Tag Archives: Idiots

Selling Quackery In New York – 1919

What Exactly Was In That Love Potion 100 Years Ago?

The secret "love potion" ingredient? It's at the end of our story.

The secret “love potion” ingredient? It’s at the end of our story.

It’s the 21st century. You’d think the number of people who believe in magic spells and potions would be declining. Unfortunately it is not. For proof look at how China is helping to wipe out the rhinoceros by buying rhino horns through poaching. These uneducated fools believe that the rhino’s horn contains “medicinal” value  to make a man virile.

Should we expect with more information and better education humanity has become more enlightened about patent medicine? Probably not. The internet has spread just as much misinformation as fact. And there’s one more factor to consider: people have has always been rather gullible when it comes to falling for quackery.

No, things have remained the same and unscrupulous people have pushed secret and magic love potions upon ignorant hopefuls from time immemorial.

Here in New York City almost 100 years ago, is proof that the city has always been a central repository for all sorts of hucksterism.

This article is from September 20, 1919 and appeared in the New York Sun. By the way, what a great term for fortune teller – “seeress.” Continue reading

The Top 10 Rude & Annoying Things People Do In New York City

Distracting Devices, Double Parked Trucks And Too Much Perfume

There are hundreds of things that are daily annoyances in New York. But to live in New York you have to be impervious to many of them. Bad behavior is avoidable, but many New Yorker’s think they are above everyone else and the rules of civility or the law do not apply to them.

Obviously the sort of behaviors described below are not confined to New York City, but seem to flourish here. Here are my top 10 stupid/rude/self-centered actions that get my blood pressure rising.

Tell me you haven't seen this on the streets of New York?

Tell me you haven’t seen this on the streets of New York?

1 – People Who Walk Around With Those Giant Golf Umbrellas (a.k.a the inconsiderate bastard umbrella)

Okay its raining, you don’t have to cover an area the size of Missouri with your ginormous umbrella which is more appropriate for the beach rather than city streets.

They are called golf umbrellas and unless you are playing a round at Augusta, they are too big for the city. EVERY time you pass a person with one of these monstrosities they always  bump into your umbrella or nearly take out an eye. The people carrying them are unapologetic dunderheads.

2 – Women Who Douse Themselves In Perfume

Your perfume is worse than a fart

Perfume is worse than farting

Let’s get one thing straight: 99 out of 100 people do not need perfume.

This is not 1789 Louis XVI France where people never bathe or modern France where they bathe twice per year.

Of course some women aspire to smell like strippers, but unless you are going for the pole-dancer scent you don’t need perfume or cologne to make you smell decent. Regular showering and soap use is quite enough.

If you are putting on more than the tiniest amount of perfume we can smell you and let me tell you – you STINK! No one else is going to tell you, so I will. You could kill an army with the amount of perfume you’re wearing and you don’t even realize it.

In a subway, bus, elevator, restaurant or other enclosed place you, Ms. Valentine Valentina Assoluto wearer, are more offensive than the stinkiest gas emission from your arse.

So let me reiterate- perfume is not sexy and no one likes your god-awful perfume except you. So stop wearing so much of it. By the way, this goes for men too.

3 – Those Who Text While Crossing the Street

texting while crossing streetNew York City recently started a campaign where they have painted the word “L O O K” in big bold white letters on the ground at major intersections. Continue reading

The “Artwork” Of The 110 Harbor Freeway Los Angeles

Why Go To The Museum of Contemporary Art or The Getty?

If you live around Los Angeles you may be too busy to go to a museum to see paintings. Luckily or unfortunately depending on your point of view, you can always get your fill of “art” while driving to work.

On the constantly congested 110 Freeway, one can take in up close the utter decay of the city every 6 to 30 feet. That is the range of distance between the supporting pillars of the freeway on the median. There you can admire the ugly, illegible scrawls of grade school drop-outs.

The “Lovely Artwork”

Continue reading

MTA Propaganda

Open For Business  ** Shop 2nd Ave ** It’s Worth It!

A cryptic poster on a city bus that says absolutely nothing. Typical of the MTA.

The punishment for the person who wrote this slogan should be to live in an apartment adjacent to the constant construction.

Below is the text of this MTA sign pictured above that “encourages” shoppers.

The many interesting shops, restaurants and services on Second Avenue are open while MTA Capital Construction builds the Second Avenue Subway. Shop Second Avenue. It’s Worth It!

Visit mta.info and click on the Capital Construction link for more about your local shops, restaurants and services.

The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce is a partner with MTA Capital Construction in support of local establishments as construction continues on the Second Avenue Subway.

This is going to convince anyone to shop in the construction zone?

Lame signs do not get people to shop in an area that is having many of its businesses being decimated by the constant construction for the Second Avenue Subway project. The poor business owners and residents along the construction route have suffered since 2007 and many stores have gone under in the intervening four-plus years.

Solutions, Not Signs

More people might patronize the establishments on Second Avenue if the MTA didn’t in a prima facie way, block access to the stores along the construction path. One side of certain streets appear to be inaccessible. Maybe the MTA could cut down on the hours that allowed filth and noise to be generated. Or just make a conscious effort to make the streets more inviting by not chopping the sidewalks to half their normal width and blocking re-routing crosswalks, making it difficult for pedestrians to stroll.

Plus the area is just plain ugly. It seems little or no thought was given into making the avenue look more appealing.  The fences, walls and temporary banners give Second Avenue a very shabby appearance. In many places Second Avenue looks more like a post-war zone, not a construction zone.

Originally the MTA projected the first phase from 105th Street to 72nd Street of the Second Avenue subway would be completed in 2014.  It is of course delayed and over budget. If they don’t run out of funds it might be completed by June 2018.

One side note: the entire first phase of the original New York City subway from City Hall to 145th Street, (almost nine miles) was built in just over four years from March 27, 1900 – October 26, 1904.

Question: Why Do Some Garbagemen (Sorry, Sanitation Workers) Block New York City Streets and Not Give A Damn about Public Safety?

City Bus Must Pass Into Oncoming Traffic

Answer: There is No Good Reason

Some of New York’s Strongest, as the sanitation department has dubbed their workers, leave me scratching my head sometimes.

That is why I am going to call out this group of “New York’s Laziest” as there is a subset of sanitation workers who demonstrate their slothful ways with a complete disregard for traffic laws and public safety on a daily basis. I’m not talking about just backing up traffic on narrow streets by not fully pulling over and instead parking their trucks diagonally when they load garbage. I’m talking about something that is egregious.

Now when you can do something the easy way or the hard way, almost always you should choose the easy way, right?

Wrong.

On a busy crosstown block in Manhattan where there is two-way traffic; a school crossing zone; ( the school is one block away!)  a major bus route and lots of vehicles trying to navigate the streets in rush hour, these workers have consistently demonstrated their disdain Continue reading

Paul Gauguin Painting Attacked at the National Gallery

Lunatics Among Us

This story of a woman attacking the Paul Gauguin painting “Two Tahitian Women” on April 1, 2011 got skipped over in a lot of newspapers or was a blurb in others. The 1899 painting is worth an estimated $80 million dollars.

What was even less covered, and I thought was worth commenting on, was what the suspect in the attack, Susan Burns said in her statement to the police. “I feel that Gauguin is evil. Continue reading

Guess What? The World Is NOT Ending May 21

People Believing In Strange Things

Maybe you’ve seen these people?

The New York Times front page story on the people who believe in Harold Camping’s prophecy about the return of Jesus on May 21 and the end of the world on October 21, points out that the children of these doomsayers are somewhat confused by their parent’s strange beliefs.

The idea of knowing doomsday’s arrival by interpreting or unlocking the secrets of sacred text has been around for a while.

The Times has a second story about a New Yorker who gathered about a dozen believers to prepare for the end of the world in 1925.

The United States has quite a history of biblical Doomsday prophets. A very notable occurrence happened Continue reading

Our Silly World

Maybe you missed the Associated Press article about new laws being passed in Romania to punish witches (yes, witches) and fortune teller’s with fines and imprisonment if their predictions do not come true.

The brief, published in the New York Times goes on to say that Romanians take superstition “very seriously.”

Do you really wonder why the world is in the shape it is, with governments sanctioning witches and fortune tellers?