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Things to Hate on a Wednesday

Considering a move to New Jersey? Here are some aspects of the interstate commute that you can anticipate loathing:

*The man (or woman, I actually don't see gender patterns here) who feels entitled, before 7 AM, to have a lengthy phone call on an otherwise-silent train car. This man (or woman) will almost certainly end the call by reaching for his (or her) headphones, which will be turned up too loud, so that you can hear just a fraction of, say, Rihanna's "Please Don't Stop the Music," but not an appealing fraction, just, like, a small insect whine that doesn't end and doesn't end and doesn't end.

*The man (this is usually a man) who feels entitled to interrupt the flow of foot traffic out of the train car at Hoboken, but who then does not extend the same courtesy to other passengers.

*The poster advertising "the Felician Way": Felician is apparently a small college in New Jersey, and the poster features an older white man pontificating, and there's a look of real self-satisfaction in his eyes, and it's hard not to suspect that he's a douchebag.

*The conductor, who will fail to tell you what stop you're at, so that you find yourself in a kind of Hitchcockian dreamscape, in and out of slumber, wondering if you've just missed the place where you need to be, "need" because your employer has said you're expected here--the conductor who will do this, or who will instead shout the names of the stops with such zeal that you actually feel alarmed each time the voice comes on, it's like an audio equivalent of the jolt you get every time the old and dusty NJT brakes fail to function (which is basically once per minute).

*The slovenly man who boards at South Orange and doesn't get his hair cut frequently enough. It's probably unhealthy and unfair to judge a guy for unappealing hair--you've had your own bad hair months--but, at 6 AM, it's hard to resist. It's hard not to see the hair as a micro-aggression.

I'm sure that's not everything I hate about the trip, but that's quite a few things, at least. Happy Wednesday.

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