No Pants Subway Ride 2k9

It's a given, I think, that everything's better without pants. I just didn't realize how true that was until today. Not really.

Imagine you're riding the subway. Toronto's in particular, but it could just have easily been any other in the world. The normal routine drudges on until somebody, all of a sudden, walks onto the subway car without pants.



Generally a little disconcerting, I'd guess. Until at the next stop, a few more pants-less people nonchalantly stroll onto your subway car.



And then it really starts to get wierd. People keep trickling in from platforms all along the subway line - missing their pants - until your subway car is full of dozens of people going about their afternoon commute partially nude.



You ask one of them what the hell is going on. He tells you he forgot his pants at home; hell of a coincidence about the others, eh?

And as you ride North on the Yonge line, more and more people keep coming onto the subway car wearing nothing but their skivvies from the waist-down. The tan-less tide reaches a blinding crescendo of bare legs at Davisville station, and the next thing you know, they've all gotten off the train at Eglinton. You keep going along your route. They've turned around for the return trip downtown.


So what the hell was that?

Improv in Toronto. More specifically, the Toronto chapter of Improv Everywhere, the people responsible for the notorious Grand Central Freeze: hundreds of undercover IE "agents" froze in spot, forming a two-minute tableau that just generally confused the shit out of everyone.

The No Pants Subway Ride started in Improv Everwhere's city of birth, New York, in 2002. It grew over subsequent years, spreading across the world's metropolises like a bad strain of the clap at a good Catholic school.

Today was Toronto's second year of the NPSR, and hundreds of people gathered in Queen's Park to take part. We were divided into groups, and began our march to the Queen's Park subway stop.



En route to our pre-determined platforms, we took off our pants.

I got off at Wellesley with my pants in my bag, and waited for the second train that was to collect all the participants. Whereas the first train was witness to a few dozen people spontaneously taking off their pants in the subway car, the second saw only a successive tide of half-nude commuters piling on at each stop.

When we got to Eglinton Station, we turned around and went straight back downtown.


[I'm in this photo. Find me if you can!]

A bunch of us went to the College Street Golden Griddle afterward for pancakes to celebrate our victory. Then we went to the pub next door to celebrate the fact that we still weren't wearing pants.

And it was magical.

Of course, the photos are on Facebook.

Boom De Ah Da

My point? Nerdy girls are hot.

From the Huffington Post Commentariat

...I think that just about sums up my views on the matter. I'm strongly in favour of a two-state solution, provided that such a Palestinian state actually held peaceful coexistence as a goal. Unfortunately, when the governing party holds as part of its constitutional charter a clause to completely eradicate the nation of Israel, with everyone in it, I have trouble imagining that party acting in good faith towards long-term peace.

Israel, on the other hand, has shown - in deeds, not just in words - that it is willing to make real concessions when across a table from a viable peace partner. When Egyptian president Anwar Sadat offered a treaty in good faith, Israel ceded the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a peace accord - a piece of land at least 2 or 3 times larger than Israel itself, and containing most of the oil that was then under Israeli control.

Israel was willing to exchange to Egypt a huge amount of land and a moderate amount of natural resources because Egypt came to the bargaining table seeking peace in good faith.

Yet Israel wants to keep the Gaza Strip - a useless little wastelend, out of territorial greed? No, it's because it hasn't seen any reason to believe that a nascent Palestinian state wouldn't become a sovereign staging ground for more attacks against nearby Israeli towns.

The Palestinians would have a state already if their leaders showed a desire for a peaceful two-state solution. I agree completely with Benjamin Netanyahu on this point: "If the Palestinians would lay down their arms there would be peace. If the Israelis laid down their arms, there would be no Israel."

For peace, concessions cannot come from only one side.



---


Edit, 30 Dec 2008, 10:51am:

A Jerusalem Post article describes a higher statistic for civilian casualties than I'd previously quoted, with UN numbers as a source. I don't know what accounts for the difference in estimates quoted by the two sources (15 civilian casualties in the Wired article v. 64 in the JPost article), but the real number probably lies somewhere in between that four and eighteen percent.

It may be a simple matter of differences in who is considered a non-civilian: do you count someone involved in transporting or manufacturing Hamas rockets, or only those who have a gun in their hands?

Even if the count lies closer to the higher quoted number, my opinion has changed very little: keeping civilian casualties below even 18% when striking military targets embedded within an urban population shows fairly clearly that Israel is devoting significant attention and resources to ensuring that civilian casualties are minimized. Those who like to say that Israel is targeting civilians should probably rethink a few things.

JibJab - 2008 Year In Review

It's been a hell of a ride.

Bush Dodges Shoes Thrown by Iraqi Journalist

The guy's got quicker reflexes than I'd have given him credit for!

Virgin Mary Ignites Scandal in Playboy Appearance.

We all knew it was going to happen sooner or later; the little slut couldn't keep up that charade forever.

The Virgin Mary has sparked outrage in Catholic circles by appearing nude on the cover of Playboy Mexico, veiled only in a thin linen shroud.



Playboy has since apologized for the indiscretion, acknowledging a breach of contract: The Catholic Church holds all rights to The Virgin Mary, including but not limited to her likeness, publications, and album sales in perpetuity.

Still, there's a nativity scene that would sell.

Too bad Catholics can't masturbate.

Chill the fuck out

Yes we can

YES, WE DID!

That's all for now. I'm piss-drunk, ecstatic, and moving onto an army base tomorrow.

Bondage down under! (Crikey!)

Because I often find myself with vast tracts of time and no productive way to spend it, I sometimes check the back-links to my blog. The back-links (or track-backs, or whatever they're actually called) are the recorded entry point that linked someone to a page on Phaedron Rising.

Usually, it's something fairly innocuous, like residual interest from the bookstore bible-shuffle at Pharyngula or Tall Penguin, or some passing interest in Mr Smith Goes to Washington.

Until last week, my favourite referral was the search for "cooties sex" on Google Estonia. No more.

It seems that there's something strange afoot down in the land of dingoes and stingrays; seems some Aussie was in need of either some DIY bondage advice or a good lawyer, because he turned to the wisdom of Google's algorithm for an answer to his troubles.

A fun experiment to try at home: go to Google or Google Australia and enter as your query "having problems confining a housemate to his room" either with or without the quotation marks.

Look who's result #1! I should be flattered, but I don't deserve that accolade. A pair of handcuffs and a makeshift blindfold are the closest my repertoire ever comes to BDSM, and I shy away from using them without a safe word. Nonetheless, happy strapping to my new Australian "mate."

And remember. If the cuffs are soft and fuzzy, you're missing the point.

Not even three-fifths!

"Mr Rising, you're actually ineligible to cast a vote for Barack Obama."
...
"No, it's not a curtailment of your rights, Mr. Rising."
...
"Yes, but that doesn't extend to Canadians."
...
"Mr Rising, you don't get three-fifths of a vote."
...
"Mr. Rising, it's not because you're black."
...
"Because you're not black"
...
"I seriously doubt that you're black 'from the waist down,' Mr Rising."
...
"Please put your pants back on, Mr Rising. We're all very impressed."


My point is, the Man's keeping me down. You'd better cast votes for the two of us. And did you know that it's illegal to take off your pants at a voter registration kiosk?