Headline from the Boston Herald last week: Cambridge ‘yoga’ parking tickets have drivers in a twist
Because in yoga you do a lot of twisting you see.
Parking tickets messing with your inner tranquility? Try yoga!
That’s the latest New Age answer to modern aggravations from the city of Cambridge, where violation notices are now helpfully illustrated with a series of calming yoga poses.
But harried motorists are hardly chanting “om.”
"'I don’t think it’s working,' Hyunho Noh, 29, of Cambridge said yesterday, paying a $25 ticket featuring the 'citation salutation,' a play on yoga’s Sun Salutation. 'I don’t like it. There’s no way to like it,' he said." explaining what should have been really fucking obvious to anyone who thought this would help a single person in the world get over the fact they just got hit with the city's most effective douche-tax.
"So much for trying to introduce a little Tantric levity," the story continues. "Andrew Buote, 48, of Revere, meanwhile, was hung up on material concerns. 'Find out how much money it cost,' said Buote, toting a $95 ticket. 'That’s how much money they wasted.'" Which is true, but also probably the most coherent, expletive-lacking sentence anyone from Revere has ever uttered.
And because everyone loves puns, and by everyone I mean headline writers and no one else in the world, the Yoga Journal, which is apparently a thing that exists, chimed in with a little levity of their own, saying "The city of Cambridge has stretched its views on parking tickets." See what they did there?
This guy from some blog I just stumbled on summed up the situation pretty well: "Everybody knows that parking tickets are annoying and lame and stupid. But is there some way that they could be patronizing as well? Yes! Thanks to innovative thinking in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where parking tickets now include instructions for assuming stress-relieving yoga positions."
It only gets worse though. What if I told you it was all part of a public art project? Would cartoon steam shoot of your ears as you punched your laptop off the fucking desk?
I guess the premise is ok, in that momentarily distracting people when they're angry can help to alleviate dome-pressure, but that only works if you present them with something they actually want to see. If I got pulled over by a cop and and he handed me a stack of Tom Brady glossies, I'd be like, FUCK, I got pulled over. Wait, that's weird, why are you handing me these? Oh, look at his hair in this one... So on that level it makes some sort of odd sense. But who wants to look at yoga poses? People who drive cars don't do yoga, they lilt to wherever they need to go. Here's a couple more poses I think might be more appropriate to have handy when you get a parking ticket:
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3 comments:
Is there a yoga pose that helps me reach the trash barrel quicker?
"Which is true, but also probably the most coherent, expletive-lacking sentence anyone from Revere has ever uttered."
horf!
also, i might be interested in experimenting with that third alternative pose option.
Ha. Good old Revere, always good for a cheap gag.
Yeah, that one looks a lot less stressful. Don't tell your sister.
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