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

[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…

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.

“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…

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

I was going to post a whole entry on your-bitter-is-my-poignant, but then I actually watched “Heart of Gold.” Now I’m somewhat in the Jade camp. Back on Buffy, it was easier to dismiss the self-destructive behavior of the characters as general teen stupidity (or alternately, soulless fiend stupidity). That doesn’t really fly with Firefly, except possibly for Simon and Kaylee.

I find Inara in particular a very difficult character to understand (and therefore to write). She reminds me of Sam, whose feelings were also inscrutable, although from a technical perspective she’s probably closer to T’Pol in her inscrutable superiority. I had indifferent luck fanfixing Sam into a coherent character, and I’m not sure I can do any better with Inara.

On the bright side, the Sci-Fi channel is having an 11-hour Firefly marathon on Sunday. I thought that meant they’d skip the unaired episodes, but they’re skipping some from the middle of the series (such as it was, in the DVD order) instead. So if you, too, want to be depressed, you can see “Heart of Gold” at 5pm Eastern time.

Also the tab navigation has been rearranged to get all the Trek together under one tab (from the cryptically trekky MIS, TOS, and VOY), making room for the exciting Firefly tab.

After all that, I didn’t have the energy to put up my Firefly fic. (Yes, I wrote some Firefly fic. It’s all Jade’s fault.) I think that will require a little more CSS. Let me know if something breaks in your browser—it all looks peachy to me.