Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

She Said Her Name Was Saffron, a filk by Marc Gunn, is briefly free at The FuMP.

You can find Serenity: The Other Half on Dark Horse Comics’ MySpace page. The browncoats at FireflyFans.net recommend that you read page 5 very carefully.

Although it seems like just my kind of T accident, I wasn’t on the B line last week when lightning struck it.

At first I thought this was some kind of programming joke, but it’s even funnier than that: Python Trek.

Thanks to Universal Hub for covering the squishing beat so I don’t have to. They inform me that today’s squishing was brought to you by the Needham line. Two pedestrians were walking on the tracks and one only is escaped alone to tell us what the frak they were doing walking on train tracks.

Lest anyone forget, in the eternal battle of man against train, the train wins.

Rare is the Green Line collision in which I am not somehow involved, but I managed to miss the fatal rear-ending on the D line today. There’s not much left of those trains, and considering how they just roasted a B train two weeks ago, it looks like the MBTA is going to have to send away to Breda for more rolling stock soon.

[Update:] The visiting Feds Eye Possible Cell Phone Use In MBTA Crash. They’re also eyeing some Smoking Cell Phones. Cell phone use was my favorite theory, though I also considered the rumors of recent signal problems on the D line. As I noted back when I got rear-ended on the Green line, rear-ending is always the rear-ender’s fault, even underground in the dark, never mind aboveground in broad daylight on a half-mile of straightaway while allegedly using a cell phone.

Also, Switchback has before-and-after pictures of car 3667, which looks like a Kinki Sharyo (Type 7). (CharlieBlog confirms that 3667 was a Type 7 I, and that the rear-ended car, 3703, was a newer Type 7 II, also totalled–with pictures.) I’m impressed that NETransit already lists both cars as wrecked.

Imagine if any of the cars had been a cheap, more squishable, more derailable Breda…

I figured I’d be like the Boston media and report the flaming B train as late as possible. The train jumped the tracks and knocked down some power lines on the last outbound run Tuesday night (technically, very early Wednesday morning).

Service on my lines was unaffected, but rumor has it that the E-line was disrupted, probably because there was no way to get trains from the trainyards around Cleveland Circle onto the B-line, and whatever trains were running from downtown to Washington Street Wednesday morning had to have come from somewhere.

In other late-breaking news, the Giant G3 Cube on Boylston opened tonight. I was thinking of going, but I chose dinner instead.

I’m not at all convinced that River’s more unusual speech patterns are a likely consequence of her illness. She seems to be channelling Spock as often as she’s spouting nursery rhymes; for example, in her reaction to Simon’s birthday (105 “Out of Gas”):

“Day” is a vestigial mode of time measurement based on solar cycles. It’s not applicable.

I didn’t get you anything.

Nevertheless it works for her, and I was particularly struck by the poetry of her apple bits speech. So here’s the whole scene (109 “War Stories”):

INT. SERENITY - SIMON’S ROOM - CONTINUOUS

The door slides open and Simon enters, seeing River sitting on a bunk.

SIMON
Whoa! [Mei-mei… - “little sister”…]

SIMON covers a shivering RIVER with a blanket.

SIMON
How you doing?

RIVER
I threw up.

SIMON
I’m sorry. It’s a side effect. We
just have to find the right treatment
for you. How do you feel now?

RIVER
Going… Going back like… apple bits,
coming back up. Chaos.

SIMON
But you felt okay this morning?

RIVER
Played with Kaylee.
(smiles)
Sun came out, and I walked on my feet
and heard with my ears. I ate the bits,
the bits stayed down, and I work. I
function like I’m a girl.
(upset)
I hate it because I know it’ll go away.
The sun goes dark and chaos has come
again. Bits. Fluids. What am I?!

SIMON
(hugs her)
You are my beautiful sister.

RIVER
(sniffling)
I threw up on your bed.

SIMON
(fuckity)
Yep. Definitely my sister.

The Urban Dictionary does not really clarify “fuckity” as a stage direction…

I spotted this feel-good non-squishing T story at Universal Hub: an MBTA employee saved a man from the all-squishing Red Line by stopping the trains and helping to retrieve him from the tracks. According to a BostonNOW blogger, one of the rescuers barely missed the third rail.

Sometime last week I added four more episode additions to the Firefly page. (Apparently you can watch Firefly free now on Hulu.)

If you’d like a little more existential angst and ennui than my fic can provide, try garfield minus garfield.