Overheard

Guy No. 1: "How do you like the new SmartLink card?"
Guy No. 2: "I love it."

A SmartLink card is a plastic, credit-card-size train ticket that users refill by inserting it into a machine and providing payment. So, this guy was saying he loves a train ticket. What the fuck?

However, on the scale of intolerability, he pales in comparison to this lady, as reported by the Associated Press:

SAN ANTONIO — A woman charged with murdering her 3 1/2-week-old son used a knife and two swords to dismember the child and ate parts of his body, including his brain, before stabbing herself in the torso and slicing her own throat, police said Monday.

Or this guy:

CHINO HILLS, Calif. — San Bernardino County authorities say a Chino Hills man apparently killed his 7-year-old daughter and himself.

The bodies of 50-year-old Carl Jacobson and his daughter, Katie, were found around 9:30 p.m. Saturday by the man's wife when she returned home after visiting other relatives.

People are funny; one guy loves a train ticket, and some lady decapitates her baby. Next thing you know, some white singer, who used to be black, will be mourned as a victim and feted with a Staples Center gala.

They Can Have Their Cakes

Do people deliberately try to smell like urinal cakes, those porous-looking ostensible deodorizers found in men's bathrooms? I don't know if they're men or women, but if you ride public transportation enough, you're bound to encounter the aroma.
Women presumably wouldn't know what urinal cakes smell like, so they could catch a whiff of a similar fragrance, decide it's appealing and use it, even though it makes me inclined to piss. I don't know what would make men smell that way. Perhaps there's a black market for urinal cakes and people are concealing them in their pockets. If there is such a black market, I wonder if the hot-pink ones fetch a premium. I suppose there would be a pro rata system, since many of these urinal cakes would be used and partially eroded.
If people are deliberately making themselves smell this way, perhaps they should just do away with any pretense and wear them like medallions around their necks. It could start a trend and fortify urinal-cake makers.

North Jersey

North Jersey, as in New Jersey, not the Channel Islands, has a certain charm, as the apparent graveyard for aging tractor-trailers and repository for dumpsters, juxtaposed against green (at least in the summer) marshland. Graffiti is no small part of the aesthetic, a personal favorite being DETOX THE GHETTO, painted on an overpass's concrete abutment. Not to mention SAPIENS.
The color scheme is pleasing, ordinarily rust brown (the kind that results from actual oxidation) against the aforementioned greenery against a typically gray sky (which could be smokestack-related). And there's wildlife, or at least a mutt that sits outside of a warehouse door (rusted aluminum) and a forlorn pony who seems to have more or less adjusted to his ironbound sanctuary.
Occasionally the wetlands yield the concentric circles indicative of a rising fish. Kind of like life on Mars.
The vista can simultaneously yield ostensibly lush growth; airplanes; a cellphone tower; water; trucks; asphalt; billboards; unidentifiable, twisted, rusted-out heaps; power lines; barbed wires; railroad tracks; windowless buildings; pillars supporting invisible structures; and piles and piles and piles of concrete. This stretch of the so-called Northeast Corridor must be the concrete-slab capital of the world. Who is responsible for this shit?
No matter; with features so varied, only Yellowstone offers as much diversity.

Golf

Golf is my salvation. Hallelujah for all those jerk-offs out there playing that stupid game, because otherwise they might be clogging up the places where I like to fish.
And what's up with all these recreational golfers who ride in carts? Not only are you participating in something that can only loosely be defined as a sport, but you're not getting any fucking exercise. Get out and walk and carry your goddamned bag. At least those guys on TV walk, even if they do have someone else carry their clubs. And even if they do wear stupid-looking sweater vests. And the colors. And the patterns. And knickers.
Not like golfers are pretentious or anything.
At least golf courses are nice looking, and they sometimes forestall further sprawl. If only those pot-bellied fucks weren't out there spoiling the view.

Right-Hand Lane

Just a few thoughts about driving:
I know the cops don't give a shit, but slow the fuck down in residential areas.
I don't want to hear your fucking music.
Use your blinker, you douche bag, so that I don't have to read your mind and try to glean what you're doing.
Get off the phone, goddamnit. How many times do I have to say it? If i had your number, I'd call you to tell you to put the fucking phone down.
Go when the fucking light turns green,
I'm impressed, you have a Porsche. I'd be more impressed if you went when the light turned green...and got off the phone.
I'm stupefied when other drivers do something completely contrary to the rules of the road and then behave indignantly because I have the temerity to take issue with it.
If you're old, it's bad enough that you drive, but do you have to do it when you most get in the way of people who work and have limited opportunities to get shit done?
When you want to go five miles an hour under the speed limit, please get out of the left lane. That's the hammer-down lane. You copy? 10-4?
If you're going straight after the light turns green and you can do so from the left lane (there's nobody there waiting to turn left who would hold you up), why would you get in the right-hand lane and prevent me from going right on red? Because you're an inconsiderate jackass.

Bicycles

People who ride bicycles are assholes. On the asshole scale, they're only slightly less offensive than people who park right in front of the convenience-store door, where there are no parking spaces but an apparent entitlement exists granting them dispensation to occupy that real estate and inconvenience the people who park in designated spots.
In a similar vein, bicyclists evidently believe that they're entitled to the paths in the woods where I run. Come to think of it, they also appear to think that they are entitled to ride out in the middle of the fucking road. Either that or they think spandex is some kind of armor plating that will shield them from harm. Because they apparently feel entitled to wear such clothing, too, and is there any reason to other than it affords them protection and the opportunity to be an asshole? Especially in their yellow Lance Armstrong jerseys.
Now, my son rides a bike, and he's not an asshole. But, then again, we've taught him to be mannered and we haven't instilled a sense of entitlement into him because he can ride a bike. So he's like the exception that proves the rule, whatever that means. And he better not ever park his bike in front of the convenience-store door, where, obviously, he would have to watch out for the jerk-offs parking their cars there already.