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March 28, 2007  A fairly amazing bit of graffiti at the Montrose Ave. station on the L train, poking fun at crazy 9/11 conspiracy theorists and their nonsense. My friend John Gorenfeld recently pointed out that 9/11 conspiracies have reached a new low with the fairly remarkable case of Michael Zebuhr, a grad student at Clemson who was murdered in a random robbery in Minnesota. Unable to hide their stripes, 9/11 conspiracy crazies believe that Zebuhr's murder was an "execution" designed to prevent him from telling others about the "truth" behind 9/11. Why the alleged street-thug executioners would choose Zebuhr over the people who ran the 9/11 group he belonged to, as well as explanations for why the government would choose to assassinate him over discrediting him, have not been forthcoming. As much as we'd all like to believe 9/11 was a controlled explosion, no modern disaster has been better documented, and I can't imagine any line of political inquiry being less productive at this point. It is incredibly disheartening to see demonstrations for an end to the war in Iraq be desecrated by these people. March 16, 2007
As a followup to my recent post about my battle with Cingular over an early termination fee, I am realizing that I may have had an option other than calling customer service every day for a few weeks: I could have filed a federal lawsuit! A New York-only legal war is now ongoing between Sprint Wireless and something called the "Vaad," which is not an alien life form but instead a rabbinical council formed by some ultra-orthodox Jews to procure "kosher phones" for its followers. These kosher phones were to be able to make all sorts of phone calls but not able to access text messaging or the internet, both of which are strictly forbidden. The Vaad sunk $150,000 into the venture, which was apparently fraught with problems on both sides from the get-go. Apparently, Sprint was never fully able to figure out the billing structure, in which individual sect members were to be billed separately for their phone charges, but were to be disallowed from having any sort of control over their accounts were they to call Sprint customer service.
For the Vaad's part, apparently Sprint got a bit irritated when -- and it is impossible to make this up -- "a community activist prepared a newspaper advertisement that both verbally and graphically compared the devastating spiritual effect of the use of Internet-capable cell phones to the devastating mass murder of Jews at Auschwitz." The ad did this by featuring "side-by-side illustrations of crematoria at Auschwitz and a 'flaming' internet-able cell phone" complete with the "unauthorized use of Sprint's trademark." The lawsuit itself features a mind-boggling blow-by-blow description of the Vaad making impossible demands and the company being too incompetent to do anything about it... It is a must-read. March 07, 2007  In yet another reminder that it is still one of the greatest places on the World Wide Web, retro pop-culture site X-Entertainment unveils a look back at 11 discontinued soft drinks. March 02, 2007  From the notorious rat-infested Taco Bell on 6th Ave., the official notice from the Health Department. Click on the image above for a larger version; in true New York fashion, they had to put the paper notice on the outside of the glass, thereby inviting some entertaining graffiti. My favorite: "Rats own this place!" |
