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The Monorailist

Ramayana, Monorailayana

The Monorailist | 2006-01-27.2500 LMT | Monorail Danger | Lost Worlds | Technology

According to the Ramayana, around 1.75 million years ago a bridge was built from mainland India across the sea to Sri Lanka. This feat of engineering was accomplished by the vanara architect Nala with the help of an army of monkeys, chief among them Hanuman, so that Lord Rama, prince of Ayodhya and avatar of Krishna, could save his wife, Sita, from the clutches of the island's dastardly, ten-mustachioed demon-ruler, Ravana.

While conventional Indologists theorize that this bridge was merely a walking path, I am certain that careful reading of the epic shows that the bridge was in fact India's first monorail line -- perhaps the grandest the world has ever witnessed.

NASA satellites have documented the bridge's remains: a chain of shoals of unnatural formation -- variably called Rama's Bridge, Nala's Bridge, or, in the West, Adam's Bridge. However, there is an interesting discrepancy; while these limestone shoals sit securely on the sea floor, tradition describes the bridge being made of "floating stones". Some scholars wildly infer that the shoals must have been formed later with the sinking of the presumably buoyant stones, but offer no mechanism for this transformation. They are like blind men unable to identify an elephant by its dissimilar parts. A true synthesis comes only with the realization that the shoals and the "floating stones" represent two different aspects of the same structure -- pillar footings and an elevated monorail track.

Consider the Monorail, with its track gliding through the air like a gentle breeze solidified, held aloft on slender pillars that hardly inconvenience the ground below. Is there any better description for this graceful, elevated state than to say the track is floating? I think not. Clearly, the chroniclers of India's history, faced with the awe-inspiring splendor of that majestic monorail stretching insouciantly Ceylonward, could not have described the rock that made up its track any other way than as "floating stones".

Read the epic with eyes open to the monorailistic possibilities and more details come into focus. Behold Nala's Monorail floating over the sea on pillars made of whole trees, some of them still bearing blossoms, uprooted by the monkey army and planted on shoals newly formed with elephant-sized boulders torn from the mountains by the most powerful of the vanara and plunged into waters tumulted with their alacritous monkey business. Five days! Five days was all it took the army of monkeys -- heroes all -- to build 30 miles of monorail track. Oh! If only Seattle had such a bold visionary as Nala!

(Some skeptics -- no doubt fearful of the coming Monorail Awakening and the massive social transformation it will bring -- will desperately protest that the bridge, described as being 10 yojanas or 80 miles wide, could not have been a monorail. But the same sources claim it was 100 yojanas or 800 miles long when we know the crossing to be only 30 miles. Obviously, exuberance for such an exalted structure has led to an exaggeration of the measurements over time. Do not attempt to explain away the reality of ancient Indian monorail technology with these untrustworthy figures!)

After the monorail line was built, Rama and his younger brother Lakshmana are said to have rode across it on the backs of Hanuman and Angada. As Sugriva, King of the Vanara, tells Rama: "These monkeys can hold both of you while flying in the sky." A clear reference to the elevated nature of the bridge, to be sure, but what are we to make of this? Was this a monorail track without monorail cars? Was it merely an elevated path for monkey porters? No.

We know from the epic that the vanara employed "mechanical contrivances" or "engines" to transport the largest boulders to the sea, so they had the technology to produce a monorail car. As Hanuman and Angada were instrumental in the endeavor to reach Ravana, what better tribute than to name the newly crafted monorail cars in their honor. Thus Rama rode in the foremost monorail car Hanuman, not on its monkey namesake -- a distinction that become understandably confused over time. Mind you, this doesn't lessen Hanuman's bhakti, for he did much in the service of Rama, but I think Rama would find traveling in the sublime, transcendental luxury that only a monorail can provide more befitting of him than riding on the back of a monkey, no matter how loyal and noble the monkey may be.

Having established the antiquity of monorail technology in India, I say: Let Mr. Zapato continue his tired tirades against the Monorail! Let him try to lead the good people of India away from their deserved place among the Monorailized Nations of the World! He will fail -- he already has failed! For you see, the Monorail is the warp woven through the very fabric of Indian culture; an intrinsic part of her national heritage, though today only dimly remembered. India is the homeland of Monorailism and the cycle of history shall be completed with the Monorail's rebirth in Chennai.

Lastly, an interesting note: Lava, the name of the Malaysian consulting firm behind the Chennai monorail deal, is also the name of one of Rama's two sons, both reunited with Rama after being born to Sita in monastic banishment. How fitting that a company bearing the name of one who would not have been conceived had it not been for Nala's monorailular ingenuity should be helping to return the Monorail to her ancestral home, reuniting the Past with the Future.

The Monorailist

India Has The Monorail!

The Monorailist | 2006-01-12.2270 LMT | Monorail Danger | Cascadia | Politics

News from the East! Chennai will be the first city in India to be monorailized!

The Tamil Nadu Government today announced it will implement the Monorail Rapid Transport System to reduce traffic congestion in Chennai city, making it the first in the country to have such a system.

Congratulations, and welcome to the Future! The concept of the Monorail, still largely unfamiliar to most Indians, was explained to Chennaites by News Today:

Monorail, the single-track upraised train service, is popular in many advanced countries (Japan, Malaysia, Australia, USA, to name a few).

This charmingly naïve tautology -- for to be advanced necessarily means embracing the monorail -- shows that India is finally awakening herself to Monorail Consciousness. And sure enough that consciousness will spread as two billion eyes open to the possibilities of the monorail; ND also reports that West Bengal, Karnataka, and Punjab are expected to follow Chennai's bold lead.

What effect will this have on tensions between India and Pakistan, who are planning their own monorail in Lahore? Will a common monorailular cause -- tying together the subcontinent in a glorious ribbon of unity made, and made of, concrete -- bring these two bitter adversaries together? I am certain the monorail holds forth to mankind the prospect for global unification -- uniting the divergent rails of social discord into one common path of agreeance -- and this could be the beginning.

But what of us? What of Seattle and the rest of Cascadia? Are we to outsource the Monorail Revolution? Will we be left below, to fend for ourselves on the cold, unforgiving streets, molested by biker gangs unguided by the rails of law and surrounded by the accumulating detritus of our failed technologies as India and others pass over us in luxurious comfort into humanity's destiny? We must not let this be our fate! We must get back on track! A dream derailed is a dream denied!

With Seattle going on it's 25th consecutive day of rain, could this not be a sign that we have disembarked at the wrong station? Need I point out that monorails, held high aloft the lapping waves of the flooded streets, are not hampered by such deluges?

While my primary concern is with the Elevationment of Humanity, this setback has affected me personally. The closure of the Seattle Monorail following that suspicious accident -- I suspect there is more going on than just pilot error and that Mr. Zapato has information he is withholding -- has left me stranded in my apartment since November.

Unable to reach the West Lake Center food court, I am living off of canned goods and what meager scraps I can come by. I would order take-out, but the local delivery boys have black-listed me since I mocked their primitive automobiles and bicycles. My neighbors have suggested I use the busses, but that is not an option. Once one has been elevated on a concrete beam of hope high enough to touch the very robe-hems of the Gods, one cannot -- no, will not! -- go back to those debased forms of transportation which one had transcended.

I have faith that the monorail will one day run again, but the situation seems as if it will only get worse before it will get better. Please, send fresh supplies and monorail technicians!

The Monorailist

Sink Faster, Dour Ship! The Future Is Rising!

The Monorailist | 2005-10-21.3800 LMT | Politics | Monorail Danger

Land! Land is what we need!

And land we shall finally have. The courts have recognized the rightful authority of the Seattle Monorail Project, saying that it may use eminent domain to condemn the "Sinking Ship" parking garage in Pioneer Square to make way for a much needed monorail station.

The Domain of the Monorail is most eminent indeed. Preeminent, in fact! If our monorailular destiny is to be made manifest -- as it must if there is to be any hope for the Elevationment of Humanity -- then the impediments of the past ought justly be stricken down so that the concrete tendrils of Lady Monorail may spread to all lands and take root in every neighborhood. I say: Let there be a pullulation of monorail stations! Parking garages be condemned!

Fear not, gentle Luddite motorists; the final plunge of the Sinking Ship will be no true loss. Parking shall be pointless in our monorailed future, as cars will have gone the way of the horse and buggy, and meter maids shall go begging on street corners for their precious coins. Take heart, for every end is a new beginning. The ghosts of the Seattle Hotel, long tormented by the noxious Cult of the Automobile, shall finally be put to rest in the luxurious temple of Righteous Monorailism, where in their peaceful slumber they will watch Humanity finally soar free twenty feet above the Earth.

I must admit disappointment at the leadership of the SMP for not being bold enough to exercise Section 8 and liberate Seattle, nevertheless the current problems are a momentary setback. The Monorail Project will push onward! While the new proposed line is shorter than previously planned, it will still let my fellow monorailists travel farther than ever before. And once the Self-Evident Truth of the Monorail is before the public, with the anti-monorail forces unable to deny it, the line will only grow.

Ever since my decision as a young boy to never travel by any nonmonorailular means, I have been somewhat limited in where I could go, a sacrifice I have gladly made for this most noble of causes. Yes, the Pacific Science Center and Westlake Center have served me well -- with their abundant shopping, dining, and science educational options -- but progress beckons. Oh, what brave new world lies beyond Westlake and the Space Needle? What strange people exist in those far-off lands? In due time, we shall find out, and we shall bring with us the gift of the Monorail.

The Monorailist

Monorail Liberation Is At Hand!

The Monorailist | 2005-08-18.3740 LMT | Politics | Monorail Danger

The Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) is an Independent Transportation Authority established by the Will of the People with a mandate to build, own, operate, and maintain a city-wide monorail system. It is not subject to the authority of City Government -- which is why Mayor Nickels has taken the unprecedented and underhanded tactic of blackmailing the Project with the threat of construction permit rejection.

Pursuant to RCW 35.95A.050 §8, the SMP has the authority to "exercise all other powers necessary and appropriate to carry out its responsibilities." Section 8 must now be exercised.

The time for patient negotiation has ended and calmer heads must step aside for those with the courage and vision to reify our collective dreams with all due alacrity. Therefore, I call upon the SMP Board and its new interim executive director John Haley Jr. to seize the office of the Mayor and assume control of the city of Seattle.

I do not issue this call lightly; this is a necessary and appropriate step for the SMP to carry out the mandate given to it by the People. We cannot -- must not -- allow anything to stand in the way of Monorailular Progress.

This is only the first step on our path to the Future. Everywhere there are monorails, we must assume our rightful control lest those small-minded Luddites who seek to keep Mankind shackled to our surface-traveling past abuse their positions of power in vain attempts to destroy our species' only hope to reach Elevationment.

But we must not stop at Seattle, or Las Vegas, or Jakarta. No, we must press onward, ever onward, and extend the lines into lands as yet untouched by the concrete embrace of the monorail. We must bring the Freemasonry of Efficient Transportation -- the Brotherhood of the Monorail -- to those living in ignorance and fear.

And when they ask Where do you come from? What are you? we will answer thusly: "Pax Mundi. Monorails over the World." Call us Monorailmen if you like. For we are the natural trustees of Civilization when everything else has failed.

This is how I conceive our plan of operations: Settle, organize, advance. This zone, then that. At last monorails over the whole world and the New World begins -- the World of the Monorailmen and a new start for Mankind.

The Monorailist

Movie Review: Batman Begins

The Monorailist | 2005-06-18.8290 LMT | Entertainment | Monorail Danger

Batman Begins isn't so much a Hollywood summer blockbuster as a Hate Crime against the Future.

[SPOILERS]

The first act seemed innocent enough. We are thrust into the story of Bruce Wayne's tumble into the dark cave of fear and hate -- precipitated respectively by a traumatic childhood bat-attack and his guilt over his parents' murder by a mugger that resulted from his chiropteran fears. It begins, without so much as opening credits, in the midst of his Dantean trip into the underworld of crime, searching for the Ways of Wrongdoers and the means to stop them, and leads to his fiery rebirth from the Himalayan hideout of the League of Shadows as a Dark Avenger against Crime.


Batman costume ironically on display in the Sky Church in the EMP, through which the Monorail traverses.

But all this Sturm und Drang is just a façade, cobbled together from well-tread comicbook plots and backstory outlines, for director Christopher Nolan's real agenda: anti-monorail agitprop.

The gleaming monorail system that runs through Gotham in Bruce Wayne's childhood flashbacks -- made stereotypically retro in design by the art director to suggest it belongs to a future passed -- is at the center of both the city -- its rails spoke out from the hub of Wayne Tower -- and the film. It is showcased during a pivotal scene in which Bruce's father explains to him the troubles of Gotham. We learn that the monorail was built by him as a symbol of Hope and Unity for a city faltering on the verge of Poverty and Despair. This portentous scene takes place during a Wayne family trip to the opera that will result in the parental deaths at the heart of the Batman mythos. Here we see the monorail as grim Charon, ferrying the Waynes to their doom.

Years later, after Bruce Wayne's return to Gotham as the Batman, the monorail has become a symbol of degradation, covered in graffiti and sparsely occupied by muggers and Mafia hitmen. The propaganda message here is clear: Monorails are a False Hope and city planners would do well to reject them as a means to Urban Renewal.

But this isn't the final depth to which Nolan's propaganda will sink.

We eventually learn that the monorail is to become a tool of the League of Shadows, lead by immortal archvillain Ra's Al Ghul, to destroy Gotham by using it as a transport for a microwave weapon that will vaporize the water in the pipes that run beneath the monorail line, unleashing the fear-inducing psychotropic drug that the League has surreptitiously poisoned Gotham's water supply with, thereby hurling the city into chaos. So in the end, the plot is this: Only by destroying the monorail can Gotham be saved. If we were to believe the filmmakers, monorails attract terrorists and ninjas, lead to Madness, and need to be demolished for any hope of Salvation.

(I think it's fair to say that the anti-monorail motives of the filmmakers were shaped by their love of SUVs, as evidenced by the worshipful portrayal of the tank-like Batmobile. Upon seeing the Batmobile, Police Sergeant Gordon enthuses: "I got to get me one of these!" He later goes on to use the Batmobile to blow up the monorail. Not exactly subtle.)

As further evidence that the whole film was thrown together for the sole purpose of attacking monorails, consider the poorly thought-out doomsday scheme of the League of Shadows. If the microwave weapon were capable of vaporizing the Gotham City water supply, why did it not also vaporize the aqueous portions of the Gothamites? Why did the eyeballs of those in the Narrows not explode when their vitreous liquid was made gaseous by the microwaves? The only possibly explanation -- apart from an abject lack of understanding of Science on the part of the writers well beyond the norm for even the most curmudgeonly Ludditic anti-monorailist -- is that the filmmakers started with the idea that the monorail was to be destroyed and only later came up with a slapdash reason why. Their limited imaginations, typical of those who dismiss monorails, were simply not up to the task.

As I left the IMAX theater at the Pacific Science Center and took the Seattle Monorail back to my apartment, I was left shaking my head in befuddlement as to why a prestigious Center of Science would agree to show such an unscientific, hateful film so out of touch with the self-evident wonders of the Monorail so near to them. Is not the goal of Science a truer understanding of our World for the Embetterment of Mankind? How is that goal served by attacking what is not only the most significant discovery of Modern Science -- the Principle of Monorailular Transit -- but also the only means of lifting Humanity up out of its congestion, both traffic and moral, and into the sky so that we may ride swiftly and confidently into our Destined Future? It is not served at all by that, I say! Rest assured that I will be writing a strongly worded letter of complaint to the Science Center's Ombudsman.

As for Batman Begins, on a railular scale from one to five (one being a Supreme Achievement of the Human Soul and a Shining Beacon of Hope for our Children, five being Ignominious Refuse for the Junkpile of History), I give it four rails.

The Monorailist

Boats Must Make Way For Our Destiny

The Monorailist | 2005-02-02.6400 LMT | Monorail Danger | Cascadia

For too long Society has been denied its Natural Transcendency by Luddites clinging to outmoded technologies and ways of living. Enough! I must call upon the Fishing Vessel Owners to put aside their fear of change and let the Green Line Monorail be built.

The Fishing Vessel Owners Marine Ways, a Ballard shipyard built in 1919 that still relies on archaic duorail technology, must make way so that our collective destiny can be achieved. While the passing of such a storied industrial site is unfortunate -- as it has served as an important reminder of how far and how fast Humanity has traveled from primordial experiments with transportation beholden to the whims of Nature to the present awakening of the New Age of the Monorail and all the psychohistorical maturity that such a transition implies -- it nonetheless remains necessary. How else to support the monorail span over the Lake Washington Ship Canal than by razing the FVO dry-docks and erecting a pillar in their place? If whole councils of monorail engineers cannot find a solution to this puzzle, can we expect mere ship repairmen to?

The concerns of the FVO, while understandable coming from those still living as if it were the 1910s, are trivial and easily assuaged. Jobs lost can easily be regained in the monorail maintenance and hospitality industries. Even primitive, pre-monorail peoples such as wood-caulkers and keelwrights can by uplifted though an intense program of monorailization and neurolinguistic programming. I've seen it happen before in Malaysia, and I have every confidence that these results can be replicated in Cascadia.

Members of the FVO also allude that the fishing industry will be hurt by the loss of shipyards, but this is short-sighted. Monorail lines will eventually be built over the vast seas, allowing the rich bounties of the deep to be harvested by fleets of fishing monorails. These monomariners will be unaffected by such dated concerns as sea-sickness, capsization, or catastrophic oakum failure and will be free to ply their trade in all the luxurious comforts afforded by modern monorail design. There is simply no need to fear that the flow of fresh halibut will be abated.

In closing, I again call upon FVO President Don Lindblad to cease his attempts to fight the Future -- to put away childish things and embrace our species' evolutionary growth as a monorailfaring people. Take comfort that the fully monorailized World of Tomorrow will have a place for you and your kind; you only need to board the monorail and let it carry you there.