I was reading the Globe online the other morning and came upon this little slide show by Globe staffers entitled "Why We Love Boston in the Winter." I thought, OK, la-tee-dah, here we go.

Let me start by saying that when I first came to Boston I made a crack about albino alligators in the underground, and people didn't cut me any slack.  "That's New York, not Boston, bitch."  They could tell I was talking out my ass. I felt the same way when I read some of the Globe staffers' bizarre "favorite things" about winter in Boston.

I don't have any beef with sing-along nights at Jacob Wirth's (which generally devolve into a competition amongst drunken heterosexuals to see who can shout Billy Joel lyrics the loudest) or Vitamin C (although I'm not sure that it's indigenous to the area or relevant to the topic), but some of the staffers' favorite things were sheer fantasy cut from whole cloth, with no relation whatsoever to Boston or any shared reality that I know of, and made me wonder where these so-called staffers were really from.  Are they telecommuting from India?  Is this the brave new world of outsourced lifestyle journalism?

I mean, take the most outrageous slide of all, depicting two girls smiling ear to ear while strap-hanging on a green line train where, a certain Katie Johnston Chase (or is it Alaknanda Karnamadakala?) rhapsodizes, Bostonians are experiencing the modern wonders of...

STRESS-FREE TRAVEL

The T is everybody's favorite punching bag - we love to complain about it breaking down, running late, costing more. But on a snowy day when cars are slipping all over the road, it's a godsend. You step inside* with a copy of the Metro**, peel off a few frozen layers, and magically emerge at your destination minutes later. Not only is it a stress-free***, environmentally friendly way to travel during a snowstorm, but you can get in some prime people-watching and eavesdropping while you sit there - as long as you don't mind being squished on all sides by yammering college students, souped-up baby strollers, and people singing out loud, and off-key, with their headphones on.

*Unless, of course, you can't step over the mountain of snow at your stop in order to step inside.
**The Globe owns a 49% interest in Metro.  You can also read other magazines, newspapers, and periodicals that the Globe does not own a significant interest in while traveling the T, although you probably won't hear about them in the Globe.
***Unless you get shot, flashed, stabbed in the head, punched in the face, urinated on, and your cell phone or ipod stolen. Tee hee hee.

Let's not even get into the "magically emerge at your destination minutes later" bit.  For anyone who rides the T regularly, regardless of the line, this is an obvious forgery.  It doesn't even merit further parsing.  It's like calling customer service at Dell and getting someone with an accent as thick as Vindaloo calling himself "Brad".  Whudevah.

Only slightly less ridiculous was a blurb by Sarah Rodman (or is it Lakshmi Mallammanavar?)
DIdn't stop in Southie or Dot, didja?  I've been in Boston a number of years in four very representative neighborhoods and have yet to experience the Snow Emergency BFF-Effect.  Anyone who's spent any actual time in Boston knows you can't have too many enemies.  You can definitely have more than one at a time, like, say, Jack Frost and the neighbor who wants the parking spot you just dug out, and who will get his car keyed or tires slashed if he moves your space-saver before April.  Forget the tra-la-la OMG isn't shoveling snow so much fun! Let's be friends forever! nonsense.  But then it doesn't snow much in Thiruvananthapuram, does it?

And as for "gazing into the eyes of strangers," it's true that the first ten minutes of the first snow of the season people feel emboldened to venture out of their shells momentarily.  But then they think better of it.  And "gazing" is laying it on a little thick for the kind of desperate, darting glances you see on Boston's mean streets when eye-contact is made at all.  It's best to stare into the middle distance and hope for the best, especially when every third person you see is waiting for any excuse to solicit you for something.  "Do you have a minute for Metro Boston's drunks today?"

I think one of my housemates saw this slide show, because the other day out of the blue she suggested in all seriousness, to universal shock and horror, that we visit Inman Oasis in Cambridge as a group for a soak in the hot tub.  Which was way TMI for the rest of us.  It's like if a coworker had blurted out, "hey — I've got a crazy idea!  Let's everybody switch underwear on the count of three!"  We all pretended not to hear and quickly dispersed.

But it proves that it is possible that some people believe what they read in the papers these days, even the least convincing, most product-placed pieces in the lifestyle section, that have clearly been conceptualized by failed ad men and emailed to India for completion. 

All I could think of as I clicked through the old file photos and read through the unconvincing copy was: maybe in the Bollywood version of Boston, but not in my back yard.