Subway Cellphone Etiquette

A woman laughs her head off watching cartoons on her iPad.  An idiot speeds down the platform on a scooter.  A pungent homeless man lives on the unattended side of the 3rd Ave. L station, kept company by containers for bodily input and output, reminding us of our caveman past and likely future.

But nothing promises more subway discomfort than cellphone service, so here are some tips on how to behave inside the communal phone booth:

- If a cellphone user drops their phone on the platform, you should "accidentally" kick it onto the tracks.

- If an oblivious, gesticulating cellphone user has their arms ripped off by an arriving train -- and they do not have a Bluetooth thing clipped to their ear -- find the nearest pay phone, call 911, and report that someone has vandalized a train.

- If they DO have a Bluetooth, ask them to call 911, then feel free to be amused at the hands-free irony of the situation.

- If a cellphone user is talking at you from a foot away like you're invisible, summon your most deadly germs and cough directly in their face.

- If they persist in talking at you, unleash a loud stream of curses at them with your hand cupped over your ear as if you're on the phone.  If they express irritation, look offended and say "Could you mind your own business?  I'm talking to my mother!" ™ ^[1]

- If all else fails, douse them with the Cellphone Repellent pictured below -- armadillos don't belong in the garden, and cellphones don't belong in the subway!

Also repels armadillos, snakes, moles and geese!
[1] Pretty sure I've used that before, and I like it so much I'll take this opportunity to trademark it.

2 Broke-Ass Girls

Ladies, your Burger King uniforms look rumpled from that long bus ride.
Why not slip into something more comfortable in my van around the corner?
He cut me off as I started across Broadway above 23rd and said "Could you cross somewhere else?  We're shooting here."  Sure enough, the tourist island in the middle of the street was packed with TV/movie equipment.

I thought "What?  Now I'm supposed to take orders from film crew flunkies?"  I had the urge to ask what they were shooting, and if it wasn't up to my standards, march right through the middle of the scene:

"I'm walkin' here!  This is my city too, assholes, so get that camera and those goddamn lights outta my face!  Cut!  I said CUT you motherf*ckers!!" ^[1]

But then it occurred to me: It's NOT my city any more, and it won't be until I get rich or... produce my own TV show.  So my series proposals follow.

If you know someone who can bankroll them, contact me care of Anitha, the morning-shift lottery lady at Hudson News stand #23 in the Port Authority Bus Terminal; tell her you're looking for "Lucky Larry, with the van."

2 Broke-Ass Girls

Two young women move to NYC to become neighborhood cafe baristas, but discover all the neighborhoods are gone.  So they decide to rob the rich instead, and bike around the city communicating via text message like English rioters.  (With any luck the show will be funded by the robberies.)

The theme song as they corner and stick up victims: The Lady Of Rage - Afro Puffs; theme song as they ride away, richer: Roxanne Shante - Have a Nice Day.

Project Runaway

A competitive reality show.  Contestants will be enrolled when they arrive at the Port Authority, tired and penniless.  Then the camera crew will follow them as they sink into crime and prostitution, trying to earn enough for a bus ticket back home to Swamplick, Broke Neck, Pickle Bend ^[2] or whatever hick town they came from.

The winner gets the bus ticket, a few lines of speed, and a slice of 99 cent pizza for the ride home,  The losers, who will wind up in jail, are enrolled in another reality show titled...

Skank Tank

...where we'll follow them as they weave their way through the criminal justice system and, every few days, face a panel of skanky incarcerated celebrities -- Russell Brand, Paris Hilton, whoever's available -- which will adjudicate the skankiness of contestants' appearance.

The winner will be whoever manages to be skankiest without falling over the edge into stankiness, and souring the cellblock with the rank odor of sexual desperation.

Winners will be released at the Port Authority with a $20 bill, a $10 NY Lottery ticket, and a $5 Duane Reade gift certificate.  Losers will disappear into the bowels of the penal system, where they'll be fodder for a show I've just started brainstorming:

I'm thinking: something about jailhouse moonshine, body modification, and how true love can be found where you least expect it...

[1] Note how I still make the effort to keep this blog family f*cking friendly!
[2] Hometown names fabricated to avoid insulting any particular backwater hellhole.

Hurricane Irene Disappoints NYC

Did tired Irene [NYT] stop to rest in Trendy Corner's window at 6th & 37th?
Early Saturday morning a woman hustling a cart through Key Food gleefully announced "The End is here!"  Emergency shoppers had already cleared out the potato chip aisle, bought nearly all the canned sardine, and picked out all the single rolls of toilet paper, leaving bulk packages for the flood.  Streets were unnaturally quiet as people hunkered down inside; there's nothing like mass apprehension in a big city, waiting for the assault.

I was hoping that, before a satellite dish ripped from a roof came slicing through the blown-out window to chop me in half, I would have the satisfaction of knowing that luxury tower penthouses, with their invulnerable, weather-mocking owners still inside, had been sheared off and sent spinning north, to crash land on icebergs ruled by merciless inbred Vikings marooned centuries ago, and that the towers that house NYC's Feckless Lords of Finance had popped their glass and exploded, or at least got their feet wet.

But after a heart-pumping two day buildup, as our glorious, furious Doomsday Bride approached, ready to scourge, drown and then lift us, cleansed, into the sky...

Nothing.

So instead of being delivered into the loving arms of a wrathful god, we are left to face the dreary prospect of yet more life on earth: Washing the dishes (Didn't I just do that?), brushing our teeth (Didn't I just do that?), and leading shallow lives soothed by constant interruption and babbling screens that promise illumination but deliver just radiation.

Now I know how the Family Radio Worldwide believers felt when doomsday fizzled:

Keith Bauer, a doomsday believer who drove his family from Maryland to experience the Rapture at Family Radio's Oakland offices, told the News he was disappointed.

"I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this Earth," Bauer said.

From The Rapture to A Whimper, from the ultimate satisfaction of seeing your enemies crushed just before you retire to an eternity of bliss, to the realization that the only thing you have to look forward to is deciding which fugitive hope to spend your last $5 on: Caffeine or the New York State Lottery?

Now a chastened believer, I think I'll split my bet between the two...

If I Ruled NYC: Tourist Policy

N.Y. Souvenir, 5th Ave. near 47th St.
Pretty soon tourists will figure out that the most "new yorky" things left in New York are tourist shops.  And all those shops are doomed to lose their lease, so we need to get as much out of tourists as we can now, before they get wise.

As Absolute Ruler of New York, I would do the following:

1) Install a pair of "Welcome to the Big Apple" arches -- like the famous arch in Reno, Nevada, left -- over 34th St. outside Penn Station, where open-top tour buses pass by every 30 seconds heading east.

2) Install sprayers on the first arch the buses pass under, to spray the "roofie" drug on tourists so they forget what's going to happen to them.

3) Install incredibly powerful vacuum hoses in the next arch, to suck up everything the drugged tourists wear and carry.

Don't worry!  An attendant in an apple costume will be ready to unclog the hoses in case a child, scrawny person, or extra large pair of sweatpants gets sucked into the vacuum.

4) Pay for the program, and enrich the city's coffers, by selling the tourists' cellphones, credit cards, cameras, shoes, etc. to Internet entrepreneurs.

5) Give the tour bus company a cut to take the groggy tourists to Fort Lee, New Jersey and drop them off behind a motel -- so that any complaints about their trip will be about New Jersey!

Earlier: If I Ruled NYC

Stereo Plaza Mall, 8th Ave. near 37th St.

Getting Old in NYC

The Grim Reaper waits for our bones on 47th St.
I was sitting in a generic cafe during the heatwave, trying to reboot my evaporating brain, when an old man sat down at the next table.  His parchment skin was oily with sweat, and he wore a tank top and shorts nearly as old as he was.  He immediately got to work researching a pile of books, scribbling away with a pencil, without a thought in the world about his hunched, archaic appearance.  It got me thinking about getting old in NYC -- just like getting old anywhere else except that you do it in public, surrounded by the bustling multitudes.

The Bad Things

- You can't get a job, because businesses would rather hire youths still gullible enough to work like cult members for the glory of the corporation.

- You realize you may never fulfill your dreams, like inventing that attractive bullet-proof refrigerated vest suitable for everyday use.

- You will likely have to live on a limited budget, which means you'll be dependent on the kindness of strangers -- never a good lifestyle -- and even kind people will suspect you're being friendly just to get them to carry your groceries upstairs.

- The aging process is basically one humiliation after another, with hair and stiffness everywhere but where you want it, until you pray a bus runs over you as you crawl across the avenue to buy a lottery ticket, hoping to win enough for a body transplant in Bulgaria.

The Good Things

- You can't get a job so you don't have to go to work.

- When you overhear youths make cracks about old people, you can say "Yeah, I hope that never happens to you," meaning you hope they drop dead long before they get old.

- When it's hot you can walk around outside in a tank top and shorts, with a hand towel draped around your neck to mop off sweat.  You can wet the towel in a park drinking fountain and drape it over your head, then wring it out and gum it for a while to rehydrate your parched flesh.  And you can walk around your sweltering apartment with the windows open wearing nothing but flip-flops.  If your neighbors injure their eyeballs looking at you -- at what lies ahead for them -- that's their tough luck.

- You don't have to plan for the future anymore, because odds are you don't have one.  Eat like a pig from a menu of exotic combinations of forbidden food -- a pound of bacon smothered in hot pepper cheese, chased with peanut brittle and a big bowl of spumoni swimming in schnapps -- while you watch sexy aerobics instructors work out on TV.

- You realize that, thank God, you won't live forever, and that soon you'll shuffle off this boiling planet and leave it to the festering multitudes, so completely used up and unhinged that you'll be absolutely sure you're headed for paradise!

Escape from New York Recipes

Coming soon: Creamed Banker Beef on a Shingle,
pictured here under a heat lamp in Hell
Escape from New York

The Tea Party will soon be in power and close down the federal government.  Society will collapse within days, and all the bankers, corporate moguls and media elites will flee New York City, as crackheads take the streets and bloodthirsty mobs chase down stragglers, feed them to homemade guillotines, and use their severed heads to turn the avenues into gruesome bowling alleys.

Without the FAA's air traffic controllers, elites will have to escape by land.  They'll head for their fortified Rockie Mountain compounds in Humvee convoys, guarded by contractors back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Heartland Meth-Head

But they'll never make it, because the U.S. heartland -- full of crazed, toothless, acne ravaged meth-heads suffering withdrawal from Fox News and armed to the teeth -- will lay waste to enough banker beef to make a buffalo skinner weep with nostalgia.

Before the wild dogs and orphans eat it all, get some for yourself and try a few of the following recipes.

Banker Burritos

Chop up assorted body parts -- toes, ear lobes, and pituitary glands are especially flavorful -- and grill them.  Place the fixin's on a large wheat tortilla, smother them in black beans, salsa, and tofu sour cream, then roll up the burrito.  All that flavor makes it hard to believe you're eating the flesh of one of the most vile predators to ever walk the earth.

Banker Tofu Scramble Orange Julius

Use banker brains, which taste just like tofu, for a new twist on the classic scramble.  Banker brains, fine-tuned for high frequency robbery, are extra large and extra gray.

Chop the brains and saute them in garlic, Thunderbird wine, and Worcestershire sauce.  Then pour the mix into a blender, add six organic eggs, a can of orange juice concentrate (minus the can), and a half pint of vanilla ice cream.  Blend on "liquify" until the concoction starts foaming out the lid of the blender.

Then pour a pint from the blender into a Kool-Aid pitcher, add a quart of 199-proof bathtub vodka, and serve!

Serves six, if you can still see well enough to find another quart of vodka.

Corporate Mogul Tomato-Free Gazpacho

Same recipe as just above, but use the moguls' cheeks -- both facial and buttock -- in place of banker brains.  Mogul cheeks, ripened from a lifetime of gluttony and perversion, impart a smoky tang that will make it hard to believe the gazpacho is tomato-free, and leave you wondering "Where the hell is that bacon smell coming from?!"

Media Elite (Fox News Anchor) Fajitas

(Warning!  Be 200% sure the anchor is 100% dead before you handle them!)

Chop off the anchor's fingers and throw away the rest of the body, as it contains poison concentrated enough to kill a small solar system.

Grill the fingers over a gasoline fire.  Then throw them away too.

Serves all of humanity.

GOP Dictionary

Ronald Reagan Memorial
Abortion
Something women do to insult those who believe that life -- in the womb or in the tomb, where it can't disagree with them -- is sacred.

America
The place where Real Americans are born.  A Real American can sit on their ass in front of the TV their whole life and still be great -- because they were born great!  Not to be confused with the notion of racial superiority, though most Real Americans just happen to be bona fied Aryans.

Bipartisan
Meeting the opposition halfway (down into the bowels of hell, home of the GOP, where no one can hear them scream).

Conservative
1. Someone who favors tradition (the tradition of their being in power).
2. Someone who wants to preserve civilization (circa 1000 AD, when people had the freedom to take what they wanted).

Conservative Think Tank
1. An institution defending the rights of a minority* overlooked for far too long!
2. An institution dedicated to making thought pointless.

* Billionaires.

Democracy
A system where you have to spend a lot of money to convince a majority of voters to embrace the asshole within, then shoot themselves in the foot.

Education
Watching Fox News.

Environmental Protection
Illustrated by the photo above of the Ronald Reagan Memorial in Union Square.

Evolution
If students are taught that facts, reason and science are worthwhile, we might as well kiss our ass goodbye.

Freedom
Freedom from responsibility.

Inalienable Rights
1. The right to take what you want.
2. The right to take away others' rights, see Abortion.
3. The right to carry a gun to defend your right to act like an asshole.
4. The right to call certain groups of people by the names they were called before everyone got all politically correct.

Liberal
Simpering Stalinist child-molesting aristocrats.  They are candy-ass weaklings, with their effete pinkies sticking out from tea cups, but at the same time they are the most vicious, elitist, fascist force ever known!

Night
Day.

Patriotism
The ability to hide behind the flag or stand in front of troops for photo ops.

Problem Solving
Watching Fox News.

War on Terror
A slogan that gives us the right to rule by fiat.

"We're broke"
What you say when someone wants you to help pay for something -- like fixing a rusty bridge -- that anyone else gets to use.

"We're broke" vision for the middle class, in Queens

If I Ruled NYC

The signs suggest NYC "loves it hard," and I'd be happy to oblige.  If I ruled New York City:

Cellphones would explode at the "event horizon" of my presence, forming a ring of fire 80 feet across.

If only!  Unfortunately I have not developed super powers to match my super desires, so I have to be more realistic:

Bankers would spontaneously combust and make an unearthly shrieking sound, like a burning witch, as they melt into puddles along the sidewalk.

Again, sadly, I'm hoping too high on the hog, because the childhood warning "liar liar pants on fire" has turned out to be nothing but empty words, words that only affect people with a conscience -- a laughable weapon in these times, like a gun that shoots best wishes.  So I have to be even more realistic:

Drivers would be required to have microscopic horns implanted in their ears before they could use their horn or car alarm, so that using them would unleash a skull cracking, eye exploding assault that would cripple the driver and leave them with a never-ending ringing in their ears, as if they were wearing a Gothic church bell hat, even as deafness set in and their sanity drooled out their ears.

Hmm... Still too hopeful.  Drivers are sitting in their escape vehicle, so it would be hard to round them up for the implants without assaulting their vehicle, which would probably destroy it and leave massive piles of wreckage all over the city, causing even more honking and alarm.  I guess I'm just going to have to settle for something pathetically mediocre and hardly worth doing:

Flatbed trucks with catapults would patrol the streets 24/7, flinging cinder blocks at luxury developments until they're all reduced to rubble.  Then crews would pour compost over the rubble and plant flowers.  The flowers would attract bees, their honey would attract bears, and the bears would kill any new developers who threaten their idyllic hill of rubble, flowers and bees.

And if, God forbid, even that turns out to be asking too much, maybe I'll just order the Sanitation Department to stop trucking garbage out to fill every hoot 'n holler in the country, and start flinging it over the fence of hole-in-the-ground developments, like the one in Williamsburg below.

I'll Poison Their View

An ugly condo just went up dead-center in the one patch of sky I could see out my window, with a penthouse patio where residents can lounge and booze it up while they watch me like buzzards.

So I bought some middle-finger and "tavern angel" candles (right & below) for the window, and a dozen of the creepy Little Joseph candles above (by Maxim Velcovsky), to ring the room like heads on stakes in "Heart of Darkness."

I'll light the candles at dusk, then sit inside the flickering ring in my favorite pair of ventilated underwear, with a three foot submarine sandwich draped across my bulging oiled belly, flanked by huge beer steins placed on the heads of the pair of life-sized plaster hyenas that flank my living room lawn chair.

I will sit there every evening, munching my sandwich and drinking beer while I watch TV, looking like the bloated and deranged lovechild of Marlon Brando, Colonel Kurtz, and Homer Simpson.

The bastards poisoned my view, so I'm going to do the same to theirs -- they'll be disgusted to look at me, but they won't be able to look away!

It will be like their eyeballs fell out of their heads and down a well, and now bob on the surface of the water staring straight up, with nothing to look at but me and my hyenas enjoying ourselves in the festive ring of fire -- eating, drinking, and laughing our heads off all night long!!

More Irritating NYC

Was it Wall Street Bike Your Son to Work Day on the Williamsburg Bridge?
NYC continues to lead the world in irritation innovation.  If I ruled NYC:

- Agile fakers who use a cane for show, then shoot through doors ahead of you, would have their cane pulled out from under them until they really need one.

- People who drag around a suitcase on wheels, hogging sidewalk space and blocking escalators, would have to pay an "axle fee," which could be used to widen sidewalks and escalators.

- People who rush in front of you to get on an escalator, then stop and block your way, would get their shoe laces caught in the teeth at the landing, fall on their face, and be turned into a welcome mat.

- People who let their dog do its "business" on subway grates, making the platform below reek, would be sedated and dressed in a St. Bernard costume, then sent to the pound.

- Since historic neighborhood names only serve to sell luxury condos at this point, I would rename neighborhoods after the wi-fi ID of the local Starbucks, and edit Wikipedia to claim, e.g., that "the LES" was named for Les Grille, the inventor of the Belgian Waffle Truck.

- I would still allow people to exit unattended gates at subway stations and trigger the alarms, but ...

... since who, outside of sociopaths like congressman Darrel Issa, the self-proclaimed inventor of the car alarm, still thinks that subjecting the public to pointless shrieking is a substitute for good design?  If your car alarm goes off, it should call your cell phone, not wake up the whole block just for spite, and if the MTA wants to control the gates it should find a solution instead of adding yet more fraudulent "emergency" noise to the city ...

... I would put the business end of the alarms inside MTA headquarters.

A Curse on Rupert Murdoch

With the world up to its neck in a cesspool of evil, and not a lifeboat in sight, I've been forced to take supernatural measures, to pray like hell for a Vicious Christmas Miracle and conjure Dark Forces with an assortment of hexes, curses and spells, to serve my enemies the slow and painful justice they've earned!

The target of my first curse is Rupert Murdoch.  Seldom has the gift of life been squandered with the gusto spent on this evil pile of flesh.  On to the cursing!

Please groan the following chorus (of two anagrams for "Rupert Murdoch" generated by the Internet Curse Server) over and over while you read the curses below: Cur Turd He Romp, Rec Duh Rump Rot

- May the withered, flaccid remnants of his sex organs get slammed in a car door.

- May the used toilet water that irrigates his diseased flesh back up into his head and gush out his grotesquely hairy ears and nose, leaving tiny dingle-berries of toilet paper hanging in their hair trees.

- May those same nose hairs braid themselves overnight, snake around his neck while he snores, and strangle him.

- May his progeny grow to hate him even more than they already do, and succeed in their plots to shorten the time he stands between them and his money.

Viagra Angel & Murdoch

- May his festering crotch itch so severely that he takes a table fork to it while under the spotlight at the holiday dinner sponsored by his venal lick-spittle minions at Fox News, the NY Post and the Wall Street Journal, all dressed in grimy elf costumes to make him look more human.

- And while I'm at it, may all those evil elves, from Roger Alies on down to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, catch the same case of crotch cooties, and scratch them so furiously that they churn themselves up into an angry white tornado of skin dust, that whirls off across the plains and erases half the Bible Belt before it leaps into space to scratch itself against the sun and, like dried cat crap placed at the business end of a particle accelerator, explodes in a poof! of particles that scatter across a half dozen backwater spacetime dimensions, the sewer pipes of Creation, and be flushed down the drain for good.

Or at least until my dark mistress, the Savage Queen of Curses, decides that Creation is a little low on evil.

Palin for President!

I am so sick of the world we've let happen...

...of NYC turning to plastic, phony as a high-rent hooker's smile, as it services the Wall Street party-til-you-puke aristocracy ...of cellphones, wi-fi, and shiny people infesting every corner of public space, broadcasting their emptiness ...of people "following" people on Twitter, "real" people on reality TV, "friendship" on Facebook, and all the other noise that helps us forget the difference between going somewhere and going nowhere.

It can all go burn in hell.

We have reached the End of Democracy, and found that freedom is more than we can handle. We are idiots in diapers, O Lord, who have fouled everything you gave us.  The universe would be better off if earth was replaced with a dirty black hole, sucking in garbage tossed off other planets.


Sarah Palin morphs to Jim Jones
So I hereby endorse Sarah Palin for president in 2012, and offer the following campaign slogan.

Palin for President:
Let's just get it over with!

The sooner she gets to work, the sooner all this crap will be erased and we can return to the Eden our Founding Fathers knew, savoring the flavor of our fingers as we rubbed our hair with possum fat to make it shine, and enjoying the simplicity of a world where, when you noticed someone "following" you, you detoured into the woods and snuck up behind them, then hit them over the head with a club.


Don't laugh, she could win.  Politically cunning, and burning with hatred for anyone who's dissed her, she makes other GOP hopefuls look like the tired hacks they are.  Our arrogant prince of a mayor will run on his own billions and split the vote with Obama, leaving Palin the winner.  I always figured she'd make a decent banana republic dictator, and it won't be long before we find out.

The Topless Party

Judith with Head, Cranach the Elder

If you want thoughtful analysis of our degraded state following the midterm elections, read these excellent columns by Paul Krugman, Timothy Egan, or Frank Rich.

But if you want a SOLUTION, read on.

Bankers are too arrogant to change their ways; just like the oil barons, they'll ride the world into its grave before they give up a cent of their ill-gotten gains.

GOP politicians will never change; they are a disease festering in the bowels of this nation, a huge malignant mass snaking up from where Boehner, McConnell and Cantor's heads stick out America's ass, squirming like the 3 Stooges stuck in a porthole.

So I hereby declare the start of a new political party, the Topless Party.

I was going to call it the Guillotine Party but, being French, "guillotine" makes it sound too elitist.  And this party is gonna be about as elitist as a county jail headcheese sandwich.

The party platform boils down to adding a constitutional amendment that makes being too rich a capital crime, so that if you reach a certain level of wealth, adjusted for inflation, your head will be chopped off in the village square.  Billionaires -- that most useless and dangerous class of criminal -- will be the first to go topless.

Sure there are hundreds of millions of poor assholes out there who deserve a head chopping, but it's much more efficient to start at the top, with the people who siphon so much wealth for themselves, then use it to spread misery at the bottom.

Just as a hypothetical case, consider the billionaire David H. Koch, master polluter and right wing kingpin -- born with a silver spoon worth a few hundred million, yet bitter as hell that you have anything at all -- who's bought off the cream of NYC aristocracy and has a building named after him at Lincoln Center.

This pestilent fascist prince should not be allowed to spread cold germs, much less pump millions of dollars worth of self-serving poison into society's bloodstream.

Soon it will be "Off with his head!," which we'll stuff and mount on his Lincoln Center building like a moose head, to remind budding aristocrats that there's a new mob in town, and constitutional limits to financial gluttony.

Of course he'll get a public trial -- we are not savages! -- confined to a courtroom cage like they use for mobsters in Italy, chained a few feet away from a starving, abused circus bear with a taste for well-fed flesh, just to keep him alert as the bailiffs count through his piles of bills, securities and gold.  And he will get as many lawyers and appeals as a Mexican groundskeeper at one of his estates would get if he got caught pilfering posies.

Just imagine: no more arrogant billionaires towering over the land like the Colossus of Rhodes, pissing in the sea, laughing at us suckers too weak to take the millions needed to become a billionaire.

After the trial and head chopping, all us non-billionaire Americans will get even shares of the money.  And since a billion dollars divided 300 million ways is more than 3 bucks apiece, we only have to round up a few billionaires to score enough beer money to start planning the head chopping assembly line we'll need to take care of the bankers and GOP politicians -- just because they have not yet reached billionaire status doesn't mean they don't deserve the same level of service.

You know, it feels great to start a political party that actually stands for something, with a straightforward solution to all our problems.  Frankly it makes me a little teary eyed and, to repeat the words of Sarah Palin the other day on Tea Party victories from coast to coast:

"This is our moment!  This is our Morning in America!!  This is our chance to annihilate our enemies, bowl their heads across the lawn and drink their blood!!!  Give Me the Money, America... then give me the blood, the sweet sweet blood... enough to irrigate the desert, paint the clouds red, and drown the sun!!!"

Beekman Tower Launch Party

While vacationing in Florida, I tested
the concept with a single Saturn V rocket
If I ruled the world I would give the cream of the financial industry free apartments in Beekman Tower, then throw a blow-out party with gourmet food and recreational drugs served by sex professionals working the halls from top to bottom.

Then I would seal the entrance, strip the scaffolds camouflaging the half dozen surplus Saturn V rockets I had strapped to the building, and press the launch button.

Note that it wouldn't cost me a huge amount to pull this off because, where the typical manned space flight requires an expensive guidance system to go somewhere specific and come back, I really don't care where the rocket goes, just so long as it never comes back.

NYC Irritation Innovation

Sightseers swing past earth at Columbus Circle
NYC is a hotbed for innovating things that irritate.

Old irritation: Idling sightseeing buses.

New irritation: Idling sightseeing buses with huge ads exhorting people not sitting on their ass on the bus to get in shape, like above.

Old irritation: Door jumpers.  You open a door for yourself and someone a few lengths away jumps through it before you do.  They're parasitic ghosts who slip through space between real people, stealing muscle power, avoiding having to touch the filthy door (probably some of the same people who use a store restroom, don't wash their hands, then fondle merchandise or clamp their polluted hand on the escalator rail on the way out).

New irritation: Door jumpers using cellphones, who consider it only right that others open doors for them because they are busy on the phone.

Old irritation: Spatially oblivious people.  Like spaced-out tourist families that pick the most congested choke point in pedestrian traffic to stand around debating where to go next -- forcing everyone else to churn through their whirlpool of confusion.

New irritation: Spatially oblivious iPeople.  They notice you are about to collide, so they consult their cellphone -- they actually stutter-stop for a half second to study it as you converge -- as though they hope to flee into Cyber Phone Space and avoid your onrushing mass of molecules.

I have seen people do this at the most inappropriate moments -- stepping onto or off a train, in the middle of a busy doorway -- and suspect they really are split between worlds, too lazy to choose one.

And speaking of "inattention to surroundings," the article at the link below is a hoot.  It says that, even before cellphones, national park visitors would put their kids on a wild animal's back for a snapshot.  Now they use technology to extend their idiocy.  One quartet of hikers sent out high tech emergency signals three times -- each time sending a $3400 an hour helicopter into action -- and refused to fly out until forced.  Their second emergency?  They thought the local water "tasted salty."
- Technology Leads More Park Visitors Into Trouble, NYT

Making NYC a Better Place

I push crosswalk buttons along the West Side Highway even when I don't
cross, so drivers can stop and contemplate their role in Global Warming
You might think that, as a blogger, I just run my mouth and leave it at that. But talk is cheap, and I am a man of action!  Here's what I've been doing to make NYC a better place:

Reduce Clutter and Noise.  If I notice a distracted cellphone user peering at my ankles -- using me as a guide through sidewalk traffic so they can update their Facebook page or argue with a Customer Service representative while on the move -- I try to lure them into vehicle traffic to get run over.

Reduce Health Care Costs.  If I succeed in getting them run over, or I come across the scene of an accident, I become a First Responder and ask the victim questions from my Karma Triage Checklist like: Who did you vote for in the past few elections, do you support universal health care, and have you ever been a murderer, a child molester, or a Fox News fan?

If they pass the test, I yell for the paramedics; if they fail, I flash my 99 Cent Store badge and tell the gathering crowd to disperse, then drag the failure to the gutter, cover them with newspaper, and leave their fate to God.

This may seem cruel, but since we have a huge surplus of assholes on earth, why hoard them?

Reduce Effects of Global Warming.  When miserable summer heat forces me out of my oven-like apartment, I find a strip of stores with arctic air conditioning and automatic sliding doors, then walk back & forth in front of them.  This approach not only cools me down, it cools down the city and planet too!

What have YOU done today to make NYC a better place?

#1 NYC Pet Peeve

Ren, Also Peeved
Of course there are plenty of things I straight-up hate...

...basically anything, from cellphones to car horns & alarms to Wall Street money, that helps the clueless swaggering plastic assholes among us increase the radius of their broadcasts...

...that couldn't be called pet peeves unless the pet was the monster from Alien, but there are a few things that maybe peeve me more than they should.

Like the way the "green market" at Union Square, left, always steals the sidewalk and tries to force passersby through its precious gauntlet, like bran through the intestines during yoga class.

Like the spiffy kids who try to stop you on the sidewalk to listen to their "Save the Children" scams.  Save them for what?  Dessert?

But my #1 NYC pet peeve is those f*cking booster banners, like below.

Bright Shiny Yuppie Prayer Flags
I hate them, I Hate Them, I HATE THEM!!!

You can't take a picture in this city without those banners in it.  They are turning NYC into a Yuppie North Korea, with bright reminders every 100 feet that it is your DUTY to be HAPPY for the opportunity to trade your city and soul for the bland, ad-sponsored comfort of suburban emptiness, for the ability to pass through life unmolested by doubt, friction-free, like... bran through the intestines during yoga class.

Socialist Census Forms

Inflatable Census Idol / Emergency Ark, Union Square
Obama's socialists, applying their godless scientific techniques to counting and sorting us like sardines, have sent a census form cleverly addressed to The Resident at my address -- even though they already know who I am.

Thanks to the Facebook "privacy policy" that stays one step ahead of me in its quest to rip me open -- so advertisers and other Internet predators can toy with my beating heart like an Aztec priest -- any information I give the Census Takers will be easy to link to my tax forms, which means the godless IRS may find out I have fewer than the few hundred dependents I claim.

The Census Takers will want to know personal religious details that are none of their business, like the fact that I have 17 wives.

I was going to limit myself to one wife for each month of the year, but five of the first dozen disobeyed me and I had to trade them in.  Then each wife has, I don't know, two to ten children apiece, and they're all on welfare.

"Render unto Caesar the bills from Babylon," I say, because I have to spend all the time I'm not procreating becoming more righteous so [God] will notice me, down here in the multitudes of pseudo-righteous phonies.

Then there's the illegal aliens I rented the basement to -- who I'm pretty sure have built a sub-basement and rented it out to aliens from an even more godforsaken country, where the people are not just ignorant savages who can't even speak English, but freckled in the most nauseating hues imaginable, marked by [God] for the suffering they deserve.

I wouldn't mind the hideously freckled illegal aliens so much -- because, being too ugly to come out in the daytime, they would not compete with me for the work I would take if it did not interfere with my procreating and righteousness -- but I've noticed the floor up here is starting to slouch, and I'm worried they might be building a sub-sub-basement themselves down there, to rent out to beings so alien they don't come outside at all.

I would go down and check, but I'm worried I would never come out again!

So the Census Takers can go to hell!  Righteous, real Americans like me are as unquantifiable as the number of letters in the name of [God].  And maybe the socialists don't know how many of us there are, but [God] does, and the last time I talked to Him, He said His privacy policy will never change, and that...

What happens in this religion stays in this religion!

Say hallelujah!

[ Trying to Break Down Resistance to the Census ]

Plastic-Induced Paranoia

Poison Molecule Emitted By That Plastic Building in Back
I can hear worms scrape through the dirt under the sidewalk, and both ends of cellphone conversations a block away.  Everyone's laughing at me... my blood vessels are sticking out like rope, throbbing, about to explode!

I know something's wrong.  The glue and plastic fumes from all the shiny new buildings is poisoning me, making me super sensitive, like a spider.

You see what I mean, above?  My eyes are so powerful I can pick out individual molecules in midair!  And I can hear those two-faced signs, below, laughing at me and calling me names, "U ho!  U mad!  You pathetic, ass-face freak!  Ah... ha ha ha!"


I just stole a couple 3-packs of that new instant coffee from Starbucks and poured it in my beer.  Once it kicks in and I'm back in the flow, invisible, I'm heading for Grand Central to jump a train north -- the air up there will fix me up.  I know it's cold and I only got this t-shirt, but I've been sweatin' like a pig, so I ain't worried at all...

Facebook Confidential

Facebook is like an endless art opening, where social connections are more tribal (with many-to-many connections, like below left) than personal.  Personal connections mean a lot to me, tribal ones not so much.

In a room buzzing with tribal activity, at my worst I back you into a corner and treat you to a passionate monologue on something I find interesting.  At my best I'm the 8th Grade wallflower at the school dance, whose face flushes and knees knock whenever the buddingly buxom object of his desire nears.

I prayed Facebook would be different!  Not like Friendster, then MySpace -- social networks I entered, fouled and fled like an escaped circus freak searching for home, a deformed thing that -- though striking in silhouette as it scurries along the darkening horizon -- is better appreciated from a distance.

I could try to improve my networking skills, but at this point it might make more sense to ditch the human aspect altogether and become an idea or "brand" -- let's call it KS -- worthy of Facebook fan worship (like the red center of the many-to-one network, right).  The brand-fan relationship, while safely distant, is still personal, isn't it?

Once KS the brand has caught on, I -- it -- could hire someone halfway around the world to do its Facebook updates while it sleeps, so it becomes a 24/7 broadcast, a blinding hypnotic lighthouse that burns its brand onto fans' retinas, so they see it in their sleep, until there are legions upon legions of them chanting its name under their breath without even noticing, until it replaces the dead space between every utterance on earth and pushes the aether back another half mile into space.

Did I mention it may be easier to appreciate from a distance?

The more I think about it the more I like it; KS makes a good strong brand.

After all, it stands in for the whole state of Kansas and envelops each and every KisS -- and is there any kind of romance more romantic than prairie romance?

And now that it's arrived, I'd like to thank its mother for giving it the opportunity to become a living, breathing brand.  It more than makes up for the networking genes not quite ready for Facebook.