I of course will have nothing to do with the first program mentioned in this article. Nope. Nosiree. I won't be doing those progress reports. Nope. Not I.

I have become a selfish jerk:

- I have been shamelessly promoting my blog. I tell people “why, I posted it on Live Journal.” “Gosh, I posted it on Pico.” Like I am that important. People come to read when they wanna, and it’s cocknoxious of me to ask them to step out of their routines—which probably involve more work than I do—to read my mealy mouthed whining! (But read my/ our sports blog.)

- The continuing sales of candy on the subway by pre-teens and teenagers is making me sick. I assume they’re out because in the holiday season, people are giving, people are sweet, and people are from out of town. I should respect that some of my young (black + Latino) people have a hustle, but what kind of world are we in that they have to hustle like this? I’m a hater, I know. Even worse, I wonder if it’s because I hate to hear people on the subway? I have preaching, I hate sales, I hate panhandlers, I’m halfway to sounding like I am from a red state and I am living in a waterfront condo.

- I’m going to go wash my sins out with whiskey. Happy New Year!

Here is a pretty good list of some of the worst television of the year.

This morning Alissa met me with a bag the size of a well-fed 10 year old. We walked to Atlantic/ Flatbush, in hopes of finding a ride... and there was a yellow cab, empty of passengers and lights on, in the middle of the street. Sweet! He didn't even pass me by! It took 40 minutes by car, traffic on Flatbush and gridlock on Broadway being the culprits.

post: from the Defend Brooklyn mailing list:


So Pataki and Bloomberg were willing to let TW-100 walk over a pension proposal that would have saved the transit authority less than $20 million over the next three years considering that the city says that every day of the strike will cost its businesses hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues. Are they that dumb? No, This is all about upcoming negotiations for City employees who's contract runs out next year. Bloomberg was quoted in the NY Post 12/20/05 saying New city employees had better get ready for reduced pension benefits no matter what happens in the transit talks — where pension costs are a key sticking point.

"A fifth tier for city workers is something we have to think about," the mayor said during a press conference on Staten Island, referring to the city's four current pension plans.

Pension reform had been on the mayor's agenda long before the transit negotiations.

This is why we have a strike today! And if you think this is bad just wait till the summer.

Phil

Escalade-ation

So in response to Mayor Bloomberg calling the TWU workers selfish, cowardly, and thugs, Roger Toussaint, head of the TWU, responded this afternoon by likening their struggle to Rosa Parks' struggle and bringing up the lack of days off/ holiday provisions on Martin Luther King Day. And the story of a transit worker with a child who couldn't get days off.

This ain't gonna end this week, because that's a step up in rhetoric.

plus: i like how this NYTimes graphic starts with the most affected-- a graphic that is city-center oriented; and goes on to the worst affected. the most affected graphic does not take into account the additional time and discomfort on the LIRR or in vehicles for those of us on the outskirts of the city, or the effect on Long Island. That is your paper of record.

Day Deux

Less cold today; walking makes a body tired. But I feel good, exercised; which is the perfect antidote to the malaise I've been feeling recently. Plus it takes a moment like this to remind me how much I love certain people.

Also, shopping at Century 21 was quick and easy. More people in the store than I would have guessed but free enough at lunchtime to get some clothes.

Last night I caught a ride home with one of my big bosses and I will never do that again. On the plus side, he really does remember my name and even my high school. On the bad side, we sat in traffic on Water Street for an hour. And then on State Street for half an hour. I learned a lot about Sir Paul McCartney's oeuvre, found out there is apparently an Eagles song in the movie "the Warriors," and saw my old Windsor Terrace neighborhood, but that trip was not necessary.

Tonight, we walk.

Here is a transit strike photoset from yesterday, including Randi Weingarten at the Manhattan base of the bridge, Marty Markowitz in the Brooklyn Cyclones cap telling us "we're going to get through this" on the Brooklyn side, and lots of morning commuters getting reacquainted with their bunions.

What some New Yorkers are saying about the transit strike

opposition seems to be based on people's whining inconvenience (serve me, meat! and smile when i can't understand the subway map and my brittle voice shrieks at you!) and on the premise that being a transit worker is a desirable job. also, the premise that since the rest of the world is getting unlovingly screwed out of pensions that everyone else should.

also, this transit system is obviously valuable to all of us, drivers and walkers and subway riders alike. and if someone's douche-ass advertising job was valuable to the company, they can go to their boss and say "hey, i'm valuable. pay me like i'm in GoodFellas or i go to a rival."

the transit workers have no rival.

so when they get mistreated, when they have given back wages (when in any private industry job have you agreed to not get a raise?) they only have one option. stay. that lack of option should have a specialized status/ value. since the sweet children from indiana who come to the city to test their hipster fortunes playing their glockenspiel into their powermac don't want to be train conductors, obviously, this is a job that a limited amount of people are willing to do.

additionally: danger factor, being in the subways. in 7th grade our science teacher asked us to come up from the subway and blow into a tissue and check the color of what comes out. lovely, right? and we don't work in it.

and yes, the subways are going to be automated at some point (that sends warmth up my spine! hey, digital readout, these kids are robbing me. what's that you say in response? next stop, bergen street?), which should embolden the transit workers. because what are they going to do in 10-15 years? work in finance? study philosophy?

anyway, the comments. these people.

douchey comment string from gothamist.

Transit Strike 2005!

I went to bed last night knowing that it was actually going to happen. The Transit Workers’ Union was going to walk off the job; the MTA representative came out and spun the negotiations his way, the TWU representative spun the negotiations that way. The news reporters clenched their jaws and pursed their lips to deliver the news. The traffic reporters spat gloom and doom. I heard of bottlenecks; Dora and Di decided not to go.

The LIRR station at Atlantic was jam packed with people buying tickets to get to Jamaica and then back into the city. Good luck. Meanwhile, I started my walk up to the Brooklyn Bridge, assuming it should take me 40-50 minutes.

And I had my camera. There will be a photoset later.

Highlights include:

- A few bikes.
- Not much foot traffic, relatively.
- Goofy bikers and rollerbladers.
- Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz greeting us on the bridge. “We’re going to get through this!”
- Empty roads on the bridges and streets.
- The United Federation of Teachers at the Manhattan foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, with some TWU folks, handing out coffee.
- The Red Cross, handing out coffee.
- Reporters everywhere.

Apparently the Staten Island Ferry wasn’t crowded.

Also, that was a good brisk walk! I should do it more often! Except for the frozen nose thing.

From the NY Times, about the strike on the private bus lines likely to happen on Monday. I bring this up because I live out there, with some pretty cruddy bus service to begin with, and at $5/ dollar van ride, i'll take the LIRR, thanks. or just stay with my girlfriend as long as she'll have me. you know, becausde mike bloomberg told me i should. anyway, here is some text from the article:

The Transport Workers Union represents 217 workers at Jamaica Buses, based in Jamaica, Queens, and 490 workers at Triboro, based in Flushing, Queens. By noon today, the buses were still running, and it was unclear when the union members would stop work. A driver for Triboro Coach said a walkout was unlikely before Monday.

Jamaica Buses has about 15,000 riders each weekday, while Triboro has about 42,000. If there is no bus service on the lines, city-licensed commuter vans along those routes will be permitted to charge up to $5 a person and taxis will be allowed to charged up to $10 a person.

The chairman of the City Council's Transportation Committee, John C. Liu of Flushing, said in a discussion on WNYC-AM radio this morning that the patrons of the private bus companies would be the one harmed by a strike.

"These riders have suffered from years of neglect by the city and the M.T.A.," Mr. Liu said. "Their service has become atrocious and to sock it to them this way through a strike at this point just seems profoundly unfair to these bus riders."

He emphasized that the union was not the only one to blame for the contract impasse. "Whenever there is a shutdown of a transit system, it's not just simply the union's fault because it is illegal for them to do so," Mr. Liu said. "The M.T.A. should have come to the table a long time ago in earnest and not wait until the very, very last second. And in fact that's been, I think, a part of the problem. The chairman, Kalikow, didn't even show up until yesterday afternoon."

Roger Toussaint, the union's president, and Mr. Kalikow met at 11 p.m. last night for the first time in the labor talks, just one hour before the union's three-year contract expired at 12:01 this morning. Although talks had been conducted throughout the day, they heated up once Mr. Toussaint and Mr. Kalikow were both at the table.

The major sticking point, according to several union officials, is the authority's proposal that new employees reach age 62 before being able to collect a full pension. Since 1994, the vast majority of transit employees have been able to collect a regular pension at age 55 if they have 25 years of experience.

Normally I’d talk about the extreme self-absorption and anti-tabloid snobbery of the NY Times (Hi! This is Queens here! We exist!) but this is an interesting article, short and sweet, about one transit worker. I like it not only because the writer is one of the kids from the HS (Sewell. I know a funny story that Cappy might know too!), but also because the article talks in monetary and time terms about the life this conductor leads, the middle income people in the middle of the transit negotiations.

Meanwhile, A judge enforced an arbitrator’s ruling that removing conductors from the L train violated the Transit Worker’s Union contract.

And from Ray Sanchez' column:

Joshua Freeman, a labor historian at the City University of New York, said MTA giveback demands plus the union's militant history couple to make a strike a real possibility.

"The very nature of brinkmanship is sometimes you fall off the edge, even if you don't flinch," he said. "But this is not late in the game by standards of these negotiations, which tend to always be resolved at the very last minute."

And, Some MTA Guidelines in case of a strike, from the Newsday:

Enhanced carpooling rules in morning rush hour; restrictions on trucks, cars with fewer than four passengers

Carpool staging areas in all five boroughs

Additional parking at Metro-North and LIRR stops

Encourage use of bicycles where possible

Encourage staggered work schedules

Encourage telecommuting

Start of school will be delayed two hours, field trips canceled

SOURCES: NYC OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, NEWS FILES

In case you don’t know about the local papers—I suppose “tabloids” can be used to segregate them from the classy and regal New York Times—a little proof positive that the NY Post is very chummy with Fox News and into promoting conservative concepts on New York’s populace (as if reading Andrea Peyser wasn’t enough. Or the mug shots of negroes).

There’s no link to the article because I wouldn’t want you to sign up for the NY Post (though it’s free); you don’t need to get dumber. Read the Daily News instead. That way you won’t think about boycotting stores that won’t put Christmas in their advertisements.

Hiatus

This is a NaNo haitus-- not that I am getting far in the novel-- but I break it for this article about the changing New York (and how we used to be able to say "I'm from New York and that meant that even if you were sheltered you could probably throw a punch or hire someone who could), from the NY Times. Yes, the article is about video games. An excerpt:

WHEN we say, "I'm a New Yorker," we sometimes say it with a little sneer. Rats? Mafiosi? Terrorists? We can take it. Bars here close at dawn. Subway doors are ripped open with bare hands. New York's edginess is so endemic, so untamed, that a crack cocaine den was found this year in the otherwise relentlessly genteel Upper East Side. That's how we roll.

At least that's what we sometimes like to think. In fact, New York is no longer such a tough town. On any given day, we're more likely to dial 311 than 911. This is a city of Prada boutiques and pumpkin spice lattes. One of the biggest disasters to strike the city this year was a public-relations gaffe in which a 24-foot-tall Snapple popsicle melted all over Union Square on the first day of summer. The horror!

NBA Preview at the sports blog, Athletes in Action (sixstarcamp.blogspot.com)

Halloween was spent as a member of the Incredibles. We had all four (Dash and Violet/ Invisigirl played by Silver and Lara; Mr Incredible by Gulshan; Elastigirl by Dora) and damn we looked good.





Little did Mr Incredible know that I didn't want to know about his woman's mild-mannered alter-ego... and that Frozone always gets the girl.



It's because chicks just love my draws.



post-script. I am now picodulce on Livejournal; I am going to use that site for the more personal posts, the whining and crying and such, because I can make those posts private/ or post to small close inner-sanctums-style groups of people. so, hethalouise, raycroft, silver, chaz, jo-go, greg, nicky brooklyn, everyone named matt, angie, alice, marge, new-top, pixel, eben, coast guard rob, schnapp, toby, assorted e-stalkers, et cetera, it'd be cool if you got Livejournal accounts and were able to read my oh-so-private posts. It's cool if you don't, I hate being a joiner; but the greatest hater of them all, neverecho, has joined, so why shouldn't you?

And when you join, go to /users/picodulce and add me as a friend. That is all.

I will still post to this blog, but it'll be focused on politics and New York living and parties, whereas the other blog will be all emo. Check it weekly at best. Make it an .rss feed.

P.S. - There is already an eben. and he goes to the wuniversity!! whaaa? eben, did you go back to school and get interested in anime?

Festiva 10.27.05

I’m having a bit of a Molly-fest these days. Not that I know her so well, she’s more Alex’ friend than mine, even though I saw her at times before she moved to Oregon. So I am jacking ideas from her, like the list of books a few posts ago, and now, the idea of 100 things to do in the next calendar year. My list is not yet ready and may be read only by me… but it’s going to be done.

I am also having even more of a Dora fest but I won’t talk about it; I want this blog to be work safe and, like Norville Barnes creation in the Hudsucker Proxy, “for the kids.”

Fred, Please Talk To Your Woman. 10.24.05

Wilma. Oh Wilma. Thanks, Hurricane Wilma; you have ripped up the roof of my pappy’s barn and flattened his crops. But the house in FLA is OK and so is my dad, sans electricity, of course.

Ok! A Wilma fundraiser! Who wants to go volunteer their time and farming expertise and come see the house in Florida? How about you? And you? We’ll plant things and build mounds and dig in the dirt. It’ll be better than “Cats.”

Been busy with work! I’ll tell y’all about it very soon. But for now, here is a post, jacked from Molly. Apparently, Time magazine has listed their group of the best novels ever. So I adopted Molly’s post (and her notations- bold for read, italics as explained below, “I tried” for the ones I part-read) and I ask you the same question: what should I have read from this list that I have not?

[--Bold equals read. Italicized equals read something by the author, but not this particular title.--]

The Adventures of Augie March / Saul Bellow {I Tried.}
All the King's Men / Robert Penn Warren
American Pastoral / Philip Roth
An American Tragedy / Theodore Dreiser
Animal Farm / George Orwell
Appointment in Samarra / John O'Hara
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret / Judy Blume
The Assistant / Bernard Malamud
At Swim-Two-Birds / Flann O'Brien
Atonement / Ian McEwan
Beloved / Toni Morrison
The Berlin Stories / Christopher Isherwood
The Big Sleep / Raymond Chandler
The Blind Assassin / Margaret Atwood
Blood Meridian / Cormac McCarthy
Brideshead Revisited / Evelyn Waugh
The Bridge of San Luis Rey / Thornton Wilder {I Tried.}
Call It Sleep / Henry Roth
Catch-22 / Joseph Heller {I Tried.}
The Catcher in the Rye / J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange / Anthony Burgess
The Confessions of Nat Turner / William Styron
The Corrections / Jonathan Franzen
The Crying of Lot 49 / Thomas Pynchon
A Dance to the Music of Time / Anthony Powell
The Day of the Locust / Nathanael West
Death Comes for the Archbishop / Willa Cather
A Death in the Family / James Agee
The Death of the Heart / Elizabeth Bowen
Deliverance / James Dickey
Dog Soldiers / Robert Stone
Falconer / John Cheever
The French Lieutenant's Woman / John Fowles
The Golden Notebook / Doris Lessing
Go Tell it on the Mountain / James Baldwin
Gone With the Wind / Margaret Mitchell
The Grapes of Wrath / John Steinbeck
Gravity's Rainbow / Thomas Pynchon {I Tried.}
The Great Gatsby / F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Handful of Dust / Evelyn Waugh
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter / Carson McCullers
The Heart of the Matter / Graham Greene
Herzog / Saul Bellow
Housekeeping / Marilynne Robinson
A House for Mr. Biswas / V.S. Naipaul
I, Claudius / Robert Graves
Infinite Jest / David Foster Wallace
Invisible Man / Ralph Ellison
Light in August / William Faulkner
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe / C.S. Lewis
Lolita / Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies / William Golding
The Lord of the Rings / J.R.R. Tolkien
Loving / Henry Green
Lucky Jim / Kingsley Amis
The Man Who Loved Children / Christina Stead
Midnight's Children / Salman Rushdie {I Tried.}
Money / Martin Amis {I Tried.}
The Moviegoer / Walker Percy
Mrs. Dalloway / Virginia Woolf
Naked Lunch / William Burroughs
Native Son / Richard Wright
Neuromancer / William Gibson
Never Let Me Go / Kazuo Ishiguro
1984 / George Orwell
On the Road / Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest / Ken Kesey
The Painted Bird / Jerzy Kosinski
Pale Fire / Vladimir Nabokov
A Passage to India / E.M. Forster
Play It As It Lays / Joan Didion
Portnoy's Complaint / Philip Roth {I Tried.}
Possession / A.S. Byatt
The Power and the Glory / Graham Greene
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie / Muriel Spark
Rabbit, Run / John Updike {I Tried.}
Ragtime / E.L. Doctorow
The Recognitions / William Gaddis
Red Harvest / Dashiell Hammett
Revolutionary Road / Richard Yates
The Sheltering Sky / Paul Bowles
Slaughterhouse-Five / Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash / Neal Stephenson
The Sot-Weed Factor / John Barth
The Sound and the Fury / William Faulkner {I Tried.}
The Sportswriter / Richard Ford
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold / John LeCarre
The Sun Also Rises / Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God / Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart / Chinua Achebe
To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee
To the Lighthouse / Virginia Woolf
Tropic of Cancer / Henry Miller {I Tried.}
Ubik / Philip K. Dick
Under the Net / Iris Murdoch
Under the Volcano / Malcolm Lowry
Watchmen / Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
White Noise / Don DeLillo {I Tried.}
White Teeth / Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea / Jean Rhys

Updating from Dora's. She is the best girlfriend ever. Unfortunately, I must leave her now for the Joshua Tree. This is what happens when I am away from email for 24 hours! Oh well, it was mighty worth it for a quiet night of snuggly wuggly. See, since Dora and I are the couple with the most friends ever it's quite rare for an evening of no interruptions. oh, again with the snuggly wuggly!

[--the above note was written entirely by dora. the genesis: i apparently have not been clear enough to some people that i have a stoooopid hot girlfriend and her name is dora. she, as an avid reader of my blog, attempted to hijack the blog to express my deep and heartfelt emotions. she also wanted to clown me by supposing that i use the words "snuggly" and "wuggly." together. in the same sentence. that is all. i may not be going to the joshua tree but i will be watching usc vs. notre dame. updates to come on this blog and the sports blog, http://sixstarcamp.blogspot.com.--]

He's Courthousin' 10.12.05

From the EUR:

DMX GETS HIS B-BOY STANCE ON
OUTSIDE COURT: Rapper does impromptu
Photo shoot for media following hearing.

*Rapper DMX hit media cameras with
the classic ghetto prom pose (knelt down,
fingers touching chin, looking off to the side)
following his appearance at a hearing
Tuesday at the Queens Criminal Court
building.
Cameras snapped away as DMX hit
poses in his cream-colored Phat Farm
sweatsuit, heavy silver chains and boots –
all this after he actually danced his way
down the courthouse steps.
Moments before the antics, the rapper,
whose real name is Earl Simmons, faced
a judge for allegedly violating the conditions
of his release following a car crash last
year at Kennedy Airport.
X pleaded guilty last December to
reckless endangerment and admitted he
was taking Valium when he smashed his
sport utility vehicle into a gate at the airport
on June 24, 2004, after telling a parking
lot attendant he was a federal agent. He
was sentenced to a conditional discharge,
meaning further violations within a year
could land him a jail sentence. Since then,
he has been cited twice for traffic violations,
one involving driving a car at 104 mph near
his Westchester County home. He has also
been fined and ordered to forfeit his 1998
Ford Expedition.
On Tuesday, DMX remained silent
as Judge Dorothy Chin-Brandt granted
a defense request to adjourn the case
to Oct. 25. He was apparently saving
his energy for the reporters outside.
Chewing gum and in a constant state
of movement, DMX told reporters "they
are all ludicrous," when asked about the
charges against him. "It's been very
stressful," added the artist, who was
accompanied by his wife, Tishera
Simmons. "Nobody likes to come
to court."
The rapper then proceeded to plug his
new album and movie. His film "Last Hours"
is in its final edit, he told reporters, and his
latest album, "Here We Go Again," is due
out in December.

[If A Title Was Encompassing You Would Not Require The Post] 10.11.05

The problem with Floridian fruit is that everything is different. The limes are orange on the inside, the pumpkins talk smack, the sweet potatoes laugh to see such sport and the papayas run away with the spoon. In all seriousness, I believe I am drinking hot limeade but I might be drinking hot water over a fruit only meant for desperate birds.

Skipped out on lunch with Misanthrope Anna, going to lunch with my bosses instead. They’re very chill. We talked about cats and therefore, when we laughed, I can’t refer to it being better than “Cats.” I brought up the well-worn joke phrase, “I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats” to a pair of people who had never heard that before. Does anyone know where that phrase came from? Joel? Heather?

I returned to work, argued for a while about the Yank-these, and spent a few hours writing with Raycroft.

Raycroft wants you to donate to our ownership group. We’re going to buy the Nationals.

My mother returned from Florida with a possible leave NYC day – end of the year – and the strange fruit that started this post. (Thankfully none of the fruit was Billie Holiday’s strange fruit) That strange fruit, sweetened with honey, powers this post. This post is both mood and filler, and writing calisthenics before I sleep.