NPR and R&R Are Hardy Har

Listen to some extreme reporting.

A Three Hour Tour

Watch this from CBS News.

The Bus Buddies

From Business Week:

"The Bus Buddies are part of the fastest-growing group of work travelers in the country, people who rarely see their houses in daylight, leave home when their kids are still asleep, and mainline Red Bull just to stay awake. They're known as extreme commuters. They spend at least a month of their lives each year traveling a minimum of an hour-and-a-half to work and back, vs. the U.S. average of 50 minutes. Their ranks have jumped an astounding 95% since 1990, according to the Census Bureau, accounting for 3.4 million workers."

Extreme Commute = Bad Poetry

Twiced Keats And None The Better


I have lived two of Keats lives
And have yet to write anything but cheese
Like this my trivial Ode To A Sneeze

Stompin through a forest
Coatless I almost froze
I saw two creatures in the leaves
Wearing no clothes
One me. The other my nose.

Cut from my body
This hawk beak I loathed
I knew sadness no longer
Bye bye middle face toad

A Gogolian severance
I hoped not a dream
So long to the explosions
The never ending phlegm stream.

Drunk I awoke in W.C. Fields
Felt my huge schnoz
And the suffering it yields

Oh go away bulbous ruin
Karl Malden is dead
Haven’t you heard
My face is cottage cheese
And you a large curd.

Ooops. I feel a little tickle
Up there inside
Where an evil tiny man with a feather
Doth hide.

Like the cuckoo clock bird
He’s getting ready to strike
“Three points off the lee bow, Sir
She’s About To Blow!”
Too late to prepare for the
Inevitable heave
A glob of goo now inhabites my sleeve.

Extreme Commuting

I spend three hours each day on a bus going to and from work. My butt is calloused. My flu shot is current. And I read about a thousand pages a week.

Extreme commuting involves purchasing a good backpack, a sturdy digital player with several pairs of earbuds, a library card and the ability to tolerate all forms of humans being whatever it is they are being that day. Some are being naughty. Some are being smelly. Some are being rude. Some are being nude. The sum of it all is that some days you shut your eyes and summon up some southern sun splashed seaport.

I swipe and ride, a commuter program for state employees in Tennessee. It saves expensive Gore global guzzling gas, enables my reading addiction and forces me into being a social animal and not the isolated road rager I was when I was a lone driver.

Now I plunk myself into my cushioned seat aboard the RTA's 96X relax and ride.