If you're from NYC and take the train even semi-regularly, that should stand out like a sore thumb. The typeface is completely wrong and the terminal station on the left is in Queens while the train is going, ostensibly, to Brooklyn (plus the train reflection is all weird and swoopy). This is how it is supposed to -- and did -- look earlier in the episode):

My guess? They had footage from inside of the train station and either cut corners or simply forgot to take footage from the other side and decided to 'shop it, or whatever the video-editing equivalent is.

Little did they know that I would blow the lid right off their little secret two years after it had any relevance to anyone.

Related posts:

1. Dream Wave
2. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
3. Vector In On That Guy

I can’t guess to its origins; ostensibly they want to entice New Yorkers into reading literature by posting an admittedly fascinating opening line to an admittedly fascinating story. There are a lot of these quote-based ads on the train, usually funded by large corporations as a public good service. It is thanks to them that I now have, irreversibly, Pound’s “In A Station of the Metro” drilled into my brain. That one, along with Williams’ “This is Just to Say” (it’s the one about the plums) have been sitting in the adspace for years.

Anyway. Kafka? Really? I can only assume this is the work of a spited literature grad, forced to write copy for the MTA. I mean, I hope that’s how it came to be. I’d rather not consider, for instance, that not a single individual, at any point during the greenlighting of the thing, spoke up and mentioned something about how inappropriately dour it was, siccing that line on unwary, tired and hung-over commuters on their way to jobs they despise.

So, in an open statement to the MTA, I would like to advertise my own services for being the guy who selects terrible inappropriate opening lines to novels to advertise on the train. I’ve brought along some examples.

Unfortunately, the remainder of the post was claimed by a combination of a server crash and my poor backup habits. Sorry, folks.

Related posts:

1. Movable Type Authority
2. Taking Different Roads