In the absence of anything interesting to talk about, why don't I post some ranting filler content that I wrote on my handheld a few days ago?
For the past few weeks, I've noticed that the MBTA conductors have, strangely, become several orders of magnitudes more, should I say, "enthusiastic." As I'm writing this, I'm on the Red Line, and the conductor has overridden the automated stop announcements altogether and instead substituted her almost ecstatic-sounding voice: "Now, Approaching, JFK/uMass! Please gather all of your personal belongings! Doors, opening on the left!! Commuter Rail service and local bus connections! You are our eyes and ears, alert a T official if you see something suspicious. This is a Brrrraintree train!!"
I've been trying to think of some reasons that the sudden mood swing from dreary to excessively happy may have occurred. Seeing that everyone has started doing it all at once, I can be pretty assured that it was some suggestion made by the MBTA higher-ups that prompted this. As for reasons? My best guess would be that it's caused by the recent decrease in ridership caused by the few Green Line collisions within the past year. The only problem is, those collisions were caused by the conductors not paying attention (in particular, they were text messaging while driving), and the need to 'entertain' the riders, for lack of a better word, only keeps their attention that much further away from the tracks.
It's unlikely that they got a substantial pay raise or similar, as the MBTA is something like $1.6bn in debt. I also doubt that working conditions have dramatically improved, as they were recently considering giving the T Police semi-automatic M16s (for non-Bostonians, the public transit system here is known as the "T", and it has its own police force called the T Police). Does anybody have some other ideas, or am I just being too cynical?