This could happen on any metropolitan light-rail system, but it's a nice boy-meets-girl story. This is my favourite moment in the piece (except for the second-to-last paragraph, of course):

More announcements crackled over the train's speakers. The doors opened. A ballet repeated every 20 minutes in train stations everywhere else in the world began. The platform was filled with the crisscross of passengers from one side to the other. Having perfected my mad dash over the years, I found my usual seat empty (the two-seater facing forward) and settled into my routine: plop bag on empty seat to the left, Ease down into the seat so that knees touch the back of the seat in front of me creating a table to rest my news paper.

Some anti-war posters: my favourites are the ones of Presidents Bush and Hussein, their visages pixelated, with the caption "as clear as his motives?". (The one of Hussein is a little incongruent in an anti-war campaign: doesn't that poster, if isolated from the rest, tend to paint Saddam as the bad guy?)

I'm still not convinced it's "about" oil, since it would be hell of a lot cheaper to remove the sanctions, allow Hussein to brutalize its people while we buy oil at market price, rather than spend billions to fight a war to produce oil which will be sold at...you guessed it...market prices. (There is a better-argued piece that, economically, fighting a war doesn't make sense available.) But I don't think anybody disputes the connection to oil in this campaign. That's not really a problem worth pointing out. What does need explaining, at least for me—and I consider myself a fairly smart person, but can somebody explain to me (using the email form on the side) what the connection to this war and/or the country of Iraq and fast-food companies is? I count at least 4 posters that refer to fast-food companies and/or their products. What, fighting this war will give them access to cheaper cow meat and potatoes?

And as for this poster (while beautifully designed, really), I'm not sure I equate the KKK with Hamas (how many suicide murderers do you know wear the white shroud; no, really, how many people have been murdered by the KKK in the past, say, year, as compared to Hamas?) nor do I equate the Marines with a multi-national company's manager (the former is literally trained to kill, while the former is trained to conduct business; any killing that's done is at best an indirect result of anything the manager does, through taxes—taxes you pay as well—and general moral support, etc.).

And the comparison with George W. Bush with Adolf Hitler is absolutely ludicrous. Stop it. Now.

But, and I say this with the upmost sincerity, there are some talented graphic desingers out there. [via Tina]