NYC: Trash Her Train Of Stuff

Chuck Shepherd Thursday, April 21, 2016 Comments Off on NYC: Trash Her Train Of Stuff
NYC: Trash Her Train Of Stuff

Homeless New Yorker Sonia Gonzalez, 60, recently became a legend on Manhattan’s West Side by maneuvering a stunning, block-long assemblage of more than 20 shopping carts’ worth of possessions along the sidewalks. Among the contents: an air conditioner, a laundry hamper, shower curtain rods, a wire shelving unit, wooden pallets, suitcases, and, of course, bottles and cans. She moved along by pushing two or three carts a few feet at a time. She often blocked entrances to stores in the process. The day after a New York Post story on Gonzalez’s caravan, Mayor DiBlasio ordered city workers to junk everything in her carts that wasn’t essential. She was left with one cart’s worth.

 

Take That, Portland!

Seattle’s ambitious Office of Arts and Culture has allocated $10,000 for the year 2016 to pay a poet or writer to create a work while working on the city’s Fremont Bridge drawbridge. The office’s deputy director told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in January that the city wants to encourage “public art.” The grant will oblige the recipient to create a work of prose or poetry from the bridge’s northwest tower, to help the people of Seattle understand the function of art in the city.

 

Putting The ‘Basic’ Back In Basic Training

A Singaporean army draftee caused a public stir in March, 2011, when he was photographed by a visitor as he underwent physical training in army fatigues while his maid followed him, carrying his backpack on her shoulders. Army officials told reporters the draftee had since been “counseled.”

 

If I Don’t Care About The Psychodrama, Am I Racist?

In February, The New York Times reported on the recent marriage of a composer of “moody, queasy” works and compulsive dominant Georg Friedrich Haas to Mollena Williams, who blogs about her own bondage experiences in “The Perverted Negress.” Friedrich had introduced himself to Williams on a dating site, where he wrote, “I would like to tame you.” He credits his new marriage for his improved productivity, saying, “I’m no longer disturbed by unfulfilled thoughts.” Although Williams-Haas is a black woman submitting to a white man, she explains that, “to say I can’t play my personal psychodrama out just because I’m black, that’s racist.”

 

Not Illegal: PJs In Court

Craig Long, an exasperated Columbia County, Penn., district judge, posted a sign outside his courtroom informing visitors that they should not wear pajamas to court. But Long acknowledged that his admonition couldn’t be enforced by law. He was merely trying to encourage minimal standards.

 

Bias Against Fathers, Maybe?

In its brand-new communications stylebook for city workers, San Diego officials noted that in order to be bias-free and inoffensive, Presidents’ Day announcements should never refer to America’s “Founding Fathers” — even though they were all males — but only to “founders.”

 

Of Course You’re Under Surveillance

The roadside billboard giant Clear Channel Outdoor Americas announced in February that it would soon be recording the cellphone locations of drivers who pass the company’s signs in 11 cities. Clear Channel said it would do this in order to give advertisers information about how to pitch products to people who used particular travel patterns and behaviors. Clear Channel asserts that no individual identifications will be made. But privacy advocates fret about potential abuses. Even a Clear Channel executive acknowledged the program “does sound a bit creepy.” On the other hand, as Clear Channel pointed out to The New York Times, cellphone users’ locations and characteristics are already being extensively monitored by advertisers.

 

The Search For Feminist Ice

University of Oregon professor Mark Carey produced a 10,300-word journal article proposing that Earth’s melting icecaps be dealt with by means of a “feminist glaciology framework” that will “generate robust analysis of gender, power and epistemologies” with a goal of more “just and equitable human-ice interactions.” The densely worded tract suggests that melting icecaps can be properly understood only with more input from female scientists since, Carey says, research disproportionately emphasizes climate change’s impact on males. The New York Post reported that the paper was funded by a National Science Foundation grant of $412,930.

 

Gun World, U.S.A.

— The Tennessee Senate voted in February to make its official state rifle the .50-caliber Barrett M82 rifle. The rifle, which has a range of 1.1 miles, is a favorite of snipers.

— The Lance Toland Associates insurance company of Georgia said that it’s issued Taurus handguns to each of its 12 employees, who are required to carry the handguns for their aircraft insurance work.

— University of Houston recommendations for faculty on the new law giving students the right to open-carry firearms on state campuses include admonitions that professors “be careful discussing sensitive topics” and “not ‘go there’ if you sense anger.”

 

Awesome!

— In a suburb of Newcastle, Australia, workers using a crane extracted a 1-ton coil of sewage made from “wet wipes” flushed down toilets. The sludge reached a height of more than 20 feet when the crane finally yanked the whole thing up. Said a representative of the water company, “You’ll flush the toilet, and the wet wipe will disappear, and you think it’s therefore flushable.”

— Syrian refugees arriving at the airport in Vancouver, B.C., were warmly greeted in a video by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In March, some were inadvertently booked into the same hotel that was hosting the fifth annual VancouFur convention of “furries” — people who wear tiger, dog, bear or fox suits, etc. Syrian children were said to love playing with the furries.

 

Chutzpah!

In March, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder boasted that the lead-in-the-water crisis plaguing the city of Flint for months had actually spurred job growth. Snyder has been heavily criticized for tight-fisted budgeting that enabled the crisis. The job growth Snyder referred to was a group of 81 temporary workers who were recently hired to hand out bottled water so that residents wouldn’t have to hydrate themselves with the poison municipal water.

 

Can’t Possibly Be True

A senior federal administrative law judge recently claimed that in his experience 3- and 4-year-olds don’t need lawyers to advocate for them in immigration proceedings. Judge Jack Weil said it “takes a lot of time and patience” to teach children of this age their legal rights. But he insisted there is no need for the government to provide lawyers. Weil, a U.S. Dept. of Justice employee, was contesting an American Civil Liberties Union claim at a recent deposition in an immigration case in Seattle.

 

Latest Religious Messages

— Businessman Induvalu Suresh cut off the little finger of his left hand at the Hindu pilgrimage site of Tirupati, India, in homage to the gods because bail was granted to prominent Indian leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. They had been charged with fraudulent business practices in a case with heavy political overtones. Suresh donated the finger to the gods.

— In October, a regional court in Nizhegorodsky, Russia, decided that the Russian Orthodox Church could pay for its new boiler by giving the boiler company $2,525 in rubles and “paying” the remainder in prayers.

 

‘Til Death Do You Join

In rural China, the black market for female corpses — even those that have already been buried — is thriving. According to a 3,000-year-old legend, men who die as bachelors will spend eternity alone. Thus, families arrange “ghost weddings,” in which a female corpse is buried alongside a man who dies a bachelor.

 

Starstruck And Dumbstruck

A man who broke into the ATM at a Bank of America in Phoenix on March 1 was in police custody a few minutes later. As he walked away from the machine, he happened to spot actor Bill Murray on the street. (Murray was visiting friends in the city.) He couldn’t resist the temptation to stop to chat with the star. The delay allowed witnesses to the robbery to catch up to the man and identify him for police.

 

Additional Details Needed

— Andrew McNeil, 34, was arrested in Lincoln, Neb., and charged with disturbing the peace. According to the police report, McNeil was found at an undisclosed location at 11 pm, naked and “covered in sawdust.”

— Rob Moore, 32, was arrested for misdemeanor drug possession in Marathon, Fla. He came to police attention when an officer heard him banging on the trunk of his car from the inside. Moore’s story was that he was looking for something in the trunk, fell in, and couldn’t get out.

 

Athletes: Bane Of Criminals

— In search of pain medications, Anthony Nemeth, 26, jumped over the pharmacy counter of a Walgreens in Bradenton, Fla., in February and demanded the pills. Customer David West, 25, who was standing at the counter with his girlfriend, ended the attempted robbery with four quick punches that sent Nemeth to the floor. West is a competitive boxer who was once state champion.

— A young female tried to steal the purse of Betty Jeffery, 76, who was sitting in a wheelchair in Pitsea, Britain. Jeffrey is a former national arm-wrestling champion. She slugged the young female thief in the face, slowing her down and causing her to drop the purse as she fled.

 

Clever Idea; Clumsy Execution

— Simon Chaplin, 62, thought he had evaded police near Hebron, England, by employing a do-it-yourself, James Bond-style smokescreen device on his Peugeot sedan. Initially, baffled officers were forced to hang back. But as the haze broke, they merely followed the smoke trail and caught Chaplin, who was convicted in Swansea Crown Court in February.

— The man who tried to vandalize a cafe in the Richmond suburb of Melbourne, Australia, in February, got away. But surveillance video showed that while he was dousing the outside of the building with fuel, he also doused his own shoes. He was spotted running away with his feet on fire.

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