Babies

September 25, 2006 ·
Filed under: Area 51, Dog Shit, Dung of the Day 

Those of you who reside in or around my ‘hood have probably noticed the recent proliferation of procreation lately. If you do not believe me, go to The Garden (our local grocery store) on any given Saturday or Sunday morning and negotiate the gridlock of SUV-sized baby strollers yourself. It is more than a little annoying.

I do not have anything against babies. While waiting to check out from the grocery store I actually enjoy watching little Timmy suck on a ring pop and then proceed to shove it all the way up his nose. This not only makes the time go by faster, but it gives me the kind of cheap thrill that makes my life bearable. (Both of the the previous points are probably one and the same, but I digress…)

Parents are usually the ones who piss me off. A number of my friends have recently become or will soon be parents. I’m happy for them; they are cool people and will undoubtedly raise cool kids. The world needs good kids raised by parents who love them. On the other hand, the world does not need sappy birth announcements like the one that blighted my mailbox last week:

Our hearts whispered
your name and God answered…
At one glance we loved you
with a thousand hearts…

Unless the information I received in my sex education class was incorrect, I fail to see what god has to do with such things. It is my understanding that child-bearing is a simple matter of biology, not invoking some cosmic hotline for help. If you can’t figure it out on your own, you probably shouldn’t have children in the first place. Simple as that.

Then again, maybe contacting “him” has become an automated/consolidated process like dialing 311. Not only will a courteous operator handle your inquiry, but a licensed expert from Jesus’ Insemination Services Made Manifest (J.I.S.M.M.) will be dispatched to your home where he, turkey-baster/plunger in hand, will help you achieve your reproductive dream. Be sure to demand I.D. from your case-worker, as there are a number of imposters afoot.

The repetitive mention of “hearts” strikes me as being downright creepy. Having a fair amount of pre-Colonial Latin American history under my belt, the phrase “we loved you with a thousand hearts” paints a particularly gruesome picture in my mind. Presuming that each parent has one heart, where did the other 998 come from? Your guess is as good as mine.

In closing, I’d like to make the following suggestions to soon-to-be parents:

  1. Your childless friends (BTW— we prefer the term child-free) are happy for you.
  2. We wish you the very best and look forward to being a part of your child’s life, but…
  3. please leave god and hyperbole out of it. Most of the world’s problems nowadays are firmly grounded in god and hyperbole; there is no need to add fuel to the fire, so to speak.

Having children is a biological function. It is about as mundane as taking a shit: both happen every day, all over the world, in numbers that would stagger the imagination. I will refrain from describing my bowel movements as an act of god (and believe you me, my affection for hot food often renders by-products culled straight out of the Old Testament) if you will be so kind as to return the favor in kind.

Otherwise, I will have not other recourse than to reply to your birth announcements with this.

Miss Heather

Neat Stuff

September 23, 2006 ·
Filed under: (s)Hit Parade, Area 51 

I have been busy making stuff of late.

Here are two recently-completed pieces that I wish to share. I hope you enjoy them as much I as I do.

The FEMA Clock

FEMA Clock

The body of this clock is made from a pencil case I bought from a local 99 cent store before Hurricane Katrina. I thought it was pretty funny at the time of purchase, but I get a real rip out of it now. The penguin playing guitar is a nice touch.

I am toying around with the idea of placing this item for sale on Ebay just to see what will happen. It’s been my observation that many users of Ebay tend to be right-leaning, so I imagine it would not be received very well.

The American Express Lamp

Am Ex Lamp

I have been collecting those fake credit cards that come in junk mail for at least three years now. With some help from my friends, I have amassed around 100 of them as of this post. To date I have used them to spice up the chandelier in the living room, but I elected to pull a few ‘cards’ to make this nifty lamp shade.

Otherwise, I have one cool new development to announce: Jack E. Jett has shown interest in featuring some of my dog shit infotainment on his show. I suspect this weekend will be spent prepping stuff to this end and knocking out a PowerPoint presentation of my latest dog shit findings for all to enjoy.

Miss Heather

Dung of the Day: Jabba The Shitt

September 20, 2006 ·
Filed under: Dog Shit, Dung of the Day 

I found today’s Dung of the Day while poking around my old nabe (far north Greenpoint). Although I found a bounty of prodigiously large canine bowel movements, I felt this little guy had a certain je nais se quois worth sharing.

Jabba the Shitt

Charts, statistics and a Crap Map will be forthcoming.

Miss Heather

Vomitorium

September 19, 2006 ·
Filed under: Area 51, Greenpoint Magic 

I just took out the trash. As I was completing this task I noticed that my shoes were sticking to the floor. This is because someone has seen fit to vomit in our foyer, up the stairwell and outside our front door. This person was even thoughtful enough to leave their used puke rags for me to savor and cherish.

Miss Heather

P.S.: If you are wondering, I still do not have a working telephone. It is 11:00 a.m.

Critical (m)Ass

September 19, 2006 ·
Filed under: Area 51, Greenpoint Magic 

Just when I think things can’t get any more shitty around here at “Half-assed Junction”, the universe throws a couple more turds my direction.

Among the numerous items on my agenda for today, I get to wait for Verizon to repair our telephone. We have not had phone service since Sunday. I spent all day yesterday waiting for Verizon, to no avail. I suspect the work the MTA was doing yesterday (READ: a 8+ story tall crane occupying our street), has something to do with the phone company not showing up.

I am not necessarily angry about having an inoperative landline: I have worked enough Reception desks to harbor a dark hatred of telephones and most of the people who use them. Rather, I am getting very tired of this full-scale assault against the peaceful sanctity of my home. As I write this (at 9:00 a.m.):

  1. I have been awakened at 7:00 a.m. by Clarence the Tom Cat making his morning visit. This worked our cats into such a frenzy my husband had to intervene before they beat the living shit out of each other.
  2. The construction crew out front fired up their machinery at 7:30 a.m.
  3. The landlord started work on his new roof behind us at 8:30 a.m. Hopefully the Department of Buildings will pay him a visit today. God only knows I have waited long enough for this to happen: OVER A WEEK.

If I have managed to achieve anything during the 30-odd years I have been in this mortal coil, it is the cultivation of anger management skills. I was quite the ball of piss and vinegar in my teens and twenties; I am still as angry (if not more so) now, but I channel it in a more constructive fashion. This newly-developed ability of mine is being pushed to the absolute limit right now. The recent revelation that our landlord is refusing to accept rent checks from one of our neighbors isn’t helping much.

Over the last month or so I have noticed that the garbage in our building is not being handled like it used to be. Instead of being sorted and bagged on a regular basis, now it piles up into an uncontrollable heap. When this matter is (finally) bagged, all the contents (recycling and household waste alike) are being thrown together.

The is happening because the landlord is no longer allowing our neighbor (a section-8 tenant whose husband is very ill) to work as a porter in our building in exchange for a nominal reduction in rent. Her rent checks are not being accepted either. Apparently this has been going on for two months, but we only got wind of it last night. I am not certain what else is going on (with our nabe), but I imagine it can’t be good.

While I cannot offer many details as to what is happening (with this neighbor), I can give a compelling reason as to why it is happening: our landlord recently refinanced the mortgage on this building. One of the stipulations of this mortgage is that the rent collected from this building goes against the balance (of said mortgage). If an apartment turns over, he can raise the rent*; if he raises the rent, it means more money to throw against the mortgage payment. I wonder how many of the other long-term residents of this building he is doing this to— or if my husband and I will be next?

Miss Heather

*and we’ll get more neighbors like this.

Ghetto-gate: September 17, 2006

September 17, 2006 ·
Filed under: Area 51, Greenpoint Magic 

The landlord next door has done no new ‘renovation’ work the last two days (that I know of anyway). Had he done so, I bet he’d get really pissed about what happened to his roof. Literally.

Clarence the Tom Cat has seen fit to ‘spray’ copiously upon his (new) plywood domain (much to our cats’ displeasure) and the neighbors next door have reverted back to throwing food/garbage out their window. The landlord can gentrify the building, but he can’t gentrify the residents contained therein. The Crapstravaganza continues!

H

This is why I live in Greenpoint

September 15, 2006 ·
Filed under: (s)Hit Parade, Area 51, Greenpoint Magic 

I found this piquant piece of social commentary at the Greenpoint Avenue stop of the G train on September 11, 2006.

Jackass number two

‘Nuff said.

Miss Heather

Ghetto-gate Update

September 15, 2006 ·
Filed under: Area 51, Greenpoint Magic 

Headline

After seven days of construction constriction, I am finally regaining my sense of humor. I have no doubt that sleep deprivation and consuming ample amounts of Budweiser* have helped me get back to my usual beatific state. There is a certain dark humor to be found in my predicament: the recent ‘improvements’ going on around me (in the name of ‘gentrification’) are the very reason for my diminished quality of life. “Progress” has my rendered my apartment (which one would presume to be my place of refuge) downright unbearable of late.

Thankfully, the rain has given me a reprieve from any construction-related rooftop hijinks the last 24 hours. Other than the soapy smell of glue** wafting from the untreated plywood behind my apartment or the occasional “pop” made by a(nother) piece of plywood warping, it has been fairly peaceful. I have even managed to get some work done.

Mr. Markowitz, I have the Dog Shit Queen of Greenpoint on line one…
After running errands this morning I arrived home to find an email from a Ms. Luyando from the Brooklyn Borough President’s office in my inbox. I had honestly forgotten about the crazed missive I had sent to Mr. Markowitz’s office last Saturday, so this was a pleasant surprise. Ms. Luyando asked me for some additional information (which in my rage I had forgotten to provide, but then again jpegs like this speak for themselves) and she gave me a case number. I gave her the information she requested and told her she could consult my blog (www.newyorkshitty.com) for images of the questionable construction I was complaining about.

I can only hope she (or one of her assistants) did so. If I were (still) a civil servant I would be overjoyed at the prospect of being paid to parse through pictures of dog crap and blog posts with titles as “Hot in the Ass”.

Otherwise, I am going back on the beat and am currently planning a trek to a very special part of Greenpoint. I spent two (LONG) years of my life in the area I plan to showcase and suspect it will be quite the fruitful snootful. (It was awful then and I see no reason why it would be any better now.) I also plan to do some much needed troubleshooting/maintenance to New York Shitty and add new links to my blogroll this weekend, so stay tuned!

Miss Heather

*The Dog Shit Queen of Greenpoint’s drink of choice is the King of Beers. For obvious reasons.

**My husband says it is formaldehyde. He was a finish carpenter once, so I guess he would know.

Photo Credit: I found this genuine vomi de l’artiste (the presence of red wine is a dead giveaway) in front of 123-125 Green Street.

Dung of the Day: 110 Green Street

September 15, 2006 ·
Filed under: Dog Shit, Dung of the Day 

I have never been a big fan of soup with dumplings. Today’s “Dung of the Day” has ensured that this culinary quirk of mine will not change in the foreseeable future. Bon appetit!

Butt Dumplin' Soup

Miss Heather

Nature: 1, Landlord: 0

September 14, 2006 ·
Filed under: Area 51, Greenpoint Magic 

For reasons one can only imagine, the landlord next door did not see fit to protect the untreated wood on his new roof against the rain. Perhaps he had planned to do so yesterday but the visit from the Fire Marshal threw a monkey wrench in his plans, who knows? In any case, it’s becoming a real mess back there. The last time I saw something as bucked and wonky as this, it was the result of British dentistry.

Uh Oh...

I wonder what the Building Inspector is going to think about this? I will find out soon enough.

Otherwise, he is back at work and concealing his DOB Permits (AGAIN).

Permits?

I wonder if the man wearing a jacket reading “Bureau of Fire Prevention” I saw standing across the street noticed this?

Miss Heather

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