can i get an AMEN?

how glad are we all that this week is over? jeezy creezy.

overheard on the E train:
WOMAN WITH BRITISH ACCENT: i made myself breakfast for the first time today.
MAN WITH HARD-TO-PLACE ACCENT: oh really?
WOMAN: yes. just toast. but i was very proud of myself.

i love the subway. sure, i'm a big fan of the red line in dc. less close to home, i've enjoyed the never-ending, impossibly-steep moscow subway escalators that feel like they're taking you to hell and the budapest subway platforms where peasants hawk live fowl and yummy mushroom pastry. i've been delighted by the honor system in dutch and danish public transportation and, importantly, found both easy to navigate when less than sober. but the new york subway wins all the points. allow me to sing its praises.

first, everyone reads. not just the new york post. i've seen shakespeare and ann patchet, goethe and nietzsche, the wall street journal and mother jones. more people read on the trains in new york on a daily basis than in the entire state of mississippi.

second, it's ideal fashion-watching time. it's like flipping through a catelogue without having to waste energy turning pages.

third, priceless eavesdropping opportunities. see above.

i'm near giddy that the week is over. the farther we get away from this election the better. the sooner people stop debating whether or not john kerry was the right candidate, why "america hates us," what a mandate means (WHITEmandate, is how i like to think of it), and what's going to happen next, the for-damn-sure better. also, i think the phrases "red states" and "blue states" should be stricken from the record. it's frighteningly simplistic and basically dismisses the existence of significant minorities. the last thing that democrats in arkansas or utah want, i imagine, is to be even more marginalized than they are.