NYC Returns To Being A Craphole Watch: Abandoned Appliances

It’s definitely getting more difficult to jettison trash in vacant lots and underutilized parks, which seems to be why people are apparently turning to the subway system:

A massive refrigerator stuffed with empty Arizona iced tea bottles somehow ended up on the West 4th Street subway platform, where it languished for days before the MTA finally removed it.

To Be Fair, It’s Less A Religious Symbol Than An Accident That Looks Like A Religious Symbol, But Don’t Underestimate The Internal Logic Of Atheists Who Can Be Big Pains In The Ass, Sort Of Like Libertarians Or Literary Criticism Majors . . .

. . . because, well, I don’t totally understand how something that wasn’t designed to be a cross is actually a cross and thus should be treated like it’s a cross, at least for the purposes of a lawsuit, though I guess more importantly the larger item of note here is that it’s no longer “too soon” to shit in the 9/11 punchbowl:

In the days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, some workers and mourners at the World Trade Center site seized upon a cross-shaped steel beam found amid the rubble as a symbol of faith and hope.

For the past five years, the 17-foot-tall cross was displayed outside a nearby Catholic church. On Saturday it was moved again, to the site of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, where it is to be in the permanent collection.

But the move quickly provoked a lawsuit from American Atheists, a nonprofit group based in New Jersey. It argued that because the cross is a religious symbol of Christianity and the museum is partly government financed and is on government property, the cross’s inclusion in the museum violates the United States Constitution and state civil rights law.

And I want these people way the hell away from my Virgin Mary eggplant, which is shaping up nicely in the garden . . .

On The Other Hand, It Was Better Than The “Jeet Jet?” Joke He’d Reportedly Been Considering Trying Out

“He just got a little confused”:

Mayor Bloomberg practiced his version of verbal jujitsu Wednesday, mangling a greeting to Muslim leaders at a Ramadan gathering with “shalom alaikum.”

They Can And They Did

Go big and stay home:

A fugitive fool who taunted cops on his Facebook page, “Catch me if you can, I’m in Brooklyn” — has been captured by U.S. marshals.

And guess where.

Victor Burgos was sitting at a computer with his Facebook page open when a task force of marshals and NYPD detectives tracked him down in an apartment on Jefferson St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Then Again, We Could Also Get Rid Of The Lame Deposit And Put Them Out For Recycling Like They Do In Normal States Where The Bottle Industry Doesn’t Control The Legislature, Because Recycling Is The Law Anyway Now And Besides There’s No Reason To Have To Muck Up The Trunk Of Your Corolla

What New York State’s antiquated bottle return law does to people:

By 7 most mornings, a line has started to form at Thrifty Redemption Center. At first, it is hard to pick out any human form as each nimbus of cans and bottles floats along the sidewalk, driven by hidden pistons of legs.

The grocery carts are packed with cases of empty glass bottles, and these are topped by stacks of bags of plastic bottles, like a bubble bath that rises over the edge of the tub but somehow does not spill onto the floor. The aluminum cans swing in bags from out-riggings on the sides of the cart, broomsticks or drapery rods salvaged from the street.

Among the first to arrive most mornings is a young Chinese woman, her hand curled into a hitch on the front bar of the cart as she steers it toward a curb cut. Luis, an older Ecuadorean immigrant, waves to her. In a few minutes, Frank arrives in a Toyota Corolla that is the automotive equivalent of the shopping carts: he drives with the trunk open so the bags of bottles can froth out.

Retired from the phone company, Frank works a few nights in a restaurant and brings the empties home to his garage in Bay Ridge. Once a week, he drives them to Thrifty Redemption. No full name and no pictures, he said, with an eye on the tax man. “This will be $50 to me,” he said. “Fishing money. I go out of Sheepshead Bay, half-day.”

And John A. Catsimatidis’ editorial still relevant.