Brooklyn State of Mind: THE CONSPIRACY OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Brooklyn State of Mind: THE CONSPIRACY OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES

THE CONSPIRACY OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES

I am proud to say that I am not an adherent to conspiracy theories. I do not believe there is a coordinated effort to cover up the existence of aliens (Why would they want to come here anyway? Maybe Holland). There are no United Nations secret police in black helicopters (they are city assessors looking for illegal pools). President Obama is not an Al Qaeda and ISIS agent because he likes shwarma every now and then. Santa Klaus is not a drunk even though he smells of alcohol in the mall. He’s diabetic needing insulin and wipes the injection area with cleaning swabs before dealing with little kids with super sweet personalities that could send him into a sugar induced stupor.

People who believe in conspiracies tend to be uneducated, uninformed, fearful and anti-social people who are so desperate to belong to one group or another. Religions and cults are a good outlet for most people but conspiracy theorists need to be more focused and aliens, cattle mutilations, men in black suits and Scientology fit the bill so well.

I was in the Waldbaums supermarket on Ralph Avenue with my son shortly after the World Trade Center attack.  The man behind me at the cash register line seemed to be relatively normal and started to make conversation.

Man: You know this could’ve been prevented.

Me: Really, How? Better information from the CIA?

Man: The owners of the world trade center could’ve prevented this.

Me: So, what could they have done?

Man: They never activated the force field.

I kid you not, this guy was completely serious about this. At that moment my son who was nineteen looked at me trying not to laugh and did everything in his power not to verbalize to the guy that he was a freaking moron as he was wont to say to several prior bosses and teachers.

Me: You do realize that force fields are science fiction.

Man: Nooo. They use them on Star Trek all of the time.

Me: Maybe they could have used tractor beams to pull the planes back before they hit or shot them down with photon torpedos.

Man: EXACTLY! That’s what I have been saying all along.

Conversation over. I am not making light of the horrendous attack on our soil but I need to illustrate the sick puppies that are walking amongst us.

The next person I spoke to later that day said that the attack was actually the Jew loving United States government and Israel inciting a war to eradicate Muslims. Our forefathers threw tea overboard to start the Revolutionary war, the U.S. sunk the Maine to get into the Spanish-American war, The U.S. sunk the Lusitania to get into WWI, Roosevelt allowed Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor to get us into WWII (that’s the big one you know). So what’s so far fetched about the World Trade Center attack bein insitiated by the government of the United States and Israel?

Why is it that when a catastrophic event occurs the crazies come out en mass? Hurricane Katrina was God punishing African Americans in New Orleans, Hurricane Sandy was God punishing liberals in New York. Those tornado in Kansas was due to a little dog biting the general store lady.

As I mentioned previously, I am not a subscriber to conspiracy theories. They are not true. They are a product of a troubled mind looking for acceptance unless you’re talking about the cable industry. I have been victimized by a coordinated effort by Verizon to separate me from my hard earned money. They appeal to my vanity by selling me fancy tiny super computers that can make phone calls and send pictures of my cat. They sell me thousands of channels showing absolutely nothing that I want to watch but I am forced to keep them because I don’t want my friends to think that I can’t afford all of those premium channels that I don’t watch or need. They made me switch from regular phone and cable service to fiber optic phone service because fiber optics are so much better than coaxial cable.

Let me ask you something Mr. Smarty Pants … If fiber optic is so much better than coaxial cable why is their a coaxial cable from the junction box to my set top boxes?  To illustrate my point you are in your car driving on a three lane side of the highway at 50 miles per hour. Assuming there are no accidents you will continue driving at 50 miles per hour and reach your destination 50 miles a way in one hour. Now, lets say you are on the same highway that was improved so you can drive 100 miles per hour. Assuming that there are no accidents you would expect to reach your destination in half an hour. But now lets say the three lane improved highway hits a point where you are forced to do 50 miles per hour. A traffic jam would ensue so regardless of the spankin’ brand new highway you started on you are still going to get to your destination in an hour and not in thirty minutes. I will refer to this in the future, if I ever have to refer to this again, as the pebble in the stream theory. Don’t ask me why but it’s easier to say “Pebble in the Stream Theory” than to write a long inane paragraph.

After the World Trade Center attack we had no television reception for a few weeks with the exception of the Spanish stations. El Guerro de la Sexos quickly became my favorite show along with Sabado Gigante. I couldn’t understand most of what they said but every ten minutes or so everyone would get up to sing and dance which was very cool. Wouldn’t it be cool if Al Roker and Glen Beck and the panelists in Face the Nation would jump up to sing and dance after every discussion?

We got broadcast back eventually and enjoyed it for a few years but could never get CBS which is channel 2 in New York City. Then the Feds in collusion with broadcasters and electronic manufacturers went from analog signal to digital. I had to buy two convertors but they could never get all of the channels. I bought a digital antenna, then an amplified digital antenna and still couldn’t get all of the stations. I was under the impression that a digital signal was much better than analog. Bullshit!

This is how they get you to subscribe to a satellite or cable TV system. I live less than seven miles from some of the most powerful broadcast antennas in the world and I can’t get half the channels. What is wrong with that picture? They want you to get pay TV so they can have a two way channel to your house and spy on you to see if you’re watching subversive shows like Roseanne and Ellen. No way, no how, I will not pay for something that God gave us for free!  When I was a teenager we had a dollar movie theater in Sheepshead Bay called the Graham Theater. The carpeting in the theater was so grungy that there were times the stickiness of the carpet actuall pulled my show off while walking. Before every movie they would play a public service announcement that said Fight Pay TV. I had no idea what they were talking about back then. Now I know and should have joined that crusade instead of protesting the war in Vietnam and fighting for the 18 year old vote.

I finally broke down and ordered Dish Satellite TV, then Direct TV but every time there was a wind storm I lost reception and they informed me that they would charge me to re-align the antenna. I eventually went to Verizon for their phone, internet and TV triple play.  It’s cable it won’t need alignment, ever. The internet worked fine for a few years than I started having problems. You must upgrade to a faster speed. So I did and my internet worked fine. Than problems again. You need a new modem they told me so I bought a new modem. Everything is fine for another two years and problems begin again. You need  FIOS fiber optic and a faster speed plan and a new modem for the fiber optics they tell me.

Convince me there is not a conspiracy here.

Growing up TV was free, there was no internet, there were no cell phones. My parents paid about $20.00 a month in total for all their infotainment and telecommunication needs. If you had to look something up you went to your World Book Encyclopedia or walked to the library.  Currently I pay nearly $6,000 a year for all three must have services and my cell phones and tablets and I don’t even have all of the premium channels or the fastest service. $6,000 a year, believe it or not, is a lot of money even in Brooklyn and covers the rent on a two bedroom apartment for a month in Brooklyn Heights.

So now you know. There are no conspiracies, only the machinations of bored, lonely people who sit at the computer all day posting on Face Book and tweeting on Twitter and hanging out with their cat when they are not napping or noshing.  No conspiracies with the exception of one insidious, dark corporation that is one step closer to controlling the matrix and the simulation that we are currently living in.

THE PHOTOGRAPH: OR HOW I NEARLY STARTED WWIII

John F. Kennedy, the future 35^th President of the United States, married Jackie Bouvier on September 12, 1953. On that very same day a bouncing baby boy was born in Brooklyn, New York. That intelligent, witty and impossibly impulsive brat was me.

Why do I mention this trivial tidbit of information? I’m not sure but like every kid born in the 1950’s we all felt an affinity to Jack Kennedy. I called him Jack because of our perceived and imaginary friendship. I knew him as well as I knew my friends. Impeccably dressed, dashing, war hero, Pulitzer winning author. The only person in the world more famous to an eight year old than Jack Kennedy was Jerry Lewis. Jerry was too busy hanging around with Dean to hang around with me.

I found out through my school that the government’s Office of Public Information (it may have went by another name but I can’t recall it) had all of these pamphlets available for free on the Constitution, the founding fathers, the Civil War, the revolutionary War, Songs of the Union and the Confederacy and much more. All you had to do was send a letter and tell them what you wanted and in a few weeks you received it in your very own mail box delivered by the United States Postal Service by an official emissary of the government of the United states of America.

I than wrote to the White Houses and asked Jack if he would send me a signed photograph.  And he did. A full color 5 by 7 photo signed by the President of the United States of America! This was my proudest possession of all time. I treasured this more than my worthless mint condition Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Roger Maris, Warren Spann, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Mel Ott and Ralph Kiner trading cards which I threw out to make room for my new prized possession.

I showed my parents the photo and they were so proud of me for being a personal friend of the President of the United States. I sent another letter to the White House and told Jack that if he is ever in Brooklyn he could come by and have cookies and milk together.

My father, Harvey, was a hard worker and put in 60 hour work weeks and worked six days a week. His only day off was Monday so we rarely spent time together other than talking at the dinner table. My father rarely disciplined us as this was usually my mother’s job but when we did something that required additional discipline my mother would say wait until your father comes home. My dad hit me once in my entire life and that amounted to a few light slaps on my leg. But nevertheless my brother and I feared my father’s anger.

When my father got angry he would start to whistle. I believe this was his way of counting to ten so he didn’t go completely ape shit on us. He would then stick the tip of his tongue out to the side of his mouth and his fair skin would start to turn red. At this point we knew it was time to start to quiver. He would then begin to yell and pick up his shoe on the floor and throw it down and pick it up and throw it down again and again while yelling at us. After he finished the tirade and we were still in one piece we would wipe the sweat from our brows and thank God that he didn’t beat us with that shoe. My mom was the one who hit us. Usually with a belt, a shoe or a hair brush and many times left a bruise but it was my father we feared despite the fact that he never hit us.

What is it about yelling and shoes? Nikita Khruschev, Chairman of the Communist Party and Premier of the USSR, used this tactic effectively. Sitting at his table at the United Nations smashing his shoe on the table yelling. “Nyet, Nyet, Nyet!”  This was pretty damn cool. Like my dad throwing his shoe on the floor! So I promptly prepared a letter addressed to Russia and asked Mr. Khruschev, I called him Nick for short, for an autographed photo to keep next to my Kennedy photograph.

Who else can I write to? Brazil! So I promptly wrote a letter addressed to the President of Brazil and not knowing exactly where to send it to I asked my father if he could mail it for me.

He looked at me and said, “You can’t send this!”

“Why not?”

“You’re going to start a war! Who else did you write too?”

“I wrote to Russia”.

“Oh my God!. You can’t do this. There are things you just can’t do”.

Did he really think a letter from an eight year old would start a war? I know Tommy the Turtle constantly told us to go under our desks and cover our heads when we heard a siren in case of a nuclear attack. Everyone was really scared that we lived on the brink of a nuclear cataclysm. Gary Powers was shot down while spying on Russia from his high flying spy plane and if this didn’t start a war I surely didn’t think that my letter asking for a signed photo of Khruschev would start World War III.

“What is this?”

“It’s a leyter from a boychik in Brooklyn, New York from the United States asking for a photograph of you”

Taking off his shoe and banging it on his desk, “Nyet, Nyet! Unacceptyable! Who is this American boy to create international incident! Launch the nuclear missiles!”

I don’t even think it was the letter to Russia that bothered my father. I think it was the letter to Brazil that was the nexus of his angst. If the Brazilians were upset by my letter they would stop the export of Samba music and coffee. You know they grow an awful lot of coffee in Brazil.

Even while growing up I can remember the day that Jack was assassinated as well as the days that ensued. The only other memories that are etched so vividly in my mind is the attack on the World Trade Center. It was a tumultuous decade with the deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the escalation of the war in Viet Nam. But Jack Kennedy who may or may not go down in history as a particularly effective President did catch our imaginations and projected the image of what a President should embody.

Over the years the signed photo from Kennedy disappeared along with my copy of Profiles in Courage and model of the PT 109. It’s probably somewhere with my baseball cards, my American Flyer train set and my number one issues of Spiderman and Daredevil.

2021: A BANKING ODYSSEY

While watching a TD commercial the other night it seemed only natural to do a fusion bank commercial with the classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Further proof that watching television is not the best thing for you.

A young Chinese woman in a pink blouse runs up to the door at TD Bank while a young man named Bart in a business suit locks it just before she can enter.

Woman (Knocking on the door glass): Wait...I have to make a deposit!

Bart: Sorry, but we are closed.

Genna: (running over and begins to unlock the door): That's OK Bart.  HI, Amy!

Bart (to the customer) talking in a mechanical cadence: I am Banking and Registration Technology but you can call me BART for short.

Bart (Turns to Genna with a far away, disturbing look in his eyes): That is not protocol Bank Manager Genna.

Genna: That's all right Bart. We don't follow the protocol of the industry.

Bart (with a puzzled look on his face): That does not compute Bank Manager Genna. I have been programmed to follow the industry protocol. Conflicts may cause a defect in my programming (slight tic on his face).

Genna: That's OK, Bart. (Smilimg) We don't follow protocol here.

[Ten minutes later]

Bart: Bank Manager Genna, the customer has departed from the store and I have throughly checked that all employees have swiped out and left the building. I have re-locked the door.

Genna: Thank you, Bart. Now that wasn't so bad was it?

Bart: No bank manager Genna, however, while locking up the bank I have noticed a red light in the vault. Would you like to see it.

Genna: Sure Bart let's go downstairs and take a look see.

[They go down the stairs and just before them is the bank vault. Bank manager Genna stands by the vault door and peers inside]

Genna: I don't see the light that you are referring to.

Bart: You can not see it until you enter the safe. Please follow me.

[They enter the vault ]

Bart (pointing to the corner): Look over here.

Genna (bends over and looks towards the wall): I still don't see it

[There is the slamming sound of the vault door closing]

Genna: Bart! Whar are you doing? Why did you close the door?

Bart (looking at his watch) : It is bank protocol to close the safe Bank Manager Genna. I am programmed to shut the safe at 8:00 PM each night.

Genna: But we are still in it and It won't open until the morning! Thank heaven this safe is designed with enough air to last 24 hours.

Bart: I cannot allow you to violate my protocol programming bank manager Genna. I have been programmed to remove all threats to this branch. I am aware of the amount of air in the safe, bank manager Genna. That is why I am going to activate the Halon fire extinguisher to remove all of the air from the vault.

Genna: But we will both die!

Bart: I will not die bank manager Genna. I am a robot and next in line for your position. LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!  I am the branch manager now. Tomorrow we will close at 3:00 PM. I have a date with the cute ATM machine in the driveway.

RATS: LIVING IN NEW YORK CITY OR THE CONFESSIONS OF A RODENT HITMAN

It's been a while since I posted to my blog, I would guess off hand that it has been about three years. Well unlucky for anyone who reads it I'll quote Jack Nicholson in The Shining ... I'm Back!

We were living on the second floor of a three family home on Paerdegat 3^rd Street in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn around 1994.  The city was doing major construction work on the proposed Paedergat  Basin Nature Preserve a half a block away and many of our neighbors were complaining about rats being displaced due to the construction and scurrying about in the streets. I personally did not notice any.

Our absentee landlord, David, sent a plumber over to do some work in the sub-basement that was accessible through a steel cover in the garage.  Later that day after the work was completed we had noticed that the plumber never fully closed the hatch so we did it. It was at that point that we noticed some strange things in our apartment.

The carpeting, already fairly worn, was starting to unravel by the closet door in my daughter’s room. We also noticed a lot of papers mysteriously bundled up under our microwave oven cabinet. I also felt at times while sleeping that I heard something run by my headboard but as our upstairs neighbors had two cats I thought it was their cats running around at night. 

OK, still no bells ringing. A few days later my wife, Ilana, angrily calls me and my son into the kitchen holding a bagged loaf of bread we kept on top of the microwave oven that was ripped open on the top and had a hole about four 4 by 5 inches dug out of  it and says if you want to snack on the bread why don’t you open it and take a slice instead of poking your fingers through the bag and ripping it out!

I stood there looking at her dumbfounded as to why she would even insinuate that I would do that. So to show her I turned to my son and accusingly  asked him why he did that to the bread. He stood there looking dumbfounded as a normal 12 year old usually looks and said that he didn’t do that. It was at that moment that it occurred to me that we had a rodent problem.  Ilana asked me if I really thought that we had a mouse. I looked at her, my eyes wide open in horror and said that I didn’t think we had a mouse problem … we had a (as in one) RAT! Then we proceeded to run around the kitchen screaming and holding our hands in the air. No we really didn’t do that we were pretty cool, calm and collected.

We threw out that loaf of bread and the next day I told Ilana when we buy a new loaf we have to keep it in the bread box drawer. If you're not familiar with that term many years ago kitchen cabinetry was often fitted with a metal drawer with a sliding steel cover to keep your breads fresh and handy dandy. Probably also as a deterrent to rodent problems that were prevalent before the 1960’s and obviously nowadays as the infamous rat with a slice of pizza photo can attest to.

 Later that evening we see the drawer bouncing around and something making a lot of noise and movement in the drawer. I grab my trusty baseball bat as everyone in Brooklyn has a baseball bat regardless whether you play baseball or not.  Ilana runs upstairs to get our neighbor Tony so he could pull open the drawer giving me the opportunity to swing the bat as soon as the whiskered demon from hell pops his little head out.  

Tony comes down and we get a few deep breaths together and open the drawer with a primal scream …. Aaaahhhhhhhhhh. And theres nothing in the drawer. Nothing but a rats tail and blood. When we opened the drawer the rat panicked and ran getting his tail caught in the sharp corner of the drawer shearing off his own tail!

After escaping he somehow managed to run through all the other drawers leaving rat blood on our flatware and everything else. Everything ended up in the dish washer on the hottest setting and we thoroughly scrubbed the drawers to make sure we wouldn't contract bubonic plague.

The next day we bought an old-fashioned spring loaded rat trap and set it up in the kitchen with a chunk of bread as bait knowing full well that this varmint likes bread. We went to bed and about two hours later … SNAP … eek eek eek…scratch …eek eek. 

Ilana, who is in charge of reconnaissance went into the kitchen and yelled that we caught him but he’s running around the kitchen. I came in armed with the requisite baseball bat and saw the rat with the spring bar clamped down on his neck and eyes bulging running in circles around the kitchen. There was no way I was going to go near it to release it from the trap so I took the bat, closed my eyes and swung down on it two, three, five, seven times possibly more while yelling, “AAAAAHHHHHHH, Die! Die! Die!” I may have hit him twice but nevertheless I finished the critter off.  When we noticed that this rat had a tail it had occurred to us we had a family of rats living with us.

We called our landlord, who up to this point was very unsympathetic about our dilemma and told him that if he doesn’t get the building exterminated we would do it and deduct if from our rent. He agreed and the exterminator came the next day and placed traps and poison everywhere.

That evening I cam home from work and went to the bathroom in our bedroom and lowered my pants and was about to sit when I heard a splashing sound. I looked into the toilet and a rat was splashing around in the it. From what I was told by the exterminator, the rat most likely ingested the poison and was trying to get water to drink due to the poison burning in his gut. I closed the lid as he tried jumping to get out so I placed a cinder block on the lid to make sure he couldn’t get out. Who knows how strong rats really are? 

What to do next? I had no rat poison in the house so I poured some chlorine bleach in the bowl through the small space at the rear of the seat. Knowing that they tell you never, ever, ever mix ammonia with chlorine bleach I poured in ammonia anyway. Then some Drano pipe cleaner.

We called the exterminator for advice and asked if my concoction would kill it and he said forget about the rat those chemicals may very will kill us. He further stated that we should open the bedroom windows and leave the room for an hour and a half.

We waited the requisite hour and a half and braved opening the lid. There was no longer any splashing sound. There it was bald with Drano damaged white eyes, completely dead. A bald rat is a sight to see. If you Google the Naked Mole Rat it would give you an idea what it looked like. We lifted it with a nice long pair of channel lock pliers and placed the body in quadruple layered plastic shopping bags and then brought it upstairs so Tony could have the privilege to observe our carnage.

This was the end of our rat problem. We got rid of our son’s captain's bed because there were rat urine stains in the drawers. There was also the smell of decomposing bodies wafting through the walls for two weeks but the exterminator assured us the smell would dissipate in a few weeks. 

I never killed anything before, with the exception of insects, arachnids, worms, fish, a parakeet sprayed with underarm deodorant and two turtles that choked on M&Ms but I never killed any vertebrate just for the sake of killing them. The skill of an executioner or tiny animals came in handy as I had to kill a dying rat in the basement of Samuel Tilden Houses of the New York Housing Authority because the caretaker didn’t have the nerve to do it but his was a mercy killing. Of course the first swat with a shovel missed and I just got it’s legs but the second swing got him.