Muchas gracias Nate, those hooligans' spam tangents were really starting to kill my enthusiasm for the topic. Troll Trains are just too complex and controversial of a subject for the folks here to handle with maturity, and absolutely deserve their own thread. I'll get on that as soon as my schedule allows, don't you worry.
So, trains... regular ones... Well shit, I'm drawing a whole lotta blank on those. I've seen them and heard them before, but not much else. Yes, I'm totally being serious here, trains occupy less space in my memory banks than the E! channel.
In my early youth, I rode my share of silly little kiddie train rides. I've ridden the novelty train that goes around a nearby amusement park, and years ago we took briefly rode on the regional commuter rail for a few minutes during a grade school field trip (sadly the rail reaches a discouraging number of suburbs atm, our local transit authority is planning some long overdue expansion). But that's the entire extent of my train riding experience. Never to travel on vacation, never for the fun of riding a train, and years back the Texas Hobo's Union rejected my application. What a bunch of dicks, I didn't want to join their wacky misadventures anyway. So yeah, no train riding. That's just the way of the wildebeast here in the paradise known as the southwestern United States. I assume it's mostly due to unfavorable geodemographics; cities built after the whole automotive revolution thing sprawl like a virulent case of herpes. Using public transportation within a metroplex is pretty niched, and annoying at best (e.g. if you need a ride to pick up your car from a mechanic, you're at the mercy of a friend, because deciphering the bus schedules/maps sucks ass*). The huge gaps between urban would seemingly create some use for trains as fast, affordable travel, but unless you're venturing to an old school population center (sometimes referenced in academia as "walking cities"), or you otherwise plan to rely on buses/friends/etc, your mobility plummets upon arrival. So it's relatively handy to drive yourself across a bunch of nowhere, painful as it may be to the ass region (both literally and metaphorically speaking). On top of that, in awesome places like my beloved home of Dallas, when the sun is a'shinin in the summer, not to mention most of spring, most of fall and occasional days in winter lolololol), walking more than a couple blocks means you'll be escorting the company of Mr. Swamp Ass and his notorious partner in crime, Pitstains McGee. All you assholes that live where your feet make viable transportation, count your blessings. Same for you jerks that have a subway/rail line worth taking.
* I exclude from the using-buses-sucks thing the fine city of Denton, home of the endearing University of North Texas (where I accomplish my higher learning) and contrastingly lame Texas Woman's University (a campus that rapidly earned my contempt, long before my former high school sweetheart met the gal she dumped me for a year after a year together through college lolololol). As should exist in any good college town, there's a fairly efficient bus network at the center of campus. There's applications for a variety of common situations, such as: saving gas, being environmentally friendly, ditching out on Mr. Swamp Ass and Pitstains McGee, lacking a car yourself because the town's pothole extravaganza raped it**, or the always classic get-really-drunk-but-not-have-to-walk-a-mile-or-two-afterwards (preferably in the afternoon of the first day of a semester, before the one benign class meeting where your professor explains an online course you eventually fail.
** Or would your car, which is metaphorically more akin to a penis, rape the hole, which is (obviously) metaphorically more akin to the orifice of your pleasure? Let's see... car plows into hole, but the hole didn't probably didn't want it, but then again the hole made the event happen by putting itself in the cars way... plus I don't think many women go around raping men, at least in a manner free of violent sodomy. I never thought I'd see the day, but I guess I finally used "rape" in an inappropriate metaphorical. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.
So... trains are cool, I guess.
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