Interestingly enough, today I received this email from my mother: “The descent into indecency continues, Son. Recently, while on the train to Philadelphia to see our estate managers at Woodford, Worthington, and Crump, there was a swarthy man seated at the end of the Quiet Car who was infringing upon his unfortunate female seat-mate with inappropriate advances in a threatening and menacing manner—she was clearly uncomfortable and his voice could be heard all over the car, his thick-accent making it all the worse for those of us trying to enjoy the magnificent scenery as we serenely wended our way towards Intercourse. I gently but firmly attempted to remind him of the protocols of the Quiet Car, but he persisted, as I suspected he might, as it was obvious by his shiny sharkskin suit and loud tie that he was a Cosa Nostra-adjacent fixer ferrying a suitcase laden with a cash bribe to some corrupt kleptocrat MAGA functionary in the City of Brotherly Love. I was forced to summon the Quiet Car Overseer to quell the obnoxious emanations from this miscreant. The descent into incivility proceeds apace, My Son, and I hope I live long enough to see a return to the days when people obeyed the rules.” And now you know the rest of the story.
Money - 10% or the head honcho (always) - a Bribe'm thing they called it - he was always Huntering for the best deal too from 4-N countries without having to register as a 4(Four)-N-a-gent too, feigning to be good with the 'oil and gas'.
Even in the early grade school years, I could not STAND the tattle-tale girls -- and it WAS always girls -- who were in training to be future HOA Board Members. Oh, how they LOVED "The Rules". I spent a great deal of time in the hall outside the classroom thanks to these humorless future harridans!
I also did not understand why the public librarian had to "shush" everybody. Who can't read with a little noise? I had younger siblings, an ever-present television set on after age 12, my mother vacuuming -- and the very purpose of reading was to shut all that out!
“It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.”
It would seem to be so if you look at your average Pro-Hamas demonstration on campus or anti-ICE riot to prevent criminals from removal. I'm going to guess it is made up of at least 60/40 women to men, not counting the "wimmin" who actually ARE men. Of course, it may just SEEM like there are more women because so many of them are morbidly obese.
Since you provided a very comprehensive litany of the lack of security precautions on your Amtrak trek, I wonder how your Quiet Car Karen would have responded had a suicide bomber walked into her pristine presence with a belt crammed with dynamite or Plastique, signaling that he was going to blow the train into oblivion. Dangerous, deadly, but very, very noisy too.
She might have been far less confrontational and rude, since she might well believe that this madman was obviously a victim of a Christain based, cis normal, toxic masculinity, islamaphobic society. While he deserved her empathy (sympathy for anything other than transexuals is a bridge too far for Karen in this scenario).
Maybe the exchange would go something like this:
Karen: "As-salamu alaykum!, sir. But, you know that Amtract would forbid you to explode that vest in this car. It's a quiet car, as you would have known, had Amtract respected your culture and posted the limitations in Arabic."
Suicide bomber: "Wa alaykum as-salam,." woman. I see that you are wanton women, who insults my faith because you do not wear a burka, or even cover your hair. Normally, I would chastise you, but I'm about to do my duty and then be in paradise before this train got anywhere near the Hudson River."
Moments later the conductor shows up, and addresses the suicide bomber: "Sir, are you going to be a problem?"
Suicide bomber: No! BOOM!!!!!
The train gets blown to smithereens all across central New Jersey, which means that the authorities investigating the attack have great difficulty sorting out the train parts from the other flotsam and jetsam littering the New Jersey countryside.
The MSM totally ignores the tragedy, until a rumor starts that the bomber was a white supremacist who lit the dynamite with a tiki torch!
Tony survives, because he is seated at the rear of the noisy coach, right behind the food prep facility. He is shielded from the blast by the large refrigerator and ovens and reinforced bulkeads. Unfortunately, he is right next to the condiment cabinet, and is covered head to foot in mayonnaise (think 3 of the 4 ghostbusters after they cross the streams to defeat the demi-god Soul through an act of 'total protonic reversal.'
Fortunately, the mayonnaise acts like a soothing salve and helps protect Anthony from the fireball. This miraculous survival -- in part -- due to the chemical nature of mayonnaise, Anthony, a man of total integrity BTW, is forced to reconsider his objections to this culinary mainstay.
His miraculous survival is reported far and wide, and his wife invests in mayonnaise on the commodities market, making a large fortune, part of which Anthony uses to fly private jets to NYC from Philadelphia. It's a win/win/win situation.
The bomber learns that through a tragically inept translator, the 72 virgins, that he's expecting are actually Virginians, who are not welcoming.
Karen finds hell is a lot louder than she'd prefer, but all her pals are there, so....
Amtrak posts signs in Arabic forbidding the detonation of explosives of any kind, including petards. They do NOT modify their security profile. But, they do require a questionnaire for any passenger, which asks if the passenger is a white supremacist.
Thank you, Susan. Today I am 78. Never, especially in my early 20s did I ever expect to get this far. Who says that the age of miracles has passed? Your kind comment is a lovely present.
Anthony. You might get a kick out asking Grok who you are. He(?) and I are arguing whether or not you are a trial lawyer. Apparently, you are a social media creator and filmmaker from California... ;-)
Wow, I wonder if I'm an auteur specializing in gritty, dystopian anti-condiment dramas known for their graphic violence and nonsensical dialogue. I hope I have a 2,000 hp catamaran docked in Monaco from which I watch the F1 race while eating European-style funnel cake. And my social media empire consists of squirrel water skiing videos.
I assume you write these epistles of wisdom while on the train — airports are my favorite. Airports are noisier with all the announcements and I find it hard to think. This fits my style — thoughtless. By the way, I will be playing in Colts Neck, New Jersey at the Bruce Springsteen, multimillion dollar home for the next two weeks, …. I’m a working man from Allentown.
Quiet cars are so designated because some passengers wish to travel in a quiet environment.
If you want to chat/telephone then sit in a regular carriage.
Don’t be that arrogant, insensitive rebel-in-search-of-a-cause that can’t simply be courteous and move to a carriage where you can make as much racket as you wish.
I'd like to travel in a mayonnaise-free environment, but we can't always get what we want.
You should have been pleased to see that my wife completely agrees with you. As you might have inferred, I take this entire incident about as seriously as a Jasmine Crockett disquisition on the inherent racism of Count Chocula, but I will add that we have very different conceptions of what constitutes a "racket."
Anthony, even though your taste buds lack the sensitivity to enjoy mayonnaise, I must agree with you. Quiet does not equal silence. If they demand silence, then they should say so explicitly.
I KNOW Mr. Lucido, Sir or Madam, and he does not have an "arrogant" bone in his body. He is among the LEAST insensitive, most courteous humans ever born. If you want a "quiet environment", drive. We have become a nation of the Ear-Bud People without random conversations -- not to be confused with "rackets" -- with our fellow Americans. It represents a huge loss of community.
Good to know. See? IF we had had a nice quiet chit-chat on the train with your explaining about your exhaustion from, as Dylan Thomas put it, "Trying to strike sparks in minds that had no flint," then I would have understood! Anyway, people can disagree and no apology is necessary. This isn't Britain!
It IS, isn't it? Sadly, not my own quip, but the great Dylan Thomas's. But as you have experienced it in the classroom, I have also experienced it -- rarely -- in an audience here and there for my standup comedy. We call it "vertical death" when every joke falls flat and it is clear that the entire audience, as one, hates you. I will tell you this, though, THAT is all professional comics talk about -- the awful gigs. Everybody has had the wonderful standing ovation gigs and that is a joy, but they all blend into one. The standouts are the times you bombed and time stood still! Lol.
It’s similar for teaching, on balance I flatter myself that I’ve done a lot of fine teaching. Interestingly, math teaching is most effective when leavened with humor.
But it’s the times when I really screw up an “explanation” or when during an exam students start pointing out egregious typos or missing information on the test paper that most stand out in my memories. There’s no macabre name for those moments, it’s just terribly embarrassing.
However, in contrast to standup comedy audiences, my students have always been gracious and forgiving, for which I’m so grateful.
Ultimately, students want their teachers to be authentic and genuine. Teenagers have remarkably fine tuned BS-sensors.
I guess I foolishly thought I’d get a pass with indirect use of “arrogant”. Rebuke waranted and accepted 🙏
I agree regarding Ear-Bud culture and the value of random chit-chats. But at the end of a long day trying to teach teenagers mathematics I really do long for a quiet journey home.
It’s disappointing to so seldom get it in a location for which it’s intended.
"Quiet cars are so designated because some passengers wish to travel in a quiet environment."
Speaking of arrogance. The average noise level on a train is 65-70 decibels (comparable to a vacuum cleaner 10 feet away). That's hardly a "quiet environment". Mr. Lucido indicated that he entered the "Quiet Car" through a door that was distant from the sign that designated it as such. He could not read the sign from where he was sitting. Expecting him to know that it was the Quiet Car is ridiculous in that case.
As a comparison, in Texas, business that don't wish to allow carry of firearms on their premises are required to post specific signage at each entrance to their facility. If an individual enters the business through an entrance without such signage, there's no effective notice and they aren't in violation of any restriction until verbally informed. IMHO, it's the same with a "Quiet Car". If Amtrak wants to designate such, they need to have prominent signage on every entrance and/or visible (and readable) from every seat.
I’m sure there are no small number of my acquaintances that will agree I tend to arrogance, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
I’ve no experience with Amtrak but I ride the (perhaps significantly quieter) trains in Austria almost daily and I look for the quiet carriage on my journey home in the evening in a futile attempt to avoid live conversations or, even worse, mobile phone conversations with the speaker activated.
It’s futile because there’s almost always other passengers that chat, telephone, or watch videos on their smart phones without headphones.
This is on a six-carriage, two-level train in which only one level is “quiet”. It seems to me they could easily choose a different carriage.
Politely pointing out to chatting passengers that they are in a quiet carriage makes zero difference. This experience, plus the article from Mr. Lucido (whose writing I enjoy reading and a gentleman whom I’ve come to admire), as well as the responses to my comment just shows quiet carriages are a utopian mirage.
I suppose I react a bit emotionally to the topic and perhaps my comments were too “aggressive”. I certainly intended no slight.
Finally, mayonnaise is the greatest condiment ever, and my use of “racket” was metaphorical.
Karens are ever present. As are bureaucrats who create stupid rules because they have power to do so. We have an obligation to stick a figurative finger in the works whilr shouting "damn your eyes" (ok ..well at least saying "no" in calm tones.). It's how I got thrown out of Costco for refusing to wear a mask. It made my wife cry so I decided to be less adamant in future. I don't have the answer, but it is at least incumbent on us to mock and deride them at every opportunity so they are not emboldened to believe that they are "doing good". Keep fighting.
Speaking as someone who got into fights (verbal) fight trying to buy a (one) 6 pack of beer with my ID being my senior citizen reduced fare metro card. The cashier didn't like it. I can sympathize. The morons rule.
AHM: If you had become a personal injury lawyer, you would have had your own plane and thus no need bother being a Congress-critter to be able to fly wherever you wanted to go.
Very true. But, then I would have to stand in front of a jury and argue with a straight face (maybe shedding a single, glistening tear) that my client's horrible disfigurement, lumbago, PTSD, traumatically induced lisp and end stage fibromyalgia was caused by a slip and fall during a blizzard.
So, no plane. Maybe I should look into an ACME Ultralight. I hear the insurance premiums are quite reasonable.
Not these days you wouldn't, at least down here in the good ol' South. PI lawyers vacuum up cases where the injuries are significant (especially so if the victim is killed) and the liability is plain (always the case when a govt. entity is the alleged tortfeasor and the victim is in one of those special classes of folks). Such cases are never tried. That's why Alexander Shunnarah's billboards tout his settlements, not jury awards. He's the Ben Crump of these parts.
At last count, about 1500, mostly in Alabama and western Georgia with a few in the Fla. Panhandle. He does not personally try any cases and most of them come from referral lawyers and are often then referred back out to local lawyers if push-come-to-shove and the defendants won't settle but insist on going to trial in the smaller communities, where judgments for plaintiffs are usually much lower than the settlements he touts. He was set up in business by his wealthy Christian Arab father.
He is a hearse-chaser who only.flies to attend PR events with the criminals' I mean "victims") families and bring the suitcase to put tsxpayers' money in. Ask Pam Blondie about him.
During that bizarre, historic time called the era of Covid Hysteria, Walmart (a large store chain) attempted to organize the flow of shopper traffic by limiting the number of shoppers in their largest stores to 50 by monitoring the in and out flow of traffic and to speed up the process by painting directional arrows on the floor which they presumed would benefit the disabled that walk around only looking down. It is my habit to shop looking straight ahead and ignored the arrows until a WOMEN named Karen stopped me, tapped me on the shoulder and pointed down at the floor to let me know I was walking contra-arrow and that I should care. The solution was simple; either punch Karen in the nose or, still standing straight, start to walk backwards. I chose the latter but Karen did not appreciate irony and sulked away.
It's understandable how Amtrak doesn't have any security. The train from Denmark - the one in South Carolina - to Chicago runs through the first town I lived in down here. Upon getting to DC, passes through a tunnel that passes under the Capitol. Luckily, our enemies are not likely to be kind enough to relieve us of the burden of this Congress. Besides, dangerous MAGA hillbillies and jihadists alike will be dissuaded by bizarro Angela Lansbury, her stern visage, and her overdressed enforcer.
A fun experiment might be to dress up in Muslim garb with a few friends (although maybe not any wives) and conduct a call-and-response Islamic service in the Quiet Car. I think Mohammed Privilege trumps Karen Privilege, but only through scientific experimentation can the question be settled.
Interestingly enough, today I received this email from my mother: “The descent into indecency continues, Son. Recently, while on the train to Philadelphia to see our estate managers at Woodford, Worthington, and Crump, there was a swarthy man seated at the end of the Quiet Car who was infringing upon his unfortunate female seat-mate with inappropriate advances in a threatening and menacing manner—she was clearly uncomfortable and his voice could be heard all over the car, his thick-accent making it all the worse for those of us trying to enjoy the magnificent scenery as we serenely wended our way towards Intercourse. I gently but firmly attempted to remind him of the protocols of the Quiet Car, but he persisted, as I suspected he might, as it was obvious by his shiny sharkskin suit and loud tie that he was a Cosa Nostra-adjacent fixer ferrying a suitcase laden with a cash bribe to some corrupt kleptocrat MAGA functionary in the City of Brotherly Love. I was forced to summon the Quiet Car Overseer to quell the obnoxious emanations from this miscreant. The descent into incivility proceeds apace, My Son, and I hope I live long enough to see a return to the days when people obeyed the rules.” And now you know the rest of the story.
Money - 10% or the head honcho (always) - a Bribe'm thing they called it - he was always Huntering for the best deal too from 4-N countries without having to register as a 4(Four)-N-a-gent too, feigning to be good with the 'oil and gas'.
Even in the early grade school years, I could not STAND the tattle-tale girls -- and it WAS always girls -- who were in training to be future HOA Board Members. Oh, how they LOVED "The Rules". I spent a great deal of time in the hall outside the classroom thanks to these humorless future harridans!
I also did not understand why the public librarian had to "shush" everybody. Who can't read with a little noise? I had younger siblings, an ever-present television set on after age 12, my mother vacuuming -- and the very purpose of reading was to shut all that out!
You've seen this before, no doubt -
“It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.”
- George Orwell, 1984
It would seem to be so if you look at your average Pro-Hamas demonstration on campus or anti-ICE riot to prevent criminals from removal. I'm going to guess it is made up of at least 60/40 women to men, not counting the "wimmin" who actually ARE men. Of course, it may just SEEM like there are more women because so many of them are morbidly obese.
No, it's 80-20.
Look out now. ;-)
The comment above was meant for you.
Fabulous column, Anthony!
Since you provided a very comprehensive litany of the lack of security precautions on your Amtrak trek, I wonder how your Quiet Car Karen would have responded had a suicide bomber walked into her pristine presence with a belt crammed with dynamite or Plastique, signaling that he was going to blow the train into oblivion. Dangerous, deadly, but very, very noisy too.
She might have been far less confrontational and rude, since she might well believe that this madman was obviously a victim of a Christain based, cis normal, toxic masculinity, islamaphobic society. While he deserved her empathy (sympathy for anything other than transexuals is a bridge too far for Karen in this scenario).
Maybe the exchange would go something like this:
Karen: "As-salamu alaykum!, sir. But, you know that Amtract would forbid you to explode that vest in this car. It's a quiet car, as you would have known, had Amtract respected your culture and posted the limitations in Arabic."
Suicide bomber: "Wa alaykum as-salam,." woman. I see that you are wanton women, who insults my faith because you do not wear a burka, or even cover your hair. Normally, I would chastise you, but I'm about to do my duty and then be in paradise before this train got anywhere near the Hudson River."
Moments later the conductor shows up, and addresses the suicide bomber: "Sir, are you going to be a problem?"
Suicide bomber: No! BOOM!!!!!
The train gets blown to smithereens all across central New Jersey, which means that the authorities investigating the attack have great difficulty sorting out the train parts from the other flotsam and jetsam littering the New Jersey countryside.
The MSM totally ignores the tragedy, until a rumor starts that the bomber was a white supremacist who lit the dynamite with a tiki torch!
And ANOTHER hilarious "Tony" heard from! Well said, sir!
Oh no! In your scenario, what happens to Mr. Lucido? He's still on the train!
Tony survives, because he is seated at the rear of the noisy coach, right behind the food prep facility. He is shielded from the blast by the large refrigerator and ovens and reinforced bulkeads. Unfortunately, he is right next to the condiment cabinet, and is covered head to foot in mayonnaise (think 3 of the 4 ghostbusters after they cross the streams to defeat the demi-god Soul through an act of 'total protonic reversal.'
Fortunately, the mayonnaise acts like a soothing salve and helps protect Anthony from the fireball. This miraculous survival -- in part -- due to the chemical nature of mayonnaise, Anthony, a man of total integrity BTW, is forced to reconsider his objections to this culinary mainstay.
His miraculous survival is reported far and wide, and his wife invests in mayonnaise on the commodities market, making a large fortune, part of which Anthony uses to fly private jets to NYC from Philadelphia. It's a win/win/win situation.
The bomber learns that through a tragically inept translator, the 72 virgins, that he's expecting are actually Virginians, who are not welcoming.
Karen finds hell is a lot louder than she'd prefer, but all her pals are there, so....
Amtrak posts signs in Arabic forbidding the detonation of explosives of any kind, including petards. They do NOT modify their security profile. But, they do require a questionnaire for any passenger, which asks if the passenger is a white supremacist.
"I regret that I have only one "like" to give for this Tony!" We need a 1000 button!
Thank you, Susan. Today I am 78. Never, especially in my early 20s did I ever expect to get this far. Who says that the age of miracles has passed? Your kind comment is a lovely present.
It's a relief to know the gate swings both ways.
Anthony. You might get a kick out asking Grok who you are. He(?) and I are arguing whether or not you are a trial lawyer. Apparently, you are a social media creator and filmmaker from California... ;-)
Wow, I wonder if I'm an auteur specializing in gritty, dystopian anti-condiment dramas known for their graphic violence and nonsensical dialogue. I hope I have a 2,000 hp catamaran docked in Monaco from which I watch the F1 race while eating European-style funnel cake. And my social media empire consists of squirrel water skiing videos.
And the language model for Anthony gets larger...
Tony,
I assume you write these epistles of wisdom while on the train — airports are my favorite. Airports are noisier with all the announcements and I find it hard to think. This fits my style — thoughtless. By the way, I will be playing in Colts Neck, New Jersey at the Bruce Springsteen, multimillion dollar home for the next two weeks, …. I’m a working man from Allentown.
What a monster she is. I would’ve resumed chatting as soon as Lurch left, more loudly - but then I am a bitch.
You, Good Madame, are no bitch, but I would defend to the death your right to call yourself one! Lol.
Quiet cars are so designated because some passengers wish to travel in a quiet environment.
If you want to chat/telephone then sit in a regular carriage.
Don’t be that arrogant, insensitive rebel-in-search-of-a-cause that can’t simply be courteous and move to a carriage where you can make as much racket as you wish.
I'd like to travel in a mayonnaise-free environment, but we can't always get what we want.
You should have been pleased to see that my wife completely agrees with you. As you might have inferred, I take this entire incident about as seriously as a Jasmine Crockett disquisition on the inherent racism of Count Chocula, but I will add that we have very different conceptions of what constitutes a "racket."
Anthony, even though your taste buds lack the sensitivity to enjoy mayonnaise, I must agree with you. Quiet does not equal silence. If they demand silence, then they should say so explicitly.
If they demand silence, maybe they should ride a train.
I KNOW Mr. Lucido, Sir or Madam, and he does not have an "arrogant" bone in his body. He is among the LEAST insensitive, most courteous humans ever born. If you want a "quiet environment", drive. We have become a nation of the Ear-Bud People without random conversations -- not to be confused with "rackets" -- with our fellow Americans. It represents a huge loss of community.
Btw I’m male, full name Olan James.
Good to know. See? IF we had had a nice quiet chit-chat on the train with your explaining about your exhaustion from, as Dylan Thomas put it, "Trying to strike sparks in minds that had no flint," then I would have understood! Anyway, people can disagree and no apology is necessary. This isn't Britain!
"Trying to strike sparks in minds that had no flint”
Hilarious! 😆
It IS, isn't it? Sadly, not my own quip, but the great Dylan Thomas's. But as you have experienced it in the classroom, I have also experienced it -- rarely -- in an audience here and there for my standup comedy. We call it "vertical death" when every joke falls flat and it is clear that the entire audience, as one, hates you. I will tell you this, though, THAT is all professional comics talk about -- the awful gigs. Everybody has had the wonderful standing ovation gigs and that is a joy, but they all blend into one. The standouts are the times you bombed and time stood still! Lol.
It’s similar for teaching, on balance I flatter myself that I’ve done a lot of fine teaching. Interestingly, math teaching is most effective when leavened with humor.
But it’s the times when I really screw up an “explanation” or when during an exam students start pointing out egregious typos or missing information on the test paper that most stand out in my memories. There’s no macabre name for those moments, it’s just terribly embarrassing.
However, in contrast to standup comedy audiences, my students have always been gracious and forgiving, for which I’m so grateful.
Ultimately, students want their teachers to be authentic and genuine. Teenagers have remarkably fine tuned BS-sensors.
I guess I foolishly thought I’d get a pass with indirect use of “arrogant”. Rebuke waranted and accepted 🙏
I agree regarding Ear-Bud culture and the value of random chit-chats. But at the end of a long day trying to teach teenagers mathematics I really do long for a quiet journey home.
It’s disappointing to so seldom get it in a location for which it’s intended.
"Quiet cars are so designated because some passengers wish to travel in a quiet environment."
Speaking of arrogance. The average noise level on a train is 65-70 decibels (comparable to a vacuum cleaner 10 feet away). That's hardly a "quiet environment". Mr. Lucido indicated that he entered the "Quiet Car" through a door that was distant from the sign that designated it as such. He could not read the sign from where he was sitting. Expecting him to know that it was the Quiet Car is ridiculous in that case.
As a comparison, in Texas, business that don't wish to allow carry of firearms on their premises are required to post specific signage at each entrance to their facility. If an individual enters the business through an entrance without such signage, there's no effective notice and they aren't in violation of any restriction until verbally informed. IMHO, it's the same with a "Quiet Car". If Amtrak wants to designate such, they need to have prominent signage on every entrance and/or visible (and readable) from every seat.
I’m sure there are no small number of my acquaintances that will agree I tend to arrogance, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
I’ve no experience with Amtrak but I ride the (perhaps significantly quieter) trains in Austria almost daily and I look for the quiet carriage on my journey home in the evening in a futile attempt to avoid live conversations or, even worse, mobile phone conversations with the speaker activated.
It’s futile because there’s almost always other passengers that chat, telephone, or watch videos on their smart phones without headphones.
This is on a six-carriage, two-level train in which only one level is “quiet”. It seems to me they could easily choose a different carriage.
Politely pointing out to chatting passengers that they are in a quiet carriage makes zero difference. This experience, plus the article from Mr. Lucido (whose writing I enjoy reading and a gentleman whom I’ve come to admire), as well as the responses to my comment just shows quiet carriages are a utopian mirage.
I suppose I react a bit emotionally to the topic and perhaps my comments were too “aggressive”. I certainly intended no slight.
Finally, mayonnaise is the greatest condiment ever, and my use of “racket” was metaphorical.
Woher und wohin?
Von Bad Vöslau nach Wien Hetzendorf
Karens are ever present. As are bureaucrats who create stupid rules because they have power to do so. We have an obligation to stick a figurative finger in the works whilr shouting "damn your eyes" (ok ..well at least saying "no" in calm tones.). It's how I got thrown out of Costco for refusing to wear a mask. It made my wife cry so I decided to be less adamant in future. I don't have the answer, but it is at least incumbent on us to mock and deride them at every opportunity so they are not emboldened to believe that they are "doing good". Keep fighting.
Speaking as someone who got into fights (verbal) fight trying to buy a (one) 6 pack of beer with my ID being my senior citizen reduced fare metro card. The cashier didn't like it. I can sympathize. The morons rule.
re: " I pondered the rules and then, because I can't help it, said: "It says no loud talking. I wasn't talking loudly." "
True to form and 'reversion to the mean' (vis-a-vis) trial lawyer.
I loved it. (Engineers love this sort of thing too.)
There's a word which describes the action to be taken in such circumstances: Defenestration
Don't make Chuck weep.
AHM: If you had become a personal injury lawyer, you would have had your own plane and thus no need bother being a Congress-critter to be able to fly wherever you wanted to go.
Very true. But, then I would have to stand in front of a jury and argue with a straight face (maybe shedding a single, glistening tear) that my client's horrible disfigurement, lumbago, PTSD, traumatically induced lisp and end stage fibromyalgia was caused by a slip and fall during a blizzard.
So, no plane. Maybe I should look into an ACME Ultralight. I hear the insurance premiums are quite reasonable.
Not these days you wouldn't, at least down here in the good ol' South. PI lawyers vacuum up cases where the injuries are significant (especially so if the victim is killed) and the liability is plain (always the case when a govt. entity is the alleged tortfeasor and the victim is in one of those special classes of folks). Such cases are never tried. That's why Alexander Shunnarah's billboards tout his settlements, not jury awards. He's the Ben Crump of these parts.
I just spent a week in Tuscaloosa. My god, how many billboards does Shunnarah have?
Apropos of not much, I LOVE Tuscaloosa! Most beautiful college campus in the United States. Roll, Tide, Roll!
Tuscaloosa, the words an elephant in pain fears hearing from his Italian dentist.
Are Dad jokes permissible here?
There's no "thumbs down" button. That's not fair.
At last count, about 1500, mostly in Alabama and western Georgia with a few in the Fla. Panhandle. He does not personally try any cases and most of them come from referral lawyers and are often then referred back out to local lawyers if push-come-to-shove and the defendants won't settle but insist on going to trial in the smaller communities, where judgments for plaintiffs are usually much lower than the settlements he touts. He was set up in business by his wealthy Christian Arab father.
Or Benjamin Crump.
He is a hearse-chaser who only.flies to attend PR events with the criminals' I mean "victims") families and bring the suitcase to put tsxpayers' money in. Ask Pam Blondie about him.
All you need to attain Amtrak bliss is a portable Cone of Silence. This ranks higher than colonizing Mars.
During that bizarre, historic time called the era of Covid Hysteria, Walmart (a large store chain) attempted to organize the flow of shopper traffic by limiting the number of shoppers in their largest stores to 50 by monitoring the in and out flow of traffic and to speed up the process by painting directional arrows on the floor which they presumed would benefit the disabled that walk around only looking down. It is my habit to shop looking straight ahead and ignored the arrows until a WOMEN named Karen stopped me, tapped me on the shoulder and pointed down at the floor to let me know I was walking contra-arrow and that I should care. The solution was simple; either punch Karen in the nose or, still standing straight, start to walk backwards. I chose the latter but Karen did not appreciate irony and sulked away.
It's understandable how Amtrak doesn't have any security. The train from Denmark - the one in South Carolina - to Chicago runs through the first town I lived in down here. Upon getting to DC, passes through a tunnel that passes under the Capitol. Luckily, our enemies are not likely to be kind enough to relieve us of the burden of this Congress. Besides, dangerous MAGA hillbillies and jihadists alike will be dissuaded by bizarro Angela Lansbury, her stern visage, and her overdressed enforcer.
A fun experiment might be to dress up in Muslim garb with a few friends (although maybe not any wives) and conduct a call-and-response Islamic service in the Quiet Car. I think Mohammed Privilege trumps Karen Privilege, but only through scientific experimentation can the question be settled.
Oooh, you are so MEAN! I love that in a person. 😎