friday mania!

[spatch]

I put two plastic coffee lids on my coffee mug this morning but only one was open. Then I was very confused when I tried to take a sip. Don't do that.

First off, your picture of the day:

A little bank humor here, folks.
No school like the old school.

I see that ITA, one of the few techie companies that isn't all biotech these days, has been putting up new employment ads on the T. I'm not sure if I like the direction of these new ads. The old ones featured those funky brainteaser puzzles, you know, the ones that were perfect for staring at, bleary-eyed, at 7 in the morning. The ads that said "How many six-digit prime numbers do not contain an 8?" or "Write a computer program on the back of your Metro that will take the statistical averages from the last five years of air travel and determine the probability that the next flight from O'Hare to LAX will have at least one piece of misrouted luggage; bonus points if you can determine whether or not that missing luggage will be a golf bag" or "Fill in the grid with numbers from 1 to 9, such that each row and column contains each number from 1 to 9 only once..." no, wait. At any rate, the ads all made the same point: "If you can do this crazy kinda stuff, especially at 7 in the morning, then maybe you can work for us."

These new ads don't have those kinds of puzzles. They don't say "Hey, work for us and solve crazy puzzles all day." What they do seem to say is "Hey, work for us and spend all day staring intently at models of airplanes" because that's what the people in the ads are doing. As I usually travel without my trusty Sharpie, I was unable to give these people suitable thought bubble captions. But I came up with a few good ones, which you are free to use should you feel so inclined:

• "Hey, the people inside there look like ants."
• "And what is the deal with airline food, anyway?"
• "Your puny jet engines are no match for my ATOMIC BREATH and LASER EYES PCHEW PCHEW PCHEW!" (note: you will also need to draw LASER EYES on this one for full effect. And maybe some paratroopers and helicopters and some ninjas on the ground fighting tanks.)
• "Write an algorithm that will calculate a funny caption for this picture."

Ok I got nothin else I'm tired you take it from here.

Comments

[redtheblue.livejournal.com]

caveat: "Write an algorithm that will calculate a funny caption for this picture that doesn't involve snakes."

[spatch]

oooh, good call, good call.

[tcb.livejournal.com]

*snarf*

and spatch, I love your questions :)

and if you don't mind, I may anonymously repost your post internally as I'm sure quite a few here would get a kick out of your reaction to the new campaign ;)

[spatch]

Muah. Feel free!

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

Is that a frightening caricature of Danny Kaye?

[spatch]

I'm not sure who it's supposed to be, but if you haven't seen The Triplets of Belleville you must run right out NOW and get it.

This fellow is the bandleader during a musical number that includes caricatures of Fred Astaire, Django Reinhardt and Josephine Baker, so he may very well have been based on a real person too. He does have a bit of a Danny Kaye vibe to him, doesn't he? But he was just a wee bit beyond the Jazz Age...

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

Oh, righto, I didn't recognise him (don't worry, I own the dvd). Gosh, I wonder who he is meant to be?

[modpixie.livejournal.com]

best caricature in belleville rendezvous: the random appearance by glenn gould.

[ckd]

What's even more amusing than having tourists wind up at Quincy Center looking for Quincy Market?

The missed opportunity to see hordes of out-of-towner sports fans trying to get to the Shawmut Center and winding up in Dorchester. Damn you, Fleet! Why did you have to rename it before it opened?

Also, any bets on how long it will take the MBTA to get rid of all the signs and announcements telling people that the ICA is at the Hynes T stop? (Note: I have already picked NEVER EVER HA HA HA so that is taken.)

[spatch]

Heresy! Hynes/ICA will always be known as Hynes/ICA. Said as one word: heinzeyeseeay. Much like Kendallemmeyetee or Charlesemmgeeaitch.

However, the T was quick to remove the Citizens branding from the State Street station after that horrid attempt at station sponsorship back around 1998 or 1999, so you never know. Then again, the T of 8 years ago was an entirely different beast altogether.

[(Anonymous)]

Feh!

I still call Hynes/ICA by its real name, Auditorium.

[spatch]

Go to bed, old man!

Auditorium lives in the Boston of Scollay Square, Eggleston and Harvard-Holyoke.

[modpixie.livejournal.com]

so what does the "auditorium" in the hynes stop mean?!

[ron_newman]

Before it was the Hynes Convention Center, it was the Hynes Auditorium. (And before that, it was the 'War Memorial Auditorium', a name I'm glad they got rid of.)

[krank-kether.livejournal.com]

So you use this map then, don't you?

[mistergoat.livejournal.com]

Wow. Where did you find that, when is it from, and how can I see other maps from that time? Obviously, it's from before they tore down the elevated, but tell me more!

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

What was amusing was that the sponsorship happened shortly after Citizens bought the (by that point, very small and being phased out, but the employees all had accounts) consumer banking division of State Street.

[subbes]

OMG, shark on Puerto Rico. Awesome non-sequitur icon.

[davidglasser.livejournal.com]

man, even livejournal is reminding me that i have to finish this damn program

[antiquated-tory.livejournal.com]

It sounds like the T has gone through as many changes as the Prague Metro, and it was built by the Soviets as a sort of way to make up for invading the country in '68 (apology not accepted). Not sure if anyone still calls Andel station 'Moskva.'