Return Visit

Pop, when they do that you're supposed to say
"What the f*ck are you looking at?!"

Back in town in December, the young visitor went sledding in Central Park, then traded his cardboard sled for a giant "magic pod," above right.  After carrying it around for 20 minutes in the freezing cold, he tossed it aside and muttered "Mom, I ain't feelin' a thing... that little twerp burned me!"


Feeling stultified by the wholesomeness of his tourist experience, he went undercover, above left, then headed west until he spied the crippled neon of the "Sin Will Find You Out" cross.  "This looks promising," he said, then asked people loitering in shadows we passed "Anything happening around here, friend?"

[ Visitors ]

West Side Eyesores

East side, west side
All around the town,
Eyesores are popping up
Like daisies, best
Keep your eyeballs
Pointed down

First up, above and to the left, some Williamsburg "luxury condo" backwash at 7th Ave. & Carmine in Greenwich Village.  From the silver & black yacht deck penthouse roof line, to the trademark soot gray condo brick & balconies, to a Cafe Roadburn -- I mean Caffé Roastbean -- fastfood coffee outlet, the building screams Emptiness like a slice of black vinyl cake.

Then a few blocks southeast at 196 6th Ave., below, co-op "architecture" that -- in the brutally thoughtless style favored all along the BQE Condo Belt -- puts most of its energy into the utility stuff on the roof.


Above left, the building starts out looking like it aspires to Class on the first floor, then slumps into an Edge City Budget facade as it rises, and finally erupts in a splashy crown of sheet metal pipes combed over the bleak bald lumps on its head, designed to suggest labor camp cottages downwind of a Hershey's factory?

FOX GOP Tea Party McVeigh Day

X Chromosome of Palin's Real Americans
On the 15th anniversary of Real American hero Tim McVeigh's assault on the Socialist Security Building in Oklahoma City, the assault on reason, honesty, and decency by the FOX Fascist Borscht Belt entertainers -- the Becks, Cheneys, Gingrichs, Limbaughs, Murdochs, Palins, and Roves -- continues, because they make millions off the suckers who yearn for the return of a world where Real Americans, Good Germans, and the Cream of the Confederacy do not have to stifle their right to call a !@#$%^ a !@#$%^.

The suckers' attraction to this deadly entertainment is easy to understand -- who would not want to be born a prince, be born perfect, and live in a world where your every effortless whim is stamped with the (fascist) Almighty's approval?

You could watch trash TV all day, eat like a pig, and pray for global annihilation -- all without lifting a finger -- and still be perfect!

And all you have to do to appreciate your princely status -- the refinement bought by slavery, by holocaust, by the industrialization of hate and exploitation -- is gut your puny conscience and fill that meaningless cavity with the warmth of your inferiors' suffering, burning like a campfire in the wilderness, worshiped by fiends.

[ Welcome to Confederate History Month, Frank Rich, NYT ]
[ A Confederacy of Dunces, Gail Collins, NYT ]

Scandal Sheet

For noir New York flavor, the movie Side Street is great -- including the opening aerial shot of the skinny towers downtown -- but I liked Scandal Sheet even more.  The title tabloid's ink-stained cynics throw a "lonely hearts" ball to boost circulation, where the grand prize, listed above, is a bed with a built in TV.


Above, a couple of lonely hearts -- pressed by the tabloid's ace reporter -- have agreed to get hitched.  When they come off stage after the announcement, the new groom asks "We are gonna get that bed with the built in TV, right?"

Later, on the trail of a murderer, the ace reporter and his sidekick interview a lineup of Bowery bums.  After a good long look at a dozen or so alcoholic faces, the sidekick quips "I will never, ever, touch another drop."

PS: Considering that the photos here are direct from my built in TV set, I think they came out pretty good.

Why I Love Starbucks

I was sitting near the window at Astor Place Starbucks when a wide blond woman stabbed me with her large pointed bag as she squeezed by, scouting for a table.  She inspected and rejected the one in front of me, then finally settled on the one just behind me.

A few minutes later, her lady friend brings back their coffee and a pastry, which has not been warmed to the blond's satisfaction.  She takes it to the counter, and when she gets back she's fuming because the counter people were "rolling their eyes."  Her friend warns her to calm down, "this is a nice place" she says, but the blond's still agitated and warns she's ready to "jump over the counter and f*ck them up."

Then she takes in her surroundings and stage whispers "this place is so middle class," like it smells funny.

A few minutes later, after she's related how she's afraid to get into the shower at home, and how all the hooks she puts in the wall fall off... after the coffee and pastry's kicked in... she's in a lot better mood.

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 ]