Don’t Let The Gasoline-Soaked Bedbugs Burst Into Flames In The Middle Of The Night, Setting Your Living Quarters On Fire

And for God’s sake, if you happen to do this, please remember not to smoke in bed:

Firefighters have responded to reports of gas odor in several Queens apartments this year — only to find that the residents had soaked their mattresses with gasoline to kill bedbugs, The Post has learned.

One woman had even wiped gasoline on her arms to keep the bugs from biting her. Another had also wiped her children’s beds with gas.

“Gasoline is very explosive — even static electricity from a rug can ignite it,” said Battalion Chief Robert Turner, who responded to two of the incidents. “Luckily, all of the apartments were well-ventilated.”

The incidents happened in Corona, Queens, at separate apartments as recently as this month.

Moral Of The Story: When Relieving Oneself In Subway Tunnels, Piss Just Beyond The Station, Not Before It

Ew:

A man relieving himself beside the subway tracks in a tunnel at City Hall station had a turn of bad luck yesterday. As he swung around to return up the stairs in a section of the tunnel just south of the station, his hand was caught under a fast-moving no. 5 train, police and fire officials said.

Here Are My Wings . . . Please Clip Them

This is just to say: I am an impatient, overly aggressive and just plain bad bicyclist, and the best thing about the transit strike ending is that I am off the road.

So in a sort of holiday spirit, I would like to take the opportunity to apologize to several pedestrians whom I scolded or cursed at. (NB: This in no way releases you from what at the time were obvious, inexcusable transgressions — it’s just to admit that my response was perhaps excessive.) Please note the following:

• To the middle-aged woman in the black overcoat at 60th Street and Park Avenue on the morning of December 21, 2005 at whom I yelled “Lady, get out of the way!” — I’m sorry, I really should have just slowed down and allowed you to cross against the light; and being stressed out that morning still does not excuse me from sneering “Hey, Lady” at you.
• To the middle-aged gentleman at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue on the evening of December 21, 2005 — “Get the fuck out of the way!” was perhaps an overly aggressive way to express what I really felt, which was something more along the lines of, “Please take care not to walk directly in front of a long line of bicyclists trying to cross the street, particularly when you are walking against the light.”
• To the group of three pedestrians at 60th Street and Park Avenue on the morning of December 22, 2005 at whom I yelled, “Get out of the way!” — while actually speeding up — I apologize; even though (again) you were crossing the street against the light, in speeding up to almost hit you I was perhaps acting too aggressively.
• Finally, to the near-elderly woman in the black fur coat at 59th Street and Third Avenue on the evening of December 22, 2005 who was crossing against the light — the one at whom I yelled “Lady, get out of the way” and who snapped something indecipherable at me — I am sorry for making the extra effort to turn around while I was almost through the intersection and yelling “fuck you”; yelling “fuck you” is probably never justified, especially when I wasn’t exactly sure what you said, and especially because yelling obscenities at the elderly is rude, unseemly behavior.

That said, I am emphatically unapologetic about flipping off the idiot in the blue minivan who drove right in front of me at 45th Avenue and 23rd Street in Queens. In fact, I would have yelled, too, were it not for the fact that he could not hear me. To you, Sir — Watch out for bicyclists, you stupid moron.

We Need A New Smokey!

To all you all who throw your shit on the subway tracks, Hey, Moron, Give A Fuckin’ Hoot, Why Don’t You? (boom — instant T-shirt idea!):

The Transit Authority has identified the dirtiest subway stations in the city, where enough trash to fill more than 6,500 large bags of garbage has been collected off the trackbeds so far this year.

TA cleaners carrying 55-gallon bags pick litter by hand from the trackbeds at busy stations once or twice a week – yet within days, debris once again litters the rails, officials say.

“There’s no way you can stay on top of it,” said William Johnson, a veteran cleaner assigned to the 125th St. and Lexington Ave. station, which has the dubious distinction of consistently being the city’s most trash-filled station.

And it’s getting worse: From January through September, transit workers hauled 37,000 bags of rubbish from station tracks systemwide – a nearly 32% increase over the same period last year, the TA said.

. . .

The garbage is more than an eyesore. It’s also fuel for fires sparked by trains. Those blazes force firefighters to descend into a potentially dangerous environment. Underground fires can require the evacuation of riders and regularly result in delayed service. And trash attracts the sturdy breed of rats that make the underground warren their home and dart out of the darkness between trains to feed on the refuse.

And leave it to the transit workers union and them Straphanger whiners to blame the MTA on this one when we all know that the problem is with your stanky asses — you who throw wrappers, cans, cups and bags onto the tracks:

Critics charge that the TA has unwisely trimmed the workforce assigned to cleaning platforms over the last several years, and has been slow to deploy more workers to remove debris from tracks. Still, critics and straphangers concede that there are too many litterbugs – rude riders who toss empty coffee cups, newspapers, fast-food wrappers and other refuse aside without regard for their fellow travelers.

Law-abiding subway riders called upon those who are less civil to do the right thing. “We all use it, so we should take care of it,” Roberto Rios, 18, of the Bronx, said at the 125th St. and Lexington Ave. station. “If we didn’t throw garbage to the floor, it wouldn’t be a problem. People should be more considerate.”

You Think You’re Ready? You Really Think You Know What To Do?

In a week featuring coordinated bombings of Western hotels in Jordan and the apparent disruption of a terrorist plot allegedly in its final stages in Australia (and a potential threat in China . . . or not?), New York Magazine indulges our latent thirst for disaster-preparedness porn:

Despite [NYPD assistant chief in charge of preparedness Phil] Pulaski’s confidence, few people believe a full-scale evacuation of New York would be anything other than an interminable, nightmarish logjam. “You look at New York City and you know you’ll never be able to evacuate all of it,” [State] Assemblyman [Richard] Brodsky admits.

When I ask Pulaski about this, he takes an uncharacteristic pause. Then he answers with a question.

“What would happen that would require the entire city to be evacuated? I can’t think of anything.”

Unlike New Orleans and its levees, New York has no single point of failure, and it is difficult to imagine a situation in which the entire city would have to be evacuated. Except for one. A nuclear explosion.

. . .

A dirty bomb is one thing, but an actual nuclear event, as it’s often innocuously referred to (it makes it sound like something you don’t want to miss, like the “movie or concert event of the season”), is the mother of all disaster scenarios. And it is the Rubik’s Cube of preparedness planning. How do you prepare for something so overwhelming?

. . .

In the end, some of the most important things to manage are expectations. “There is this notion,” Brodsky says, “that we can take care of everybody. Well, the truth is we can’t take care of everybody.”

But Wait! There’s More! Act Now And You Not Only Get A Disaster-Preparedness Porn Feature But Two Other Worrying Sidebars As Well! See What New Yorkers Are Doing To Prepare For Avian Flu! (“One woman says she got a prescription at the insistence of her boyfriend, who already had his. ‘This is just precautionary,’ he explains, asking that they not be identified because he works for a TV network and doesn’t want to be subjected to ridicule by his peers.”) And also — A short guide to nine big things to worry about — and what you can do about them:

If terrorists hit the Kuehne Chemical Co. chlorine-manufacturing plant in Kearny, New Jersey—directly under the Pulaski Skyway and considered one of the country’s most vulnerable targets—the city’s top priority would be figuring out how fast it would take the greenish-yellow gaseous cloud to get here.

Indian Point Meltdown? Check:

Hope that winds are headed north [Albany is for suckers!], as the 35 miles between the nuclear-power plant and midtown is a short commute southward for a radioactive plume, which could kill thousands in a few days, cause radiation sickness and eventual cancer for tens of thousands more, and taint the city’s water supply.

Nuclear Explosion You’re Looking For? We’ve Got That, Too:

Pray for help from the Feds because city hospitals, police precincts, and firehouses could be destroyed. If the prospect of a fema-managed catastrophe isn’t scary enough, a nuclear bomb would kill millions, and the lucky ones would get vaporized instantly. Others would be burned, blinded, or poisoned by radiation sickness in subsequent weeks and months. Bodies would litter the streets, and the water supply would be contaminated. The city would be too radioactive for outside emergency workers to enter, so those left alive would have to improvise.

But Wait! Wait! Act Now And You Get Not Only A Disaster-Preparedness Porn Feature — Plus The Two Worrying Sidebars! — But Also This Handy Guide Showing All Geologic Fault Lines In The Five Boroughs! All Yours. But Only If You Act Now!

And Don’t Forget This Blast From The Past: Bill Keller’s “Nuclear Nightmares” (New York Times Magazine, May 26, 2002)