In the year 10 BDC (Before Debit Cards) I had visited a friend in the Midwest. I was living in Atlanta and decided that, rather than paying to park at Hartsfield Airport, I could stretch my meager budget by taking the oft-laughed-at MARTA train. (Motto: "Ride MARTA, it's SMARTA." Laugh all you want, MARTA drops you off inside the airport terminal, unlike NYC, where none of the three airports can say that.)

I'd lived large on the small amount I brought, so large in fact, that I didn't realize I had only 60 cents left. And I still had to buy a token for the train ride home. I opened and reopened every pocket in my purse, every zipper in my wallet in that frantic way when you come to the understanding that, since you don't have magic ruby slippers, you will be stuck in the airport forever like a bad Tom Hanks movie and you don't even have a Russian accent.

MARTA was cash-only, and since this was also the year 5 BCP (Before Cell Phones), my options were limited. I could call a friend collect, but it was late and I already felt lame enough. Since the currency exchange accepted credit cards, I gave serious thought to converting 20 dollars into Japanese yen and then converting it back to dollars to get the cash. (Ingenious, no?) But soon after, a grandfatherly gentleman in a business suit asked if I could use some help and I poured out my pitiful story. He gave me the change and I never forgot his kindness.

It was just last week a woman at Grand Army Plaza had the same anxious and pathetic look on her face. In lieu of ruby slippers, she needed a swipe, but she was going about it all wrong.

Those of us who ride the subway frequently have an unlimited Metrocard. For one monthly fee, you can ride as often as you like. The catch is that you can only swipe your Metrocard once every 15 minutes or so. As with the rules of any program, people quickly learn the loopholes — things not possible with the old token system. Let's say you're an entrepreneur (e.g., you sell batteries in the subway cars). If you pay two dollars to get on the train, you'd probably have to sell five batteries just to break even. Now if you ask someone coming through the turnstiles for a swipe of his unlimited Metrocard, no skin off his back and you're making a profit from battery number one.

But the tired woman standing outside the Grand Army Plaza turnstiles was clearly new at the game, asking people who were on their way to the platform, instead of people on their way out. She said, "Excuse me. Could you…"

Before I realized she was talking to me, I'd already swiped my card and was through the turnstile. No going back then. Waiting 15 minutes to swipe again for her is really beyond my rush-hour benevolence. I looked at her drooping face and did what I thought would help. I pointed to the Chinese lady with the batteries who, speaking no English, had just finagled a swipe from a black teenage girl coming out. The woman nodded, now on the right track.

Moral of the story: Since you don't have ruby slippers, always buy your ticket home before you leave.

Jacquelin Cangro

According to a Thomson Reuters survey, most Americans are willing to pay for healthcare reform.

"The telephone survey of 3,003 U.S. adults conducted by Thomson Reuters (TRI.N) (TRI.TO) found 63 percent willing to pay for healthcare reform, though most also said they are happy with their own doctors, insurance plans and out-of-pocket costs."

But the conservatives have been saying the opposite all along — that people are okay with the present system and don't want it fixed. They are lying.

And how about the loonies who are comparing healthcare reform to a way to have "death panels" and "rationed care"? The crazy one up in Alaska uttered some sentences on her Facebook page and the lunatics accepted as fact. What is even more baffling is that some people are comparing the proposed reform to the Nazis.

Here is Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission:

"I want to put it to you bluntly. What they are attempting to do in healthcare, particularly in treating the elderly, is not something like what the Nazis did. It is precisely what the Nazis did."

And this man leads a group on ethics and liberty? He is better suited to be the Alaskan crazy one's propaganda director. Since he knows the Nazis so well, he is suited to do the job.

The way people like Land, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Steele have polluted the healthcare reform debate, "scam" is a light word to describe it. I prefer to use another word; it starts with a "t" and rhymes with "reason."

Bhumika Ghimire

 According to the The Huffington Post:

"Rush Limbaugh couldn't resist trying to connect the brutal beating of one student by another on a school bus to President Obama, using it as an example of how Obama is somehow causing racism throughout the U.S."

Only in Lambaugh's stinky books is it racism when students fight on seating choice. Local police clearly say that the fight was not racially motivated, but our dear one is not going to believe the police. He sees a white boy getting beaten up and he sees Obama's hand behind the incident.

I am not saying that the incident should not receive any attention. I am a parent, and to hear the kids are getting into serious fights in a school bus is scary, but let us keep things in perspective. Rush Limbaugh is a nut.It is funny to see how low can this man go. There is no bottom to this pit; it keeps expanding like his gut.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/16/rush-limbaugh-obamas-amer_n_288371.html

""

Bhumika Ghimire

Why would he not support a public option that will allow millions to have access to health care? What does Michael Steele have against a plan that will give the poor and the needy a chance for a healthier life? I know why — because he and his party and those blue dog Democrats have sold their souls to the devil named "insurance industry."

They do not want a sensible healthcare reform bill. All they want is to kill any prospect for reform so that their masters in the insurance industry will continue to fund their campaigns.

It is clear: the GOP deserves to be lead by an incredily arrogant man. After all, the party itself is so out of touch with reality on healthcare crises.

Bhumika Ghimire

Since her unfortunate introduction to the rest of the country last summer (thanks a lot, McCain!), Sarah Palin has proven herself to be many things: corrupt, incapable of debate, completely ignorant of foreign affairs,  hypocrite (charging that Obama "palled around with terrorists while she and her husband belonged to a political group that once asked Iran for help in seceding from the U.S.), a liar (by claiming that her husband had never been an AIP member when he was — even McCain staff knew that), unwilling to take advice, and unable to either form or convey a simple thought. After reading her editorial in The Wall Street Journal today, I'm convinced that she has just plain lost her mind. In this embarrassing opinion piece (opinion indeed), she writes:

…is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by — dare I say it — death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans.

Let me explain that last sentence — even though legal and media fact checkers (and anyone who has ever read the healthcare bill) have repeatedly shown that death panels were a myth, a blatant lie, Palin doesn't need those pesky facts to get in her way. She said it, Republicans regurgitated it, and fear-ridden, ill-informed Americans believed it. Hence, it must be true! 
She just can't let it go. The term "death panels" must play in her mind like a loop. She must cling to it, mentally, like a reassuring mantra.

Or maybe it makes her feel special. Much like when she told the McCain staff that she loved saying "palling around with terrorists," she just loves saying "death panels." Because when she does, people pay attention to her. Like they did when she was Miss Wasilla. Like they did when she was a fancy tee-vee sports reporter. Like the salespeople at Nordstrom did when she had $180,000 to spend.

But why is anyone listening anymore? And, more importantly, the part that scares me — what future vicious, damaging fabrications will her followers believe?

Jennifer Leblanc

•  With 19 children, the Duggars will be using resources roughly 17 times more than an average family. Who cares about global warming or climate change or depleting natural resources? Let God figure that out.
• Michelle Duggar has already spent 12 years of her life pregnant. How about her health and well being? No forget that — they have to obey God and have as many kids as possible. No qualms putting the mother's health and well being of the kids at risk.
• And let us not forget the 18 kids that are already here. They have to enjoy not getting enough personal time and attention from parents too busy handling a mini-township.

Yes, let us be happy for Michelle Duggar. She is having her 19th child, and the only question people can think of asking is if there is a plan for more.

Bhumika Ghimire

Guy #1: …so that's why our ancestors ran from animals, unless they were going to eat them.

Guy # 2: Every day is a battle, man.

– Manhattan-bound 2 train, morning rush hour

Jacquelin Cangro

It has been a hectic week. As usual, I have left my university essay for the last week, after wasting a month in the hope that the essay would just disappear. I've now learned that procrastination is not something that can be banished after 12 years of school and four years of university — it just clings onto you like a soaking wet t-shirt. I now have three days to write a 20-page essay that I have not yet started. Therefore, instead of spilling out my thoughts on society, I wrote out the beginning of a short story that I have been working on. It's titled Outcast.

Outcast

I couldn't do it. The darkness penetrated my headlights as the rain whipped the windscreen, threatening to shatter my only shield: Hope eroding into nothingness. Again and again.  Vertigo. I envisaged the barrage of rain merging with my anguish, feeding it as my fingers trembled over the steel-cold trigger. I couldn't do it.

"TURN RIGHT!" my Mercedes screamed at me.

Below, a torrent raged on either side of the bridge. I looked into the review mirror; my drug-varnished eyes were swollen from the incessant crying. Pause. A blankness consumed all thought as I spun the steering wheel to the right, driving bonnet first into the river.

I sat calmly as water rushed into the car and gradually asphyxiated me. Nothing.

I held the metal tube to my head and pulled the trigger. Nothing.

I felt the bullet embed itself snugly in my cerebrum while I watched everything turn red. Nothing.

I waited for a while, then swam out, dried myself and walked back to the shed; ticking off "be empathetic" on my mental to-do list as I walked.

It was the usual Monday morning:

"What's on TV?" I asked ritually, knowing already that there was nothing that I would like. I blinked at the screen: reality show…soapie…reality show…reality show….soapie…movie…Hmmm…I lodged myself into the couch; it was going to be a long day.

"Why do you keep asking me that?" Jack snapped, six point five seconds too late. It was his morning tantrum, a vice that, as much as he tried, he could not rectify. I didn't mind it much, but, to him, it seemed to be the Great Wall of China between him and his ultimate goal of godhead. He blamed it on his 16-hour memory — medically, it did not exist but was something that his parents had told him as a kid and that he had continued to believe religiously. Of course I never corrected him. I found it entertaining watching him remembering to forget. 

If Jack had to describe his life he would compare it to that ancient game of snakes and ladders:  every day he progressed up the board and every morning he landed on a snake and was sent back home. Jack was not the embodiment of righteousness, but he tried, and his sins were forgiven away due to the innate good of his actions. Except in the mornings, when he remembered that he didn't remember and cursed away all traces of his chant-induced tranquil demeanour.

"WHERE ARE MY F***ING SOCKS?"

Of course, it was never a surprise when they went missing; Weasel tended to be quite explicit when he stole things. He didn't know how to steal. Gerald had attempted teaching it to him, but Weasel was an absolute klutz — an intelligent idiot whose only hope of survival was Jack's socks.  He was the type of person that one could never stay angry with. He had the constant look of a puppy chewing on inflated water boots and an inherent drive to please people. It made me want to kick him and chase him out into the cold just to watch him whimper. I was waiting for the right day. Monday was never the right day.

"F***ING HELL, WHERE IS WEASEL?!"

I returned to the TV screen, wondering whether I should remind him of his quest for spiritual fulfillment before he went too far. I hated the responsibility of making such decisions. In truth I didn't actually care about what people did or how they did it; the concept of good had become subjective, and not even I had the power to entrench it in a single-sentence definition.

Hardly anyone listened to that voice of reason at the back of their heads any more. They all needed direct responses: "signs." It was such an inconvenience. Even when I did provide them with hints, they brushed it aside as mere coincidences. People had forgotten how to freefallingly believe; they had to see and feel in scientific jargon before doing anything. My existence had equated to that of the dinosaurs who had aimlessly roamed themselves into extinction.

I heard Jack stampede down the stairs, his clenched fists punching the railings as his morning tirade bottled itself in his throat, waiting to explode. I decided to intervene before he entered the room: "Probably stoned in the middle of nowhere. Would you like a cup of coffee?" It was my voice of masked reason.

Tharuna Devchand