Sunday New York got hit with a sure-enough blizzard. I haven’t been in the city proper, but here in the city improper we all got snowed in real good.
Apparently the Right has seized upon the snow-covered city as a means to smear both unions and public employees. Stories generated by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and the conservative Washington Examiner claim that the city sanitation workers’ union deliberately sabotaged the snow cleanup. The Examiner went so far as to claim that “union thugs” routinely shake down the city for more money and use intimidation to line their pockets. The Post claims that union “bosses” ordered workers to snarl the cleanup to protest budget cuts.
Naturally, the rightie blogosphere is eating it up. And Faux News warns that union thugs soon will be sabotaging snow cleanup in your town.
Note also that the one and only source for this story is one Republican councilman from Queens.
Mayor Bloomberg promises to look into it, but the more likely explanation for why this particular snow was such a pain in the bleep can be found at The Talking Dog.
Among other things– apparently what really snarled up Sunday traffic was that the city didn’t declare a snow emergency and order non-emergency traffic off the street. So, lots of people foolishly tried to drive places in the snow and got stuck, which much complicated plowing and snow removal. See more in New York Times and New York Daily News.
Most Americans are just a bunch of spoiled little brats. I used to see this when I lived in the Washington DC metropolitan area. With as much snow as that part of the country gets, I just finally got used to it. Snow comes, people bitch. I sit in my warm apartment and thank God for the day off from work and watch TV.
His counterpart at the rank-and-file’s union, Harry Nespoli, has also denied there is a job action, though he admitted his guys are working lucrative 14-hour shifts.
A lucrative 14 hour shift?…Gee,I wonder if it’s as lucrative a John Paulson’s billion dollar derivative deal with Goldman Sachs.. Paulson only made the equivalent of $10 million a day for a year— which breaks down to roughly $6 million dollars per 14 hours of doing nothing.
I guess this means that faux news will stop showing professional football, and baseball, because we all know that players belong to unions. Its the only option we have people. Go union.
OK, since ya ‘brung it up,’ here’s an e-mail I sent to people about my experience that day:
Let me tell you about yesterday, the day after Christmas. We were expecting a blizzard, and boy, did we get one!
I took my parents down to NJ for the Christening of my cousin’s 2nd son. Now, most people would use the brains God gave them, and stay home, especially when every news station tells you not to even think about going out. And as everyone in my family, besides us and my sisters family, logically did. But, my mother would never forgive me, and staying home in the storm would have been Hell on Earth (for weeks, if not months), even though she would smile and say she understood. My Dad looked at me, and me at him, but, both being moral cowards, neither one of us had the courage to tell her we’d sit this one out, and maybe my cousin’s wife will pop another one out despite getting over 40, and hopefully we could make that occasion. But NOOOOOOO!!!
So, off we go!
We left at 11am just as the blizzard started, and about 1/2 way there it really started to come down. Now, it’s normally an hour and 15 minute trip, and we made pretty good time going down, despite the fact that the blizzard started to really, really, really bliz. Just as we’re getting near the church, the car in front of me on Rt 280, a 50 lane highway (ok, I exaggerate – but close), does a triple-axle and spins around like an ice-skater for almost 4 full revolutions before skidding to the side of the road – no one was hurt, I don’t think, because it was grassy, and they didn’t flip over or hit any guardrail or anything. They probably left a little poo-poo in their shorts, ’cause I damn near did just looking at them. If they wacked into something I would have stopped and called 911.
So, we get to the church for the event, and it’s really coming down. And the only people there besides us and my sisters family, were my Aunt and Uncle who live around the block, and some local friends of my cousin and his wife. The rest of the relatives were home laughing at us, I’m sure. It’s over, time to go home, right? But, my Mom, only seeing the kids for a few minutes at the church, really, really wants to go see them for awhile and give them their gifts, despite the rapidly mounting snow, so off we go to his house for the reception. I did mention that my Father and I are moral cowards when it comes to my Mother, didn’t I? And my sister, usually the pragmatic and logical one, unlike me, says sure, why not, and that they’d join us. It may take me awhile to forgive her.
We get there in one piece, and I tell my parents to eat fast, and get set to leave at 3:15. So we gobble down some food, and we’re actually on schedule. I get my Mom out the door, after miraculously shortening the usual 4-hour Ukrainian/Russian good-bye ritual to 15 minutes, and out to the car – I’m sure everyone missed the 15 last good-bye hugs and kisses after the first 15, but they’ll get over it. Someday. (We’re the only people who need longer to say good-bye than is actually scheduled for the event itself. “You want us there for a party from 1 to 6? OK, we’ll show up at 11 and leave at 8.”). Then, as my Dad, who was probably telling everyone the same joke he’s told them 1,234 times before, finally comes near the car door (it’s always Mom who’s late), he realizes that he’s forgotten the gifts of a bottle of scotch and a vodka back in the house but couldn’t remember where. So, back he goes into the blizzard, like Commodore Peary after any lost expedition members – all that was missing was a few dogs and a sled, we had the snow and gale part down pat. Now, a few minutes later, I’m cold, wet, and pissed, so I go back and tell him and everyone who’s now helping him look for his lost treasures to leave the damned booze, and my sister who was leaving a few mintues after us would take it, or someone would get it to us somehow in the forseeble future. My father would gladly have left without his pants, but not without the bottles. Well, he may be 85, but he’s still got his priorities straight! He finally found them in the last place anyone in my stupid family would ever look – right next to the damned door. So, we leave at 3:30.
We finally got home after 7, on what’s usually a little over an hour drive. My sister, who waited an extra 1/2 hour until the end of the Jet’s game so my nephew could watch it, got home at around 9pm, and they have a shorter drive. Why did they stay? I don’t know, since he’s not even a Jet’s fan. No one in the family is. Now I have to talk to my nephew. Doing something stupid to see the end of a sporting event is his Uncle’s act, and he’s getting to get his ass beaten if he encroaches on it again. And what was my sister thinking? Is she losing it? Normally, she’d be the one telling me to not be an idiot, and to get my ass on the road because there’s a blizzard out there!!!
Well, let me tell you about this trip – I couldn’t see where I was going for most of it. There were white-out conditions almost the whole way where, I swear, you couldn’t see 2 feet in front of you, but I kept going because if we stopped going forward, we were dead – Dad’s just turned 85, and Mom’s going to be 79 on my birthday (or me, 53 on her birthday – since she came first). In conditions like that, you tailgate the car in front of you because you didn’t want to lead ’cause you can’t see shit, and you hope the schmuck in front of you (who’s obviously got a lower IQ than you do because he/she DOES want to lead) at least has better eyesight than you do, or else you’re doing your lemming imitation off a cliff, or into a guardrail, if you’re lucky. And if you lost the car in front of you, since you couldn’t see anything ahead of you, then you look to the left and right for the guard rails on the sides, and hope you’d notice if you were getting too close to one, or too far away from the other. It’s no fun looking to your left or right when you’re driving instead of straight ahead – but death may be looking at you from the front, so why bother? You wouldn’t be able to see it anyway. And, also, since I never had any children, I never gained the experience of driving a vehicle forward while looking anywhere else but straight ahead. The fact that more couples with young children don’t die on the roadways may indicate that, yes, Virginia, while there is no Santa, there may very well be a God. But I still want more proof.
All-in-all, one of the worst drives I’ve ever had, and I’m an experienced NY drives with an all-wheel drive car (145,000 miles and counting – thank God). But at least we got home in one piece.
All I could think of was that ice/snow storm in Raleigh about what, 3, 4 or 5 yars ago, where people were stuck on I-40 for something like 8 – 12 hours. And I’m driving thinking, ok, if we DO get stuck, here are the plusses: we just ate, and we’ve got some scotch and vodka in the car, so there’s no need for that St. Bernanrd carrying cheap brandy to come around – the scotch was 15 years old – just about the right age for a scotch, and just a little younger than most of the actresses I’ve dated in my life. And then it dawned on me that I couldn’t drink any of it! The last thing you need if you’re stuck in the snow for hours, with two cold or maybe fast-fading seniors, is a DWI when someone finally does show up to save your sorry, drunken, shivering ass.
A mile from the house, I stopped off at the 7-11 for a tall-boy of strong (12% alcohol!), but horrible tasting beer. Then, after I got the car in the garage, got my parents upstairs, went back down and hauled my ass back upstairs with the few gifts we got, cracked open the beer, and poured a healthy shot of pepper vodka (ok – maybe like 3), and shotgunned ’em. Nothing takes the chill out like pepper vodka – but not that horrible Absolut Peppar shit. I wouldn’t use that crap to take off my toenail polish in an emergency. Oooooooooooooops! T-M-I. Just kidding!
NO, REALLY!!!
Well, to make a long and lame story short, my friend Bobbi from NC sent me pictures of her and her dog playing in the snow they got down there. And seeing those pictures made me glad someone found something useful and fun to do in the snow besides driving 75 miles like NaShnook of the North, terrified that if he doesn’t get home soon, he’ll freeze to death, and his body won’t be discovered until spring, perfectly preserved in the mound of snow the plow driver buried him under when he couldn’t see shit either.
We got about 15+ inches, maybe more in spots, and I’d show you a few photo’s of the beautiful Lawrence of Arabia snowdunes, and the 3 foot overhang off the roof that’s still there, but the only camera I’ve got is a 15 year-old 35mm (hey, it beats pencil drawings or water color’s), and if my cheap-ass cell phone even had a camera, I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to take a picture, save it, download it to my PC, and send it. So, use your imaginations
As for the NY Post, I used to buy it on Sunday’s for the sports section. I stopped awhile ago. It’s the most offensive thing I’ve ever seen printed. It’s not fit to wrap a dead fish in, because it’s an insult to the poor, dead fish’s intelligence.
Hey, I cleaned up a few things on my PC, and not only did I lose my history and dropdowns, I lost my beloved perplexed yellow circle!!!
I don’t like being an angry silenced green pentagon, even if I do look like a St. Patty’s Day home plate.
Woe is me!!!
How do I get my yellow circle back?
maha,
I guess you could say, “I got accustomed to your (my) face…”
I know you gave instruction about it eons ago , but I forgot. To tell the truth, I never looked into it because I really liked what the internet gave me – it’s actually an improvement on what nature gave me.
c u n d gulag — you have to go to gravatar.com and figure it out; I don’t have any control over the faces at this end except whether to display them all or not.
How do I get my yellow circle back?
Are you entering the same e-mail address as you normally have in the required information box( mail) in order to leave a reply? Check for spelling errors if you think you did…The e-mail address determines the icon so that it will always be consistent with the picture displayed. At least I think it does.
Gulag..You can always grab a 64px x 64px picture of Taras Bulba to use for an icon. 🙂
Swami,
Yeah, it’s right. And I went to gravitar.com like maha said. And it wants to send info to me to my hotmail account. The problem is that I now can’t get into my hotmail account, it says my password is wrong, and then it wants to send a reset to a Road Runner account that I lost in a move 6 years ago. I must have done a number on the cookies, ’cause all my bookmarks and cache’s are gone too.
CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!
That’s what I get for trying to customize a McAfee clean-up. They really shouldn’t allow idiots like me that option. They should have some basic computer IQ question before you’re allowed to go and do something so f-ing stupid as to give your computer amnesia, and also a really strong warning to make sure you understand the consequences. Something to the effect of, “Hey MORAN, are really sure you know what the Hell you’re doing? Really, really sure? ‘Cause if you ain’t, den don’ touch nuttin’, Capice?”
Well, I know how I’ll be spending the weekend! Trying to regain what I lost, and I can’t even remember what the hell I had.
I stopped using McAfee a few years ago after I used it to encrypt the wireless internet in my apartment. Once the encryption was done, I couldn’t log in to my own wireless because I didn’t know the password — which the software, not I, had assigned — and the McAfee software couldn’t tell me what the password was. Appeals to McAfee’s laughably named “customer service” were futile. They said I had to get some code from whoever manufactured my wireless router, and that turned out to be impossible.
So, I was frozen out of my own wireless. I had to use cable connection for quite a long time, until they day came when I finally bought a new computer and router and could use software other than McAfee to encrypt the wireless.
Swami,
Taras Bulba!
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks, I needed that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
maha,
McAfee sucks. But what I was using before was worse, and I can’t even remember what it was – this aging stuff is vastly over-rated, let me tell you.
I guess you get used to shitty crap after 6 years, so I’m here with McAfee, the ugly imcompetent date that brung me.
Oy, do I have my work cut out for me!
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