Catsandbeer.com

I just found something I wrote with (at the time) nowhere to put it as I traversed America’s railroads on an Amtrak 30-day pass after moving back to the US from Ecuador. Three years later, this website is now officially somewhere. Enjoy (or don’t):

Riding a train across and around these united states isn’t as fun as it sounds. In fact, it’s not fun at all, but then again, I guess it doesn’t really sound like it would be anyway.

The United States is really, really big and – you know what? – there’s basically nothing in it. I just heard our next stop is in New Mexico. I guess that means we finished up Arizona. Hooray?

The middle of our country, the so called "Great Plains" get all the fame of being full of fucking nothing and unfathomably boring. But here’s a news flash: Arizona? New Mexico? Dirt. And then there’s Texas: Jesus fucking Christ, you could fit all of the nothing of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma into the vacant hole that is Texas.

But apart from the great nothing that is going on outside the train, you also have the stimulus vacuum that is life inside. These trains are shenanigan and hijinks-free; there are absolutely no murder mysteries to solve.

Beer starts at $4.50 a can, and even if you had that kind of scratch to get loaded, what’s the point? The fantasy of 80 mph sex with a stranger here will go forever unfulfilled. I mean, there’s no one on these trains you’d even want to talk to let alone with whom you’d want to join genitalia, and that’s too bad because, really, the men’s changing room would be PERFECT for some late night boinking (it even has a little fold out love seat).

But keep it in your pants because, seriously, young models are not train goers. You basically have to be old, Mexican, or both to set foot on a train, and once you do, GOOD NIGHT (both demographics are pro sleepers). nope, you’d better be a Creationist and Nascar/country music enthusiast, pill popper (and not the fun kind) or unwed, undesirable mother of at least three screaming kids before you even think about riding the rails.

It’s said that only the boring are bored, but I’m not so sure about that. When I’m bored on the train (read: all the time), I open up the Sky Mall catalog (here called "Travel Mall") and add captions to the products (photo of a dog and a cat each in a flannel pet carrier looking just this side of suicide - "It’s like they want us to be gay”).

But train folk, I’m pretty sure they cure boredom by getting pregnant. And there is a logic to it – after all, it does give you plenty to do for nine months to 20+ years, and if you make them in bulk, you’re never without a baby pooping, a a kid yelling, or a preteen just beginning his/her clinical depression. I can’t imagine these people are having sex with each other for the pleasure of it, so it really must just be "something to do."

Well, here’s hoping that the movie of the night is Pirates of the Caribbean (again) and not Freaky Friday or Daddy Day Care (again and again).

Ah well, time to sign off and make the jacket models say racist stuff.