Category: Music

goodbye, tokens

token11.jpgRecently, the MBTA (Boston’s public transit system, also called the T) underwent some major changes, which can be boiled down to a single big change: you no longer use tokens. They’ve converted to a an electronic system involving the use of cards. Last week I mentioned that I got my first Charlie Card. Previously I’d unwittingly bought a Charlie Ticket. What’s the difference? Let me lay out the differences and similarities for you:

Charlie Card: Hard plastic, like a credit card. Very sturdy.
Charlie Ticket: Stiff paper, like a business card. Somewhat flimsy.

Charlie Card: Available for free, then you pay to add credit to it.
Charlie Ticket: Available for free, then you pay to add credit to it.

Charlie Card: Can be reused by adding credit to it.
Charlie Ticket: Can be reused by adding credit to it.

Charlie Card: Can be registered in case it gets lost.
Charlie Ticket: Can’t be registered. If you lose it, you lose. (Loser.)

Charlie Card: A T ride costs $1.70
Charlie Ticket: A T ride costs $2.00

tokens_3.jpgYes, this paper version of the MBTA card lets you ride the T for 30 cents more than if you take the same ride using the Charlie Card. Why would anyone want to do that? Why did I buy one? The short answer is cluelessness. I hadn’t even realized there were two different kinds of tickets. The Charlie Ticket is what’s available from the machines. To get your Charlie Card, you must know to seek out a distribution point and ask for one. Easy enough, as long as you know. The Charlie Ticket must be meant especially for newbies and tourists. A tax on cluelessness, as it were. Perhaps it should be called the Sucker Ticket, or the Clueless Card. But I suppose that would spoil the fun.

And so that this post won’t end up being just a rant, I should bring up some fun trivia that folks not around Boston may not know about. The name of the Charlie Card actually refers to a song: “The M.T.A. Song,” by the Kingston Trio, a song about a guy named Charlie who gets stuck riding around on the T. Funny thing is, it’s a song written in protest of a fare increase in the Boston T system, then called the MTA. (And by the way, all these recent changes to the T system have also been accompanied by a big hike in fare.) And here, how about a list. A list of songs that relate to my T adventures:

  • “The M.T.A. Song,” by the Kingston Trio (Also known as “Charlie on the M.T.A.”)
  • “Skinhead on the MBTA,” by the Dropkick Murphies (An updated punk reinterpretation of the Kingston Trio classic.)
  • “Ambition,” by Subway Sect
  • “The Metro,” by Berlin
  • “She’s got a ticket to ride,” The Beatles
  • “She’s got her ticket,” Tracy Chapman
  • “Brand New Sucker,” Jonathan Coulton
  • “Ain’t Got a Clue,” The Lurkers
  • “Loser,” Beck

    • dubious distinctions

    I just got home from my violin lesson. I’ve been taking lessons for just over 3 years, or, as I think of it “not that long.” I was sitting in the music store where I have my lessons, in the waiting area outside the little closet-sized “studio” where I have my weekly lesson. A few other people were sitting around waiting for lessons, mostly some older kids accompanied by a parent. And just as I was reflecting on the short time I’d been studying, I heard the following exchange from some folks sitting across the way:

    “Have you been playing long?” someone asked.

    “Yeah,” answered the teenage girl and her father emphatically. “Almost 4 years.”

    We can chalk that one up to another instance of me apparently having a somewhat distorted view of the passage of time. Or perhaps the relative perception of the length of a year, say, for me vs. a teenager. (I feel old.) And me vs. the parent of a teenager. (I feel scared.)

    I’d also like to take this moment to boast that, according to my violin teacher, I am her “best adult student.” (I’d also like to add that most of her adult students have actually been studying the violin longer than I have, so it’s not totally a throwaway compliment.) (However, I also should point out that, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that none of them are likely to read this, her other adult students pretty much suck.)

    (I’d also like to share that I’m having some trouble deciding what categories to check off for this post. I mean, should I put music? “Does learning to play the violin count as music?” I just asked myself. To which the response had to be “not the way I play it…” Oh, but what the hell.)

    New Year’s resolutions for 2006

    It’s been quite a few years since I’ve made a list of New Year’s resolutions. And here it is, the beginning of another new year, and it seems like a wonderful opportunity to set some goals. Having a new baby can lead to difficulties in getting many things done, so I’ve decided to set some goals that I know can be achieved. Namely, some that I’ve already reached.

    A New Mother’s Retroactive Resolutions for 2006

    1. Personal appearance: Lose 10 pounds
      Physical appearance is important to so many people, and I think weight loss often tops people’s New Year’s resolution lists. I can honestly boast that I lost at least 10 pounds in a single night! While the process wasn’t exactly painless, it sure was quicker than dieting.
    2. Health and fitness: Exercise more
      Another common goal is to improve one’s fitness levels. And I did indeed “exercise more” in 2006. The trick to this one is to take advantage of the inherent ambiguity of the term more. Since it is necessarily a relative or comparative term (i.e. something can be/have/do/etc. more XXX than some other thing), I choose to leave out the specifics of the comparison. For example, if I wanted to say “I plan to exercise more than I have been exercising” my resolution would have failed. However, if I consider my resolution to mean something like “I plan to exercise more than various people who are a) comatose b) dead or c) of a more extreme couch potato nature than even myself,” I have achieved this goal in spades.
    3. Fine arts: Write a song
      Let’s not leave out creative and artistic growth. I actually wrote several original compositions, complete with lyrics. My greatest hits include “The Diaper Song” (We’re changing the diaper, and we’ll put a new diaper on…put a new, put a new, put a new, put a new diaper on.) and “The Bouncy Song” (I have a little girl, her name is Phoebe Lenore, and she likes to bouncy bouncy…bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy Phoebe…)
    4. Feeding the mind: Read some books
      It’s always important to strive for intellectual breadth and depth. I’m happy to say that I’ve read quite a few books this year. Many of them quite thick ones. Well, with thick pages, at least. And I’ve even gone as far as to nearly memorize several of them, including: Goodnight Moon (Brown), Bear Snores On (Wilson), The Foot Book (Seuss), Quiet Loud (Patricelli) and The Going to Bed Book (Boynton).
    5. Home improvements: redecorate the house
      Let’s not forget the home. I can quite honestly say that there have been many changes to the appearance of our home. Not a single room looks the same. The new look is definitely more colorful than ever! The new palette includes a shift from earthy tones (mostly muted browns and grays, typically represented by wood and stone) to an array of chartreuse, tangerine, fuchsia, cerulean and lemon yellow. Mostly represented in plastic and some plush.
    6. Productivity and daily routine: Wake up earlier in the morning
      Who doesn’t want to feel more productive? I used to frequently waste the day away by sleeping until 8:00 a.m., or even snoozing in past 10:00 on weekends. I now always wake up before 7:00 a.m. There are even many days when I wake up before dawn: by 6:00, or 5:00, and sometimes even 4:00! And I don’t even need to set the alarm clock.
    7. Etiquette: write and mail thank you notes in a timely manner
      This one is for real, actually. Though the interpretation of “timely manner” may be subject to my own somewhat lax standards. I determined that I should finish writing thank you notes for the presents given for my daughter’s birth (in February 2006) within the same calendar year as her birth. I am bound and determined to achieve this goal. (Don’t quibble with me over today’s date. I will have those letters written in 2006.)
        8. our new living room decor
        Our new living room decor.

    brains stuck in my head

    I have a song stuck in my head. (Heya Tom, it’s Bob from the office down the hall..) Really stuck in my head. (Good to see you buddy, how’ve you been?) It’s going on days now. The current soundtrack playing in my brain is “re: your brains” by Jonathan Coulton. It’s a perky, catchy little song told from the perspective of an office worker proactively proposing a workplan by which he hopes to achieve his vision, should the negotiations conclude favorably, of eating the brains of his coworker. (Things have been OK for me except that I’m a zombie now.) It’s how one might imagine a merger of Shaun of the Dead with Office Space. I particularly like this bit:

    I’ve got another meeting Tom, maybe we could wrap it up
    I know we’ll get to common ground somehow
    Meanwhile I’ll report back to my colleagues who were chewing on the doors
    I guess we’ll table this for now
    I’m glad to see you take constructive criticism well
    Thank you for your time I know we’re all busy as hell
    And we’ll put this thing to bed
    When I bash your head open

    And this bit, which uses the corporate definition of compromise, meaning “let’s figure out a solution in our mutual best interests whereby you agree to do what I want:”

    We’re at an impasse here
    Maybe we should compromise
    If you open the doors
    we’ll all come inside and eat your brains

    A bunch of folks have made videos for it, which you can watch/listen on YouTube. (These are just a few of them…) (By the way, I cannot be held responsible if you also get this song stuck in your head. Follow these links at your own risk):

    • This is the first one I saw. It’s a computer-game style video, with a sort of mideval looking style. (Not the contemporary cubicle-world vision I have).
    • I like this one better, which uses a bunch of movie clips.
    • This other one uses anime, and is pretty cool.
    • There’s also this version of Jonathan Coulton playing in a club.

    I think a PowerPoint presentation of would make an appropriate medium for a video. Anyone want to make one?

    While I quite like the song, I do hope I get it out of my head soon. It’s like to drive me bonkers.

    I generally recover from situations like this, where a song gets stuck in my head for days. But there have been a couple of instances that have left scars. My mind shies away from even the thought of listening to them. I was once tormented by the song Peaches, by the Presidents of the United States, which got stuck in my head for days around the time I worked an all-night inventory in a bookstore. The memory of the song and the bleary-eyed hungover feel of the messed-up sleep schedule are forever linked. The song “Oh yeah” by Yellow (as featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) is another one that nearly killed me. And that one doesn’t even have lyrics. (Womp, womp…chktchktkkaawww…)

    token of my affection

    My blog title is inspired in part by these fabulous lyrics by the late, great Kirsty MacColl:

    “I’ve been the token woman all my life
    The token daughter and the token wife
    Now I collected tokens one by one
    ‘Til I’ve saved enough to buy a gun”
    From the song Bad, off Kirsty MacColl’s 1994 album, Titanic Days.

    Kirsty MacColl died in late 2000 in a bizarre accident where she was hit by a speedboat. The world lost an amazing voice and a talented songwriter.

    While I don’t consider myself to have been a token woman (I actually come from a family and background where women predominate), the lyrics of the song resonate with me in a number of ways. I have felt the urge to rebel against my own identity and to besmirch the squeaky-clean behavior record I grew up with. Plus the lyrics are clever. And dark.

    The thematic content of “Bad” also bears a striking resemblance to Eartha Kitt’s classic “I want to be evil.” These two songs are members in my collection of “songs about women who seek to break out of their restrictive goody-goody roles and discover the joys of naughtiness.” Actually, so far, this collection (which could perhaps use renaming) has only these two items.

    As yet, 2 is the smallest quantity of members in a collection. Although perhaps I will decide at some point that 1 may be a sufficiently large set to merit being called a collection. Especially if I never expect to have additional members in that set. Hmm. “I would like to show you my extensive collection of nose.”