or as the name implies, people worthy to be attributed to the feast of February 14th. He could have been a priest in Rome, a Bishop in a small town north of Rome, a martyr in some Roman province in Africa, or if you ask me, nobody imparticular. My personal feeling on the subject, is the same as my feeling on most Christian holidays in that it was created for the sole reason of superceding a Roman Pagan holiday. In this case Lupercalia, and in all honesty, I'd much rather celebrate "the Lycaean god, whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus" than a fictitious amalgimation of Christian "saints" who, I'm sure I don't need to remind you, were quite capable of purchasing their sainthood.

The obscurity of St. Valentine's identity implies that much like Christmas and it's Roman Pagan reciprocal Saturnalia, Valentine's Day was most likely a replacement holiday for Lupercalia, a pastoral pagan holiday celebrated between February 13th and February 15th which, as Plutarch notes, "...was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy." If you ask me, that sounds like a lot more fun than celebrating someone who may or may not have been martyrd for marrying Christian couples during the time of their greatest persecution with Edible Arrangements or overly priced rose bouquets.

The American Dream is no longer a savage journey, but just an old discotech

There's no passion in our generation. We've accepted a life of passivity. Of 'credit cards and parents that love us'. There is no need to stress or to strain or to work hard. The ideal of the American Dream died long before Hunter Thompson went in search of it's end and now everyone just expects the dream to be handed to them in a highball glass, or in a Louis Vuitton bag or in an overly vocordered hit single. We haven't had to suffer for anything. We haven't had to fight for anything we thought was right or moral or inspirational. Our "culture" has become so patheticly cookie cutter and suburban white middle class that it is difficult if not impossible to have faith or hope for our artistic future, despite the reintroduction of the words to our vocabulary by the new president and messiah. I find myself in constant pursuit of the mania of the counterculture of the late sixties and seventies because people were so mad and as we all know, "the only people for me are the mad ones." Maybe I just need more ibogaine or psylicyben in my life because I'm mostly unimpressed with myself and my inability to access that elusive raciness, the mania, the madness.

Ward! Beaver! Dinner's ready. We're having roast beef.

White Women are Fragile Flowers

I'd like to thank Beyonce, or perhaps more appropriately her parents Matthew and Tina, for creating a beautiful woman, with curves and all, talented enough to fight the general portrayal of women in mainstream media as waifish toothpicks, flaunting all that is unfeminine and encouraging women and girls of all ages to fight their natural body growth in unhealthy ways thus keeping their body as childlike as possible. In doing some research on this particular post, as the video posted above (or the actual music video -which I couldn't embed) is what encouraged me to write this appreciative note regarding the ability to accept my own curves a bit more, lead me down a more racially diverse road than I expected to head. Initially, I thought simply that a woman with curves is a rarity in pop culture and I should interject my "thank you" when I feel so inclined, and while Beyonce is a beautiful woman, with hips and natural breasts, a small waist and gorgeous legs, she is also a woman of color and while that doesn't matter in the way I appreciate her beauty, it does exemplify the dichotemy of what is considered beautiful for white women and what is considered beautiful for women of color.

The passive, aggreable, and unthreatening version of a wilted flower portrayed by white women for so many years in Hollywood is what we can thank for the rise in the need of sizes like double zero, websites promoting anorexia, and "Best and Worst Beach Body" specials running year round reminding us that cellulite is not acceptable no matter who you are and is a far cry from the appreciation of a curvy body depicted in paintings of the Renaissance or Baroque eras. Tyra Banks, Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, and Salma Hayek are all women with both breasts and hips who are considered beautiful by the mainstream but if you take a look at the white women considered beautiful, they're either Pamela Anderson-esque caractures of what women should be and plastic surgeon created cartoons, or they're like Angelina Jolie (who in my personal opinion was more attractive before she lost tons of weight), Rachel McAdams, Keira Knightly, Nicole Kidman or Jessica Alba, all of whom are certainly beautiful and I would give my right leg (but it'd probably take both legs for me to weigh enough to match any of their scales) to look like them, but none of them are women, even if I stopped eating for the next 4 months, I could ever be as small as. That's because I am a woman with breasts. I am a woman with hips. Granted, I could stand to lose some weight, but even at my most healthy, I'll never be a size zero. I'm simply not built that way.

There is hope, however, for white women in media to be portrayed as something other than a wilting, curveless, child-like nubiles or an overweight, sexless, unattractive secondary character. People like Christina Hendricks, of Mad Men, show that even white women can have curves, have breasts and hips and thighs and be considered attractive and not overweight.

Perhaps my post here is rambling and doesn't come to a concise point, but it's something I felt the need to touch on. My initial idea was to praise Beyonce for her fantastic body, her talent, her video etc, but had to acknowledge, as a white woman, that I should be able to be proud of the shape of my body as well, despite the fact that it is less accepted by mainstream media as typically beautiful.

The Unconsidered Ramifications of Suicide

Warning: This one is a bit morbid folks.


When Jeanne Morsett was planning on killing herself, she probably thought about how it would affect her husband Gerald. She most likely took into consideration the impact it would have on her two sons and her daughter, probably even her granddaughter. I'm sure she thought about all of them and then disregarded how her death might affect them because her problems were clearly more important than the potential problems she could cause. She then proceeded to the Mansfield train station where she threw herself in front of an Amtrak Acela Express train headed from Boston to New York, traveling around 150mph, to end her life in one of the most gruesome and public manners plausible.

What Jeanne Morsett failed to factor into her unthinkably selfish act, or perhaps she did factor it in and decided to disregard it right along with the feelings of her family members was how her death would impact me. She didn't seem to care about how it would affect the cute blond girl in the blue wool coat who ended up calling 911. She didn't acknowledge the group of teenage children who were waiting for the train, or the man who first saw her heading for the tracks, or the conductor of the Acela, or any of the passangers on board. She didn't care about all the police and EMTs and firemen who could have been called away from someone who wanted to live. She didn't care that I'd have to be the one to see the remnants of her body lying less than 50 feet in front of me. She didn't care that I wouldn't be able to sleep for days after that or that everytime I shut my eyes all I could see was her torso and leg lying on the train platform. She didn't care that I wouldn't be able to ride the train for a while, or couldn't be at the train station without crying every time I heard "Train approaching, please stand behind the yellow line" or even more anytime another Acela blew through the station at an insane speed. She didn't care that even months later I can't watch anything bloody or greusome on television, or that the phrase "its like watching a train wreck" will never be the same for me. She didn't care that sometimes I still cry myself to sleep because of her and for all of that I hate her. I have so much anger towards someone I've never met which is clearly futile but I can't feel anything else about it. She was so selfish and hurtful to so many people and while I have nothing but the utmost sympathy for her family and loved ones, I have nothing but anger for her and I dare you to try and be angry at a dead person you've never met. It is probably one of the least productive things I've ever done.

The Perils and The Positives Pertaining to Facebook

As of June 2008, I had completely removed myself from all of the social networking sites I had spent so much of my time building and perfecting, making sure to have the most obscure yet poignant quote to suit my mood, listing all my favorite books, movies, and tv shows and updating as necessary, keeping all the photos of me to ones that were of an attractive nature and filling in never ending time wasting surveys (on myspace) just because. I thought it was time to remove myself, to quit cold turkey, because things started to get a little sketchy on my end and here's what I mean.

I have spent a lot of time and effort trying to block out most of my youth and teen years due to the fact that they were as traumatic and horrifying as anyone who claims their awkward years were from the time they were 10 to the time they were 18. I went away to college. I made new friends. I separated myself completely from the awkward, insecure, little girl I was. Developed my personality to be one of someone who is much more in control of her own life and far more secure in who she is. Rock on, me. The problem came, however, when after a few years on myspace and facebook, people from my past started to creep back in, reminding me just how awkward and insecure I used to be. I was getting friend requests from people I was never friends with, people who in fact, barely spoke to me or acknowedged my existance for oh so many years. Now, this is not a "woe is me" rant regarding how hard life was growing up, because if I've learned anything, its that my life wasn't bad at all and that most of my turmoil is in my own head, not at all based in reality.

I began accepting friend requests from anyone who went to high school with me, friends or not and through that was able to see who they were friends with, thus expanding my high school connections. I understand that that is the purpose of the social networking site, but I eventually came to the realization that I am being most honest and open hiding behind the see-through wall of faux anonymity provided by the world wide web. I didn't need people I didn't even like 10 years ago to see where I work, what my relationship status is, or where I went on vacation last summer, nevermind the pictures of me drunk with my roommates, in a bathing suit, or running around on Marathon Sunday dressed like a 70s runner and making a general ass out of myself. Add that to the ability to keep checking the pages of ex-boyfriends or old hook ups, see their pictures of new girlfriends, or that they're now engaged. Or even worse than that is the ability (and the disturbing desire to) check in on said new girlfriends, or even old girlfriends. See her pictures and compare myself to her in every way facebookingly possible. It all came to be just a little bit too stalkerish and sketchy for me to live with.

Thus came my purging of all things social networking site related and it wasn't until I was mocked and berated by my new friends from across the globe whilst traveling in Mexico that I considered opening a new facebook page. They were all posting their pictures of our adventures on their facebook pages and in order for me to access them, I had to sign back up. With that I created a new page, with far less information, that nobody could see if they weren't my friend. I started to add my real friends as well as my new traveling friends so everyone could see the pictures from my adventure. And then, it began to happen. The people I ran away from facebook to avoid began to try and creep back into my life. Friend requests came and I was baffled by how these people found me so quickly or why they could want to be my friend. I found, however, a deeper strength within myself and hit the "Ignore" button when someone I knew in elementary schools younger sister wanted to be my friend. How simple it was! And how freeing. I didn't have to worry about becoming a creepy facebook stalker again if I wasn't friends with people I didn't actually enjoy.

The other positives that I've come across are that now the majority of my extended family are members of facebook and thusly I am able to keep better touch with the members of my family I don't get to see or talk to all that often. We can bond over Lost or the President or our pets. We can keep track of each others families and see pictures of vacations, all of the exact things I was avoiding from the people I didn't like, I now look forward to seeing from the people I love! I suppose it all boils down to the fact that these social networking sites are fantastic for keeping in touch with those you actually want to keep in touch with and with the simple and easy use of the ignore button, we can all do just that without fear of becoming a sketchball stalker of those we don't particularly care about.

Rocking "A Sleeping Giant"

Join me, friends, on my first foray into writing about music.

If you like punk/rock music, please, I'm begging you, check out The Growlers. Made up of Rob Carmichael (vocals, guitar), John Beaudette (Guitar, Vocals), Marc Beaudette (Drums, Vocals), and Chris Moran (Bass, Vocals), this foursome of friends from New Hampshire, currently residing in Allston, MA, are coming out soon with their full length album "A Sleeping Giant" featuring their single "Smashed" (download it here).

My decision to write a little blurb about the band, who if you don't look closely could be mistaken for their other and currently more well known band, Destroy Babylon - same great musicians, very different vibe - comes after perusing their facebook page and coming across this video of what I can only assume to be one of Rob's least favorite songs, but even the Stones and Springsteen have to play their oldest hits, whether they're the artists favorites or not. (P.S. Rob is the lead singer with the sexy rock leg (but he's taken ladies, by a very hot, awesome, bandaid rocker chick named Magellan, so cool down).)


The first time I heard "Harvard Ave", I loved it. Granted it was years ago in a basement bedroom with Rob, our friend Tom, too much Johnny Cash and my first foray towards the bottom of a bottle of scotch, but either way, the way Rob was able to capture the vibe of anyone who spent part of their twenties crawling the streets of Allston searching for more than just their way home blew me away. The song itself is a testament to how the band has grown and developed its sound over the years as it's been tweeked and changed lyrically and instrumentally. Harmonies have been added, verses rewritten and if you ask me, the final product is significantly better than the original, although the original will always hold a special place in my overly-sentimental heart.

Their new single "Smashed" is an extension of the new version of "Harvard Ave". It exemplifies all of the growth the Growlers have gone through. Rob knows how to write a good song, his verses are thoughtful and well written, his hooks are catchy and on top of that, homeboy can sing. "Unholy Ends" brings in just a touch of their Destroy Babylon feel through the accompanying horns, but not so much that you could ever confuse where the two bands are coming from. With that said, and those two songs released, I'm looking forward to an entire album of tight rock music.



You can catch The Growlers:

Friday Feb 6th at Fontana's in NYC @ 9pm

Thursday Feb 12th at Baseball Tavern in Fenway @ 1opm

and Sunday March 1st at Great Scott in Allston, MA @ 9pm



Also listen on facebook and myspace