east village idiot

On Tuesday, there were people outside my office handing out free copies of the Wall Street Journal. Each copy came wrapped with a sponsorship message.

Conveniently, this kept the content of the newspaper hidden.

Personally, I like the top version better.

I’m beginning to think that the only way to keep ourselves from offending others is to not say anything at all.

Nothing surprises me anymore.

Thank God it’s Friday. This is my first five-day week of work in a month and a half. So, it’s time to blow off some steam. By the way, did you hear the latest rumor about Sarah Palin?

You got Barackrolled.

Ho boy. It’s been a rough week, and I’ve spent the past hour on the phone with two of the most evil entities on earth: my health insurer and the billing department of a hospital. It’s funny that the people that I rely on to help me if I have a heart attack are the very same people who could give me a heart attack.

By the way, it’s still game on for Triviotic, every Monday night at 8pm at Arrow. If you weren’t there, you missed out on some stellar questions last week, like this one from the Math category:

Jessie needs 300mg of caffeine to deal with the stress of midterms. If each pep pill has 75mg of caffeine, how many will she have to take before she’s so excited… so excited… so… scared?

Hope you can make it next week. In the meantime, have a great weekend. I can’t promise the same blogging productivity next week, but I’ll give it my best shot.

There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while. A couple mornings a week, when I have alotted myself some extra time before work, I have made a habit of stopping into David’s Bagels at the corner of 14th and 1st. The order is simple: hands down, the best everything bagel in the city, with a little bit of butter. The old guy behind the counter always remembered by order, and often poked fun at my Red Sox hat (the “I don’t know if I can give you a bagel with that hat on” line never got old, because those bagels were just so damn good).

On one of those mornings two weeks ago, this sign popped up underneath the racks of their plump, warm bagels:

Their bagels were perfect. Amazingly, so was their spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Another one bites the dust.

On the last day, I stood in line for fifteen minutes to get my last freshly-baked everything bagel. A lot of people in that line with me were broken up about the store’s closing, even though their other location remained open. They were broken up for the same reason I was: we all keep tight schedules, and walking an extra 12 blocks before work each morning to get that bagel would be a hard sell, no matter how good that bagel is. Now, I’m stuck with the generic Hot & Crusty that opened next door to the now-closed David’s, the insufferable bagels from Dunkin Donuts, or - gulp - the Cafe Metro by my office. In the eight weekdays since David’s closed, I have not had a bagel.

The sign outside the store in their waning days said they “lost their lease,” and given the line that ran nearly out the door every morning (and the hike in prices earlier this year that deterred no one), the closing certainly couldn’t be because they weren’t turning a profit. I had asked the cashier on the next-to-last day, and she said “the landlord was asking too much.” Nobody should be surprised. In the new New York, closing institutions have become a sad way of life. The greedy landlords who jack up the rent on neighborhood institutions have become far too common in the East Village and all over the city, and this one hits closer to home than ever before.

Barack Obama is a block from my office right now. I feel change emanating from that direction. I can smell the hope from here.

What it says:

What it should say:

Every day, I see plenty of people doing stupid things while they commute: driving while eating, walking while texting, jogging while talking on a cell phone, biking while talking on a cell phone, ordering coffee while talking on a cell phone… the list could go on and on.

But this morning, I saw one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. It happened so quickly that I couldn’t get a picture of it, so I’ll just have to paint a picture with my words: while walking down the sidewalk on 3rd Avenue, a man on rollerblades in a helmet and spandex careened toward me. He didn’t seem to be ready to move out of my way. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you if he noticed me until the last possible second… because he was reading a book.

Watch out for those bibliophiles on rollerblades… they’ll knock you right over.

I severely overestimated the people of Lower Manhattan. Despite overwhelming grassroots support for Paul Newell and endorsements from every side of the news media, it turns out  voters in New York’s 64th Assembly District are just as stupid and gullible as the voters in Middle America: against all odds, they’d rather vote for the status quo, even though he stands for everything that’s wrong with our crooked political system.

I used to place the blame for the MTA’s fiscal crisis on Silver. But next time around, I’ll point my blame elsewhere. To the nearly 10,000 primary voters who pulled the lever for Sheldon Silver: SHAME ON YOU!

Another ad agency - thankfully, not one I work at - accidentally sent an e-mail to its entire staff about its looming layoffs. In it, the company said they were “right-sizing,” and that the moves were “in the best interest of the clients” and that they were “building for the future” (by shrinking?).

The real zinger was the message they would send to clients when an employee was laid off:

Mary Smith will be moving off your business. Now that we understand your business better, we are replacing her with someone whom we feel will be a better partner for you. 

Wow, Mary Smith must have been a horrible employee. Good thing they found someone better! She’ll never work in this town again!

I’ve been very lucky to have never been laid off. But if I ever am, this is the last way I want to be laid off.

I’m not talking about finding out through a leaked e-mail. I’m talking about being laid off through the veil of bullshit that a company spews to its employees when they’re in dire straits. It’s not a “right-sizing.” It’s not “in the best interest of the clients.” The bottom line is: their company is broke and can’t afford to pay its employees anymore. Why can’t they just say that? It’s a slap in the face to say anything different. Buzzwords don’t make the laid off employees or the remaining employees feel better about their situation; they just make them more skeptical of the company.

It’s almost as if they pulled this approach right out of the Office Space playbook. Any office drone has probably seen that movie by now. It’s been almost ten years since it was released, but HR people still haven’t figured out that everyone is on to them.

Search responses to “Rhode Island is the * of New England:”

> Rhode Island is the Jewel of New England (hilarious)

> Rhode Island is the Belgium of New England (insignificant and usually forgotten?)

> Rhode Island is the New Jersey of New England (close, but not nearly as wealthy or smelly)

> Rhode Island is the Heart of New England (if you look on a map, it’s more like the testicles, not the heart)

> Rhode Island is the Financial Center of New England (sure, if you ignore Boston’s investment banks or Hartford’s insurance companies)

> Rhode Island is the Africa of New England (wrought with conflict and corrupt government? Close, I guess)

But there are no results for the statement I was searching for, which stems from the following observations:

- Rhode Island has the lowest test scores in all of New England, despite being first in education funding.

- Rhode Island’s transportation system is almost entirely reliant on the automobile, despite being the second most densely populated state in the nation.

- Rhode Island’s government is horribly inept; union bosses and corruption continue to go unchecked, despite its citizens witnessing a massive political scandal.

- Rhode Island has the highest unemployment rate in New England - a full two percentage points above any other state in the region, and the second highest unemployment rate in the nation (thanks, Michigan!)

- The top-rated radio station in the Providence-Warwick-Pawtucket radio market is a Country music station.

Therefore…

Rhode Island is the Alabama of New England.

Now, when you critics say “go back to Rhode Island,” you know why I get so pissed off.