And If The Dog’s Worth $12 Million, We Better Sort This Out Sooner Rather Than Later

The grand plan to have your pet accompany you on your journey in the afterlife is a nice idea, but the path to heaven seems to be full of dog poop:

Haughty hotelier Leona Helmsley will be denied her final wish to be buried with her unpleasant pooch — because it’s illegal for a human cemetery to entomb an animal in New York, The Post has learned.

An official with the Department of State’s Division of Cemeteries was asked if a dog can be buried in a cemetery meant for people.

“Absolutely not, there’s no question about it,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

“A dog would not be allowed to be buried or interred in a cemetery. It’s for human beings.”

Officials at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester, where the Helmsleys have a $1.4 million crypt in the mausoleum, told The Post yesterday they never had an intention of honoring the will. It specifies that when Trouble dies, her remains should be buried next to Leona and her husband Harry, who died in 1997.

“We’re not allowed to bury any pets in the cemetery,” said a Sleepy Hollow rep.

Helmsley, who died earlier this month, left $12 million to the 8-year-old Maltese.

. . .

“I was surprised to see that there was no mention of it in the media,” said Manhattan attorney Mark Borten, who had read about Leona Helmsley’s plans for the fluffy, four-legged heiress.

“Just because it’s in her will doesn’t mean it’s necessarily legit.”

Maybe The Question “Are You Very Interested, Somewhat Interested Or Merely Just Mildly Interested In Getting Something For Nothing?” Threw Them

Now that people know more, they’re wildly intrigued:

Opposition to congestion pricing has increased over the last month, and is fiercest in The Bronx, according to a poll released yesterday.

The Quinnipiac University poll reported that 57 percent of city voters now give a thumbs-down to Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to charge $8 a day to motorists to enter Manhattan below 86th Street on weekdays.

Only 36 percent support the proposal.

In a previous poll last month, the split between opponents and supporters was a closer 52-41 percent.

The only borough where the majority of residents stood with the mayor was Manhattan, 54-36 percent.

In every borough, however, congestion pricing took a heavy hit. Opposition reached 74 percent in The Bronx, 61 percent in Queens, 60 percent in Brooklyn and 56 percent on Staten Island.

You Can’t Win If You Don’t Obssessively Fork Over $42 Each Week

And over the course of 30 years, that comes out to $65,520. Then again, they did win twice in 11 years*. Just don’t tell the poor saps you see each Friday down at the lottery bodega:

Lottery lightning has struck twice for a former Bronx couple, who won the state lottery for the second time in 11 years.

“It’s a great feeling,” Eugene Angelo Sr., 81, said yesterday when he learned that the ticket he bought with wife Adeline, 74, last week was the sole winner in the twice-weekly Lotto game and is worth $5 million.

In December 1996, the family bought one of four winning jackpot tickets and received the lump-sum payout of $2.5 million after sharing a $10 million jackpot with three others.

“We’re a little older, a little wiser, and there are a few more of us when you count the grandkids,” said Angelo, a retired construction worker who sold his Bronx home and moved to Mahopac in Putnam County after winning the lottery the first time.

“But we’re still the same old people. Still very excited.”

Eugene Jr. said his father spends about $42 on lottery tickets each week — and has done so since the state lottery began nearly 30 years ago.

. . .

The chances of winning once are 22 million to 1 — so the odds of doing it two times are “galactically astronomical,” said New York Lottery spokesman John Charlson.

Acting Lottery Director Gardner Gurney said the Angelos are “living proof that lightning, or in this case, random luck, can strike twice.”

Is There Anyone Still At Their Desk At The End Of August?

When pressed for duty, New Yorkers find a way to call out sick:

On Wednesday morning, a pair of women in shorts and tank tops sat on the No. 7 train as it ran from Grand Central to Flushing. They were also AWOL, more or less, and they were planning to watch “a friend of a friend of mine from London who’s playing Rafael Nadal today,” said one of them, Jamie Lewis, 31.

“I sent an e-mail to my boss at midnight, said I’ll be out tomorrow and you can reach me on my cell, and turned my computer off. The markets are crazy and I work at a hedge fund, so I thought I’d escape.”

Ms. Lewis’s friend, who identified herself as Patricia, said she works for an Internet company and added, “I called in sick. Can’t you tell?” She held the back of her hand against her forehead. “I canceled some meetings.”

Others were at Flushing Meadows by dint of a range of alibis and measures, and a lot of these involved the notion that because they were using corporate seats, or accepting the tickets as a gift from clients, or bringing clients, it counted as work anyway.

One man in shorts and loafers gestured to the young woman beside him on the No. 7 train and said that they both worked for banks, “and she’s my client.” This explained his declaration that the Open “is a good corporate event,” but not the fact that he was hugging and kissing the woman throughout the train ride.

Colleen Channer and a friend, who were watching the Nathalie Dechy-Francesca Schiavone match from an upper row of Louis Armstrong Stadium, the better to simultaneously keep an eye on the match between David Nalbandian and Ivan Navarro-Pastor on the adjacent grandstand court, said that she had taken a vacation from her job at a law firm. “But I have a friend who’s an I.T. guy who told his boss last year that he was running a new program, and then he put the program up and came to the Open the rest of the day,” she said.

Maybe Jeremy Piven — Or If You’re Lucky, Wallace Shawn — Will Play You In The Feature Film

There are at least two acts in there somewhere (some enterprising whippersnapper needs to supply the third):

The Carroll Gardens widow who fought to die in the home she’d lived in her entire life, won a Pyrrhic victory this month — dying in the apartment on Aug. 12 and defeating a developer’s two-year-long quest to evict her.

Angelina Visconti, 88, died of natural causes at Long Island College Hospital, though she was still a resident of the Cheever Place rowhouse.

“She got her wish, and that was what it was all about,” said Leonard Visconti, her son. “She always said she was born here, she wanted to die here.”

Visconti’s residency became an issue in 2005, when her nephew Joseph DeLeonibus, the son of Visconti’s late twin sister, tried to evict her so he could make a killing in the booming Carroll Gardens real-estate market.

The house was eventually sold for $1.13 million to developer Wayne Warnock, who picked up the eviction proceedings where DeLeonibus left off.

Earlier: Notices To Quit Thicker Than Blood.