THE CTA CONSPIRACY

by PhD McGee

You might think that day after day of train delays and reroutes on the CTA are a result of shoddy management or insufficient attention to preventive maintenance. But after yesterday, when two (2) lines were not running through the Loop during rush hour, I started to suspect a bigger, far more insidious, reason for the CTA's incessant breakdowns: Colors.

When the train lines were named after destinations, were there this many disruptions in service? Possibly. But researching that would destroy my theory so I'm not going to pursue it. My theory is this: Imagine you are a train car. You are the Brown Line. But you don't feel like brown. Every fiber in your squeaky, metal being tells you that you are not brown. You feel more tan or sometimes chartreuse.

Your misnomer causes you great stress. You become crabby. You bitch a lot. You start to wallow in your crabby crabtopolis. This causes the rails on which you run to dislike and eventually hate you. Finally, the rails upon which you roll and upon which you dump your crabby crabtopolis do what any self respecting rails would do: They implode.

Fires ensue, tunnels fill with smoke, lines close down. If you were named Ravenswood like you used to be, would you be the catalyst for this colossal collapse of service? No. No you would not.

The other theory I'm working on is the Republicans. It's just like these guys to try to undermine the public transportation system in a predominantly Democratic city. For the record, I also believe the Republicans are behind the odd and passionate need Rex Grossman has for tossing interceptions.