It's not just a slow, halting, uncomfortable ride, it's an adventure

Here at Washington Metrorail, we are always working to find new ways to make your commute more...um, interesting!

Because of our tireless efforts to keep your travel as delightfully unpredictable as possible, we've added a few special weekend attractions, like our Guess When The Next Train Is Coming game.  It's basically a more family-friendly version of our old classic Next Train Arrival Time? None of your Damned Business game.

This weekend-only (for now) offering is available to all Metro riders, except of course for the ones who are on buses because their station is closed for repairs.*  Are you among THAT lucky group?  Check back late in the week to find out, and good luck!

And don't worry, the regular weekday services will continue to be available.  Services like

Elevators out at the following four Metro stops, hope you aren't in a wheelchair

Try to find the Exit Gate that will accept your SmartCard, Go on We Dare You!  

Try to find the FareCard Machine that will actually take debit and credit cards, We Dare You!

Which Metro Station will have an actual employee sitting in his cubicle this week?

Not to mention the classic Metro benefits your parents once enjoyed and which have now been passed on to you, like the calorie-burning Stationary Escalators ("Don't Call Them Stairs, Stairs Don't Have Jagged Teeth!")  and the laugh-out-loud "radios must be used with headphones" signs (since the advent of earbuds, and the apparent willingness of Metrorail to pretend that earbuds are the equivalent of headphones even if everyone on the train can hear what the earbud-user is listening to, these really are quite funny.)  Some traditions are just too good to give up, don't you agree?

*Single-Tracking is all about Serving You Better, of course.  So shut the f--up and get on the bus, you ungrateful, car-less loser.

Wow, THIS got old fast!

Right around the fourth or fifth consecutive grunt-as-a-replacement-for-a-severely-defective-vocabulary, I hit the mute button rather than continuing to enjoy fake home movies featuring LeBron James enjoying quality time in his palace with his family.

Because really, who gives a flying damn?  LeBron James is massively rich.  LeBron James has a big house and a big driveway and a Humvee (several of each, I imagine) and a little kid and a wife and an electronic device which allows him to capture moments of his perfect existence.  Awesome for him.  What the hell any of this has to do with anything I'm supposed to buy is totally beyond me.

It's also totally beyond all the witless drooling YouTube glue-sniffers, who have conned themselves into thinking that they are seeing something genuine and warm that does not involve a lucrative marketing contract for a guy who really doesn't need any more money.  Hey, YouTube losers, here's a desperately needed clue: there are a whole lot of dads out there who do crap like this with their kids all the time, even when there ISN'T a professional camera crew hanging around.

I guess this woman's family is sick of Hamburger Helper?

1.  This "elimination" bit has been done to death over the past several years.  I've seen it used to pick out cars and (bizarrely) to convince a family to eat dinner at Golden Corral.  It's not only unoriginal, it's boring and played and really, really stupid.

2.  The only way this commercial ends logically is with the woman being confronted with absolutely no Disgusting Crap Frozen Pizza choices.  And with this woman either

A)  accepting that if she wants a "pizza her family will love" which is also reasonably good for them, she'll have to get off her lazy, shortcut-taking ass and buy the ingredients that will permit her to make the damn thing herself, in her own kitchen.  The entire time I was growing up, I was never once "treated" to a piece of formerly frozen pizza-shaped cardboard because my mother (who worked outside the home) regularly found the time to actually make wonderful homemade pizza.  For five kids.

Or

B)  exclaiming "fuck it, I did my best" and buying whatever nasty frozen monstrosity laughingly referred to as "pizza" is on sale that week.

Maybe I'm being cynical, but I kind of suspect this woman would go for Option B.  Because it would be nice to find a pizza "her family would love," but what she really wants is something that will shut them the hell up for another night or maybe even convince Hubby to take them out more often.  Maybe to Golden Corral.

Bo Knows how to move around- so why doesn't he?

Hey, Mr. Jackson?  If you really want to sell us on the idea that a bottle of sweet syrup which is basically just a substitute for coffee keeps you active, you might think about showing us images of you actually doing something other than looking out a window or sprawling on a chair while gazing at your Blackberry.  Because seriously, that's stuff that this non-Two Sport Superstar From the 80s can do in his sleep.

BTW, I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but once more won't hurt- you freaking idiot you could have been the greatest baseball player of all time why the HELL did you have to get greedy and insist on playing football too you MORON!

Ok, done.  I'm just angry because I was forced to watch this crap before each and every World Series highlight clip presented by MLB.com.  Which means I really hate the abuse heaped upon me by MLB.com, and am taking it out on Bo Jackson.

Imagine the hype if he ever actually WINS something

All of these commercials for the half-dozen companies which have inexplicably decided that Robert Griffin III is an icon despite absolutely no record of success in the NFL use the terms "great" and "elite" and "sensational," etc.  All of this hype for a guy who has QB'd in exactly one playoff game- which he lost .

Can someone explain this to me?

The vicious, depressing, and painfully familiar cycle of life, brought to you by Ameritrade

Jeff and Karen don't know it yet, but their lives as individual human beings are about to come to an end.

You see, Jeff and Karen are about to meet.  They'll be physically attracted to each other, they'll go out to dinner and have long, involved talks and gradually realize that they really, really like being together and don't even notice when hours have gone by.  They'll go to movies and take long walks in the park and when they aren't together, they'll think about each other a lot.

But then, because there's this thing called Society which has Expectations, they'll fuck it all up by getting married.  Then they'll get a house with a mortgage which they'll spend extra hours at work laboring to pay off.   Sex won't be fun anymore- it will be a chore and a duty and naturally Karen will start popping out children, because yes those Societal Expectations again.  Jeff will get crow's feet around his eyes staring at his laptop screen maneuvering money here and there, because he Must plan for being dead someday and leaving the fruits of his labor to that girl he used to really enjoy sleeping with and those kids.

Jeff and Karen won't be running off to the beach at a moment's notice- no more grabbing a bottle of wine out of the fridge and slipping into a park for a little slightly illegal but ever so much fun naughtiness, because there are those kids and, again, those Societal Expectations.  It's all so By the Book for Jeff and Karen, but that's ok because this is the way it's Supposed to Be.

Jeff and Karen have long since been rendered cold, and in the all-too-near future they will be rendered dead as well.  That's ok, though- they've had the required boy and girl who will grow up to have a few brief years of fun before becoming square pegs in square holes.  Buying houses.  Having kids.  Getting old.  Worrying about money.  And pretending that somehow this is all worthwhile, because after all, Society approves.

Congratulations, Jeff and Karen.  You represent all that is suffocating and noxious in a life rendered lifeless all too quickly.  Here's society's reward for you- a pat on the head, and another little nudge toward the abyss.

"Express Train." I'm still laughing at that part.

So, to sum up:

This kid gets an IM from his mom which reads "we need to talk."  This guy is so attached to his mom, he quickly types back the equivalent of a "wtf-ever, mom" brush-off.  Ok, this happens- sometimes my mother contacts me and I'm halfway out the door or in the middle of something very important, and I have to put her off for a bit.  But I've never put my mom on the back burner so I can play some dumb-ass video game.  Jerk.

Mom eventually gets his attention- by sending a photo of the kid's dog with the note "Boomer's not doing that well."  Ten seconds later this kid is heading to the airport so he can be at his dog's side.  Kind of sweet, except that it's been made very clear that if it were MOM who was "not doing that well," chances are this kid would still be playing his brain-dead Really You Need To Grow Out of This I Mean You Are On Your Own And Everything game while quietly cursing out Mom for continually interrupting him.

Because Boomer is vastly more important than Mom, we next see the kid waiting for the bus to take him to the airport so he can dash home and be with his dog.  He learns that his flight has been cancelled, so he does what anyone would do if he were an Inexplicably Independent Moron with the means to jump on planes and fly off to distant places at a moment's notice- he whips out his phone and asks the Magic Google "how do I get home?"

At this point, my suspension of disbelief has gone right off the cliff.  The credibility of this commercial has been stretched so far that it's snapped and left a welt on my face.  For a moment, I actually think that Google has responded with a matter-of-fact, "here's your route it's only 500 miles have fun" response- but no, it's informed him that there's an express train that can get him down the East Coast in no time.  Which instantly tells me that wherever this commercial is taking place, it sure as hell isn't the United States.  Unless "Train" translates to "Amtrak" and "Express" means "inside of 14 hours, unless it's raining."

I'm going to assume that this butthead gets back to his mother's home to comfort his dog, and mom reacts with "what the hell are you doing here? Jesus, you can't get home for Thanksgiving or Christmas or Mother's Day or my birthday, but I tell you that your dog is sick and you act like someone lit a fire under your ass?"

"I hope your electronic best friend got you hotel reservations, because I turned your room into a library.  And take your sick dog with you."