2007-05-25
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I used to like trains. Back before I required sleep.
Trains No, I�m not talking about that awesome song by Porcupine Tree, but rather the ones that roll through my town every hour or so all fucking night long. It�s annoying in the winter, but the windows are closed then because it�s too goddamn cold outside to leave them open. The windows, of course, are double-paned too, which cuts down on the noise considerably. In spring, summer, and autumn though, the temperature outside in the middle of the night is usually very nice, and I like to leave the windows open to get the fresh, cool air into the house. Using the air conditioner is an option too, but it costs a lot to run. From about 11pm on, the trains come rolling through the town every 12 and a half seconds (read here as approx. once/hour), and blast that fucking annoying and loud horn for 15-20 seconds or so at every road crossing, of which there are 17. WAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! WAH! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!! All night long. Every. Fucking. Night. 17 times 20, as you well know, is almost SIX FUCKING MINUTES OF HORN PER HOUR! That�s roughly 10% of my sleep time shredded to stringy and dripping bits by those fucking railroad assholes. Now before you get on my shit for picking on the poor railroad engineers that are just doing their job because by law they have to blow the horn at every road crossing or they�ll get fined by the road crossing police and the railroad can�t afford it and the guy might lose his job and then he�ll have to take his half-toothless tramp wife named Trixie and their crack baby out of the trailer park and move back in with his parents and his mom doesn�t like Trixie so his home life might get really stressful and his stress would scare all of the fish away when he goes fishing with his dad and then his dad won�t like him anymore and he�ll start drinking MGD and hate his life and might fall asleep on the train or whatever, fuck that. I understand that there are laws, but you can�t tell me that these pricks don�t enjoying blasting that wailing banshee of a horn for longer than the time they�re supposed to, blasting it louder than they need to, and waking up everyone in town just because they have to work nights. There is a 20-second limit imposed in the law, but the law also states, for the benefit of the particularly sadistic engineers I�m sure, that they can break this 20-second limit whenever the hell they feel like it, provided that they exceed the limit in �good faith�. I�m assuming by this verbiage that the engineer can lay on the horn all the way through a town provided he tells someone that he saw a car or if he considers himself to be a god-fearing soul. The federal legislation dictates that they have to blast their horns at �highway-rail crossings�, which does not necessarily mean that they have to lay on the whistle at every dirt road, bike path, and coyote trail they cross, which is what these pricks do. Fuck them. And fuck the stupid Department of Transportation for making them do it, too!
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