I don’t have cable right now. I think I’ve mentioned this a few times.
So far, the biggest side effect I’ve noticed from not having cable is that I watch the two channels I do get with astounding consistency. No one is more up on the programming schedules of CBC and CTV than I am.
The second biggest side effect is that I now watch the news fairly often. I like to have some background noise when I cook, or sometimes when I work on websites, and I find I hit a point where I hate my entire music collection, and the rhythm of TV is just more comforting when I’m home alone. So the news comes on, and I hear it, and although I watch it now, I haven’t stopped hating it.
TV news is like a later, dumber version of the internet and radio news I have easy access to all day. By the time it shows up on the evening news, I’ve usually been bored of hearing it repeated for at least three hours.
And then there’s the brilliance of news anchor news analysis. I know these lines they are speaking are scripted, so why have they not been given an edit to see that they make sense? Case in point: the title of this post. On the CBC news at six last night, in reference to a suburban express bus:
Think of it like a subway on wheels.
No really. Think about it for a minute. This is actually the second time I’ve heard this concept expressed this way in the last week, and it’s a nice concept, but there’s just one problem wiith it:
SUBWAYS HAVE WHEELS, people.
Please find this and many other fine Toronto subway photos at Transit Toronto
They do. Wheels. They have’m. Subways.
What Subways don’t have in Toronto are tires, but this is not the case in many cities, like Montreal, where the subways not only have wheels, but tires too. Makes ‘em run cooshy.
So let’s roll out a new simile, shall we? Think of it like a subway that’s not underground and doesn’t run on tracks and instead of many cars and many doors, there’s just one main compartment and one or two doors, and it travels entirely outside on the road instead of mainly inside, from station to station.
There. Isn’t that more clear?
Comments
Comment from lauralyn
Time: February 21, 2007, 6:51 pm
Ah ha ha ! thanks, I needed that!
Comment from chrisa
Time: February 25, 2007, 11:19 pm
i love the fact that you think this logically.
this is like my pet peeve, where the TTC says that it has cleaner transportation, because it runs off of “smog free electricity”. except that it runs off of nuclear and coal power. yep. same with electric cars.
everyone knows that subways run on wheels. we don’t have those “magnetically driven” trains that float propelled by gravity. yet.
Comment from Jill
Time: February 26, 2007, 12:53 am
I’m so surprised though. Everyone does NOT know that subways have wheels. I seriously wrote this because it capped off a week of my noticing that people don’t know. The previous incident involved a girl saying to her friends:
Girl: “Oh but wait, [laugh] no, like, subways don’t have wheels. [laugh] [frown]. Do they?”
Friend #1: “Like, I don’t know. What am I like, the subway expert?”
Friend #2: “Yeah. Who asks that? You’re like such a nerd.”
Girl: “Oh no wait. SUBWAYS have wheels. It’s STREETCARS that don’t.”
Geez. Come to think of it, why didn’t I blog that interaction while I had the chance?
Comment from andrew
Time: February 27, 2007, 2:11 pm
i thought they had feet. with claws. and that they ate people. oh, the things marvel comics has to answer for! the things!
Write a comment