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Misplaced Blame

The anti-Robert Moses bandwagon has been gaining steam over the last decade or so. Today he is vilified as a monster who destroyed the fabric of New York, made mega-blunders and above everything else was the boogie man incarnate because he made the overpasses at Jones Beach too small for city buses to pass under, oooo, he was racist.

Blaming Moses for all city ills is sort of akin to cursing the subway system and saying it is the worst. Both are knee-jerk reactions that fail to take into account the great things that were accomplished. The subway takes millions of people from all corners of the city to their jobs and if you even slightly remember the cars of the 70's and 80's you will realize how much better things are now. They are cleaner, they run more frequently, graffiti is gone and so are for the most part surly token dealers. Of course they could still be better. Instead of wasting time and money on a Second Avenue line so a bunch of Manhattan assholes can save 5 minute off their walks to their $7000 a month apartments, how about extending lines in the large swaths of Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Staten Island that have no train service at all?

So what did Moses do? Here are some of my recent exchanges with Moses bashers.

Moses ignored rapid transt which fell into disrepair. by the way, was just in Amsterdam and Copenhagen where they have bike lanes everywhere and it seems to work out great. you dont need to take your car everywhere in a big city, I never needed too

Nice idea in small cities and places that are not spread out, but try that in Los Angeles or Montana. Bikes are a great form of exercises and recreation but this notion that they are the savior of modern man is ludicrous.

If you are a kid, into your 30's this is all very nice but then you get old, you get fat, your knees ache and you don't want to get up in the morning and go out in the rain and have a workout before you had your morning donut. Try biking from the Rockaways and then tell me how we should live like people in Copenhagen.

you must have read the same book I did, THE LAST GOOD SEASON.

Moses was insane, he wanted to put highways through the Empire State Building and CAnal Street which would have destroyed that neighborhood

historical revisionism, today's bike assholes caliming Moses was racist, Moses was pro car, blah, blah. The only thing Moses did was take a city that was stuck in the horse and buggy era and make it a modern metropolis. You want it look at that fact with modern rose colored glasses, go ahead, in my mind the man did great things.

And so what if he put a highway through C-Anal Street? how would have made it worse then what it looks like today?

Blame

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Hardly

Wanna look like a douche? Then start wearing these market saturated designer T-shirts. They are are supposed to be a faux tattoo design, but much like the real thing you will look like you are desperately following trends and trying to look cool. Sadly, just like the real thing, you will be a tool.

Go Green

More shit I tell ya'. I watched a home improvement show on TV yesterday. The announcer was pushing all of these new fangled "green" innovations. In theory all nice. That is until you realize that more energy and raw materials need to go into those solar panels and energy conserving water heaters then they will ever realize in savings. Now, I am not advocating raping mother earth and walking around with blinders on repeating the mantra "global warming is an eco terrorist plot to destabilize the nation". Yeah right. But real conservation is much simpler then all of that.

Do you want to go green? Or at least greener? Then stop consuming. Stop producing. Stop buying useless crap. The message you see on TV is buy, buy, buy. That's the American way, buy more useless crap and help the economy and in the process you can pat yourself on the back and tell people your car gets better mileage. Of course this the antithesis of real conservation. Re-use things, don't throw them away, don't consume, don't buy should be the real message. It's sort of like spending money to lose weight. To lose weight you need to spend less, not more! Spend less on food and eat less and I personally guarantee you will lose more weight then giving Jenny Craig your credit card.

Fuck am I in a foul mood. This stuff just pisses me off. Rampant consumerism is just an outrage to my senses and in a way it really breaks into the deadly sin of pride. It's gluttony on a consumer level.

(pictured above: THE SOLAR VIBE, world's only solar powered dildo)

Why Can't Ugly People Sing?

The viral video of the week was this woman who performed on Britain' Got Talent show. The idea is that every one watching saw an old, ugly woman appear and started giggling, she then got up and blew every one away with an great performance. Maybe I am different then, because I don't see an ugly person and expect her to be unable to sing, dance, do calculus or whatever. I make no correlation between looks and talent. Maybe I would snicker if she was a contestant on America's Next Top Model but why on earth couldn't she sing, in fact, if anything, I make the opposite suppostition. I assume pretty people are less talented and got their based on their looks or whom they slept with!