The Bureauacracy Rampant...

I had occasion to accompany Tess to the New York City Department of Vital Records, yesterday, in an effort to recover some very important and necessary documentation, and was treated to a first-hand experience of just how stupid and quite redundant most public union...ahem...workers...are.

That picture on the left? That's a Rube Goldberg. For those who were born under rocks -- or after X-box, which is sort of the same thing -- Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist who used to create images of the most outrageous machines that performed the simplest of everyday tasks.  The point was to go to an extreme to avoid doing something simple and mundane. This one shows a machine that wipes somebody's mouth without them having to dirty their hands. This fairly describes the Bureaucracy of the City of New York: why work efficiently when you can add so many complicated steps to the process? And employ a lot of seemingly useless people while you're at it?

After all, it's only TAXPAYER MONEY, right?

The Bureaucracy Strikes Back...

Sometimes, you just have to wonder what the fuck it is that we're getting for our tax dollars.

If you live in the State of New Yorkistan, I would say you're getting jack shit. And when I say this, I should clarify:

1. We are NOT getting a government that works smoothly and efficiently.

2. We ARE getting a government which is apparently run by rhesus monkeys who, on a good day, might be able to find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight..

The long, sordid, and all-too-sickening tale of this Lunatics battle with the mindless bureaucracy of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles seemed to have the proverbial light at the end of that tunnel. But, alas!, the rhesus monkeys have found a way to annoy me yet again.

If you haven't heard this story before, then I suggest that you read this, this, and this, and then you'll be up to speed with this entire tale of woe.

And then you'll probably want to either laugh or vomit. Probably both.

Of Bicycles and Horny Moose...

Two totally unrelated stories that I will quickly...ummm...relate...for you by the time this is finished.

Really, I promise!

The first story has to do with the rank stupidity of government here in New Yorkistan. Our Reichsfuhrer...err, Mayor, Michael Bloomdouche...errm...Bloomberg is known to be a freak when it comes to bicycles. In fact, Mayor Mind-Everyone's-Business is a freak, period, but that is beside the point.

Lunatic: 1, Bureaucracy: 0

Oh, happy day! It has finally happened! I have finally been able to prove to the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing,  unionized high school dropouts at the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles that I, your humble correspondent, do exist!

I have just received my brand, spankin' new New York State Photo identification card. The one I've been seeking like it was the Holy Fuckin' Grail for five years now. If you're not familiar with my trials and tribulations on this subject, you can read about them here and here.

I'll wait until you're up to speed....

Par For The Course In New Yorkistan...

Shocker: Dem and GOP pols caught in bribery scam to get Dem elected Mayor of New York City on GOP ticket...

Now, what's so shocking is not that a democrat would try to bribe his or her way into office;they do this all the time, as a matter of course. Especially in a place like New York, Chicago, Detroit or Washington, D.C., because the sort of democrat those places seem to breed would never see a democrat elected if he/she had to rely on, oh...their wits, or telling the truth.

Bloomberg Unhinged...

Apologies: I had meant to get to this earlier, but shit happens and all that.

Okay, so it would seem that New York City Mayor Micheal Boomdouche...errm...Bloomberg...has finally lost his last sodding marble, and has extended his food fetishes to baby Formula. It's bad enough the New York City school system won't educate the little tykes when they get old enough to attend, now Bloomberg wants to see them starving, too.

Dear Food Nazis...

…you suck.

No, wait…I take that back. You have gone beyond merely sucking; you swallow.

I arrived at this formulation yesterday evening, when Tess and I had the most unfortunate cup of coffee you might imagine.

Yes, you read that right: coffee.

The Religion of Peace, My Ass...

Muslim douchebags in my hometown hope to show The Softer Side of Islam.

A little punch, a little sponge cake, maybe a DJ, and then something will probably explode shortly thereafter. Happens every time you put more than three Muslims together in the same place, don’t you know.

Or maybe they just want to hold a symposium on the joys of Donkey Sex?

Muslims Upset by NYPD Surveilance…

Ever stop to think that maybe if you turned your crazy brothers, uncles, and fathers in before they go BOOM! you wouldn’t have this problem?

Politically Obligatory Stupidity...

I'm about to say something that I've said a million times before, but it bears repeating; your government, at all levels, is full of mouth-breathing doofuses, and it's our fault that these people are somewhat-gainfully employed at taxpayer expense.

Ten Years Later: Some of You Still Don't Get It...

Yesterday’s e-mail brought a rather silly request from a group which calls itself Unity Productions Foundation in which I have been asked to provide a link here at the Asylum to some stupid video about the trials and tribulations of (presumably) peaceful Muslims who are only trying to build mosques and go about their daily lives in peace, but find themselves discriminated against and unfairly singled out by the government for being 'different'.

Maybe They Should Call It a White-Old-Man-Cession...

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.

National Marlboros and Twinkies Day...

Yet another city government decides that smokers are fair game.

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.

Well, They Needed Them to Go With the $30 Million of Unused Bike Lanes, Silly!

Something I wanted to write about last week, but never got around to;

City of New York wastes $60,000 on bike racks, along a street with no dedicated bike lane.

Such is life in Mike Bloomberg's New Yorkistan. The really surprising thing is that the project didn't cost $6 million, and have to be re-done three times by a union-dominated, Mob-connected contractor with no competitive bidding process allowed.

And when you stop to consider it's only $60,000, you realize it could have been far worse. After all, the City just demolished an entire skate park in Midland Beach that it only built a few years ago for a reason that no one has been able to yet adequately explain, and now there's a lot of talk about a solar and wind farm project at Fresh Kills (formerly the biggest garbage dump in the United States, rumored to have been visible from Earth Orbit) that will probably cost three times it's original estimate, and produce one-fifth the promised energy. All this at a time when the Bloomdouche Administration is crying poormouth -- in the richest city, with some of the highest property taxes, in all of America.

Perhaps if the City wasn't busy installing bike racks along major roads with no bike lanes that will mostly go unused -- along roads that are deteriorating something fierce, and which have become safety hazards in their own right --  building wind farms that are unnecessary (the land upon which they will be built on is perhaps one of the richest sources of methane gas known to Man; it will be built on the largest decomposing garbage dump, after all), making your personal eating habits it's primary focus, persecuting smokers to pay for insulin and neo-natal care for illegal immigrants,and handing out free needles to heroin addicts, there might be some tax money available for all those things it was originally intended for: running the city. You know, like for repaving streets, filling in potholes, keeping the streets clean, and the hospitals open. Maybe then the Public Schools wouldn't have to hold bi-monthly fundraisers just to buy toilet paper and pencils.

But Bloomberg didn't become Mayor to do something as insignificant and unfulfilling as running the City efficiently. Hell no: he became Mayor to impose his mentally-constipated-Upper-East-Side views upon us all. He's here to make sure we eat right, Go Green even if it kills us, encourage us to stay out of Manhattan on weekends so that the Upper Crust set should never have to rub elbows with the Outer-Borough Peasants ever again, and finding new and inventive ways to kill economic activity with rising tax rates and new taxes that often defy belief. All the while screaming "Budget cuts! Budget cuts!".

It makes you wonder how it was that this douchebag ever became a self-made billionaire.

Because someone who actually knew about Money would know that it isn't a lack of funding that causes City Budget shortfalls; it's the continuing and concerted campaign of waste and stupidity that comes out of City Hall and Albany that's to blame for that lack of revenues. Forethought, careful planning and auditing of public funds are words that are apparently not in any of our elected officials vocabularies.

Hence, $60,000 for bike racks in an area where riding a bike is akin to jumping from a perfectly-functioning airplane...without a parachute. But that should not matter to people like Blooomberg, who see public office as a means to an end -- in this case, catering to the needs of a select brand of total retards. This City is increasingly being run by the Stupid for the benefit of the Even Stupid-er, and the rest of us are just expected to shut up and pay for it, no matter how much it costs, how dubious the motivation, or how ridiculous the project.

And besides, bicyclists are fucking gay. It takes a special brand of effete faggot to be brave enough to negotiate our often narrow, crowded and following-the-same-routes-they-did-in-Revolutionary-War-times streets in a snugly form-fitting yellow spandex body condom, demand a little respect and then expect to be taken seriously. Frankly, I'm not surprised that you see so few cyclists on Staten Island streets, but am I surprised that the ones you DO see aren't run down just for being an annoying douchebag in public. We laugh at you. We question your sanity and lineage. I know more than a handful of drivers who will actually go out of their way to crowd you off the roads or open their car doors when they see you coming towards their parking spot.

You're lucky there aren't more of you being beaten up on a daily basis, because you're even more obnoxious people than those doofuses on Mob Wives and Jersey Shore.

No, you aren't better than the rest of us because you ride a bike instead of an Escalade; that's just something you tell yourself to make yourselves feel better about having such small penises. We know you have small ones because you wear so much neon-colored spandex that it's almost impossible for us not to notice.

And guess what? I don't drive anywhere, Mr.-I'm-Reducing-My-Carbon-Footprint. Haven't for 15 years, as it is terribly impractical in these parts. I walk everywhere, and where that isn't possible I take public transportation. That would make me superior to all of you, if we were ranked by your own environmentally-retarded criteria: building your bike required mined metals, rubber, energy to produce, transport to the bike store, petroleum-based paints and lubricants,and at some point, all of it will have to be replaced, either piecemeal or in total, as it wears out. My feet are greener than your bike (hmm, maybe I should bathe more often?), but I don't see the city spending $60k for a shoe rack outside my local supermarket -- and there's already a sidewalk there, unlike the complete dearth of bike lanes.

And what bike lanes there are in Staten Island often lead absolutely nowhere, and many terminate at blank walls and dead end streets. That's only to be expected given the propensity for the City of New York to plan it's projects and identify it's priorities so gosh-darned carefully.

UPDATE: The New York Post spends a week watching cyclists, concludes that they are mostly massive cunts.

The Word...

It was Saturday evening, and we're all sitting around the Lunatic's Sister's kitchen table. The cake has just been served, this day being her birthday (Happy Birthday, Dear Sister!). One of my nephews has just called another "retarded", as kids are wont to do.

What happened next was something that sent douchechills down my spine, and produced a violent urge to vomit.

"You know", The Lunatic's Sister says to her child, "you're not supposed to say 'retarded' to people, because it's hurtful. What did they tell you at school about that?"

"Why not?" asks the Lunatic, innocently, wishing he hadn't asked just as soon as the words are uttered, because it has just dawned upon him at that very second that he's about to listen to an explanation of why that word has become verboten that will be long, pointless, and...well...umm....rather retarded.

The Lunatics Sister, after all, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But, he asked for it, the Moron ( I wonder: Am I allowed to use that word, if I apply it only to myself?), and by God, he's gonna hear it -- if only because My Sister sometimes behaves as if she's my Mother, as well. This pisses me off because:

a) I already have a Mother who lectures me (still) while having nothing intelligent or positive to say, and

b) Nothing pisses me off more than being lectured to in that annoying and condescending tone which both Mother and Sister adopt, as if they're talking to a wayward child, with that irritating habit they have of being unable to explain themselves without a lengthy pre-amble, a diversion to a parable which might only be tangentially related to the subject at hand, and that slow and deliberate diction that would make one believe that I'm a retard, too, if you'd ever heard it.

I can hardly wait.

It turns out that a child at my nephew's school is what they now refer to as "mentally-challenged". I happen to know the child in question; he's autistic, and is given to unpredictable outbursts. I disagree, strongly, with the label "mentally-challenged" when applied to the Autistic because of my experiences with several autistic people. I know autistics that would put the greatest mathematicians of history to shame, who hold down important and complicated jobs, or who are capable of doing anything most people could do, infinitely better, and with a level of precision that would give a German engineer a permanent hard-on.

I'm a fanatical believer in the theory that we, the Human Race, would not live in the world we do if it hadn't been for some autistic dude sitting in the back of a cave, spending hours and days flaking away at a pierce of flint to form the perfect spearhead. I believe that some of the greatest scientific, literary and artistic minds in human history were probably autistic, or at least possessed some of the same qualities that we ascribe to autistic people. Autism does not mean"challenged", nor does it mean"stupid". Anyways, back to our story.

So, The School recently had another of it's fund-raiser evenings -- why a public school, supported by tax dollars, requires an almost-continuous series of fundraising drives is a question that no one can adequately answer for me. It seems that while the City and State of New York see fit to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $14,000 per student per academic year, it does so without buying supplies for the classroom. The money raised, I'm told, often goes to buy the Basics: from art supplies to toilet paper -- and this particular child caused a commotion during the festivities.

This kerfufle caused the parent of another child to remark "I think that kid's retarded" , apparently whispered to another, but still within earshot of the autistic boy's mother. This observation, made by an ignorant clod with no social graces, apparently troubled her to no end because within days there was a PTA meeting where the subject of the word "Retarded" -- and the evil and incorrect applications and connotations connected with it  -- became the main subject of intense debate.

Some observations on the 'debate', as it was explained to me;

1. The child in question is NOT retarded, he's autistic. Most people do not make the distinction, or even know the difference. Mother-with-a-Stick-up-Her-Ass wants everyone to know that her son is Autistic and NOT Retarded. In the often-confusing world of politically-correct causes, Autism somehow rates higher than simple Mental Retardation. Angry Mother is offended that someone may have used a word that somehow downgrades her son's condition. Like being Retarded is akin to living in the ghetto to Autism's Gated Community? Autism is to Mercedes what Retarded is to Ford Pinto? By what standard we say that this particular affliction is more worthy or honorable than another is beyond me, and I think my head exploded when I heard this ridiculous 'argument' about a distinction most people are incapable of making without conscious effort.

It all probably has to do with some sort of competition between "Special Needs" childrens' parents for state aid, I'll bet.

2. The word 'retarded' is hurtful, mean-spirited, and damages an already-fragile child's self-esteem, and shouldn't even be used to describe a child who is, you know, actually retarded. Unless, of course, you -- as the parent of a retarded child -- choose to wear your genetic failure as a badge of courage, shout "RETARDED!" at the top of your lungs in order to get to the head of the line at Disneyland, or use your child's affliction to get yourself some charity money, taxpayer funds, special consideration, sympathy, or fake affirmations of your 'courage'. Life, and the vagaries of Genetics, have handed you a veritable Lemon; make Lemonade. Love your child, by all means, but don't expect that others should have to give you a medal or some special accommodation because of his/her condition.

That Society often does so is a matter of courtesy; you don't get to elevate that into a special set of extra-constitutional rights.

3. Henceforth, sayeth the School, the word "retarded" is hereby banned from the vocabulary of all the Inmates..errr...Students...and there will be a 'Zero-Tolerance' policy regarding the use of the word. Penalties are not specifically discussed, but promises are made by the Gods of Education that they will, indeed, be harsh. Just what 'harsh' means in the context of children between the ages of 5 and 10 is an open question. I rather doubt flogging is going to make a comeback, and quite frankly, expulsion would probably do some of the students more benefit than real harm. After all, this is a school which has a janitor with a huge yearly budget, but somehow he's not allowed to spend any of it on cleaning supplies, because parents are constantly being asked to send the children to school with all sorts of anti-bacterial products.

'Zero-Tolerance' policies, mind you, often trip over their own self-defeating logic; if the original argument was over context (as in this case), then the application of the policy must, by it's very nature, also trip all over context. Since no one feels capable, or willing, to make a decision regarding context the easist thing to do is to simply avoid the discussion altogether. One hopes. This is not an enlightened policy: it is an abrogation of responsibility. In the context of educators guiding and shaping young minds, it is a surrender of the intellectual to the emotional, and ultimately serves no one well. This should have served as one of them 'teaching moments' I keep hearing about; why not take the time to instruct the children on the differences between retarded and autistic, stress a little understanding, patience and courtesy, and then tell Mommy-Run-Amok to shut the fuck up and deal, like an adult?

Anyways, I listened to my Sister relate the whole sordid tale, and wanted to reach across the table and strangle the life out of her, because she swallowed the whole 'Zero-Tolerance' nonsense completely, and was determined to enforce it within her own home.

Okay, fine. It's your house and they are your kids, so do what you like, but you have, Dear Sister, missed the Bigger Point (this is, indeed, my Sister's greatest talent, so I'm not entirely surprised). Actually, she's missed a bunch of points.

The first is that a greater mass of people are being punished for the thoughtlessness of another. Some asshole with no class mutters something he shouldn't, and gives offense. In the Old Days when people simply sucked things up and soldiered on -- or just got into a fistfight and solved their problems Mano-a-Mano -- this would have been taken care of immediately, and would not have required a public meeting and a censorship regime.

The Second is that it's kind of ridiculous that one person should be allowed to impose this sort of censorship over hundreds simply because she was offended. How it came to be that we, as a society, began to empower those with often-petty axes to grind is something I often wonder about, and then fervently wish we could reverse with a carefully-planned program of street executions. Unfortunately, there are some people who haven't learned the very simple lesson that Life Sucks, and that on any given day, you will probably be offended at least once, and then there are other people who haven't learned the lesson that once you allow a petty grievance to become a Federal Case -- and then crafted an all-encompassing policy to address that specific grievance -- you've opened the floodgates to all sorts of stupidity.

Today, it's the use of the adjective 'retard' in an offensive context; tomorrow, it'll be wearing a cross or yarmulke to school, wearing certain colors on certain days, a particular item in a bagged lunch, or a student's superior fashion sense which will make someone, somewhere, groan about 'unfairness' and 'offense'.

The simple truth is that the majority of people who inhabit this Blue Marble are dumber than dogshit; addressing their petty concerns in such a sweeping manner only leads to a coarsening and constriction of Life for the rest of us.

The final problem I have with this is that a word, which is perfectly valid and has a meaning outside the context of handicapped children, is being taken away from other children at a point in their educational lives where they are forming the primary abilities they will need to express themselves later in life. They are learning to expand their vocabulary, they are learning the lessons of context and contrast within language. The word 'Retarded', in and of itself, is not offensive; it's an adjective. The only power it has to offend is the power that people choose to give it.

Banning it's use may make Mother-Mind-Everyone-Else's-Business happy, but she has done, I think.a great disservice to the other children in the school. What, for example, would happen if it should turn out that Shakespeare, or perhaps a Great Poet, happened to use the word 'Retarded' in their works? Should we ban Shakespeare? Should we rewrite the entire literature of the Western World so as to remove all the words that are personally offensive to her? What if the word appeared in a scientific treatise? Should we develop a new way to teach sciences with an entirely new and non-offensive terminology?

No sooner did I hear this sorry tale then I went right home and broke out my copy of George Orwell's 1984.

In that tale of Political Correctness run amok, the Protagonist, Winston Smith, is a newspaper reporter (in a sense; what he actually 'reports' is not 'news', but rather Politically Correct lies and a continuous rewriting of history for political puposes) is having a conversation with a colleage who is involved in the recrafting of the English language (called Newspeak in the book).

This collegaue is openly bragging about his work, which is the destruction of words;  especially words that have political signifigance. These words must be purged from the lexicon because they can be used to express discontent, to foment counter-revolution, or because they would expose some politically-inconvenient truths that The Party would rather keep hidden or obscured. This colleague postulates that in the future, the English Language will eventually contain but ONE word, and it's meanings and context would be rigidly defined and no other meaning or context could ever be permitted.

The ultimate purpose of the destruction of words was to deprive the people of the ability to communicate with one another, or to express dissent and discontent, as a means of keeping the directing brains of society (The Inner Party, i.e. The Government) in power forever.

Perhaps it is a great leap to make -- from the banning of a word in order to soothe one person's ruffled sensibilities to the loss of ability to express Political Dissent -- but the effect is the same. With each banning of a word, with each narrowing of the scope of thought, with each attack on the individual's right of free expression, we're one step closer to tyranny. Whether it's the tyranny of a panty-bunched school board, a hyper-sensitive Mother, or an overbearing Government, matters not: we're slowly being trained to avoid saying what we feel. When you forbid people from speaking freely -- even inartfully or meanly -- you no longer have the most basic of freedoms.

I can understand why a Mother with a difficult child might be offended by the insensitive comment of a total dipshit; I don't understand why it was that someone gave her the power to remove a word from the vocabulary of hundreds of children -- and though she may not have intended to do this -- given an unelected, and largely unaccountable,  school administration the power to limit the way in which people might choose to express themselves.

I also don't understand how it is that my Sister swallowed this dangerous precedent whole without thinking about it's implications. She's not THAT dumb, after all, but perhaps she's just been trained better than I have.

Before I get a flood of e-mail accusing me of being indifferent to the plight of 'challenged' children and harried parents, let me make it clear that I am not without sympathy. Let me also make it clear that your Autistic child's 'limitations' are mostly of your own making, and ultimately speak more about YOU than about HIM. The child in question is a sweet, loving, beautiful little boy -- I know him personally -- and I'm convinced that if you (his Mother) didn't dote on him, and try so hard to 'protect' him, he'd find himself a nice little niche in this society and be far more useful, productive and relevant than a goodly number of so-called 'normal' people.

The first obstacle that you -- as a parent -- have put in his way is to hide the truth from him; that this world is inhabited by thoughtless morons who learned how to whisper in a sawmill, and who have no manners, and now that you've taught him that to get ahead all he has to scream louder and brandish his 'disability' like a club, don't be surprised when he starts doing the same to YOU.

After all, he's not stupid.

I would wager that he's smarter than any ten people you know combined.

I would, however, hope that one day Mommy Dearest might realize what she has done, and how she has behaved, and come to regret it. Unfortunately, when that day comes it'll only be after someone has dictated how she should live her own life in much the same way that she has just dictated that others should live theirs.

Such is human nature.

That's far a more offensive possibility, to me, than someone misapplying the word 'Retard' in a way that you find irritating.

UPDATE: Edited for spelling and grammar. My apologies!

I'm A State Assemblyman...and An Idiot, Part II...

New York State Assembly announces legislation to formally name a State Vegetable.

Personally, I'd cast my vote for "Charles Schumer".

You'd think these people would have had better things to do with our time and money (like figuring out how to save both?) ,and apparently, you'd be dead wrong. I guess there's no pressing needs up in Albany that might require the attention of our part-time-but-paid-full-time Assembly. Not like there's a $9 billion budget deficit to deal with. Not like our Schools aren't filled with mouth-breathing dunces, both students (inmates) and teachers. Not like business is fleeing the State. Not like we spend more on Welfare programs than we do roads, bridges, and infrastructure projects that might cause one to wonder whether government's priorities are in accord with reality.

Nope. None of that is actually happening, you see. That's all just an invention of FoxNews and Rush Limbaugh. Our state government has more important issues to tackle, like whether we like onions or corn better (and the answer to that question probably depends on which lobby paid more for this dubious distinction).

Last week, it was an Official Scent, this week, an Official Vegetable.

I wonder sometimes whether this planet isn't simply the loony bin for some extraterrestrial race, and this State the Rubber Room.

Why Was it That Unions Were Supposed to be a Good Thing, Again?

New York State spends ten times the national average on Public Sector pensions than any other state in America, and the Union 'Workers' themselves contribute less than half the National Average to them.

Even more shocking than this figure is that the New York Times actually reported it.

Go figure.

By the way, since I'm on about the unions again today, Dear NFL Player's Association:

The Average Salary of an NFL player in 2009 (according to various sources) was about $1.8 million dollars per year. If you are a millionaire, you don't need a union -- you need a financial planner.

You get paid to play a game that most men play for free in their spare time. You get free medical care from your teams, fame, endorsement deals, and your choice of hot chicks (gold diggers, yes, but who says you have to get emotionally attached?). And you only 'work' half the year (various training camps and the NFL season).

Yes, I know; those contracts aren't guaranteed, but then again, that's the reality that the majority of people in this country face; employment is very often "at will", and the only difference between us working slobs and you is that a good number of you get a portion of that long-term contract money up front. It doesn't hurt as much when you've signed a four-year $10 million contract with a $500,000 signing bonus, and $3 million up front, and then get cut. I'd give a testicle for a contract like that.

So would most people in America. You have some nerve threatening a strike.

As for the NFL owners: it's a $10 billion dollar NFL pie, surely you can figure out a way to divide it well enough to keep everyone happy. Then again, you're the people who charge season ticket-buyers a 'license' fee for the right to buy tickets -- before raping them for said tickets.

Both sides in this manufactured dispute make me sick.

The OTHER Emperor Without Clothes...

Mike Bloomberg is a lying douche who should never, ever be allowed anywhere near a Presidential primary.

(Ed. Note: The full version of this original article is now available online at Commentary Magazine).

For those of us who have suffered through the Reign of Doomberg the First, the evidence for the complete and utter failure which is the Bloomberg Administration is glaring and obvious, and given the current state of national politics in general, and New York politics in particular, it was entirely foreseeable.

Bloomberg the Politician has benefited from the paucity of qualified, or even likable, opponents from either the Left or Right; your choice as a voter in three successive New York Mayoral elections has been between Bad and Worse. Between Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich, to steal a meme from South Park.

Mike Bloomberg ran for mayor on the premise that a successful businessman was the best possible candidate to administrate the fifth or sixth (I forget which) largest government in America. That a man who had built a multi-billion dollar personal empire was possessed of the financial acumen and good judgement that would have seen New York prosper, with lower taxes, sensible laws, and steady stewardship. He is the example that has largely proven that while successful businessmen know how to make money in the private sector, they often haven't got the same sense bequeathed to a brain-damaged Irish Setter when it comes to managing an entity (a city workforce) who's vested interest is not in the profit of the entire enterprise, but in the maintenance of the status quo, and thus, their own profit.

The Mayor of the Best City on Planet Earth has spent his interminable term destroying the city, instead of building it up. It has been an almost-uninterrupted campaign of turning Manhattan into a liberal's paradise, where there's no smoking, no hotdogs, no automobiles, and the streets are returned to their 'rightful owners'; the big-money solons of the Upper East Side who don't wish to mix with the largely Working- and Recipient-class hoi polloi of the Outer Boroughs...unless the masses happen to be the hired help.

The man who sued Rudy Guiliani in order to get control of the rebuilding of New York after 9/11 has largely failed to do what he once promised to do. We're just now getting started on building, in earnest, the future monstrosity that will be known as the"Freedom Tower", while the Islamic assholes who destroyed the World Trade Center have been building victory monuments (Ground Zero Mosque) with largely federal funding and a phalanx of stupid politicians and judges to defend and advance their cause -- including Bloomberg. Bloomberg vowed to take charge of the reconstruction efforts, and then turned them over to people and entities even less-equipped than he was; three governors who couldn't find their own ass with both hands and a flashlight (Pataki, Spitzer, Paterson) and the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey, which has spent the last 25 years dragging New Jersey into the 20th century (i.e. the last one) at the expense of New York.

The man who promised to fix the Public Schools so that they turned out fairly-literate charges who could enter the workforce, has instead spent more money on education than many small nations for questionable results. He then contrived to have the poor results spun as a victory over ignorance, and he stands at the head of a school system that is flush with cash and unneeded teachers, but in which PTA's work like sled dogs to raise private funds to ensure those floating-on-a -sea-of-greenbacks schools have the basics: books, cleaning supplies and toilet paper (my sister, involved with the PTA in her local public school for the last decade, spends at least four months a year organizing fairs, raffles, and other events, and then begging local businesses for cash donations, to support the Public School that her children attend).

When Bloomberg decided to run for a third term, and couldn't because state and city law forbade a third term, he simply had the law changed to suit his needs. The largely democratic party-controlled City Council went along with him, because none of that rogues gallery of dim bulbs wanted to run for Mayor of a city ravaged by recession. The will of the voters, who had enacted that term limits law, was overturned largely by the whim and money of Mike Bloomberg...who now says that maybe the law should have remained in place, after he barely scratched out a $100-million victory over brainless clod who's only message was"Vote for me...I'm black and a democrat."

Bloomberg's rationale for a third term? "I'm the only one who can help New York recover from the financial distress it's in." And then he went and borrowed so much money to fund his pet-peeve-projects you would have thought that no one here paid any taxes, whatsoever (bicycle lanes that largely go unused, government campaigns against excess salt or sugar in the diet, enforcing smoking bans, forcing restaurants to reduce transfats in their menus, giving out free needles to heroin addicts to prevent the spread of AIDS -- the increase in both heroin use and AIDS cases just must have been one of them 'unforeseen consequences' of such enlightened policy -- and buying off every group or individual which might have uttered an unkind word about Emperor Mike with city 'financial aid', or as he likes to call it, 'patronage').

With that record of failure behind him, I can't figure out how it is that the man has the audacity to roll out of bed every morning and pretend he's a player on the national stage. That he actually has the arrogance to believe he's cut out for an even higher office. He has done the impossible and made much of David Dinkins' confused and scattershot Mayoral policy seem rational -- and cheaper --by comparison. If I had to guess, the entire purpose of the Bloomberg Administration has been to advance the personal cause of Mike Bloomberg, because as a citizen of this fair city, I sure as shit can't see how he's made life here any fucking better.

If Mike Bloomberg -- Emperor of New Yorkistan -- ever sees hisname on a presidential ticket in his lifetime, this country would be in dangerof electing an administration that would equal, and perhaps even exceed, Jimmy Carter's for sheer stupidity, arrogance, lack of direction, and ability to spend taxpayer money on largely fruitless-and-unnecessary nonsense -- the origin of which is not rooted in the public need, but rather in the Chief Executive's personal whims and flights of fancy.

Of Groundhogs and Doofuses...

Today was Groundhog Day -- like you really gave a crap. For some schoolkids, Groundhog Day also means Day Two of having to sit through yet another lecture on how George Washington Carver invented peanut butter, and how Little Richard and Chuck Berry were ripped off by the man, and the crack epidemic was a CIA plot, but look at the bright side: you only have 26 more days of that contrived, over-hyped torture left to endure.

A little history lesson for those who don't know what Groundhog Day is, and are too fucking lazy to even do a Google search:

Legend has it, although just where this legend originates -- and just how much liquor and how many successive generations of inbreeding were involved in it's creation -- is unclear. Suffice to say, that somewhere along the line some moron with more time on his hands than brains decided that the actions of a groundhog were more than just the instinctual activities of an oversized rodent; they were an omen of the future, and specifically, about the weather.

If you ask me, a groundhog looks like a fucking rat with a thyroid condition. I wouldn't think it had any special talent for predicting anything, let alone what the temperatures might be six weeks from now. By all appearances, groundhogs do little else besides dig, eat, fuck and shit, and if I really needed to observe the behavior of some beast so as to divine the state of the weather, I'd think I'd pick one I could ask directly, and hence, communicate with.

We have literally thousands of such people here in New Yorkistan, people who do little else besides dig, eat, fuck and shit, and if we turned to them for weather forecasts more often, they'd at least be earning that fucking welfare check. But I digress...

Then again, it has just occurred to me that my description of groundhogs -- a rat with a thyroid condition that does little useful work, and is associated with auguring the weather -- sounds a lot like Al Gore. Maybe I'm being unfair to the groundhogs when I make that association?

Anyways, about Groundhog Day...

Personally, I don't see the point of the whole thing anymore. Yeah, it sorta-kinda made sense one, maybe two hundred years ago, before there was anything like indoor heating, weather tracking satellites, Al Roker, or 24-hour-a-day weather reports (it's fascinating to me that he Weather Channel somehow makes money by basically repeating the same information to you 24 hours a day...then again, that's what they do at (P)MSNBC, and they're broke, so make of that what you will).

In the Old Days (as they say) the guess of a hedgehog was as good as it got, I guess. Science, as we would understand it, was in it's infancy (I've seen enough episodes of Gunsmoke, Davy Crockett, and The Andy Griffith Show to know what I'm talking about! The groundhog was smarter than Goober, for certain!), and mankind being able to predict the weather was probably one of those things that people routinely dismissed as being impossible. Folklore, in many cases, was considered more reliable than this new-fangled science bullshit.

In any case, the need to consult a furry little mammal, on anything, not only seems primitive, but a complete waste of time. I think the only reason why anyone still makes a fuss out of this is that it's become a tradition (some tradition; the only thing lamer and gayer than Groundhog Day is an Obama State of the Union Address, or maybe Justin Beiber. It's a toss-up). It's one of those traditions that probably deserves to fade away.

Mostly because the whole idea is fucking stupid.

The supposed Heavyweight Champ of Prognosticating Prairie Dogs is Punxsutawney Phil, who, we're told, has not seen his shadow this day. Judging from Phil's prodigious midsection, he probably hasn't seen his feet or balls for some time, either, so what's the big whoops? Not to be outdone in the Theatre of the Absurd and Cheesy, a local boy, Staten Island Chuck, likewise did not see his shadow, and unfortunately did not bite Mayor Bloomdouche again this year.

So far as I was concerned, digging his buck teeth into Mayor McCheese was probably Chuck's only redeeming quality.

So, two adumbrative guinea pigs have agreed that in the next few weeks our long nightmare of successive snowstorms, freezing winds, and icy rains will be all over, on their ways to becoming distant memories. Good riddance; I'm sick of snow, cold rain, slush, a coating of ice under every footfall, and getting soaking wet after stepping five feet from my own front door, already. I would love to see that -- warmer weather in six weeks -- happen. I just don't believe that placing all your hopes for an early spring upon the actions of a brace of furry vermin is the smartest way to go.

Especially not when some douchebag in a top hat and tails, who hasn't gotten the message that mutton chops are definitely out, is involved.

Still, people always need hope and encouragement in the darkest depths of the winter of our discontent -- there's staggering unemployment, our economy is in tatters, the world is going to hell around us, and we've finally come to the painful realization that we've elected a man to run this country who's only remarkable talents are for punting on first down, no matter what the issue, and going on vacation -- so I figure hope is where you find it.

Sunnier days ahead. Warmer weather. It's amazing sometimes how so simple a thing suddenly becomes so important to so many, and then you begin to realize how typically American it all is; that a tradition which John Q. Nosepicker -- Man in the Street -- could care less about, means something after all, at least when we're all in misery, even if it is all so fucking gay, and reeking of pagan superstition (one imagines that at least half of those doofuses in top hats are probably pastors, and their Calvinist predecessors would have burnt them at the stake for any witchcraft that involves the use of an unclean animal to foretell the future).

Then again, in the current state of affairs, simple things are about all we have left to look forward to, so I guess we'd better be grateful when we get them, and perhaps not ask too many questions about where they came from, either.

Crisis! Bedbugs At Waldorf Astoria since 2007!

Guess who brought them there. I'll give you a hint; they usually can be found changing sheets and cleaning bathrooms, and English isn't their first language.

Bedbugs A Frequent Guest at Ritzy Hotel.

Here in New York, we're beginning to see the confluence of two issues; illegal immigration, and the "Ick! Factor" of the Upper Crust. The Illegals are needed because no one changes hotel sheets, washes dishes, watches your children or manicures a lawn like a Central American, or works cheaper (it's amazing how cheap fabulously wealthy people can be, but then again, it squares nicely with the liberal desire to have "The Government" pay for everything), but, how do you square the need for cheap domestic help with the possible mortification of a guest in your hotel or swanky home that may be Catching Cooties from Consuela, and not by the old-fashioned, horizontal method, either?

Well, the first thing to do is to fire Consuela, of course, and then find another ethnic group to exploit. Expect to see Chinese and Caribbean domestics in vogue, soon, along with the bromide that they're "cleaner". After that, expect a load ofnews stories about the difficulties of the Rich will have in fumigating the house, furniture and limousine.

In the last two years or so, stories about bedbugs in New York City public schools, in the hospitals, and many other public places, have become common. No one in a position of authority had much to say about it because doing so would bring attention to the illegal immigration problem, and more specifically, paint illegal immigrants as filthy, unsanitary, disease-and-vermin-carrying wretches who would be targets for public approbation (you should see the ones around here; constantly coughing, spitting, and peeing in the streets. You'd wonder how it is that such outmoded notions continue to persist...?).

Heaven forbid people should be allowed to tell the truth about anything because it might offend someone else, especially the person the truth is being told about.

And then someone found bedbugs in Bloomingdales!

And now there's bedbugs in the Waldorf!

Even the Beautiful People began to sit up and take notice at that point, and Emperor Doomberg is said to be taking the issue "very seriously". Before it was simply something limited to the Commoners; that rabble that attends the public schools, the hired hands, the hourly Wage-Earner. Now it's moved into their circles of the better-bred, and they're demanding protection from these pernicious little pests that they helped bring back because they needed Pedro and Marisol to clean the six bathrooms in the Penthouse, off-the-books and sans Social Security taxes.

Soon, some of the swankiest stores in Manhattan will be putting up signs that say "Bed Bug Free", and right now, enterprising entrepreneurs are performing Bedbug Inspections all over Gramercy Park, and getting $1,000 a pop for them.

Because nothing is a crisis until it begins to affect those with money and a politician's ear, you see, and then it becomes a tsunami of overreaction, in which the first part of the hasty "solution" is to throw money at the problem. But, I wouldn't be surprised if we're not looking at the start of a (minor) crackdown on illegals in New York City, because of this new public health issue and potential source of personal embarrassment for the Upper-Crust. I won't hold my breath, though.