One of the reasons people flout traffic laws so egregiously in our city is that the NYPD, themselves gross offenders of traffic rules, do nothing to improve the situation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen NYPD officers treat a red light like a stop sign or drive down a bike lane.

On a quick comic side note, recently the NYPD has been issuing speeding tickets to cyclists in Central Park. It’s a fucking joke this city, sometimes.

So if the cops aren’t going to punish reckless, dangerous drivers who is? We could!

Let us arm ourselves with water-based paint balloons. When a jabhole in a 7,000 lb Mercedes G Class almost mows you down on his to way to the club, you should be permitted to belt the shit out of his death mobile with a paint balloon. Because it’s water based paint, it will wash off. In the meantime, this person will be known to all as a dangerous driver and have to wash that damn paint off his car when he gets back to wherever on THE ISLAND or JOI

Now I know this plan has a lot of holes in it, but I think it’s worth a shot.

There’s really not much point to this post other than to repost a relevant link that can help boost the VinylWineShop.com search ranking. If you didn’t see it on Facebook already, Not For Tourists, the guide designed to help city goers venture off the beaten path, wrote a little bit about us. Craig Nelson is the author and I think he did a fine job.

Read it here.  

Item 1

Yesterday, my friend Joe took me with him to go pick up some video game I’d never hear of at the chain GameStop. While we were there so was a family of 3 shopping for some game the parents had promised the boy, I gathered. Judging by the boy’s obvious consternation and the frustration clearly worn on the parents’ faces, I sensed that the boy either wanted more than what the parents had promised or the parents were not keeping their word and the boy was calling them on it. Maybe they said he could have Madden ‘10 (highly unlikely with Madden ‘11 around the corner) and now they were only willing to shell out the clams for a beat-up copy of Madden ‘08, or something. Either way, this situation was getting pretty intense and smartly the mother decided to assess the situation aloud.

“We’re getting into a communication snowball.” A what? I thought after hearing the odd, nonsensical declaration.

“A communication snowball is happening.” She repeated, in case her husband missed it the first time.

Apparently, for this family, the phrase ‘communication snowball’ is the cue that signals what ever it is that’s going on right then is getting shut the f down. Because immediately, the family of 3 packed it in, no game in hand, and headed out.

On the way out of the store the plaintive father only had this to say on in his most puerile voice, “I hate it when we get into communication snowballs.”

Amazing. That’s all I can say.

Item 2

Simple eloquence is the best way to capture this particular tableux.

Man outside of office building wearing a suit, wearing a SMOKING GLOVE, smoking a cigarette.

Anyhoo, apparently the union that most doormen are members of is not happy with the terms of something and is threatening to walk off their jobs. I think doormen in this city have a tough job; serving mostly self-important careless people has to be a taxing.

Consider the article in AM New York this morning about how you can get by while your doorman is on strike? WTF?! How to get by when your doorman is on strike? Um, how about take care of yourself, haul your own shit out of your car, get your own mail, and behave like every other functioning adult in this world. The sense of entitlement people have in this town is flabbergasting.

To demonstrate the sort of absurdity of the whole situation

Sorry for the patchy posts as of late. I’m in the midst of a very exciting and time consuming business venture that I’ll be announcing very soon. We’re finishing up our branding and place of business and I’m not one for premature idea release.

Is anyone interested in doing some guest blogging on MediumHappiness? (Corey? Gideon? Jose? Tony?) With it comes a serious credential that’s worthy of any resume as well as access to all 30 of my regular readers. Go try and beat that with a stick.

Let me know. It wouldn’t be indefinite. Just until I’ve got a few fewer things going on.

In a fine, absurdist, broad-stroke-claiming article that only Metro or AM New York are capable of churning out, I read that we New Yorkers better get used to the idea of a “wild” new york. Beavers are coming back, and so are hawks, falcons, and the occasional peripatetic coyote. I highly doubt we’re going to see populations of any of these once-native now-banished species coming back to NYC in consequential numbers. I mostly feel bad for the poor coyote who is living at the East Harlem Animal Shelter after they tranq’d it last week in Tribeca. Canine bonuses must have come early and it was shopping for a den loft.

Thanks to a municipal staffing foul-up I spent the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of colleg working for the Chemung County sewer plant in Elmira, NY instead of the non-shit-handling highway Dep’t. In retrospect, the screw up was probably better for me, anyhow. The highway workers were a stocky, herculean bunch who din’t mind scalding asphalt and unrelenting, scorching summer sun. The shit plant workers on the other hand, were smaller guys with a e conniving Hobbesian shrewdness. They were good at not working much, pilfering power tools from the city, and listening to George Thorogood on the radio. I think I fit in better with them, even though I think George Thorogood is one of the worst musical acts of all time.  

When I worked at the shit plant, I made $6.25 an hour before taxes. I remember my weekly paychecks being about $120 after Uncle Sam got his paws in my honey pot. Getting up at 5:30 am to go paint digesters, screw pumps, and trickling filters that each smell like one of the 5 different stages that decomposing feces goes through was not in the long-term cards for me. I think I made it about 2 months before I quit. And I only made it that long because my supervisor, Ryan, was one of my buddies from high school.

The point of this whole thing is that as bad as working at the Chemung County Sewer Plant is, it’s a cushy gig compared with what the New York City sewage workers go through. The New York Times ran a story today detailing the unconscionable treatment these guys have endured for the past 30 years. Basically, their wages have been as stagnant as a backed-up frat house toilet, while other municipal employees have ridden waves of raises over the years.

Read the whole story here.

The article also taught me that during the 2003 blackout 30 million gallons of untreated sewage were discharged into the East River. My back yard, basically.

The other thing I read had quite the opposite effect on me. I smiled and thought it was pretty cool when I read it: A coyote was found in New York City, Harlem more specifically. I’ve had this discussion with someone before, about whether or not there are coyotes in Central Park. It seems like ther could be. There are sections that are relatively remote and forrested. But, then again, a lot of people use Central Park everyday so it’s highly unlikely that they wouldn’t eventually be spotted. 

The head of the parks department when interviewed said he thought the coyote either walked down the Metro North train tracks or swam from somewhere north. These both seem plausible but unlikley.

I am a big proponent, by the way, of some serious re-wilding getting underway in the US. I think we humans are too complacent and have overbread way to many designer dog species. Introducing some ravenous meat eaters will help us big time. I should disclose that I am the owner of a small dog but he’s got wolf in him, I’m sure of it, so he’ll be just fine. I’ll try and post some footage of him in the near future. His name is Augustus and he’s awesome.

Bad Coyotes

And, as a challenge to all MedHapp readers, what song should this car be blaring whilst driving around town with this fine work of art in the back?  Maybe…this one?

Good to be back—sort of—and talk soon.

*Not to be confused with an actual wedding. Wedding Partying involves all of the good parts of a wedding (friends, family, booze, food, and love) minus the bullshit (gifts, rehearsal dinners, tuxedos, taking out lines of credit to pay for an ephemeral celebration, etc.)