Saturday, August 11, 2018

ANOTHER VICARIOUS VISIT TO NEW YORK CITY: A LATE-SUMMER IMAGINARY EAVESDROPPER'S REPORT FROM MANHATTAN



---"Our city is so crassly commercialized that I'm surprised they haven't renamed Battery Park as

 'Ever Ready Batteries Park'."

--"That's not a bad idea, actually. But the only way our City Council would approve that is if the 'Ever Ready Batteries' company agreed to pay $1 million per year to the City of New York as part of that name-changing deal."

---"I need to find the safest park in New York for my child to ride his tricycle at. Do you know which park here is the friendliest for tricyclists?"


--"Personally, I feel that the parents of New York should insist that their children only ride tricycles that have reflectors on them. I find it outrageous whenever I see a young child in a tricycle without a safety reflector!"

---"She is so hyper-competitive as a parent that she is trying to organize an annual citywide racing event here for Tricyclists under age 7. She wants her son Tommy to win first place at age 6, so she can display his trophy in their family's living room."

---"Do you find it a bit odd that 90 percent of the TV shows about New York show people killing or raping each other? 'Welcome to New York: Misanthropy Hub of the Universe!' our signs greeting visitors might as well declare."

---"Sandra, I appreciate your point about New York primarily being portrayed on television as a site for murder or rape. What I don't recall is which shows account for the 10 percent of all television programming that shows New Yorkers being philanthropic and non-violent and capable of actual romantic love."


---"I have never seen an estimate on the percentage of all New Yorkers, who if surveyed after taking a truth serum, would confess that they worship the devil. Is that percentage 10 percent, 20 percent, or higher, do you think."

--"I wonder how you identify a house of demonic worship here. Maybe they just hang a sign in front of their church that declares, 'Warning to Anyone Who Loves God: This is NOT your kind of place!'"

---"Actually, from what I understand, the devil-worshipers of New York are very matter of fact about telling their friends that they are 'leaving to go to my house of demonic worship', and they are dressed in black to convey their emphatic view that the Christian God is dead."

---"This is the only city I've lived in where if I meet someone who says his first name is Christian, 9 times out of 10 he then apologizes for his first name and says, 'I hope you don't think that I'm a Christian. My first name is misleading. My parents gave me that first name to help me in my business career they knew I'd be pursuing here.'"

--"My attorney, Mr. Mayer, has told me that I'm being victimized on a continuous and year-round basis by devil-worshipers here.  So which division of NYPD do I contact to file a criminal-law complaint? Would that be their Devil-Worshiping Investigations Unit, assuming there is one? Or should I instead contact the X-Files Unit of the FBI?"

---"Erica is so militantly anti-male that she is launching a political campaign to remove the word 'Man' from the name of this island! She wants those letters banished to Siberia, since they remind her of her ex-husband whom she despises so much that she blames him for having driven her into lesbianism! Erica says that the 'Man' in 'Manhattan' is very oppressive to her, and enslaves her as one of the womyn here -- and she always drops the 'a' and uses a 'y' instead when she refers to women here! Erica's political-action campaign will turn our island's name into 'Hattan', which Erica maintains will save lots of ink for the publishers of books and newspapers that refer to the name for our island! The alternative plan she's come up with would be to change our island's name to 'Femhattan'! She says the womyn of this island deserve equal time, so we could keep the name as Femhattan for the same number of years this has been Manhattan!"

---"I recently spoke with a psychologist who told me that it would be impossible to say whether a New Yorker who invests in the stock market or or works on Wall Street is manic-depressive. Wall Street, by definition, inflicts on anyone involved with this place 182 days of intense ecstasy, alternating with 183 or 184 days of intense suffering, depending on whether it's a leap year. They're either very high or very low, depending on what the stock market report says that morning."

--"Can you imagine what it's like to be a restaurant waiter here who has a regular customer employed as a stock broker? One day that paying guest has a smile on his face and tips 50 percent; the following day that same customer is frowning throughout his meal and leaves no tip at all, since he figures he'll need that money himself if the 1929 crash repeats itself!'

---"Margaret will generally clip the stock market report out of  the daily newspaper, in order to spare her husband from an intense downswing in his mood at the breakfast table. Ted, however, says this makes him even more upset, since the complete mystery about whether his stocks and bonds are up or down for that morning is very distracting to him as he drives to work---so much so that he's 50 percent more likely to have a motor-vehicle accident on days when his wife clips the stock market report out of their newspaper!"

--"I can imagine a fictional television series featuring a ridiculous stock broker here as one of the characters on that show, and he is eternally having mood swings that correlate directly to the ups and downs on Wall Street! He's the most superficial personality of  the entire cast of characters, since it's like he has blinders on every day---either 'good news' or 'bad news' his simplistic mindset mask he wears toward every day. Any other type of news, such as news about mass shootings or environmental crises, is of interest to him ONLY if he believes it might have a bearing on the next morning's stock market report."

--"I'm surprised there isn't an alcoholic beverage served here in Manhattan that celebrates the ups and downs of Wall Street! Maybe it could be called the 'Roller Coaster Ride'! Another possibility might be the 'Heaven and Hell' drink, combining an intensely sweet flavor with the intensely bitter flavor!"

---"The recent discovery that eating dark chocolate is good for the heart is helping to promote improved race relations here! I like the way some groups fighting racism are using that theme to promote greater kindness toward law-abiding African-Americans in Manhattan!  The dark-chocolate emphasis is particularly helpful to African-Americans here who are darker-skinned than average! They might as well be wearing T-shirts that declare, 'Dark Chocolate is Good for Your Heart!'"

---"Half of the single men I meet here in New York, the first thing I want to ask them is, 'So how long has it been since you were released from Attica?'"

--"I feel sorry for the upstate residents of Attica who are actually law-abiding. Everyone tends to think of Attica as a city exclusively reserved for the lawless types. But keep in mind that there are prison guards and wardens at Attica who, in some cases, are law-abiding and honorable. I don't know the percentage of cases that would be, it just depends on what the corruption rate is in our state's criminal-justice system. And after all, there are thousands of people in Attica who have never been in jail and who resent being compared to the inmate population there! Can you blame them for hating the notoriety that the inmates give to everyone else who lives in Attica?"

--"I would define the word 'naive' in New York as 'Opening your front door to your apartment from inside without first looking through the peep hole to check for criminal types!'"

---"I find it fascinating how everyone in New York is eternally registering the thought in their mind that the stranger they see as they walk toward their subway car is either innocuous or sinister. But much of the time the typical New Yorker is also thinking to himself, 'Now why did I previously identify him as innocuous, when I now realize that he is, in fact, so evil that he's a threat to my personal safety!'"

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