neverbeencool

Oh, MAX.

Just yesterday, I was this close to giving up on this whole blogging thing altogether when, on the train ride home, you pulled me back from the edge with this beautiful PSA poster:

TriMet thinks all black men are suspicious?

I love it.  Love love love it!

You have a city that’s 78% white in a country that loves to assume all minorities are criminals…  and you don’t think that maybe it might not be the best idea to show the picture of a black dude up on the sign that’s encouraging you to call 911 when you see something suspicious?  Nobody on the marketing team thought to themselves “Gee, aren’t we sorta implying that black dude = suspicious with this poster”?  So wonderful.

The observant locals among you might also notice the top of the “Blue Line” sign in the above shot.  Those same locals might also recall that Casa de Stanley is in “downtown” Vancouver and that I take the Yellow Line out from the office.  (For you non-Portlanders, the Blue Line trains run east out of downtown PDX, while the Yellow heads north).  Due to some apparent technical difficulties, half the signs on this particular train said it was a Blue Line while the other half said Yellow.

And judging by the 18 million conversations I overheard during the trip, about half the people on that train were guided by the wrong signs, ending up in north Portland crack houses instead of their usual Gresham-based freelance pharmacies.

Thankfully, though, I didn’t have to listen to the complaining junkies during the entire trip.  No, friends, I had a different bit of in-flight entertainment, thanks to the extremely gay man sitting under the Suspicious Black Man sign, a man who blabbed away to more people on his cell phone during the 20 minute ride than I’ve met in my adult life, immediately speed-dialing the next poor sucker in his contact list after one of those rare moments when he’d shut the fuck up long enough for his victim to squeeze in an excuse to get off the phone.

Best part about it was when I heard his conversation about how he was recently outed to his grandmother.  HEEEEE-larious.  The thought of Granny learning that Junior is a bottom kills me.

Plus, this man was uber-queeny, like to the point where you wonder how Granny could possibly NOT know that he was gay.  If she was living in denial about it for that long, I wonder what lengths they had to go to to convince her?  Again, comedy gold.  I keep envisioning the family showing her a Wyckyd Sceptre-esque sex tape of Junior’s typical Saturday night.

Anyway.

Thanks to the MAX, this blog gets a stay of execution.  For now.