File Under: Defies Snark, Sarcasm And/Or Droll Ironic Humor

Don’t read before lunch . . . or any other time of the day, for that matter:

A Manhattan Rite Aid pharmacy leads the Top 12 dirtiest food stores in the city, a report obtained by The Post shows. The Rite Aid at 1849 Second Ave. on the Upper East Side flunked six straight sanitary inspections between March 2005 and April 2006 when inspectors discovered such problems as hundreds of mouse droppings and food gnawed by rodents.

An alarming 159 New York City supermarkets failed three or more sanitary inspections last year according to the “Enough to Make You” report released today by Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx).

At least the Second Avenue Rite Aid is trying: One of the 34 infractions noted by inspectors was three mouse carcasses on glue traps. Inspectors also found rodent-defiled foods on the Rite Aid’s shelves — including packages marred by mice gnawing, urine and droppings.

A spokesman for Rite Aid could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Next on Klein’s list is the African Market on Faile Street in The Bronx, where live rats were found along with about 100,000 pounds of food infested by beetles and rodents.

But wait, there’s more:

* King Food Farm on 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights. Inspectors found three freshly dead mice and 40 pounds of rodent-defiled chicken. The store passed inspection in April.

* Noah Products on Ditmas Avenue in Brooklyn. Violations included dozens of mouse droppings and two shipping cartons of rodent-defiled smoked fish.

* Associated Supermarket on 14th Street, Manhattan. Rodent droppings were found throughout the store and food-prep areas, and 28 pounds of dog food were defiled with mouse droppings, gnaw marks and urine stains.

No one was willing to talk to the Post about the report.

Also added to the “no-go” list (like under any circumstances ever):

• Kmart at 2660 Hylan Blvd., Staten Island
• American Fu Zhou Grocery at 101 East Broadway, Manhattan
• Rodriguez Meat Market at 571 E. 184th St., The Bronx
• Global Commodities at 14-50A 118th St., College Point, Queens.
• Golden Town Supermarket at 35-16 Junction Blvd., Corona, Queens
• Genesis Deli Grocery at 3210 Fulton St., Brooklyn
• Rockaway Food at 1370 Rockaway Parkway, Brooklyn.

Next It Will Be Cat, Then Fish — And Where Will We Draw The Line?

We are a sick society:

Manhattan may be the center of the human universe, but some of its office buildings were strictly for the dogs [Friday], as people lugged their pooches to work along with their briefcases.

The eighth annual “Take Your Dog to Work Day” was a barking success at the midtown public relations firm Ruder Finn, with half a dozen four-legged cuties running up and down the halls, happily wrestling each other and poking into offices to bark out a hello.

“He’s a very calming influence, but also stimulating,” said Helen Shelton, whose elderly husky, Mystik, lay peacefully next to her desk, a plush chew toy by his side. And account exec Julie Rosenberg took a cuddling break with Rico. “He gives us something to focus on when we want to take a break,” she said.

I Swear It’s Safe Here, Ma!

The subway is actually really safe — until some fucking psycho sitting across from you gets up and stabs you in the chest for no apparent reason:

Without apparent provocation, a man sitting in a subway car in Harlem yesterday afternoon suddenly stood up, crossed the aisle and repeatedly thrust a knife into the chest of a 21-year-old tourist from Texas riding with his girlfriend, critically wounding him, the police said.

The tourist, identified by law enforcement officials as Christopher McCarthy, apparently thought at first that he had been punched, the police said, until he realized he was bleeding. By that time, his assailant had left the train at 110th Street and Central Park West. The train, a southbound C, continued to the next station, 103rd Street, before the authorities stopped it. An ambulance then took Mr. McCarthy to a hospital.

The police began an intensive search for the attacker. Witnesses said that he and the victim had exchanged no words before he suddenly lashed out and that the attack did not appear to be part of a robbery. At least four other people were in the car, the last one on the train, at the time, the police said.

The crime — its violent details, its setting in the subway in the middle of the day and its tourist victim — recalled a notorious New York City killing, the murder of Brian Watkins, a visitor from Utah, by a robber in 1990. Mr. McCarthy was in critical condition last night at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center on West 114th Street, where he underwent surgery after being stabbed multiple times in the left side of his chest, the police said.

Mr. McCarthy and his girlfriend, Ganda Krisananuwatara, 20, were on the second day of a planned two-week vacation in New York. “Everyone was so excited,” Ms. Krisananuwatara said in an interview. “They told me to take pictures — now I’ll have the most terrible story when I get back.”

Cabbies, Women Like You For Your Minds, Not Your Driving Prowess

The cab driver who lost control of his vehicle, killing a young Staten Island woman he had been transporting, allegedly was “flirting” with the girls by speeding like a maniac:

A reckless cabby with only a month’s experience was “flirting” with one of his pretty passengers and trying to impress her moments before his speeding taxi spun out of control — leading to the horrific crash that killed her friend, one of the girls’ seething fathers told The Post yesterday.

“People like this should not be behind the wheel of a car,” said John Sallustio, whose two daughters were seriously hurt in the nightmare smash-up on the West Side Highway early Sunday morning. “They have to be taken off the road.

“In fact, people like this should not be in regular society,” Sallustio added. “These girls were terrorized by this man, there’s no doubt about it.”

Sallustio said his daughter, Anna, 16, told him that driver Hassan Afzal had been eyeing her older sister, Enza, when he stepped on the gas just after 2 a.m. during their cab ride with two friends through Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

Enza, 21, is “a beautiful girl with blond hair and blue eyes,” Sallustio said. “He was kind of flirting with her, trying to scare them.

“Something was not right with him,” Sallustio quoted Anna as saying about Afzal, 21.

Afzal, a Pakistani immigrant who got his hack license May 5, was driving the two sisters and their friend, Danielle Ricco and Amy Vallarelli in the Ford Crown Victoria south along the West Side Highway when he allegedly began speeding.

Groomed To Death

A dog was killed after being groomed to death:

A Brooklyn family’s precious pooch was accidentally “roasted” to death after the tiny Shih Tzu was left under a grooming parlor’s scorching blow dryer for too long, the devastated owners said yesterday.

Eight-year-old Zoe Del Toro dropped off her pup, Phoebe, for an annual shave and shampoo at the Brooklyn Zoo & Aquarium in Flatlands on Wednesday — never suspecting she would not see the dog alive again.

Zoe and her mom, Tina, ran errands, and when the car phone rang two hours later, the pair thought the groomer was calling to tell them to come pick up Phoebe.

But after Tina switched the call to speaker phone, she and Zoe learned the horrifying truth — Phoebe had been fried to death.

“They said your dog has passed,” Tina recalled yesterday. “I said, ‘Passed where?’ They said, ‘Your dog is dead.’

“I said, ‘How’s that possible from a haircut?'”

When Tina arrived at the groomers, she was handed Phoebe in a cardboard box — which was still hot to the touch.

“I could still feel the heat of my dog through the box,” she said. “I can just imagine what this tiny little dog went through.”

. . .

Tina wanted justice for pet-store owner Peter Eppolito.

“This beautiful, sweet, loving dog was roasted. I won’t be happy unless there’s a vacant sign in this window,” Tina said.

Most groomers dry dogs by hand, said Kruger, but Eppolito’s shop, which grooms at least 150 animals a week, also puts dogs in cages that have dryers clipped to them.