Namesake read

I'm a commuter now...actually, let me specify, I'm a driving commuter. Yup. I haven't done this since it was J$ and me in the Corolla (back in the 90s).

But it's kind of nice, you know, no major traff to contend with, I can hit up NPR there AND back and there are seat warmers.

In honor of my new commute, the instant road rage I feel and the singing-at-the-top-of-my-lungs I feel I'm allowed to do, I give you this awesome New Yorker article from 2007, aptly named: There and Back Again: The Soul of a Commuter, by Nick Paumgarten.

I expected it to be just a little read, it felt that way starting out, but it turns out its a fantastically entertaining investigative piece on the art and scarring pit falls of The Commute. Be it public trans, car pools or an endless landscape of bumpers, the commute is a sacred thorn in our side. It's funny, it's interesting, it keeps you reading paragraph after scrolling paragraph. This is damn good writing.

Just so I can get your tush tingly with excitement here are a few of my favorite lines:

"The driver's seat is a lonely place. People tend to behave in their cars as though they are alone in the room. Road rage is one symptom of this; on the street or on the train, people don't generally walk around calling each other assholes."

"You could drive to work without your pants on and no one would know."

"The smaller the triangle, the happier the human, as long as there is social interaction to be had. In that kind of life, you have a small refrigerator, because you can get to the store quickly and often. By this logic, the bigger the refrigerator, the lonelier the soul."

"Atlanta is perhaps the purest specimen of a vexed commuter town, a big-fridge paradise."

xoL