Metro Hates You

March 15, 2010

COMIC TALK
TRANSCRIPT
COMMENTS
Metro Hates You
Posted March 15, 2010 at 12:00 am
Junji Ito is the great horror manga-ka behind such creepy ass titles as Tomoe and Uzumaki. There are days when my commute to work feels like I've stepped into a Junji Ito horror manga, specifically Uzumaki. Volume 3 of the manga features dilapidated row houses filled with people that are so crowded together that their bodies have become intertwined. Yup, that's what it's like riding Washington DC's Metro to work every fucking morning.

The Metro system was designed to comfortably shuttle tourists from the surrounding DC suburbs into the heart of DC so that they could spend their money. The trains are designed for comfort. They're carpeted. They've got comfy couch seats. They're clean. No graffiti, no chewed gum, no rotting food, no weird smudges that appear to be living somehow. If you have friends who don't live here who have ever visited DC and used the Metro, they will tell you how nice and clean the system is. For tourists, the Metro works.

For those of us who work here, the Metro is a broken system. Metro wants you to think it's a fast, efficient way to get you to work in the city, but that's a horrible fucking lie. It's not meant to carry people to work. If it was, the car designs would look more like New York's subway cars, hard tile, seats against the walls, lots of room to herd people into the center. Metro cars are more like comfy living rooms, carpeted, with the most inefficient seat layout for a transport system. The cars are old and regularly break down in the tunnels causing massive delays. And since there are no service tracks to scoot those broken cars into to let working cars full of commuters to go by, if a train goes down your commute is completely fucked. If you work here, Metro fucking hates you. hates you wicked hard.

Not only is it inefficient and stupid, it is also unsafe, especially if you work for Metro. We have seen far too many Metro workers killed because of communication problems, safety systems in disrepair, and general ineptness. It's a wonder the workers have never gone on strike.

Ugh. I could go on and on and on about how bad Metro sucks, but there are blogs for that. Unsuck DC Metro tracks our frustration with the system we love to hate and DC superblog dcist follows our general disdain for Metro.

Alright, enough ranting.

Mini Contest!

Here's a quick mini contest. There are seven characters waiting on the platform along with Kane. If you can name all seven correctly, I'll send you a sketch of your favorite one out of the seven. Send your guesses to my email address (it's the contact link up there in the nav) with the subject "Metro Hates You Mini Contest." First correct answer wins a sketch!

UPDATE: We have a winner, winner, chicken dinner! Mathew Ling guessed correctly. From left to right we've got Black Jack, Astro Boy, Cammy, Hawk, Homer, Rorschache, and Logan. Thank you to all who emailed in your answers! And now I've gotta see this Ergo Proxy thing to see this Vincent guy.
PANEL 1
METRO ANNOUNCEMENT: Expect delays to Bethesda on the Red Line due to a situation between Bethesda and Medical Center stations. We apologize for the delay. Thank you for choosing Metro. And remember...
KANE: Metro fucking hates you...
PANEL 1
METRO ANNOUNCEMENT: Expect delays to Bethesda on the Red Line due to a situation between Bethesda and Medical Center stations. We apologize for the delay. Thank you for choosing Metro. And remember...
KANE: Metro fucking hates you...
Comments

Yellow Peril Blog
Posted December 24, 2020 at 01:15 pm

This video is sort of a subtweet about some art twitter discourse. But I wanted to respond in video form rather than in written form so that you wouldn't misinterpret my words. Also not linking the discourse directly because I don't want to dogpile on the inspiration for my thoughts. But here are three ideas that I wanted to share with artists for us to keep in our brains as we go into the new year.

Posted December 24, 2020 at 01:15 pm

This video is sort of a subtweet about some art twitter discourse. But I wanted to respond in video form rather than in written form so that you wouldn't misinterpret my words. Also not linking the discourse directly because I don't want to dogpile on the inspiration for my thoughts. But here are three ideas that I wanted to share with artists for us to keep in our brains as we go into the new year.