you know what's truly atrocious in this country? it's not our incompetent administration, not the skyrocketing poverty levels, not the ever-worsening environmental standards. it's the train service. the fucking train service.

i started thinking about this yesterday while i was planning my extended weekend trip to nyc and boston. you see, i have some very dear friends from italy in those two places - the lovely natania, who's studying education at bank street at columbia in nyc, and carla, cynthia, and claire in boston, who are, respectively, teaching, doing marketing, and studying landscape architecture at harvard. and i haven't seen many of them in over a year. so we were well past due for some sort of reunione.

at first i was just going to fly in and out of boston, but then i realized i had enough time to take of a couple of days and visit natania in new york. literally, the only times i've ever been to nyc were to see radiohead concerts, so i haven't seen anything, really, of the city, except i'm very well acquainted with radio city music hall. i figured i could leave thursday evening, spend friday evening wandering around the city, and natania and i could train it up to boston friday night, ensuring a weekend full of wine, debauchery, and canoli.

except when i checked on prices on amtrak.com to go to nyc and/or boston, and found out that I CANNOT GET A ROUNDTRIP TICKET FOR UNDER $300 THAT DOESN'T TAKE 143 HOURS!!!

i have to admit that i've been completely spoiled by the train system in italy, which is absolutely amazing. contrary to what you might have heard about italian efficiency and organization, the trains are almost always on time, are pleasant and clean even in 2nd class, and also, you're traipsing about the italian countryside, so it's usually a pretty beautiful ride. now, i know nothing about any sort of government regulations that might be hindering awesome train service in america (or at least regionalized train service, especially up and down the east coast), but if the freaking italians can do it, we should be able to.

an example: from washington, d.c. to new york city, it's about 200 miles. this is comparable to the distance between the southern cities of naples and bari. on amtrak, a one-way second class ticket with an unreserved seat will run you $74 and takes about three hours. a ticket from naples to bari does take a bit longer, but you can purchase a 3 1/2 hour 2nd class ticket for $33.

now, from d.c. to boston, i think the distance is about 450 miles. an amtrak ticket between the two cities gose for $90 in its cheapest incarnation, and it'll take you almost 8 hours to get there. the distance is equivalent to the mileage between trieste and rome, can get there in a little over 7 hours, and costs only $57.

obviously, the fact that amtrak sucks and is expensive isn't really news to anyone, but after living in a country where i was able to hop on a train at a moment's notice and hit up city after wonderful city every weekend -- well. it's disappointing.

but i've found a semi-answer to my transportation woes: the ghetto chinatown buses, which are going to have to be my italian train substitute for now. i can get up to nyc for $15, then from nyc to boston for another $15, which isn't bad at all. of course, i'll be watching fantastic vistas like the new jersey turnpike and endless miles of medians instead of rolling tuscan hills or the jagged cliffs of the riviera, but it's a small price to pay to see le mie amiche belle.

sometimes, i find it amusing how much my time spent "at work" has actually become my 8 hours a day spent "managing catherine's life and all non-work-related details."

for example, my work was my marathon fundraising center for a month or two; all emails, letters, and planning were done from my desk, with my computer used to print forms, my phone used to make all sorts of calls to bars, friends and vendors, begging letters and information sent through the company mail (and i never even charged my personal account). i colored in fundraising signs in an empty office and sold raffle tickets to most of my coworkers.

when i was looking for a house over the summer, every detail of the search was conducted from the office. i spent hours browsing craigslist, washington city paper and the post classifieds; i sent countless emails to prospective landlords and filled in my work number as the place they could best reach me.

work is also my social center; of late i have planned my trip to boston in a couple of weeks, my villa trip to italy in the spring, tommy's and my four-year anniversary present to each other, and many a happy hour or weekend outing.

my next big project is doing my grad school applications, and already that's taking precedence over my "work" as well. my personal statement is saved to my work computer's desktop; i'm printing out sheets and sheets of supplemental forms from the department printer; it's like a fricking grad school command center headquarters thing.

the plus side to managing my entire life from work is that i constantly look busy and like i'm doing something important - and i am busy, and doing something important. but it's just not, um, what i should actually be doing. and it's gotten to the point where i'm *extremely* annoyed if i actually have substantial work to do. because DON'T THEY KNOW I HAVE TO RUN MY LIFE?

anyway, i've come to the conclusion that i could actually run a small business from my desk if i so choose. any ideas? stuff i've come up with: italian vacation planner; professional bush hater; blog consultant; piner-after of amazing-looking recipes; or bored editorial assistant in the pubs department.

Looks like the new Q & Not U is out. Based on hearing it live, I'm a little wary of their new stuff. Hopefully that's due to my own lack of familiarity with it. Regardless of the new material's failure to grab me immediately, the excellent Different Damage certainly earned its follow-up some attention.

Whether or not you share that opinion, don't miss Pitchfork's almost entirely incoherent review of the new album. Reviewer Nick Sylvester seems to have liked it, but writes like a chimpanzee throwing darts at a thesaurus. By way of illustration, allow me to present his concluding sentence: "Q & Not U is increasingly supple on Power, but hardly nomadic". This guy must have gotten killed on the SAT antonym section.