Anecdote 1: On Friday night, I'm minding my own business, heading home from work, when one young, bushy-haired blonde guy helped his ill-looking (OK, drunk-as-a-skunk) red-headed friend onto the subway.

The redhead, who looked about 17 or 18, had a rugby shirt on with wide orange horizontal stripes trimmed bordered with green. This colour-coordinated nicely with his hair.

That's nothing. What I really found strange was the colour of the red-head's vomit splattered all over the front of the rugby shirt was also orange! :)

Question: Are there any popular drinks right now that have a substantial orange component that could create this effect? Are there young people so design-conscious that when they woof after heavy drinking, they want their vomit to colour-coordinate with the rest of them?

Anecdote 2: A middle-aged couple (I first presumed they were married) got on at Yonge and sat immediately to my left. The guy looked like a Central Casting humanities professor -- very tweedy, goatee, intellectual-looking glasses. The woman looked like a Central Casting humanities professor's wife.

The woman spoke.

"That boy over there is so interesting looking," she answered, before adding, "so-o-o effeminate."

The kid had got on at the Sherbourne stop. I would describe him as looking somewhat creative-geeky: Greasy black hair (probably dyed), dark jacket, a shoulder bag/man-purse with a multicoloured bunch of band buttons on the strap. To me, the kid was more androgynous-looking than effeminate. Think a roly-poly Marilyn Manson without the make-up. He was sitting with three girls. They were all probably about 19 to 20 years old.

Over the course of the next few stops, the woman kept saying, "I shouldn't stare, it's rude," before going on with another stanza of interesting/effeminate.

Then she kept bugging her companion to share his own opinion of whether he thought the kid was effeminate-looking or not. He kept demurring.

"It seems so abrupt for you to stay on the subway," she then told him, extending the invitation to come back to her place where he could then grab a cab.

No thanks. Subway's fine.

I don't know what lesson to draw from that, except if you want to encourage a guy to come home with you, maybe being fixated on another male passenger you consider effeminate-looking isn't the best way to go about it.