Thursday, August 07, 2008
MTA Anti-Groping FTW!
For the Win my bunnies.
Yesterday’s news reported that the MTA is launching their Anti-Groping Campaign, which will include thousands of posters urging subway passengers to report witnessing or experiencing unwanted groping, grinding, poking, petting, squeezing, licking, exposing.... to an MTA representative.
As you may know, this campaign almost didn’t happen, and some of us were upset about that. I wrote to the Community Affairs rep at the MTA, as encouraged by Holla Back NYC. Today he wrote me back. When I replied to thank him, he wrote back again, saying that he really did believe in this, that they really do care about the safety and dignity of their customers. I wrote back again, he wrote back again. He’s a real person, and it’s a wonderful world when we’re all real people.
This is his first email response:
Dear Ms. Eaton:
Please be assured that the MTA is in total agreement with your comments on this anti-social and illegal activity, which castes a blight on our transit system and our customers. We are actively working on a public awareness campaign, which coupled with undercover NYPD surveillance should yield noticeable results. We take this problem very seriously and if you encounter or witness any such behavior, please report it immediately to an MTA employee or feel free to contact me directly at
Your comments are duly noted and fully appreciated.
Sincerely,
Douglas R. Sussman
Director
Community Affairs
Not wanting to completely delude myself, I wonder how much public opinion made a difference in the life of this campaign. Some, at least. And I hope that awareness and undercover agents make a real difference. We can be skeptical and think that undercover officers are a myth, or too scarce. Could be. But if every passenger in the system saw themselves a plain-clothes citizen on lookout - for pregnant women needing seats, for old people, kids, tired looking physical laborers (that guy coated in drywall dust needs your seat more, he just won’t ask) lost tourists… gropers… then we can all be like Spiderman.... or something....
yay.
i do heart nyc.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Not Like Anybody's Getting Hurt
Still President George Walker Bush — His Not Yet Legacy: Language.
What do words really matter? Jon Stewart knows.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Re-Up
In quivering anticipating for mintJelly’s redesign and rejiggering, I’ve begun the task of going back to 2003, categorizing and tagging every post. (There are stragglers from when this site was built with Movable Type, and then I got lazy about using categories at all, one thing that will change.)
Sounds like a heinous amount of tedium, but in all honesty (granted, i’m not on my 100th or anything) I’m enjoying this traipse through time. It’s nice to know that before CuteOverload existed, I was already writing things like so:
Maybe i need to draw a photo to convery how FAR they all are. Even the VP’s in their offices didn’t mind. poo on that! grrr hiss phhffft raerrrr *swats with paw*
Yep, hypercute animal expressions with unfulfilled threats of multimedia. Some things don’t change.
The curious thing is I’m not reading these old posts feeling embarrassed or smug with my wonderfulness. I’m reading them and thinking you’re wonderful — for ever reading, for being awesome to me, for commenting. Thank you for finding or linking to me, for playing nice with the bunnies. I want to give you presents. It gives me delightful warm fuzzies, and even prevents ax murders.
Far more than you know.
Rare Books Resurrected
CNET has lovely photos of the world’s rarest books.
The British Library is using an awesome tool called Turning the Pages to make extremely rare and precious books available to the public. A choice selection has already been scanned — like the notebook of Leonardo DaVinci, the original edition of Alice in Wonderland, Jane Austin’s early work in her own handwriting.
It gives me a tremendous feeling of reassurance in the world. How else will we prove to the alien overlords that humans can sometimes be more than myopic, murderous roaches?
