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For those that don't take the East Bay Bart line, you're really missing out on a laughable billboard you see right when you come out of the tunnel from 19th street in Oakland. Basically, it's for this company called "Harris Ranch" and it has a boy (the son I would assume) with a sign that says, "We're hungry", and then a guy (the father I would assume) with a sign that says, "Come home soon", and then a girl (the daughter I would assume) with a sign that says, "Bring Harris Ranch".       At first glance it seems rather innocent. But seeing as how I've seen it every day for the last couple of months, I've had way more time than I ever wanted to have to think about it and as I did, I realized that it's rather typical of marketing currently, in that ever since Bush took office, there has been a reversion back to the roll of the woman as the homemaker. What I find particularly annoying about this is that her dumb ass husband is sitting there basically waiting to starve because he's unable to cook or do anything useful except write signs for Harris Ranch.       Further reading in to this would point to the fact that the woman is also the one with the job. The husband is sitting there, not looking like he just got off of work, but rather lounging around like a loser. And then I suppose that this is all really sad because the behavior of these two adults is being passed on in the exact same gender roles to their children.       Like I said, I've had way too much time to read in to this and I find it a revolting advertisement. But, I think what could make it better would be to lose the son, because he's a dopey, whiny little brat that I despised when I first saw this. Then, swap out the father for the mother. That way, if you're going to stick with traditional gender roles, at least the father is working while the mother tends home. Or better yet, keep it in sync with the Bay Area and give her a look that says, she just got off of work and can't be bothered to cook dinner, so pick up some of this Harris Ranch crap (which is now available in seven states, woo hoo.) That would be the best ad for this area. No one cooks. They only buy prepared food and they have one precocious kid who is going to grow up to be an attention whore.       Okay, so it's obvious I need to cut my Bart commute out of my life and thankfully, this will happen at the end of next week. Then, no more Harris Ranch and the musings of how in addition to not being able to make anything here anymore, we outsource dinner as well.

Here's a nice topical story for a Friday the 13th and a week of lame. It all started two days ago when I finished up with my Croatian class at Berkeley and headed down to the Bart to take my trusty blue and silver steed back to the City.       As is often the case with the Bart, somewhere, someone sneezed and it tossed the whole system in to a delay. Naturally, my first reaction was, "Awesome..." Being bored and having my camera on me as I always do, I started to take random pictures of whatever was around and trying to do artistic things while I waited.       Just as I was starting to pack it up since me train was getting there, a Bart Cop walks up to me and asks,       "Excuse me, what are you doing?"       "Uh... waiting for a train."       "Well, you know why I'm asking you, right?"       Because I'm a 6'3" white guy with an American Apparel sweater on who is obviously up to no good while he waits for a train to SF?       "No, not really."       "Well, you were taking some photos, right?"       "Yeah. So?"       "Do you mind if I take a look at what you shot?"       Yeah I do actually because that constitutes an illegal search without a warrant and unless you actually suspect me of doing something nefarious and want to arrest me, fuck off.       "I guess so, sure."       I reached in to my bag slowly and pulled my camera back out, flipping through the shots that I took.       "Oh, okay, so they're just pretty stuff?"       Some would venture to call it an artform assnard       "Yeah, pretty much."       "Okay. You realize why I was asking, right?"       "No, I don't."       "Oh, well, it just raises red flags."       The last I checked, your preferential crap system didn't profile white guys who are clearly leaving a college class as being a terrorist, but hey, what do I know, I just do "pretty stuff".       "Uh, sure, I guess."       "Okay, glad you understand."       To be honest, I knew what he was getting at all along. My brother was a skateboarder and had to deal with crap from the popo for years. I just find it sad that our current state of society has gotten to the point where someone taking pictures is suspicious. I mean seriously, I've got $2000 of camera and lenses and I'm going to take strategic photos of the effin' Downtown Berkeley Bart station?!! These guys have or have not watched too much Mission Impossible and James Bond. If someone was going to be sneaky, they'd use a camera phone or something small like that, not a Canon Digital Rebel XT with eight inches of glass off the front of it. Let's all just sit back a moment and remember that the 9/11 terrorists used boxcutters and the overall idiocy of America to pull off their hell. That's what we need to "never forget". And it appears I will return to my guerilla photography again...

As I'm taking a class in Berkeley these days, I am now having to take the Bart quite often again. Ah Bart, how I missed and missed and missed and missed and missed and missed you.       Thankfully this is a rather short commute of just 25 minutes or so and that's not so bad. That Bart does run on time for the most part and is one of the more reliable systems we've got here. I have noticed though that since they've somewhat halted their renovation program for the train cars (or at least it seems like they have), the cars have gotten a sort of "distressed" smell to them. I equate to feeling like you're in an airplane bathroom. It's cold, a little breezy, and there is a septic stink of indeterminate origin all around you.

In looking back over some of the bits I've written, I realize that there should be a section of my site just to bitch about the public transportation in the Bay Area. So naturally in witnessing the sheer mass of it all, I figured a reality check bit might be in order.       For starters, I grew up where there was basically no form of public transportation, in Oroville, CA (yes, I too find their websites primitive yet informative.) There was some form of a bus and it went somewhere, but it really didn't run that often and it had only a couple of stops around town, doing me little good as I was a good five miles from downtown proper. That being that, we all pretty much drove cars. When you were 16 it was time to put away the rusty dirt bike you picked up somewhere for cheap and get something you didn't have to pedal around. Something that inhaled gas and hurtled you to your destination. In a nutshell, a four-wheeled box that lost value every time you looked at it.       Once you got a car, you got expenses. The average teenager could probably exist quite well on $100-200 a month (oh yeah, times have changed!) but once the gasoline-powered vacuum cleaner came in to existence, your money went in to a black hole. At the time, I thought I loved to drive. It gave me freedom and it was fun.       So seven years later here I am living in San Francisco without a cars (two years strong!) and realizing that I really hate driving. Beyond the ridiculous cost of the car, driving is stressful and you don't enjoy anything when you're at the wheel. It took many crossings of the Bay Bridge before I was doing it in the Casual Carpool one day to realize what an awesome view it is coming in to downtown SF.       Now I find myself entering the spoiled years of public transportation and not having to drive. I use Bart everyday and the SF Muni sometimes. I've started to let the few minutes of lateness that these systems usually are become sand in my mouth, grinding away at me. It seems I've forgotten the "joy" of sitting in traffic or the "wonders" of parking in Lower Nob Hill all very quickly. The fact that I do know what it's like not to have these systems in place has done little to quell my grumbles and while it is true that these systems are running at a less than stellar level from five years ago, they're still running pretty well. It's unfortunate that the fares tend to keep going up, but such is life in the big city.       It seems to really all boil down to the destination as to how much you enjoy the way you get there. When I first started dating Jenya and had to come in from the East Bay it didn't matter how I got there as I was always looking forward to the destination. These days, as I lug my barely conscious carcass out to Walnut Creek, I can't help myself but find the short cicuits in a system that I should otherwise by damn thankful to have.       I don't know if there's a way around the griping. Everyone I know who does the same commute I do reaches a boiling point with it somewhere during the tenure of their stay with the company. It's a long, long commute with a lot of walking that isn't cheap to a town that most certainly is not San Francisco. The only way around it is to not do it in the end. Kind of a dumb resolution that I've come to, but I guess that is about the only one I can reach. Add another few paragraphs to the griping...

It wasn't just that the door on our train had problems and held up the train. It wasn't just that the train in front of us had problems, stalled and had to be taken out of service, thus crowding everyone on to our train. It wasn't just that once we were in Montgomery, the train turned around without warning (I could have gotten off and walked had I known, damn it) and suddenly became a train going the opposite way that I had to desert and run across the platform to board the other train once we got back to the station we came from. And lastly, it wasn't the fact that my normally long ride of 35 minutes, became one of an hour and 15 minutes, nor the fact that the pleasure of this costs me $8 round trip.       No, it wasn't all this that really pissed me off. It's the fact that the Bart employees think that they can strike for some reason. For some bewildering time now, they think they deserve the raises that management is holding back. But my recent adventures today weren't anything new. This kind of poor service has been going on for the last six months, but I have little choice other than taking the train as I don't have a car.       What nerve. What honest to god nerve the union has thinking they can strike now because they aren't getting paid enough. Those people who sit in the little booth all day (and no, they don't take tickets, machines do that) make $61,000 a year. They need a raise?!! It makes me ill to think that they're going to cripple the Bay Area with a strike just to ensure they get raises for a job that they're doing poorly. And we all know that these costs are just going to be passed on to us in the end, so they're only hurting the riders who will stop riding at some point. So, think about it before you do it, you short-sighted fools. It hurts all of us and your gains wil most likely come at a huge price.

Bart has unofficially started running a new train at 8:30 AM from the Powell Street Station. This may come as a shock to many because they only list an 8:24 and an 8:39 train on the schedule in that time slot. But, with great reliability, this train is running and you can catch it.       Of course, I might want to add that this new train has come at the loss of the 8:24 train. Actually, pretty much all the trains are running on a new schedule that varies in minutes after when the trains are supposed to show up. It also seems that in addition to this, they've shortened the trains, running them with only eight cars, instead of the normal 10.       I really wouldn't mind the change in the schedule if it happened only some of the time, but in reality, the Bart is running like crap these days. A co-worker of mine was on it one day when they just stopped running to the station she needed to get to (stopped at Orinda, when she needed Walnut Creek) and it was blamed on some kind of power failure somewhere.       It seems this is commonplace with there also being a reason for the delays, train cancellations, stoppages, etc., but never anything really done about it and they're happening more and more. It makes fare hikes and other reductions a bit hard to swallow right now. I suppose I should figure out some way to junk this failing form of transportation out of my life altogether, but as of yet, nothing has really materialized to make that happen.