Yes, yes, I know: I've been absent for a while, but I have been quite busy. Looking for a steady job in the blasted heath of what used to be the economic capital of the world can be quite the time-consuming task.
It's also becoming a damned-near futile one. Unless you speak a foreign language.
I say this because it is true. For upon entering the Department of Labor here on Staten Island (what used to be called 'The Unemployment Office'. In Reichsfuhrer Bloomdouche's New Yorkistan, we're supposed to call them 'Employment Centers' keeping with the now decade-long Bloomberg tradition of calling something exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to be for political purposes) one cannot help but think that English must have been replaced as the Chief Lingua Franca at some point, and whoever did it just forgot to tell us.
You will find all sorts of literature there in the Employment Center -- about your rights as a worker, about state wage and overtime laws, how to apply for welfare -- but few, if any, of these pamphlets are written in English. There's Spanish, Creole, Polish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Cantonese, but no English.
The same goes for the Bloomberg Administration's most efficacious, cost-effective, and low-tech solution to the problem of finding a job in tough economic times: the Job Board. Or, as I like to call it, a bulletin board full of minimum-wage grunt tasks that all end with the sentence 'Se Habla Espanol".
If you're a Native Born, English-speaking job seeker with actual skills, you're shit out of luck. The Employment Center apparently doesn't exist to get YOU a job -- for all the times I've been in there in the last five years, I can't recall anyone ever actually doing anything to help me find an employer. Instead, it's always been 'fill in this paperwork, and wait for us to call you. That call, incidentally, never comes -- and frankly, I wonder just what these people are doing on any given day (other than encouraging illegal immigrants to apply for welfare benefits while also hooking them up with jobs).
There was once a time when the Job Market made sense. People needed other people with actual skills, and so they did something that nowadays seems quaint and anachronistic: they employed a Personnel Agency to go out and find qualified candidates for whatever job they had available, and to perform a very valuable service in weeding out the marginally-qualified before arranging interviews. These Agencies put you in touch with prospective employers, there was often a series of interviews, and if you made the right impression upon the hiring manager, you very often got the job.
No more.
Today's Personnel Agency is little more than a whorehouse for temporary workers. You get pimped out on short-term projects,and wind up having to split your earnings with the agency, who incidentally, also gets a fee for supplying your services. Temp work always sucked, but it never sucked this badly. You might also try to find some (again, temporary) work with what's euphemistically called a 'Consulting Agency', but again, this is sort of like Indentured Servitude: whatever contract you negotiate under the auspices of the 'Consultant Group', you're going to lose about half of it before you even see it.
That's if you can manage to elbow the Indians and Chinese out of the way first, so that you can even get a sniff at a contract. They're willing to work at such ridiculously-low rates that you wonder how it is that they manage to survive, until you remember that they come from countries where famine is a fact of everyday life. These are people who could stretch a pound of rice and a dozen cockroaches, for a family of six, out for half a decade, if they really had to, and skipping meals eighteen days in a row is no big deal.
Anyways,the Personnel Agency and 'Consultantcy' groups have had their primary function of connecting employer with potential-employee largely superceded by that most impersonal of contraptions, the computer.
See, nowadays, you may not even get to see another human being when applying for a job, and depending on how the computer is programmed to do it's job, you may never even get an interview even when you're infinitely qualified. Your resume goes into a the dark, murky depths of cyberspace and winds up in some hiring manager's PC, and the next thing you know, his 'puter is deciding for him whether or not he should invest any time or effort on you.
I wonder: How many people would have been hired if they got as much as ten minutes of face time with a Manager,but they never got that opportunity because the computer rejected and shitcanned their resume before the Manager was even aware it had been received?
Well, don't fret that personal-factor bullshit none, because technology has an answer for that, too, in the form of Facebook. It has now become common to see a space on an online application where one can put in their Facebook and Twitter nonsense, particularly a link to a Facebook video of you trying to sell yourself to potential employers (why bother with videos when you can you just as easily invite people in to TALK to them? What's so 'interactive' about Facebook or Twitter, in this regard, and really: would you hire someone based upon their ability to use internet shorthand and avoid the 140-character limit?).
It isn't enough to have qualifications and experience, anymore, now you must master the intricacies of Social Networking and Personal Online Marketing just to find a job? What kind of bullshit is this, other than a way of keeping people -- that is,the older folks, who might be making more money -- OUT OF the job market?
That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the nuts-and-bolts of the Modern Job Search. It gets far worse.
Another useful tool in days past was to 'know somebody' who could whisper a word in someone else's ear, or perhaps get you a shot at a position, but those days are long gone. Despite all this bullshit about a 'connected' world and Social Networking, even if you DID 'know someone' the chances of them being able to connect you with a job opportunity are rather slim for two reasons:
1. There ain't no jobs, and the job your contact has they might only be managing to keep by hanging on by their fingernails. They ain't rockin' boats, they ain't stepping forward to put themselves out, and they certainly ain't bringing potential competition into the office.
2. You DO realize that most of the jobs you (and by that I mean 'I') can do with all your qualifications and experience can be done in India, China, Russia, Pakistan, South Africa, Ukraine, and Indonesia for a fraction of the price you'll ask for, right? Why should anyone pay you $150,000k a year, plus bennies, when they can get some third-party Asian coolie to do the same job for $15k (often less), and they don't have to give him medical, a pension, or vacation days?
Then there's the 'BA or equivalent' routine.
I don't know when it became necessary for EVERY job to require a bachelor's degree, but I can pretty much say that it is perhaps the most ridiculous requirement imaginable. I don't have a degree, myself, and quite frankly, I didn't NEED one; I learned my trade by doing, not by sitting in a classroom, learning to parrot a professor who has no actual EXPERIENCE, while piling up unpayable debt.
As a former hiring manager myself, I saw so many college graduates that I began to wonder if they weren't making them on an assembly line somewhere. Most of them, incidentally, couldn't write, count, or find their own asses with both hands. So, imagine what a shock it must be when you pick up an ad for a Computer Operator's job (a job that is, frankly, about as close to factory work as you'll find in the IT industry) and it requires a BA or 5 years of experience.
No problem: I have 20+ years of experience, right? Should be a shoe-in. Except there's no degree for a job that doesn't really require one. And if that excuse doesn't confuse you, try this other one:
Oh, right...I'm too old. Apparently 44 is the new 81 when it comes to employing people, especially if it's in the financial industry and they have to abide by some of the more onerous...and expensive ...state laws. Like the Pension Law that states that if you underwrite any State business, then you MUST contribute a lump-sum payment into your employee's pension fund, based upon their age. A 40-year-old working for a financial firm that underwrites New York State debt, for example, costs that financial company $10,000 a year in pension benefits before he even walks through the door for his first day of work.
Fail to make that pension payment, and you'll never underwrite another bond for New York State.
Of course, no one ever tells you you didn't get the job because you have no degree or are considered too old, you simply don't get called back. Ditto when a background check reveals you've been treated for a mental illness, despite the fact that your medical records are supposed to be private. I'm beginning to think it's probably worth eventually getting caught by claiming a disability on an application, just to have some additional legal protections,or get myself higher up on 'TheList'.
I guess I always could go back to school to learn a set of new skills, but applying for financial aid (State or Federal) is a bit tricky, you see. I'm not Black or Female enough, according to the one consultant I've spoken to on this subject (yes, he actually said those words!). Are you sure you don't have any Muslim, or perhaps Pacific Islander, in your background? Too bad; that would have made you golden.
Same thing for Government Work: not black or female enough, and besides, I have this nasty habit of scoring '100' on every civil service exam I've ever taken, which means I get called LAST for any job, assuming I even get called AT ALL.
I can't stock shelves at the local supermarket: I'm over-qualified, they say. I can't program mainframe systems, or run massive mainframe complexes; I'm under-qualified -- no degree -- despite the fact that I did exactly these things for over 20 years. I'm not bi-tri-or-quadri-lingual, which I'm told puts me at a distinct disadvantage in the 'Global Marketplace', but then again, the 'Global Marketplace' is right here in the United States, sucking up welfare benefits, undercutting wages, and filling the 'Employment Office' with pamphlets written in Sanskrit, Cuneiform and Hieroglyphics.
What to do, what to do?
I guess I'll have to do one of those 'reinventing myself' routines you used to see on Oprah before she got tired of hiding her raging 50-pound-a-day bonbon habit from public view. I mean, I could start a business of my own, but certainly not in this country, that's for sure. The taxes and ObamaCare mandates alone would kill you. But even going overseas to start a business could be tricky. After all, you need to find a business concept that will attract local interest.
That means any plans I had for teaching basic hygiene in El Salvador are probably doomed to fail before I even begin. Do you know how many e coli-on-spinach cases we'd avoid if Salvadorans just washed regularly before they picked it?
Ditto for my other great idea, which was to introduce soap to Pakistan. I figured I could corner the soap market,and be the biggest importer of the stuff by simply putting a few dozen bars of Ivory or Irish Spring in a suitcase -- this would represent about a 5,000,000% increase in Pakistani soap imports -- and selling them on a street corner in Karachi. Pakistanis will pay anything, you know, just avoid each other's stench.
Seriously, though, I have to find something to do, and soon. It's starting to look pretty bleak, now and I'm running out of time, what with a sick mother and bills to pay, and all that. So, if there's anyone out there that needs a relatively-smart guy with a work ethic, willing to pay a decent wage, drop us a line at the Lunatic's Asylum and make us an offer.
I'll pretty much consider anything that doesn't involve a foreign object being inserted -- or forcibly removed -- from my rectum.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
National Marlboros and Twinkies Day...
It is ironic, no, that's the wrong word...it's sad...that in this day-and-age of the West 'bringing freedom and democracy' to the brain-dead-bass-ackwards-intolerant Muslim World, the West itself becomes just a little bit more like those Muslims with every passing day.
As far as smoking bans go, this one is quite tame compared to the oppressive regime we Smokers here in Fuhrer Bloomdouche’s New Yorkistan must suffer. However, when you start to discuss the possibility of discrimination in employment because of a person’s willingness to engage in a legal activity that government has collected untold hundreds of billions from for centuries, you’re starting to wander off the reservation of 'caring' about your fellow men and into the hypocritical minefield of totalitarianism.
Smoking Bans are quite popular these days, and smokers are perhaps the last group of people on Planet Earth that one can, in a socially-acceptable sense that requires nothing more than a great deal of moral sermonizing, openly discriminate against. Oh, and the Fatties. You can discriminate against them, too.
The reason being that the habits of Smokers and Fatties have long drawn the disapproval of so-called Liberals who consider both a blight upon the landscape, an easy source of tax dollars, and a wonderful target of opportunity in the fight to bring about socialist tyranny one baby step at a time. After all, how sweet is it that one can torment, brutalize, unfairly tax, discriminate, and hold up for public approbation and humiliation their fellow Men under the cover of the bromide “I’m only worried about your health, and the health of others” and not have to mean a single word of it?If you only ever understand one thing about Liberalism, then understand this:
Liberalism is never about your freedom. It's never about your right to live as you choose. It's never about your benefit; it's always about the Libtard being able to reorder society according to his or her own often-questionable tastes and ideals. Liberals don't want the power to 'take care of you'; they want the power to make you live as they see fit as a matter of their own personal physical and mental comfort.
Some will make the argument that Smokers and Fatties are millstones hung around the neck of society, as their habits are more likely to cost the State billions in health care costs, and thanks to many junk science studies about secondhand smoke and the supposedly bad health risks associated with excess body weight, you have, if you’re a good little Leftard with dreams of wielding the power to tell everyone else how to live, a ready excuse to let your inner tyrant fly.
I’m going to engage in a little experiment here, one Libtards engage in all the time. Bear with me, this might be instructive. It's called The Game of Moral Equivalence That Really Has No Moral Component.
If one were to say that smoking and obesity bring with them a great number of potential health risks, and these risks cause a great deal of expense in terms of rising insurance and treatment costs which others must bear, therefore, smokers and the obese must be shamed, taxed, made to change their habits against their wills, and otherwise blamed for all of society’s evils, then please explain the following:
If smoking and over-eating kill, and drain the public coffers, and are otherwise habits that can either be avoided or reformed through the use of taxation, regulation, and discrimination, then why has no one applied a similar program of enlightened oppression against Homosexuals?
After all, homosexual activity often leads to AIDS, which we all know is a deadly, incurable disease, that often requires a great deal of money and specialized medical care to treat. I wonder, if we added up the costs associated with the health risks of smoking, obesity and AIDS, if the numbers wouldn’t, in proportion, show AIDS to be every bit as deadly, every bit as expensive to treat, and as easily-avoidable as lung cancer or diabetes.
Why aren’t the health care advocates out there railing against butt sex as a deadly threat to society that costs the taxpayer billions, and as a disgusting habit that often carries with it unacceptable behavioral and health risks to innocent bystanders? I mean, because of AIDS, right here in New York City, we give free needles away to heroin addicts as an anti-AIDS measure. Because of AIDS, then, we've encouraged and subsidized drug addiction -- another expensive public health problem! -- haven't we?
Oh, right: because most Leftards are probably gay, and heroin addicts. But I (only-half) jest, of course. The real reason is because open homosexuality is one of the devices the Left depends upon to sap the moral strength of a free people, to destroy the bonds between family members and communities, and to encourage all sorts of vices and attitudes which can later be manipulated for political advantage.
If we’re going to be discriminating against people because of their habits and the supposed cost/threat to society, then let’s start prioritizing the costs/threats accordingly. When the day comes when homosexuals are discriminated against because of their behavior and the health risks associated with it – not to mention the crippling financial drain incurred in treating AIDS -- then I’d say we have True Equality in America.
I know plenty of Smokers who have lived good, long lives, free of medical complaint, with nary a cancer cell in sight.
I know plenty of Obese people who have lived full, active lives, without the trouble of diabetes or weight-related bone/joint issues.
I know plenty of Smokers/Obese people who pay for their own private health coverage, and who do not have to – nor want to – depend upon the state for their well-being and health.
I also know plenty of homosexuals who have caught AIDS – and often brag about it because it brings them sympathy and a mess of attention (which is what all homosexuals want, anyways. It's why they 'chose' to be gay in the first place!) , not to mention federal funds – who do nothing but try as hard as they might to obtain the drug cocktails they need to stay alive (and thus spread the AIDS virus, because let’s face it; they’re often not giving up sex, are they?) at someone else’s expense.
It’s not an automatic that a smoker dies of cancer, or that he/she spreads cancer through secondhand smoke. It is not an automatic that an obese person is going to spend years in a hospital bed in a special ward sucking up tax dollars like a sponge for treatment, or going through replacement knees like I use toilet paper.
It is, however, an automatic that a homosexual with full-blown AIDS is fighting a losing battle, and would most certainly die without $3,000-a-dose anti-viral drugs that he possibly can’t afford for long on his own, constant monitoring of his health status, and other expensive courses of treatment.
So, why do we pick on Smokers and Fatties?
Because they’re not sympathetic ‘victims’ with a political utility, that’s why.
I think it’s time the Smokers and Fatties of the World United, and stopped this insanity, began to expose some of these double standards, and engaged in a fight to restore our right to live our lives as we goddamned please, and give the shit our elected officials and the busy-body-Nanny-staters give us back tenfold.
I hereby declare today National Marlboros and Twinkies Day. Light one up for freedom! Suck down a Twinkie in defense of your rights! And make sure you do it in the face of the most insufferable leftist douchebag you know, and if she (it’s usually a she) has anything to say about your ‘disgusting’ behavior, then blow smoke in her face and squish the rich, creamy filling into her hair, sending her screaming into that good night like a Arab who’s just found out his fourth wife has a dick under that burqa.
Or at least punch her square in the mouth. Just on general principles.
And while you’re at it, tell every homosexual you know that you’re not inclined to pay for his treatment when he finally (not if, always when) catches AIDS.
It’s time to start fighting back.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Unfounded Calls of Racism, Stupid City Government, and a Dead Child...
Today I’d like to tell you a tragic tale involving a dead 13-year old girl, a yellow school bus, a bad public transportation system, a tractor trailer, a school administration that is more concerned with appearances and political correctness than student safety, and a court system which city lawyers openly abuse. It will not end well, I promise you, and I can also guarantee that at the end of it all you’ll be shaking your head in stunned disbelief that so-called responsible adults could be this stupid, petty, and well, irresponsible.
Our story begins two years ago, when the New York City Board of Education (three lies for the price of one) began looking for ways to cut it’s budget without firing the 2,000 or so teachers currently held in so-called ‘rubber rooms’ awaiting termination or criminal prosecution, thus pissing off the local education unions, whilst still giving the appearance of being both fiscally responsible and fair to racial minorities.
Given that combination of political requirements, it’s not surprising that Educational Establishment (an oxymoron if ever there was one) came up with a politically-biased solution that cost a young girl her life.
It all has to do with appearances, and false accusations of racism, plain and simple.
You see, I live on Staten Island, the Forgotten Borough of New York City. It is a place that City Government tends to think of as a cash cow and a dumping ground for projects that no other borough -- with their decidedly greater populations and more vocal ‘community organizer’ types -- just won’t take, such as Landfills, Wind farms, prisons and infectious disease wards.
Wikipedia describes Staten Island as a ‘suburban community’, and it once was, but it is so no longer. What it has become is a 12-by-7 mile bonanza of property taxes for a City that can concern itself with your salt intake, but then not give a shit about whether or not your community has adequate sewers and storm drains, public transportation, hospitals, or schools. There are 500,000 people shoehorned onto this over-developed island which is always last on the City’s ‘To-Do’ list, but always first on ‘People We Can Raise Taxes On’ list.
City Officials just absolutely love the property and income taxes they can collect here (amongst the highest in all of the United States!), but they just can’t see their way to spending any of it here. Probably because the island typically votes republican, and most of us are gainfully employed. There’s far more money and political power in (created by politicians in the first place) poverty than there is in the catering to the needs of the Middle Class who pays for it all, you see.
Four consequences of this attitude are:
1) The Road System on this island is a joke. Many of the main arteries still follow their meandering, pre-Revolutionary War-era paths from days of yore – in some cases, they still follow the routes they took during the days of the Dutch Settlements (pre-1660!) and these are often narrow, crowded with vehicular traffic, and lacking in adequate safety features (traffic islands, traffic lights, stop signs, or crosswalks). You’ll find the roads in a perpetual extremely-poor state of repair (the 12’-long-by-three-foot-deep-pothole-full-of-frozen-water-on-every-corner capital of New York!), and many basic services – like sidewalks along busy streets – are simply missing, and no one in City Government gives a shit. I can’t tell you how many stories of ‘Person-struck-and-killed-by-car-in- neighborhood-without-sidewalks’ stories there are every year in the Staten Island Advance, the local newsrag. It’s easily in the double digits.
Remember, this is supposed to be 21st-Century New York City.
2) Public Transportation is seriously lacking, and what is available is often unreliable, hardly goes where it needs to (the Transportation Plans which brought it here dating to the 1960’s, and only begun in earnest in the 1980’s), and under-utilized since decades of abject neglect of the transportation system has created a cult of the automobile that would rival that to be found elsewhere in the United States. This may be the only place in all of New York City where your trip to the ‘Corner Store’ often requires a journey by car that will take you a mile or more from home, and take 30-40 minutes because of traffic.
3) Schools are in seriously short supply. Since most of the available land (even City-owned land) has been parceled off and sold to developers (we need more overpriced Mother-Daughter townhouse/condos on this island like we need a plague of locusts), or goes to more Parks and Nature Preserves (which we need like a hole in the head. 1/5 of Staten Island is State-or-Federally-protected Wetlands, bird sanctuaries, parks, national monuments, and so forth), less space is available to build schools. Especially middle schools. The last new High School, for example, built on Staten Island (in the early 1980’s) was originally designed as a minimum-security prison -- in a residential neighborhood -- that only became the ‘new’ New Dorp High School because of the near-violent outrage that sprang from a community that wasn’t even asked if it would want a prison in it’s backyard, nor told until the very last minute that one was even being built.
4) What schools we do have are generally placed far apart, and are poorly served by public transportation, requiring more yellow bus service than might be normal for children who live in the other boroughs where there are more schools and more transportation options available.
Yellow school bus service in this borough is a necessity if children are to get to and from school safely and in a timely fashion. In fact, Yellow School Bus service for Staten Island schoolchildren from kindergarten to Middle School had been a standard for over four decades, courtesy of a political class that once understood the unique nature of the problems here, and a federal judge who granted Staten Island a waiver when parents in the other boroughs claimed that Staten Island kids were receiving a benefit that children elsewhere weren’t getting. The majority of these complaints, incidentally, were based upon race. At the time, the majority of Staten Island public school kids were white.
And if anything ever screamed ‘Racism’ way back when, it was the idea of white, middle class kids being chauffeured to and from a school three miles away when minority children had to walk, often only just a few blocks. Go figure.
The accusations of racism in Bus Service have never completely gone away, and those who have yelled ‘Racist!” the loudest and most persistently, I can promise you, have never stepped foot upon this isle to see the truth for themselves. Then again, people who make their livings shouting ‘Racist!’ and extracting government money for it are very often never really concerned with truth, nor care about the consequences of their actions, so long as a politician scratches his particular itch.
To give you some idea, my nephew Mikey is one of those children who was eligible for Yellow Bus Service. Let me tell you what he has to do to get to and from school, and maybe this will illustrate the problem for you.
Mikey’s school is approximately 4.6 miles from his own front door. Without a school bus, Mikey has limited options. He could walk to and from school, having to cross at least three major arteries which local drivers treat like the Indianapolis Speedway, dodging distracted by text-messages or putting-on-their-makeup-in-the-rearview drivers for whom simple things like proper use of turning signals, red lights, traffic lanes, No Right on Red signs, and pedestrian traffic are crippling inconveniences which conspire to keep them from their quest to be the first to the next red light at 65-mph-in-a-35 zone. It’s like a for-real game of Frogger.
This is mostly a cultural problem, exacerbated by poor road planning, construction and maintenance. To illustrate these issues for you, it is not uncommon for private individuals around here to pool their OWN money to build their OWN speed bumps on their school-zoned streets, because the City won’t, citing the excuse of expense. The City, however, has absolutely no trouble finding the funds to remove those privately-financed speed bumps – often in the dead of night --just as soon as it discovers them.
Option Number Two is that Mikey can walk eight blocks to the Staten Island Railway Train (a misnomer which consists of two tracks travelling in opposite directions that serves approximately 1/6 of the island’s population on any given day), take it four stops, and then have to walk 10 blocks from the station to school, both ways crossing busy (sometimes blind because of the curves or overgrown park/wetland) intersections without crossing guards or responsible drivers.
Option Number Three is take a City Bus, requiring a three-block walk from home, a transfer, and then a six block walk from the nearest stop. This requires, incidentally, about 45-60 minutes, so that he’d have to leave home at 6:30 to ensure he got to school anywhere near 8:00, due to the numerous stops (buses here stop at nearly every block for some reason), traffic and irregularity/unreliability of service.
Option Number Four is to take another City Bus which leaves him closer to school (after a transfer to another route), but which goes two miles out of his way in order to get him there, and probably takes closer to 90 minutes, all told.
You can see the problem.
So, the Board of Education, in a cynical effort to have it both ways -- paying lip service to the concept of financial responsibility, while pandering to the louder elements of the “Everything in Creation is Racist!” brigade -- decided it was time to end Yellow School Bus service for Staten Island (White) Middle Schoolers. Two years ago, the City claimed that doing so would save an estimated $2 million per year, which is a joke when you consider the NYC Board of Education is capable of finding more ways to waste $2 million a week without even breaking a sweat.
Local government (our Borough President) went right to the courts to stop this plan and to have the waiver granted 40+ years ago guaranteeing school bus service upheld. The judge in that case let the waiver stand, and then asked the Board of Ed to turn over its internal documents and e-mails related to the decision to stop service. What he got was a mess of blank and/or redacted paper, and an injunction against his upholding of the original waiver issued by a judge in a different borough after the Board of Ed went judge-shopping in (more-liberal) Brooklyn. Another judge, a state appellate judge, told the Board to go and pound sand, upheld the waiver, and squashed the injunction, and bus service was restored.
However, the Board of Ed is nothing if not persistent – and willing to waste that potential $2 million savings on more lawyers – had the service stopped once again by yet another judge, claiming the Original Waiver violates the ‘spirit of’ the 14th Amendment, despite any practical considerations. The court fight continues to this day.
Which brings us to the tragedy that is 13-year-old Aniya Williams. You see, she was run over by a great, big, fucking tractor trailer on a busy thoroughfare in an industrial area as she crossed a street -- one without a City-provided school crossing guard, despite the fact that it’s in a fucking school zone, and it was the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL -- in an effort to catch a city bus home, and thus spare herself the 40-60 minute wait for the next one.
There are two ironies here:
1. This young lady was entitled to Yellow School Bus service under the Old Waiver, which would have picked her up in front of the school, and dropped her off mere yards from her own front door, if not for all the legal wrangling and false accusations of racism in bus service.
2. Aniya Williams happens to have been African-American.
For the sake of $2 million dollars (probably $10 million now after the legal fees are all counted up), and to quiet the uninformed noises that came from the full panoply of ‘advocates’, ‘community organizers’, ‘community groups’, ‘education watchdogs’, public unions and all the other busy-body organizations and individuals who typically speak out of their collective asses, a child is dead. The only saving grace here is that more children aren’t dead, because on any given day there are probably going to be 50 more Aniya’s, racing for a city bus that runs on an irregular schedule so that they won’t have to walk 4 miles home, and who are forced to do so because a City Government that can’t count, but which can pander to anyone with an uninformed complaint and wants to monitor your caloric intake, just doesn’t get it.
This post also appears at the Insane Asylum.
Our story begins two years ago, when the New York City Board of Education (three lies for the price of one) began looking for ways to cut it’s budget without firing the 2,000 or so teachers currently held in so-called ‘rubber rooms’ awaiting termination or criminal prosecution, thus pissing off the local education unions, whilst still giving the appearance of being both fiscally responsible and fair to racial minorities.
Given that combination of political requirements, it’s not surprising that Educational Establishment (an oxymoron if ever there was one) came up with a politically-biased solution that cost a young girl her life.
It all has to do with appearances, and false accusations of racism, plain and simple.
You see, I live on Staten Island, the Forgotten Borough of New York City. It is a place that City Government tends to think of as a cash cow and a dumping ground for projects that no other borough -- with their decidedly greater populations and more vocal ‘community organizer’ types -- just won’t take, such as Landfills, Wind farms, prisons and infectious disease wards.
Wikipedia describes Staten Island as a ‘suburban community’, and it once was, but it is so no longer. What it has become is a 12-by-7 mile bonanza of property taxes for a City that can concern itself with your salt intake, but then not give a shit about whether or not your community has adequate sewers and storm drains, public transportation, hospitals, or schools. There are 500,000 people shoehorned onto this over-developed island which is always last on the City’s ‘To-Do’ list, but always first on ‘People We Can Raise Taxes On’ list.
City Officials just absolutely love the property and income taxes they can collect here (amongst the highest in all of the United States!), but they just can’t see their way to spending any of it here. Probably because the island typically votes republican, and most of us are gainfully employed. There’s far more money and political power in (created by politicians in the first place) poverty than there is in the catering to the needs of the Middle Class who pays for it all, you see.
Four consequences of this attitude are:
1) The Road System on this island is a joke. Many of the main arteries still follow their meandering, pre-Revolutionary War-era paths from days of yore – in some cases, they still follow the routes they took during the days of the Dutch Settlements (pre-1660!) and these are often narrow, crowded with vehicular traffic, and lacking in adequate safety features (traffic islands, traffic lights, stop signs, or crosswalks). You’ll find the roads in a perpetual extremely-poor state of repair (the 12’-long-by-three-foot-deep-pothole-full-of-frozen-water-on-every-corner capital of New York!), and many basic services – like sidewalks along busy streets – are simply missing, and no one in City Government gives a shit. I can’t tell you how many stories of ‘Person-struck-and-killed-by-car-in- neighborhood-without-sidewalks’ stories there are every year in the Staten Island Advance, the local newsrag. It’s easily in the double digits.
Remember, this is supposed to be 21st-Century New York City.
2) Public Transportation is seriously lacking, and what is available is often unreliable, hardly goes where it needs to (the Transportation Plans which brought it here dating to the 1960’s, and only begun in earnest in the 1980’s), and under-utilized since decades of abject neglect of the transportation system has created a cult of the automobile that would rival that to be found elsewhere in the United States. This may be the only place in all of New York City where your trip to the ‘Corner Store’ often requires a journey by car that will take you a mile or more from home, and take 30-40 minutes because of traffic.
3) Schools are in seriously short supply. Since most of the available land (even City-owned land) has been parceled off and sold to developers (we need more overpriced Mother-Daughter townhouse/condos on this island like we need a plague of locusts), or goes to more Parks and Nature Preserves (which we need like a hole in the head. 1/5 of Staten Island is State-or-Federally-protected Wetlands, bird sanctuaries, parks, national monuments, and so forth), less space is available to build schools. Especially middle schools. The last new High School, for example, built on Staten Island (in the early 1980’s) was originally designed as a minimum-security prison -- in a residential neighborhood -- that only became the ‘new’ New Dorp High School because of the near-violent outrage that sprang from a community that wasn’t even asked if it would want a prison in it’s backyard, nor told until the very last minute that one was even being built.
4) What schools we do have are generally placed far apart, and are poorly served by public transportation, requiring more yellow bus service than might be normal for children who live in the other boroughs where there are more schools and more transportation options available.
Yellow school bus service in this borough is a necessity if children are to get to and from school safely and in a timely fashion. In fact, Yellow School Bus service for Staten Island schoolchildren from kindergarten to Middle School had been a standard for over four decades, courtesy of a political class that once understood the unique nature of the problems here, and a federal judge who granted Staten Island a waiver when parents in the other boroughs claimed that Staten Island kids were receiving a benefit that children elsewhere weren’t getting. The majority of these complaints, incidentally, were based upon race. At the time, the majority of Staten Island public school kids were white.
And if anything ever screamed ‘Racism’ way back when, it was the idea of white, middle class kids being chauffeured to and from a school three miles away when minority children had to walk, often only just a few blocks. Go figure.
The accusations of racism in Bus Service have never completely gone away, and those who have yelled ‘Racist!” the loudest and most persistently, I can promise you, have never stepped foot upon this isle to see the truth for themselves. Then again, people who make their livings shouting ‘Racist!’ and extracting government money for it are very often never really concerned with truth, nor care about the consequences of their actions, so long as a politician scratches his particular itch.
To give you some idea, my nephew Mikey is one of those children who was eligible for Yellow Bus Service. Let me tell you what he has to do to get to and from school, and maybe this will illustrate the problem for you.
Mikey’s school is approximately 4.6 miles from his own front door. Without a school bus, Mikey has limited options. He could walk to and from school, having to cross at least three major arteries which local drivers treat like the Indianapolis Speedway, dodging distracted by text-messages or putting-on-their-makeup-in-the-rearview drivers for whom simple things like proper use of turning signals, red lights, traffic lanes, No Right on Red signs, and pedestrian traffic are crippling inconveniences which conspire to keep them from their quest to be the first to the next red light at 65-mph-in-a-35 zone. It’s like a for-real game of Frogger.
This is mostly a cultural problem, exacerbated by poor road planning, construction and maintenance. To illustrate these issues for you, it is not uncommon for private individuals around here to pool their OWN money to build their OWN speed bumps on their school-zoned streets, because the City won’t, citing the excuse of expense. The City, however, has absolutely no trouble finding the funds to remove those privately-financed speed bumps – often in the dead of night --just as soon as it discovers them.
Option Number Two is that Mikey can walk eight blocks to the Staten Island Railway Train (a misnomer which consists of two tracks travelling in opposite directions that serves approximately 1/6 of the island’s population on any given day), take it four stops, and then have to walk 10 blocks from the station to school, both ways crossing busy (sometimes blind because of the curves or overgrown park/wetland) intersections without crossing guards or responsible drivers.
Option Number Three is take a City Bus, requiring a three-block walk from home, a transfer, and then a six block walk from the nearest stop. This requires, incidentally, about 45-60 minutes, so that he’d have to leave home at 6:30 to ensure he got to school anywhere near 8:00, due to the numerous stops (buses here stop at nearly every block for some reason), traffic and irregularity/unreliability of service.
Option Number Four is to take another City Bus which leaves him closer to school (after a transfer to another route), but which goes two miles out of his way in order to get him there, and probably takes closer to 90 minutes, all told.
You can see the problem.
So, the Board of Education, in a cynical effort to have it both ways -- paying lip service to the concept of financial responsibility, while pandering to the louder elements of the “Everything in Creation is Racist!” brigade -- decided it was time to end Yellow School Bus service for Staten Island (White) Middle Schoolers. Two years ago, the City claimed that doing so would save an estimated $2 million per year, which is a joke when you consider the NYC Board of Education is capable of finding more ways to waste $2 million a week without even breaking a sweat.
Local government (our Borough President) went right to the courts to stop this plan and to have the waiver granted 40+ years ago guaranteeing school bus service upheld. The judge in that case let the waiver stand, and then asked the Board of Ed to turn over its internal documents and e-mails related to the decision to stop service. What he got was a mess of blank and/or redacted paper, and an injunction against his upholding of the original waiver issued by a judge in a different borough after the Board of Ed went judge-shopping in (more-liberal) Brooklyn. Another judge, a state appellate judge, told the Board to go and pound sand, upheld the waiver, and squashed the injunction, and bus service was restored.
However, the Board of Ed is nothing if not persistent – and willing to waste that potential $2 million savings on more lawyers – had the service stopped once again by yet another judge, claiming the Original Waiver violates the ‘spirit of’ the 14th Amendment, despite any practical considerations. The court fight continues to this day.
Which brings us to the tragedy that is 13-year-old Aniya Williams. You see, she was run over by a great, big, fucking tractor trailer on a busy thoroughfare in an industrial area as she crossed a street -- one without a City-provided school crossing guard, despite the fact that it’s in a fucking school zone, and it was the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL -- in an effort to catch a city bus home, and thus spare herself the 40-60 minute wait for the next one.
There are two ironies here:
1. This young lady was entitled to Yellow School Bus service under the Old Waiver, which would have picked her up in front of the school, and dropped her off mere yards from her own front door, if not for all the legal wrangling and false accusations of racism in bus service.
2. Aniya Williams happens to have been African-American.
For the sake of $2 million dollars (probably $10 million now after the legal fees are all counted up), and to quiet the uninformed noises that came from the full panoply of ‘advocates’, ‘community organizers’, ‘community groups’, ‘education watchdogs’, public unions and all the other busy-body organizations and individuals who typically speak out of their collective asses, a child is dead. The only saving grace here is that more children aren’t dead, because on any given day there are probably going to be 50 more Aniya’s, racing for a city bus that runs on an irregular schedule so that they won’t have to walk 4 miles home, and who are forced to do so because a City Government that can’t count, but which can pander to anyone with an uninformed complaint and wants to monitor your caloric intake, just doesn’t get it.
This post also appears at the Insane Asylum.
Friday, July 08, 2011
Your Children Are Still In A Public School, Because…? Part II
And why should they do this? For the money, of course!
So long as the Public School systems in this country are government-union monopolies, so long as they are run by union-backed mercenaries and paper-pushers for the benefit of politicians, so long as they are stuffed full with battalions of teachers drawn from the lowest stratum of academic performance, and so long as the System survives with little discipline, oversight, or responsibility, it will continue to remain little more than a sinkhole for taxpayer money that could otherwise be used someplace else to much greater effect and general benefit.And we’ll continue to raise future generations of blathering idiots who can’t add or read, and who don’t know their history quite as well as they know proper condom use. Remember: this is the generation that will have to take care of you in your old age, and now we know that some of them are getting passing grades only because their teachers and principals conspire to give such to them without making the effort to ensure they earn these passing grades.
That might require actual work on behalf of the School System.
The next generation, from what I can see, is going to consist of largely stupid people, laboring under the pretense of knowledge having been showered with watered-down academic ‘qualifications’, probably living at a lower standard than we do even in these economically-depressed times, perpetually angry, perpetually led by the nose by their politicians, unable to exercise the same kind of level-headed judgment you’d expect to find in a German Shepherd.
A frightening prospect, certainly.
This phenomenon isn’t just confined to Atlanta, either. Its prevalence was evident in my neck of the woods this past July 4th . See this post.
The headlock which unionized lowest-common-denominator teachers, professional bureaucrats, politicians, and ‘advocacy groups’ have on the American Educational System must be broken. It speaks volumes that here in New York -- where the Public School system spends $18,000 a year per pupil, and only manages to create more nose-picking morons, while it expands into the ‘Charter School’ area of education (i.e. a more expensive idiot factory), while the local Catholic Schools which spend much less per student -- and get much better results -- are closing their doors for lack of funding (mostly because the Pope won’t sell a painting or two, and the Archbishop can’t be bothered to give up his limousine).
I can promise you that teachers and administrators huddling behind locked doors in the (rhetorical) dead of night in a conspiracy to inflate their test scores in order to justify higher salaries and funding, or lowering standards in order to accomplish the same, is something that would almost never happen in a Catholic School setting.
It happens all the time in the world of Public School Education.
Mostly because the people who run the public schools have few real marketable skills, and questionable academic achievements, and so they need to cheat in order to avoid having to work for a living in a Private Sector they’re poorly prepared for, secure in the knowledge that they have the backing of a union machine which exists solely to suck up money, manipulate and subvert the political process, and intimidate it’s enemies, real and perceived.
After all, every idiot in America deserves a $76,000-a-year-for-eight-months-job, complete with sweetheart pension and gold-plated health benefits that most Wall Street types would have to perform several acts of forced oral sex in order to obtain.
Every last one of us pays for this kind of bloated, corrupt, irresponsible system, and our children are being cheated of their opportunity for a better future the longer this state of affairs is allowed to continue.
Dear Staten Island Parents: Your Children are Animals…
And it was such a lovely evening, too.
It was the 4th of July, and there we were, my date and I, not to mention thousands of others, eagerly awaiting the promised fireworks show that has usually taken place off the South Beach Boardwalk these last few years.
The Boardwalk had quite the crowd upon it. There were little children running around, laughing and playing. A few souls wandered the beach. There was a live band at the South Fin Café -- and they were pretty good for a local cover band, too. The event had, as it always has, attracted a rather large crowd. I would estimate there were easily 6,000-to-8,000 people there.
And most of them were well-behaved.
But the teenagers…
The local species of teenager has always left something to be desired. This is, in many ways, not their fault; they live on an island in which real-estate is something the developers use to squeeze three houses onto a lot zoned for two – with a nod and a wink from local government, who sees this minor violation of the law as no big deal; it simply means more property taxes to collect -- and with which the City seems more interested in creating parks which we don’t not need, which will go mostly unused, and cost far more in maintenance than they’ll ever generate, out of whatever may be left after the McMansions go up. There are few recreational outlets for your typical teen in these parts mostly for those reasons; there’s no place to put such things, anymore.
This is not a new phenomenon, either: it was much the same in my day, when the majority of our teenaged recreation revolved around keggers in the deep woods and finding places to park so that you could make out with Mary Jane Sugarshorts. After that, your choices were extremely poor. There’s at least two or three fewer movie theatres around here than when I was a kid (30 years ago!), and there’s also four fewer bowling alleys (all demolished to make way for condos), and the City is building a $70 million dollar monstrosity of an indoor running track here (are you kidding me?) when it could be using the money to keep the public swimming pools open, or maybe selling the land to a private concern which could open an amusement park or something (there were also more amusement parks – 5 – here when I was a kid. There’s now exactly one, I think).
The dance halls are largely gone, replaced with upscale lounges (places where the local metrosexuals can stew in their own pretenses), as are most of the skating parks and rinks (you can ice skate all you want, but who wants to in July?). These kids have no outlets for all their pent-up energy.
Of course, it’s not just that excess youthful energy and lack of outlets that are to blame, either; there’s a generation of parents who have been extremely lax about the job, and perhaps the words ‘Baby Mama’ and ‘Sperm Donor’ are more applicable -- and closer to the truth -- than the appellation ‘parents’. Most would-be parents in this neck of the woods are blissfully ignorant of what terrible little beasts their children are when out of sight, and they seem very comfortable in the adage that what they don’t know won’t keep them awake at night.
All of these things came together Monday night…and ruined the 4th of July for everyone.
It begins with the fights. It almost always does.
Brawls erupt everywhere. Most are simply pushing matches or minor skirmishes, easily broken up by the Police, or by bystanders. A few are serious donnybrooks where one gets the impression that the reason for all this warfare is a simple surplus of testosterone and a shortage of intelligence. However, the majority of the combatants are not who you might assume they would be; they’re girls. I must have missed the memo when it became a requirement of young ladyhood that you must have a good right cross.
There were, by my count, at least four ‘big’ girl fights within my field of view. By ‘big’ I mean they involved four or more girls, often in a shifting, swirling, maelstrom of constantly-shifting sides and loyalties, in which the girl who has your back right this very second suddenly changes her mind just as soon as she gets hit, or as she decides to take a swipe at another -- usually otherwise uninvolved -- girl she has a beef with. It’s all unpredictable. It becomes impossible to tell what all this fighting is about, what with all the screaming and hair-pulling and whatnot, and it was all reminiscent of the United Nation’s Security Council, only with more fists and much more intestinal fortitude.
If I were a teenaged boy in this day-and-age, I might fear for my safety taking one of these chicks out.
Not for nothing, but girls today are apparently watching MMA and WWE. Even some of the (bigger) boys watching these fights looked as if they were close to wetting their own pants out of anxiety. These girls are scary. There is nothing lady-like in their language, their dress, or demeanor, and they practice a style of street fighting that would have impressed all the Old-Guard young toughs of the Old Neighborhood back in Brooklyn.
Then came the extremely dangerous, immature, and indiscriminate practice of throwing fireworks and other incendiary devices willy-nilly within crowded spaces. Let me repeat that: several youths (douchebags) found it necessary and proper to walk about a crowded Boardwalk, tossing lit fireworks indiscriminately, with small children in close proximately, not to mention that one extremely mean-looking pit bull.
And just what sort of asshole brings a pit bull to a gathering of thousands in which there’s sure to be complete chaos and explosions? The same sort of asshole who would throw lit fireworks into a crowd, naturally. It wasn’t enough to come to the event, you had to bring your weapon-on-a-leash and then expose him to loud noises and complete pandemonium, as well?
A goodly number of these teenagers appeared to be intoxicated, leading one to wonder just where they got the booze (probably in the same places I got it when I was their age). Marijuana smoke could be smelled just about everywhere.
These sorts of thing don’t exactly shock me; I’ve lived here long enough, and seen this phenomenon often enough, not to mention it’s all the same shit I did when I was a kid (except for throwing fireworks). Complain to a kid’s parents about their child’s obnoxious behavior around here and you get the “Not-My-Kid-Now-Get-the-Fuck-off-my-Stoop” routine. You could have solid, undeniable evidence of their child’s misdeeds and they simply don’t care. So far as they’re concerned, their child is an absolute angel and if they were involved in something untoward it just HAS TO BE a case where someone else’s kid either talked them into it, or did it and then got the other kids blamed for it.
I could present a video, complete with play-by-play commentary, of their children burning down an orphanage, and it would not register. If parents don’t want to know, then they don’t want to know, I figure.
I expected this kind of bad behavior from the usual sources; the fourth generation Mafia-wannabes, the offspring of the Shanty Irish six-pack-and-a-potato set, the descendants of the Municipal Workers who have jobs simply because they can breathe without mechanical assistance and read at a 3rd grade level, the illegal immigrants for whom simple concepts like sanitation and public restrooms are nearly impossible to fathom, let alone those who don’t feel any shame whatsoever in celebrating the Independence of a country they’ve invaded and are robbing blind.
However, I was not prepared for what was perhaps the worst behavior of the evening: large groups of black kids, often 50 or more to a group. They don’t speak to one another; they yell at each other and over each other. It is impossible to see how anyone communicates, because they’re all yelling at the same time. One group fights another at the drop of a hat (one large-scale brawl erupted when two groups from rival neighborhoods happened to pass one another). The language -- when you can manage to pick out a word here or there in all that Urban Patois -- is even more debased and foul than that used by the pugilistic White Girls.
And they actually try to go around intimidating the white people they come across, as if it’s some sort of game. That doesn’t work on me (after all, I can still kick ass even in my advanced age), but there were people who were frightened or intimidated into giving up their seats on the benches, or ‘encouraged’ to find themselves another spot on the Boardwalk because the Jersey Street set decided they wanted to set up camp right there.
The Police, I’m told privately, were so worried about the possibility of a riot at this thing, what with all these drunken, violent, retarded, armed-with-explosives-and-vicious-dogs, gang-banging, brawling mass of knuckledraggers about, that…
The fireworks event was cancelled outright…and no explanation of just why was given.
Probably because that might have sparked an even bigger riot.
The Authorities decided it would be better and easier to have the crowd disperse than it would be to keep good public order. But not before they made a huge show of force. Perhaps they were right. From what I saw that evening, this was probably a prudent decision.
This is yet one more aspect of life on Staten Island that is being ruined by a rotting culture. In the grand scheme of things I will survive the cancellation of a fireworks show; the upside was that I had more time with my date (we retreated to the South Fin Grill for drinks. Review: they might as well draw a pistol on you when they present you with your bill). The downside is this is just yet another indication of How Things Came To Be How They Are.
You can no longer have a nice, family-friendly, community-centered event on this island; the teenagers arrive in great numbers and in foul mood, and fuck it up for everyone.
If I had the money, I could make a fortune providing these assholes with some place to go and have a good time, and spare the rest of the community the aggravation. Maybe an arcade, or a dance hall (the new rage seems to be pool halls, which have had recently to restrict their clientele to keep the 16-and-unders out because of all the issues that arise), perhaps even a cabaret where the teenaged garage bands could play (we used to have these, too -- the cabarets -- but they’re all gone now, having been razed in order to build yet another dominated-by-a-tanning-salon strip mall), but I can see why no one who does have the cash actually might invest it in this fashion;
It’s because these kids are fucking animals. More trouble than they’re worth.
Who wants to have to deal with the fighting, the drinking, the vandalism, the added security, the higher insurance costs, the trouble with the cops, and last-but-certainly-not-least, the extremely petulant attitudes of Staten Islanders when it comes to certain ‘Not-in-my-backyard’ issues. Everyone agrees there’s nothing for the kids to do, and in the same breath everyone agrees the solution should be in someone else’s neighborhood. Everyone agrees the kids are out of control, but no one accepts responsibility for their own out-of-control kid, and in fact, defends him/her at every turn, even when they are undeniably wrong.
About the only GOOD thing one can take from the events of Monday night is that none of the trouble seemed to be racially motivated. This has been a problem on Staten Island since time immemorial (race riots were once common in Staten Island public schools), but I can’t seem to recall one instance in which a fight took place between people of different races. Whites fought with whites, and blacks with blacks, and never the two did meet.
Thank the nonexistent deity for small blessings, right?
Still, it’s a crying shame that an event which has become a perennial local favorite must be cancelled at the very last minute because people have forgotten what it is to have even a minimum standard of decent behavior in public.
It was the 4th of July, and there we were, my date and I, not to mention thousands of others, eagerly awaiting the promised fireworks show that has usually taken place off the South Beach Boardwalk these last few years.
The Boardwalk had quite the crowd upon it. There were little children running around, laughing and playing. A few souls wandered the beach. There was a live band at the South Fin Café -- and they were pretty good for a local cover band, too. The event had, as it always has, attracted a rather large crowd. I would estimate there were easily 6,000-to-8,000 people there.
And most of them were well-behaved.
But the teenagers…
The local species of teenager has always left something to be desired. This is, in many ways, not their fault; they live on an island in which real-estate is something the developers use to squeeze three houses onto a lot zoned for two – with a nod and a wink from local government, who sees this minor violation of the law as no big deal; it simply means more property taxes to collect -- and with which the City seems more interested in creating parks which we don’t not need, which will go mostly unused, and cost far more in maintenance than they’ll ever generate, out of whatever may be left after the McMansions go up. There are few recreational outlets for your typical teen in these parts mostly for those reasons; there’s no place to put such things, anymore.
This is not a new phenomenon, either: it was much the same in my day, when the majority of our teenaged recreation revolved around keggers in the deep woods and finding places to park so that you could make out with Mary Jane Sugarshorts. After that, your choices were extremely poor. There’s at least two or three fewer movie theatres around here than when I was a kid (30 years ago!), and there’s also four fewer bowling alleys (all demolished to make way for condos), and the City is building a $70 million dollar monstrosity of an indoor running track here (are you kidding me?) when it could be using the money to keep the public swimming pools open, or maybe selling the land to a private concern which could open an amusement park or something (there were also more amusement parks – 5 – here when I was a kid. There’s now exactly one, I think).
The dance halls are largely gone, replaced with upscale lounges (places where the local metrosexuals can stew in their own pretenses), as are most of the skating parks and rinks (you can ice skate all you want, but who wants to in July?). These kids have no outlets for all their pent-up energy.
Of course, it’s not just that excess youthful energy and lack of outlets that are to blame, either; there’s a generation of parents who have been extremely lax about the job, and perhaps the words ‘Baby Mama’ and ‘Sperm Donor’ are more applicable -- and closer to the truth -- than the appellation ‘parents’. Most would-be parents in this neck of the woods are blissfully ignorant of what terrible little beasts their children are when out of sight, and they seem very comfortable in the adage that what they don’t know won’t keep them awake at night.
All of these things came together Monday night…and ruined the 4th of July for everyone.
It begins with the fights. It almost always does.
Brawls erupt everywhere. Most are simply pushing matches or minor skirmishes, easily broken up by the Police, or by bystanders. A few are serious donnybrooks where one gets the impression that the reason for all this warfare is a simple surplus of testosterone and a shortage of intelligence. However, the majority of the combatants are not who you might assume they would be; they’re girls. I must have missed the memo when it became a requirement of young ladyhood that you must have a good right cross.
There were, by my count, at least four ‘big’ girl fights within my field of view. By ‘big’ I mean they involved four or more girls, often in a shifting, swirling, maelstrom of constantly-shifting sides and loyalties, in which the girl who has your back right this very second suddenly changes her mind just as soon as she gets hit, or as she decides to take a swipe at another -- usually otherwise uninvolved -- girl she has a beef with. It’s all unpredictable. It becomes impossible to tell what all this fighting is about, what with all the screaming and hair-pulling and whatnot, and it was all reminiscent of the United Nation’s Security Council, only with more fists and much more intestinal fortitude.
If I were a teenaged boy in this day-and-age, I might fear for my safety taking one of these chicks out.
Not for nothing, but girls today are apparently watching MMA and WWE. Even some of the (bigger) boys watching these fights looked as if they were close to wetting their own pants out of anxiety. These girls are scary. There is nothing lady-like in their language, their dress, or demeanor, and they practice a style of street fighting that would have impressed all the Old-Guard young toughs of the Old Neighborhood back in Brooklyn.
Then came the extremely dangerous, immature, and indiscriminate practice of throwing fireworks and other incendiary devices willy-nilly within crowded spaces. Let me repeat that: several youths (douchebags) found it necessary and proper to walk about a crowded Boardwalk, tossing lit fireworks indiscriminately, with small children in close proximately, not to mention that one extremely mean-looking pit bull.
And just what sort of asshole brings a pit bull to a gathering of thousands in which there’s sure to be complete chaos and explosions? The same sort of asshole who would throw lit fireworks into a crowd, naturally. It wasn’t enough to come to the event, you had to bring your weapon-on-a-leash and then expose him to loud noises and complete pandemonium, as well?
A goodly number of these teenagers appeared to be intoxicated, leading one to wonder just where they got the booze (probably in the same places I got it when I was their age). Marijuana smoke could be smelled just about everywhere.
These sorts of thing don’t exactly shock me; I’ve lived here long enough, and seen this phenomenon often enough, not to mention it’s all the same shit I did when I was a kid (except for throwing fireworks). Complain to a kid’s parents about their child’s obnoxious behavior around here and you get the “Not-My-Kid-Now-Get-the-Fuck-off-my-Stoop” routine. You could have solid, undeniable evidence of their child’s misdeeds and they simply don’t care. So far as they’re concerned, their child is an absolute angel and if they were involved in something untoward it just HAS TO BE a case where someone else’s kid either talked them into it, or did it and then got the other kids blamed for it.
I could present a video, complete with play-by-play commentary, of their children burning down an orphanage, and it would not register. If parents don’t want to know, then they don’t want to know, I figure.
I expected this kind of bad behavior from the usual sources; the fourth generation Mafia-wannabes, the offspring of the Shanty Irish six-pack-and-a-potato set, the descendants of the Municipal Workers who have jobs simply because they can breathe without mechanical assistance and read at a 3rd grade level, the illegal immigrants for whom simple concepts like sanitation and public restrooms are nearly impossible to fathom, let alone those who don’t feel any shame whatsoever in celebrating the Independence of a country they’ve invaded and are robbing blind.
However, I was not prepared for what was perhaps the worst behavior of the evening: large groups of black kids, often 50 or more to a group. They don’t speak to one another; they yell at each other and over each other. It is impossible to see how anyone communicates, because they’re all yelling at the same time. One group fights another at the drop of a hat (one large-scale brawl erupted when two groups from rival neighborhoods happened to pass one another). The language -- when you can manage to pick out a word here or there in all that Urban Patois -- is even more debased and foul than that used by the pugilistic White Girls.
And they actually try to go around intimidating the white people they come across, as if it’s some sort of game. That doesn’t work on me (after all, I can still kick ass even in my advanced age), but there were people who were frightened or intimidated into giving up their seats on the benches, or ‘encouraged’ to find themselves another spot on the Boardwalk because the Jersey Street set decided they wanted to set up camp right there.
The Police, I’m told privately, were so worried about the possibility of a riot at this thing, what with all these drunken, violent, retarded, armed-with-explosives-and-vicious-dogs, gang-banging, brawling mass of knuckledraggers about, that…
The fireworks event was cancelled outright…and no explanation of just why was given.
Probably because that might have sparked an even bigger riot.
The Authorities decided it would be better and easier to have the crowd disperse than it would be to keep good public order. But not before they made a huge show of force. Perhaps they were right. From what I saw that evening, this was probably a prudent decision.
This is yet one more aspect of life on Staten Island that is being ruined by a rotting culture. In the grand scheme of things I will survive the cancellation of a fireworks show; the upside was that I had more time with my date (we retreated to the South Fin Grill for drinks. Review: they might as well draw a pistol on you when they present you with your bill). The downside is this is just yet another indication of How Things Came To Be How They Are.
You can no longer have a nice, family-friendly, community-centered event on this island; the teenagers arrive in great numbers and in foul mood, and fuck it up for everyone.
If I had the money, I could make a fortune providing these assholes with some place to go and have a good time, and spare the rest of the community the aggravation. Maybe an arcade, or a dance hall (the new rage seems to be pool halls, which have had recently to restrict their clientele to keep the 16-and-unders out because of all the issues that arise), perhaps even a cabaret where the teenaged garage bands could play (we used to have these, too -- the cabarets -- but they’re all gone now, having been razed in order to build yet another dominated-by-a-tanning-salon strip mall), but I can see why no one who does have the cash actually might invest it in this fashion;
It’s because these kids are fucking animals. More trouble than they’re worth.
Who wants to have to deal with the fighting, the drinking, the vandalism, the added security, the higher insurance costs, the trouble with the cops, and last-but-certainly-not-least, the extremely petulant attitudes of Staten Islanders when it comes to certain ‘Not-in-my-backyard’ issues. Everyone agrees there’s nothing for the kids to do, and in the same breath everyone agrees the solution should be in someone else’s neighborhood. Everyone agrees the kids are out of control, but no one accepts responsibility for their own out-of-control kid, and in fact, defends him/her at every turn, even when they are undeniably wrong.
About the only GOOD thing one can take from the events of Monday night is that none of the trouble seemed to be racially motivated. This has been a problem on Staten Island since time immemorial (race riots were once common in Staten Island public schools), but I can’t seem to recall one instance in which a fight took place between people of different races. Whites fought with whites, and blacks with blacks, and never the two did meet.
Thank the nonexistent deity for small blessings, right?
Still, it’s a crying shame that an event which has become a perennial local favorite must be cancelled at the very last minute because people have forgotten what it is to have even a minimum standard of decent behavior in public.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
It Has Something to Do With Balls...
...and how you use them, apparently.
Gay Softball League Argues Over The Definition of 'Gay'.
To paraphrase Orwell "Some Gays are More Equal Than Others", it seems.
Gay Softball League Argues Over The Definition of 'Gay'.
To paraphrase Orwell "Some Gays are More Equal Than Others", it seems.
President Frequent Flyer Miles Strikes Again...
Can you imagine just what sort of Third-World shithole we'd be living in by now if this guy were actually trying to do the job to the best of his ability?
The best thing about Barack Obama is all the time he spends NOT being President of the United States, in fact often avoiding the job as if it came with a case of full-blown AIDS. Which means the important aspects of the job of President are probably being left to a motley assortment of others: Joe Biden, Lord-knows-how-many-ideologically-driven-Czars, White House aides and advisers, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
If you can find a bigger collection of retards anywhere on Planet Earth, I'll send you $5.
I hate to engage in racist stereotypes, but it needs to be said, I think:
Barack Obama likes picking up the paycheck, he likes the perks that come with the office,. he believes he's entitled to do whatever he can get away with -- but he's one of the laziest people I've ever seen in my life, and his inattention to detail is so pronounced that you begin to suspect that all of his qualifications are fake, begin to remember that the lofty speeches are written by someone else, and that he's probably passed through Life on Affirmative Action. One gets the impression that Barack Obama spends his days in the Oval Office playing X-box and pick-up basketball, and when it's necessary to trot him out in public, he's been told what to say, and since he has the attention span of a flea, he invariably fucks even that up.
"Unengaged" does not even begin to describe Barack Obama.
So far, if he's accomplished anything in nearly 3 years, it has been to reinforce pre-existing and negative racial stereotypes about the work ethic -- or lack thereof -- of black men.
Another vacation? More golf? Really? You know,Mr. President, it is usually customary for someone to actually DO SOMETHING before becoming mentally and physically tired enough to require a vacation. But, I'm a generous guy; I've seen what happens when you're apparently trying your best, and I'm willing to make you a deal:
You can have all the vacation time you want, right up until the election. Play golf every hour of every day. Send Michelle to Portugal, Sri Lanka, Timbuktu, for all I care, with as many servants as she arrogantly thinks she needs and is entitled to (she's forgotten that She's First Lady of the United States, not the Queen of the Universe). Give Air Force One the workout you absolutely know she's just craving. Hell, I'll even pay for your hotel room...oops, I already do...but that's beside the point.
Take all the time off you want, Mr. President, because the less you do, the better life gets for everyone else;
The more you're away, the less Washington screws with us.
The more you're away, the less time I have to spend watching you on my television screen while simultaneously trying to hold back a projectile vomit.
The more you're away, the more Presidential even the weakest Republican 2012 candidate looks. You make them all appear infinitely qualified by comparison, and your only hope for re-election is to stay off the idiot box so that people can't make that comparison and become complacent on Election Day, unable to make the choice between Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich.
The more you're away, the less sanctimonious and hypocritical blather I'll have to listen to.
Go on, Mr. Odingbat, take that extra week off...we've earned it.
The best thing about Barack Obama is all the time he spends NOT being President of the United States, in fact often avoiding the job as if it came with a case of full-blown AIDS. Which means the important aspects of the job of President are probably being left to a motley assortment of others: Joe Biden, Lord-knows-how-many-ideologically-driven-Czars, White House aides and advisers, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
If you can find a bigger collection of retards anywhere on Planet Earth, I'll send you $5.
I hate to engage in racist stereotypes, but it needs to be said, I think:
Barack Obama likes picking up the paycheck, he likes the perks that come with the office,. he believes he's entitled to do whatever he can get away with -- but he's one of the laziest people I've ever seen in my life, and his inattention to detail is so pronounced that you begin to suspect that all of his qualifications are fake, begin to remember that the lofty speeches are written by someone else, and that he's probably passed through Life on Affirmative Action. One gets the impression that Barack Obama spends his days in the Oval Office playing X-box and pick-up basketball, and when it's necessary to trot him out in public, he's been told what to say, and since he has the attention span of a flea, he invariably fucks even that up.
"Unengaged" does not even begin to describe Barack Obama.
So far, if he's accomplished anything in nearly 3 years, it has been to reinforce pre-existing and negative racial stereotypes about the work ethic -- or lack thereof -- of black men.
Another vacation? More golf? Really? You know,Mr. President, it is usually customary for someone to actually DO SOMETHING before becoming mentally and physically tired enough to require a vacation. But, I'm a generous guy; I've seen what happens when you're apparently trying your best, and I'm willing to make you a deal:
You can have all the vacation time you want, right up until the election. Play golf every hour of every day. Send Michelle to Portugal, Sri Lanka, Timbuktu, for all I care, with as many servants as she arrogantly thinks she needs and is entitled to (she's forgotten that She's First Lady of the United States, not the Queen of the Universe). Give Air Force One the workout you absolutely know she's just craving. Hell, I'll even pay for your hotel room...oops, I already do...but that's beside the point.
Take all the time off you want, Mr. President, because the less you do, the better life gets for everyone else;
The more you're away, the less Washington screws with us.
The more you're away, the less time I have to spend watching you on my television screen while simultaneously trying to hold back a projectile vomit.
The more you're away, the more Presidential even the weakest Republican 2012 candidate looks. You make them all appear infinitely qualified by comparison, and your only hope for re-election is to stay off the idiot box so that people can't make that comparison and become complacent on Election Day, unable to make the choice between Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich.
The more you're away, the less sanctimonious and hypocritical blather I'll have to listen to.
Go on, Mr. Odingbat, take that extra week off...we've earned it.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Welcome, Insane Asylum Readers...
Thanks for stopping by, and on behalf of and all the Asylum Elves (Lefty, Swifty, Stig and Bruno) here at Lunatic Central, we hope you enjoy the flow of insanity, and shocking display of deep mental defect.
We love the stat bumps here at Lunatic Central! Big props to Mr. C and Nena Grace at the Insane Asylum!
We love the stat bumps here at Lunatic Central! Big props to Mr. C and Nena Grace at the Insane Asylum!
Halperin: Dick Leaves a Bad Taste in His Mouth...
So, Time Magazine's (that's still in business?) Mark Halperin called President Obama a 'dick' on Morning Joe?
What's so completely shocking about this is not that (P)MSNBC allowed such a visceral criticism of It's Messiah to hit the airwaves, but that Mika Bra-bra-bra-shin-ski should go through the giggling schoolgirl routine when she heard the word. You're not fooling anyone, Mika: we know that you're intimately familiar with that word.
How do you think she got that job in the first place?
And in denial about the part they’ve played in their own failure.
The Left in this country is bitter, negative, unhelpful, combative, spiteful, delusional, misguided, deluded, retarded, and permanently adolescent. And it doesn’t matter who is power; they would have been just as disappointed, no matterwho had won the election of 2008, and we’d probably even be hearing many of the same complaints from the Left about a Hillary Clinton presidency, because she at least has the minimum of braincells required to make compromises, and the ambition to do whatever it takes to be seen as successful, and that often means giving a big middle finger to the Left for selfish, personal ends. Especially when those ends might clash with boilerplate Libtardism.
The difference in this case is that the Press had an emotional stake in the election and success of Barack Obama, and it never occurred to them that he just might not be up to the job. The greatest indication that Barry isn’t up to the task is all the time he spends not doing it; the multiple vacations, the golf outings, the jetting off to fundraisers, the set-piece kabuki plays of political speeches in front of rabid supporters (some of whom, it’s been rumored, have been paid to cheer, and even faint, on cue). He's never at the scene of an oil spill, flood, or tornado, and he seems to leave the job of actually governing to Joe Biden and Congress.
If Mark Halperin is disappointed in B.O. because Gitmo is still open, because there’s no Single-Payer system in place, because instead of two unpopular wars we now have three (and possibly four), because Republicans and Tea Party people haven’t been frog-marched to the Concentration Camps, because homosexuals still don’t have the right to have buck-naked swordfights in the public square, or because there hasn’t been a federal investigation of Sarah Palin’s womb yet, then he has only himself to blame.
He promoted and then probably voted for this dick.
And George W. Bush’s name had become by November of 2008, ‘Mud’.
The Press did that, too, and Halperin was in the vanguard then.
By comparison, George W. Bush now looks like a reasonable man, a veritable Bismark/Disraeli/Churchill/Reagan all rolled up into one, even if the truth of his Presidency was far from it. The Press, led by people like Halperin, who did such a bad job of covering the Bush Administration (likely because they were far too busy making fun of Bush’s cowboy accent and portraying him as a drooling idiot) was entirely AWOL on the subject of covering Barack Obama the Candidate, and has done nothing but cover for him since. And now they’re tired of it.
I do have to say one thing in Halperin’s defense: you would never have heard the word ‘Dick’ applied to Obama’s predecessors by a member of the media in the past, and while the Lefty press certainly was thinking ‘Dick’ about Reagan, Bush I and II, they at least never crossed that line of disrespect. It’s telling that the man they built up and supported, the man they’ve been lying about for the last five years, the man that The Press has such a vested interest in, is now openly mocked and disrespected in such visceral terms.
Perhaps for the first time in his career, Halperin is telling the truth.
You could only imagine what other adjectives, and body parts, Halperin would have mentioned had Barack Obama been a Republican.
What's so completely shocking about this is not that (P)MSNBC allowed such a visceral criticism of It's Messiah to hit the airwaves, but that Mika Bra-bra-bra-shin-ski should go through the giggling schoolgirl routine when she heard the word. You're not fooling anyone, Mika: we know that you're intimately familiar with that word.
How do you think she got that job in the first place?
I don’t know what all the brouhaha is about: Halperin’s criticism -- even his use of a slang term for a penis -- was extraordinarily mild when you stop to consider just what a disaster Barack Obama is/was/has become.
The Reality of Obama is not what The Promise of Obama, well... promised. It never could be. But that was painfully obvious – to everyone, except maybe Libtards – way back in 2008. Had the Press, which was busily cheering Obama on, and in fact made Obama into a Messianic figure, had instead been doing it’s primary job – discovering who the man was, and what he was all about, instead of being mystified by soaring speeches and an unusual racial bio – they would not be quite as disappointed today as they so obviously are.
Then again, part of being a Libtard is always about being disappointed. That’s bound to happen when you dream of impossible things, and live in a fantasy world where other people’s money buys everything, and Human Nature is something that can be routinely ignored. Liberals engage in what a psychiatrist might call ‘A Self-Defeating-Self-Fulfilling Prophecy’ loop in all things. If they were all put on the couch, every last one of them would emerge as a prime candidate for heavy doses of Prozac.
This is in large part because Modern Liberalism is primarily about emotions, and not about facts, logic or the realistic evaluation of possibilities. People who react emotionally to everything, people who make great leaps of faith and jump to conclusions without thinking, usually find themselves sorely disappointed.And in denial about the part they’ve played in their own failure.
The Left in this country is bitter, negative, unhelpful, combative, spiteful, delusional, misguided, deluded, retarded, and permanently adolescent. And it doesn’t matter who is power; they would have been just as disappointed, no matterwho had won the election of 2008, and we’d probably even be hearing many of the same complaints from the Left about a Hillary Clinton presidency, because she at least has the minimum of braincells required to make compromises, and the ambition to do whatever it takes to be seen as successful, and that often means giving a big middle finger to the Left for selfish, personal ends. Especially when those ends might clash with boilerplate Libtardism.
The difference in this case is that the Press had an emotional stake in the election and success of Barack Obama, and it never occurred to them that he just might not be up to the job. The greatest indication that Barry isn’t up to the task is all the time he spends not doing it; the multiple vacations, the golf outings, the jetting off to fundraisers, the set-piece kabuki plays of political speeches in front of rabid supporters (some of whom, it’s been rumored, have been paid to cheer, and even faint, on cue). He's never at the scene of an oil spill, flood, or tornado, and he seems to leave the job of actually governing to Joe Biden and Congress.
If Mark Halperin is disappointed in B.O. because Gitmo is still open, because there’s no Single-Payer system in place, because instead of two unpopular wars we now have three (and possibly four), because Republicans and Tea Party people haven’t been frog-marched to the Concentration Camps, because homosexuals still don’t have the right to have buck-naked swordfights in the public square, or because there hasn’t been a federal investigation of Sarah Palin’s womb yet, then he has only himself to blame.
He promoted and then probably voted for this dick.
And George W. Bush’s name had become by November of 2008, ‘Mud’.
The Press did that, too, and Halperin was in the vanguard then.
By comparison, George W. Bush now looks like a reasonable man, a veritable Bismark/Disraeli/Churchill/Reagan all rolled up into one, even if the truth of his Presidency was far from it. The Press, led by people like Halperin, who did such a bad job of covering the Bush Administration (likely because they were far too busy making fun of Bush’s cowboy accent and portraying him as a drooling idiot) was entirely AWOL on the subject of covering Barack Obama the Candidate, and has done nothing but cover for him since. And now they’re tired of it.
I do have to say one thing in Halperin’s defense: you would never have heard the word ‘Dick’ applied to Obama’s predecessors by a member of the media in the past, and while the Lefty press certainly was thinking ‘Dick’ about Reagan, Bush I and II, they at least never crossed that line of disrespect. It’s telling that the man they built up and supported, the man they’ve been lying about for the last five years, the man that The Press has such a vested interest in, is now openly mocked and disrespected in such visceral terms.
Perhaps for the first time in his career, Halperin is telling the truth.
You could only imagine what other adjectives, and body parts, Halperin would have mentioned had Barack Obama been a Republican.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Cat: The Other White Meat...
I hate cats. With a passion.
If it were up to me, your typical tabby housecat would be on the Endangered Species List and we'd be able to undertake an effort at Mass Extinction that would guarantee that the only place you'd ever be able to know there was ever any such animal would be a visit to the Museum of Natural History, where little plaster replicas of feline skeletons would be on display, like those of the dinosaurs and three-toed-giant ground sloths.
If there's anything more useless than a housecat, I can't figure out just what that might be. Yeah, yeah, I know, they keep the vermin out of the house, and they provide love (cats don't love; they simply attach themselves to whoever feeds them regularly) and companionship, and give complete retards an opportunity to waste money and emotional energy on cute little cat outfits, kitty litter, saccharine, vomit-inducing calendars and YouTube videos, and Cat Fancy magazine, but is it all really worth it?
I mean, a dog -- at least a great big one -- serves a useful purpose and can at least scare off potential burglars, rapists, and serial killers who invade your property, if not chew such degenerates to shreds. I'm definitely a Dog Person, and not those little yapping rats on leashes wearing little cardigans, either. A chihuahua is almost as useless as a cat, if you ask me. Give me a great, frightening German Shepherd, the wolf-like Malamute, or a saddle-ready Great Dane any day of the week,.
What has prompted this little diatribe against certain members of the Genus Felix has been the behavior and activities of the neighborhood cats.
For some reason I have yet to discern, the little Kitty Gangstas in this neighborhood have taken to my front lawn, treating it as if it were their own private Disneyland. My evenings are replete with the sounds of cat fights, cat orgies, and the chorus of singing and meowing housepets set loose for the night. These activities invariably seem to take place right below my bedroom window.
I would hazard to guess that the abundant shrubbery and flower beds tend to give horny cats those safe-and-secluded retreats they require for their noisy fuck sessions, much like humans use those seedy, out-of-the-way No-Tell-Motels out by the airport, where they charge short-stay rates and extra for clean sheets, and every Civil War-era bathroom you wouldn't use without the full panoply of inoculations against tropical diseases has it's own second-rate, your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine condom dispenser, just in case you forgot.
Nary an evening goes by, and it's gotten worse since summer is here; when I'm not chasing kitties out of the flowerbeds, or I'm not awakened by the sound of cats doing it doggie-style, sometimes in groups. Cleaning cat crap off the front lawn is a disturbing chore, and this is only occasionally made more interesting by the surprise discovery of the dead squirrels, birds, small rodents, and large insects scattered about the property, stalked and murdered by the thoughtless little cretins, and left to rot, fester and smell in the heat.
They don't even TRY to eat them, or drag them home to their owners. Hell, one of them actually dragged a squirrel that had been hit by a car out of the street on onto my front lawn, probably as a love offering to one of his fuckmates.
But last night was the Absolute Last Straw.
I had just stepped out onto the front stoop for a smoke, when my nostrils were assaulted by the most offensive odor imaginable. It was worse than the rancid aroma of New Jersey at low tide. It was a scent that would make a Pakistani Incontinent Leper ward smell like a perfume factory. It's a smell that affronts: it is not only an attack upon the old olfactory sense, but it'll actually make your eyes water and your stomach churn. I know this effluvium all too well.having once had a girlfriend with an abundance of male cats in her full-of-fur-urine-turds-and-stink home.
One of the neighborhood tabbies has been spraying (marking his territory) near my front door, the little bastard, and I had just caught him in the act.
I wish I had had a deadly weapon at that very moment, and screw the idea that this may be some child's pet. This animal needed killin', as they say in the South.
Even more aggravating is the fact that the stupid animal had the audacity to stare at me as if I had invaded it's territory. This must be the little brute who's been dragging and stashing dead squirrel carcasses (I've lifted three out of my flowerbeds in the last fortnight, and the first indication they're present is always the stench) all over the property. This must be the Feline Lothario who's been keeping me awake with his raucous lovemaking in the wee hours. This must be the four-legged lunatic who's dug holes all over the front lawn seeking beetles. This is the reason six or so other cats congregate outside my window on a near-nightly basis.
If I ever get the opportunity to kill this little fucktard, he's a goner.
Which brings me to the sheer inconsiderate behavior of my neighbors. I've left signs all over the neighborhood asking people to keep tabs on their tabbies, to no avail. I don't see the need to keep a pet which, frankly, believes it owns you, and which -- probably because it's an annoying little douchebag -- requires you to let it out every night so that you can get some sleep, and fuck everyone else's sleep requirements.
That's not a pet; it's another petulant child that you're raising.
Another notice will go out; I don't want your cats fucking, shitting, meowing, congregating, pissing, spraying, or even breathing beneath my bedroom window anymore. I'm keeping my Wrist Rocket, baseball bat, and a Super Soaker full of salt water infused with a generous touch of ammonia and chlorine bleach handy in order to defend the old Homestead against this invasion of pesky and destructive little four-footed buggers.
I have half a mind to sell the pelts, and give the meat to the local Chinese and turn the entire enterprise into a lucrative work-from-home opportunity, and if you come to complain with your crying kids in tow, I'll tell you to fuck off. This situation has gotten seriously irritating, and asking Cat Owners to exercise a little restraint with their pets is apparently like asking a democrat to work for a living; it's something they consider outside the realm of normal probabilities.
I've heard the expression "It's like herding cats..." before, and I think whoever coined that phrase was never acquainted with the cats in my neighborhood, who seem to be extremely social to the point of having formed some little kitty street gang dedicated to destroying my landscaping (which costs a pretty penny every month, thank you. Despite what some may say, Mexicans certainly DO NOT work cheap when they can manage it). There's an entire herd of them in my yard every night.
Which should make it extremely easy to help the little bastards shuffle off this mortal coil in numbers that make the effort worthwhile.
Then I might be able to get some sleep and not have my front porch smell like cat's ass.
If it were up to me, your typical tabby housecat would be on the Endangered Species List and we'd be able to undertake an effort at Mass Extinction that would guarantee that the only place you'd ever be able to know there was ever any such animal would be a visit to the Museum of Natural History, where little plaster replicas of feline skeletons would be on display, like those of the dinosaurs and three-toed-giant ground sloths.
If there's anything more useless than a housecat, I can't figure out just what that might be. Yeah, yeah, I know, they keep the vermin out of the house, and they provide love (cats don't love; they simply attach themselves to whoever feeds them regularly) and companionship, and give complete retards an opportunity to waste money and emotional energy on cute little cat outfits, kitty litter, saccharine, vomit-inducing calendars and YouTube videos, and Cat Fancy magazine, but is it all really worth it?
I mean, a dog -- at least a great big one -- serves a useful purpose and can at least scare off potential burglars, rapists, and serial killers who invade your property, if not chew such degenerates to shreds. I'm definitely a Dog Person, and not those little yapping rats on leashes wearing little cardigans, either. A chihuahua is almost as useless as a cat, if you ask me. Give me a great, frightening German Shepherd, the wolf-like Malamute, or a saddle-ready Great Dane any day of the week,.
What has prompted this little diatribe against certain members of the Genus Felix has been the behavior and activities of the neighborhood cats.
For some reason I have yet to discern, the little Kitty Gangstas in this neighborhood have taken to my front lawn, treating it as if it were their own private Disneyland. My evenings are replete with the sounds of cat fights, cat orgies, and the chorus of singing and meowing housepets set loose for the night. These activities invariably seem to take place right below my bedroom window.
I would hazard to guess that the abundant shrubbery and flower beds tend to give horny cats those safe-and-secluded retreats they require for their noisy fuck sessions, much like humans use those seedy, out-of-the-way No-Tell-Motels out by the airport, where they charge short-stay rates and extra for clean sheets, and every Civil War-era bathroom you wouldn't use without the full panoply of inoculations against tropical diseases has it's own second-rate, your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine condom dispenser, just in case you forgot.
Nary an evening goes by, and it's gotten worse since summer is here; when I'm not chasing kitties out of the flowerbeds, or I'm not awakened by the sound of cats doing it doggie-style, sometimes in groups. Cleaning cat crap off the front lawn is a disturbing chore, and this is only occasionally made more interesting by the surprise discovery of the dead squirrels, birds, small rodents, and large insects scattered about the property, stalked and murdered by the thoughtless little cretins, and left to rot, fester and smell in the heat.
They don't even TRY to eat them, or drag them home to their owners. Hell, one of them actually dragged a squirrel that had been hit by a car out of the street on onto my front lawn, probably as a love offering to one of his fuckmates.
But last night was the Absolute Last Straw.
I had just stepped out onto the front stoop for a smoke, when my nostrils were assaulted by the most offensive odor imaginable. It was worse than the rancid aroma of New Jersey at low tide. It was a scent that would make a Pakistani Incontinent Leper ward smell like a perfume factory. It's a smell that affronts: it is not only an attack upon the old olfactory sense, but it'll actually make your eyes water and your stomach churn. I know this effluvium all too well.having once had a girlfriend with an abundance of male cats in her full-of-fur-urine-turds-and-stink home.
One of the neighborhood tabbies has been spraying (marking his territory) near my front door, the little bastard, and I had just caught him in the act.
I wish I had had a deadly weapon at that very moment, and screw the idea that this may be some child's pet. This animal needed killin', as they say in the South.
Even more aggravating is the fact that the stupid animal had the audacity to stare at me as if I had invaded it's territory. This must be the little brute who's been dragging and stashing dead squirrel carcasses (I've lifted three out of my flowerbeds in the last fortnight, and the first indication they're present is always the stench) all over the property. This must be the Feline Lothario who's been keeping me awake with his raucous lovemaking in the wee hours. This must be the four-legged lunatic who's dug holes all over the front lawn seeking beetles. This is the reason six or so other cats congregate outside my window on a near-nightly basis.
If I ever get the opportunity to kill this little fucktard, he's a goner.
Which brings me to the sheer inconsiderate behavior of my neighbors. I've left signs all over the neighborhood asking people to keep tabs on their tabbies, to no avail. I don't see the need to keep a pet which, frankly, believes it owns you, and which -- probably because it's an annoying little douchebag -- requires you to let it out every night so that you can get some sleep, and fuck everyone else's sleep requirements.
That's not a pet; it's another petulant child that you're raising.
Another notice will go out; I don't want your cats fucking, shitting, meowing, congregating, pissing, spraying, or even breathing beneath my bedroom window anymore. I'm keeping my Wrist Rocket, baseball bat, and a Super Soaker full of salt water infused with a generous touch of ammonia and chlorine bleach handy in order to defend the old Homestead against this invasion of pesky and destructive little four-footed buggers.
I have half a mind to sell the pelts, and give the meat to the local Chinese and turn the entire enterprise into a lucrative work-from-home opportunity, and if you come to complain with your crying kids in tow, I'll tell you to fuck off. This situation has gotten seriously irritating, and asking Cat Owners to exercise a little restraint with their pets is apparently like asking a democrat to work for a living; it's something they consider outside the realm of normal probabilities.
I've heard the expression "It's like herding cats..." before, and I think whoever coined that phrase was never acquainted with the cats in my neighborhood, who seem to be extremely social to the point of having formed some little kitty street gang dedicated to destroying my landscaping (which costs a pretty penny every month, thank you. Despite what some may say, Mexicans certainly DO NOT work cheap when they can manage it). There's an entire herd of them in my yard every night.
Which should make it extremely easy to help the little bastards shuffle off this mortal coil in numbers that make the effort worthwhile.
Then I might be able to get some sleep and not have my front porch smell like cat's ass.
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