Really, I promise!
The first story has to do with the rank stupidity of government here in New Yorkistan. Our Reichsfuhrer...err, Mayor, Michael Bloomdouche...errm...Bloomberg is known to be a freak when it comes to bicycles. In fact, Mayor Mind-Everyone's-Business is a freak, period, but that is beside the point.
A new system of rental bikes, sponsored by CitiBank, which one would believe had better things to do with money since they only got something like 50 bazillion dollars in taxpayer bailout funds, is causing trouble in New York, and people are beginning to fight back.
Our Mayor believes that encouraging people to commute via bicycle through New York City is a good thing. It scratches three of his favorite itches all at once:
a) It gets cars off the road, especially in Manhattan. Bloomberg hates cars with a passion bordering on mania. Under his regime Manhattan has been purposely treated as a private preserve for the fancy-pants, upper-crust twits whom Hizzoner rubs elbows with. There has been a concerted effort under Bloomdick to make it known that we Outer Borough peasants are not welcome in Manhattan, despite the fact that we're citizens and taxpayers, too.
The denizens of the Upper East Side don't want to see fat, soda-drinking, nasally people speaking Brooklynese on the streets of Manhattan, unless, of course, they're driving the limos, picking up the trash, or keeping the riff-raff in Harlem where they belong. One way to keep those bridge and tunnel boys out of the Beautiful People's domain is to make it impossible for them to drive into or through it.
If it isn't incredibly high tolls (example: if I were to drive from Staten Island to Manhattan by the most direct route, and then drive the same route home, it would cost me $30 - $15 round-trip for the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, and another $15 round-trip for the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel). If I were to stay in Manhattan for any appreciable length of time, I will probably spend just as much to park in a garage for 4-to-6 hours. One dare not park on the street anymore, since the City removed the old-fashioned, coin-operated parking meters, and replaced them with electronic Muni-meters which often...probably on purpose..run out of paper, and only inform you of this AFTER they've taken your money.
b) It gets people exercising, and if there's anything our Mayor cares about more than anything else (except buying the White House, one day) it's your health. Bans on smoking, taxes on smoking, bans on sodas and sugar, requirements that restaurants (except the ones Bloomdoofus eats in, of course) post calorie and cholesterol counts. You see, Mayor Asshole is concerned about your health, or so he says...
Personally I don't think he cares if half the people in this city dropped dead simultaneously. I think he truly hates people, especially regular Joes, and what he's really up to is attempting to control more of average person's daily lives through a propaganda campaign. We're supposed to believe that Mayor Mike actually cares about us, and therefore, we do whatever His Heinous says we should do. Fat chance.
It's all reminiscent of the old Victorian Era where stuck-up and paternalistic douchebags from the Upper Crust often took it upon themselves to instill their sensibilities into the "Lower Classes', and often against their will, under the mistaken impression that their 'Social Betters' knew better than they did. It's also why Europeans took it into their heads to 'civilize' the savages in Africa and Asia. And what a good job they did, too. To paraphrase a famous book, they "civilized them stiff...".
With millions of New Yorkers on bicycles instead of riding in their cars every day, we'll all lose the pounds quicker than you can say "polyunsaturated trans-fats", yesssirrreee! And Mayor Dingus can brag about how he made New York the healthiest city in the world, the slimmest city in the world, and his friends the envirowhackos, the pretentious snobs, the would-be lords of the manor, the nose-in-the-air-know-nothings, will be kept safe from the horrific vision of an unsightly muffin-top on someone who buys...gasp! off the rack from J.C. Penney instead of having their clothes tailor-made in Gramercy park.
c) The sight of a million New Yorkers on bicycles would warm the cockles of Mayor Dildo's heart, since it would be the first visible symbol of his effort to reform New York City on the Chinese Communist model.
The Share-a-Bike plan, or whatever the fuck they call it, is a stupid idea. For a start, we're a city with an extensive mass transit system. The most extensive in the world. And it's broke. Always. Encouraging people to rent bicycles for short commutes takes money away from this system, which is probably a feature and not a bug: if more people are using bikes, fewer are riding buses which pollute the rarefied air around all those new multi-million dollar condos in Hell's Kitchen and The Bowery.
The bike racks themselves cause immense trouble: whoever planned their location did so without thinking about important things...like where the fire hydrants were. Or the bus stops. Or the loading zones for local businesses. These things take up an enormous amount of space and block sidewalks. There has been a hue and cry about how these bike racks and outdoor, sidewalk cafes can peacefully co-exist in the same limited space. Of course, the City's answer has been to crack down on the outdoor cafes because in doing so, it gets to issue new and dumber restrictions and regulations, and then issue hefty fines.
In retrospect, it seems as if the bike plan was poorly thought out, poorly designed, poorly executed, and the person who could have done something about it before it all happened, didn't give a shit because he more or less sees it as a personal triumph for his personal views.
The second story has to do with a very lonely, and stupid, homo moose on the loose in Colorado.
The town of Grand lake, Colorado, for reasons that I cannot fathom, has...umm...erected...a statue of a moose. The statue, of a male moose, has attracted the attention of a real male moose, which has made repeated visits to the town for the purposes of gettin' busy.
The horny moose has attempted to woo and mount this statue several times. Apparently, the fact that he's not been very successful in achieving, shall we say, The Full Bullwinkle, doesn't seem to deter him. I guess he's just doing what moose do, which seems to be "fuck everything that looks like me, so long as it holds really still".
The moose, both the real one and the would-be cumbucket, have become objects of both ridicule and concern. Who the hell wants a moose in full rut visiting your town every day (ever see what happens when a moose gets interrupted when he's making the beast with two backs? They go insane, and that's a very dangerous one-ton animal). After the initial wave of laughter has died down, concerned citizens in Grand Lakes are beginning to realize that there is a serious danger here. It's something they need to take seriously, and worry about.
In retrospect, it seems a bad idea to have placed a life-sized statue of a moose in a place where real moose will congregate for some sweet lovin' from time to time.
And here is where these two unrelated stories are finally joined.
In both cases, someone had a really bad idea. It was blessed by local government, regardless of how stupid the idea was, and implemented without any thought given to the wishes, feelings, opinions or concerns of ordinary citizens, and certainly with very little common sense.
And in the end, someone is always getting screwed because of it.
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