No, We Don't Want To Be Todd Martens

Horrifying of course to have seen a homicide on the train, but this Chicago-adoring (Feel free to move there any time, punk!) typist for the L.A. Times has some serious problems w/ usage/vocabulary too.

We thought "cab" here might have been a simple (YET STILL ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE! Read your crap before posting.) typo,

We were all in the first cab, and the assault occurred directly behind the conductor’s pen. Most riders huddle toward the center of the train, oblivious or disinterested in the fact that the first car provides a grand view of the twists and turns of the Los Angeles tunnels.

but he repeated it:

I looked down, and saw a string of blood working its way down the ridges of the subway cab.

Shouldn't that be "grooves in the floor of the car," or something? Although "a string" would imply it was in just one groove.

Not to mention that he thinks the operator (Not "conductor.") is an animal who is kept in a pen or corral.

The conductor yelled that no one was to leave the train, and went back into his corral.

What the hell? Do young people know nothing, or absolutely nothing? Get this:

The knife looked almost homemade. Its handle was wooden, thick and seemed haphazardly carved. The blade was crude, maybe four or five inches long and three inches wide. A reporter asked me if it could have been a kitchen knife. I haven’t spent enough time in kitchens or Crate & Barrels to know exactly what a kitchen knife would look like.

Odd & specific details to remember, but does Martens really not know from a kitchen knife? The blade was "crude," as if it had been forged in a backyard smithy somewhere?

Also, he's a pig:

I saw a beautiful woman who had been on the train frantically asking people what happened, and I walked over to tell her. If Hollywood has taught me anything, it’s that meet-traumatic has far more power than the meet-cute, but as I got closer I saw she had a wedding ring and opted to let others fill her in.

This after he "knew he would be sick." Odd that after giving up on romance he managed to walk about two blocks before heaving in front of Trader Joe's.

We're feeling a little sick now ourself, especially after determining that Todd must be closer to 30 than to 20.

The literate among you are invited to look for other oddities in his lexicon. The prize for finding them is that you don't get stabbed.

This isn't bad usage, but it's cretinous:

I have never, at least knowingly, been less than five feet away from someone with the capacity to stab another human being.

Wise up before it's too late. Even your board-game playing hipster indie-rock "friends" probably have the capacity to stab someone, quite possibly over a board game.