Friday, December 12, 2008

An open letter to the Victorian Transport Minister, Lynne Kosky.

Dear Cde. Kosky,

Look I hate to trouble you, what with that Myki thingo you’re wrestling with (and by-the-way, how piss-funny was it when you were demonstrating how simple Myki was to use and the front of the machine fell off. And all the television cameras were there. You do know that the tellies will continue to use that clip every time your name is mentioned from now until the sun expands into a yellow giant and vaporises the earth, don’t you?).

Anyway.

My beef concerns those new, yellow trams. The tone produced when the stop button is pressed sounds alarmingly like the opening chords of “Heaven (must be there)” by the Eurogliders.

I didn’t fight against fascism to have my ears assaulted by bad ‘80s synth-pop every time I jump on the tram. I suggest something more suitable, like “Love will tear us apart’ by Joy Division.

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

Hoping you’re keeping well.

Fraternal regards,

Cde. Ramon Insertnamehere.

22 comments:

Lewd Bob said...

You mean this serpentine sequence of complexity?

"Oooooh! Ooh I want to find a better place
Oooooh! Ooh I'm searching for a better place

Oooooh! Ooh I'm tired of living in the sand
Oooooh! Ooh I'm searching for a better land

Heaven, must be there-ere
Well, it's just got to be there-ere
I've never - never seen Eden
I don't wanna live in this place

Oooooh! Ooh I'm always trying to escape
Oooooh! Ooh I never know which road to take

Heaven, must be there-ere
Well, it's just got to be there-ere
I've never, never seen Eden
I don't wanna live in this place

Heaven, must be there-ere
Well, it's just got to be there-ere
I've never, never seen Eden
I don't wanna live in this place

Live in this place

Live in this place, this place

Oooooh! Ooh I want to find a better place
Oooooh! Ooh I'm searching for a better place

Heaven, must be there-ere
Well, it's just got to be there-ere
I've never, never seen Eden
I don't wanna live in this place (don't wanna live)

Heaven, must be there-ere
Well, it's just got to be there-ere (must be there-ere)
I've never, never seen Eden
I don't wanna live in this place

Heaven, must be there-ere
Well, it's just got to be there-ere (must be there-ere)
I've never, never seen Eden
I don't wanna live in this place."

*

(I'll be avoiding those yellow trams...I'd rather hum 'Lovely Rita' while picturing Miss Helena naked).

Ramon Insertnamehere said...

That's the one, Bob.

Rhyming "escape" with "road to take".

Almost Proustian.

catlick said...

Thank you Bob. I now have a particularly virulent mind worm.

Perseus said...

I liked their other hit, 'Without You'. It's on my I-Tunes, and 'Mean Mr. Mustard' is not.

Ramon Insertnamehere said...

They had two hits, Pers?

Blimey!

Perseus said...

They had three from memory. There was also 'We Will Together' which was a sugary sweet appalling love song, but the lead singer chick (Grace Someone?) got nekkid in the film clip and we saw her nipples and everything. I had the 45. Got it at Ringwood Brashs.

squib said...

Ramon I think you could be a bit more grateful. At least your trams have you know rails and cables and tramlike accessories. Here, all we've got is buses pretending to be trams

Fremantle tram

Lewd Bob said...

Ah, Ringwood Brashs! Place of much nostalgia.

I bought my first LP there (1981 The Sound - featuring 'Counting the Beat') my first 45 (The Police - Every Little Thing She Does), saw Paul 'Fish' Salmon there on frequent occasions and pashed a girl from the adjacent Donut King against the '2 for 1 cassettes' discount table.

Ramon Insertnamehere said...

That's just weird and wrong, squib.

Stubbadub said...

Ramon at least you Victorians are getting some form of cashless and easy to use ticketing system for your trains. Sydney is still stuck in the dark ages as far as ticketing and fares are concerned. It used to shit me buying a weekly because I didn’t ever use every day I paid for due to site visits, lifts home etc, but if I didn’t buy a weekly I ran the risk of spending the ticket money before the end of the week.

WitchOne said...

It's got to be better than those ridiculous scratchie card things we used to have!

My Dad drove buses back then and they used those tickets as their dart board in the depo!

Lewd Bob said...

The Sydney system is superior in that it charges you depending on how far you actually travel. On Melbourne trains you could buy a 2 hour ticket for $3.50 which will get you travel to the next station 100 metres down the track or 40 stations across the other side of the city, as long as it's in the same zone. But if you travel from one zone to another, even if it's just a handful of stations that takes 10 minutes, you have to pay, I dunno, probably at least a fiver.

Ramon Insertnamehere said...

Hey squib.

All the gunzels over here keep raving about public transport in Perth.

What's your take on that?

squib said...

Ramon

You're asking the right person because did you know I was an inaugural member of our train network's Customer Service Council? This involved a great deal of train talk and mini quiches, both of which were splendid. Now, what would you like to know?

Perseus said...

I lived in Athens for quite a while and their system was BRILLIANT.

A ticket was 75c. You got on a bus/tram/train, validated the ticket, and then that was it.

If you got off 100m down the road at the next stop, so be it. If you got off on the other side of the city an hour later, so be it.

What they did was just work out a reasonable generic price, and made that the price of all tickets and you could buy them on every street corner.

Meanwhile, their taxis were cheap as chips too.

The result? Barely a traffic jam in what is a city the population size of melbourne but crammed into about a quarter the space.

Ramon Insertnamehere said...

Oh, frequency of services, over-crowding, fare structure, that sort of thing.

squib said...

The peak trains service is too overcrowded. Depending where you live on the line, you may not be able to get on the train at all in the morning. If you want to catch a train when no one else wants to then you will find it to be a very efficient, fairly priced, and modern train system

Ramon Insertnamehere said...

Many thanks squib.

The media here have been banging on and on about trains being too crowded in peak hour.

Well, durr.

I've been using public transport in Melbourne lo these many years and in my opinion, it's never been better.

shitbmxrider said...

Bad 80's Synth-pop?

Ramon, I take great offence at that! There is no such thing!

Anonymous said...

Perhaps Sheena Easton's Mroning Train would have been a more appropriate jingle to use?

Ramon Insertnamehere said...

Oddly enough Boogey, Connex, the train company down here, did use Sheena Easton's Morning Train as a jingle at one stage.

It was shit and made people hate them even more.

Anonymous said...

Let me guess - they got Paul Kelly to sing it, right?