Spare Parts

Well, it's almost official: New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) has announced its 2009 doomsday budget and it's slated for easy approval. It includes painfully steep fare hikes across the board for transit trains, buses, commuter rail lines and bridges and tunnels. Could anyone please explain just exactly how the world's most poorly run transportation system is going to be permitted to go ahead with these hikes in the midst of ongoing poor management, zero accountability, falsified and seemingly cooked documentation and record-keeping and missing million-dollar surplus gains? In April of 2002, the MTA managed to hide a half a billion dollars in its budget and increased the fare based on misleading information. They justified asking for a fare increase back then by keeping two sets of financial plans, one public and one secret, according to a report issued by then State Comptroller Alan Hevesi. Are we having collective memory loss here people? I ...

Right off the bat I’ll admit that I was neither a fan of, nor an expert on fallen actress Natasha Richardson. Of course, I knew of Natasha Richardson. Just like so many celebrities, her name did inspire recognition, the kind one has in passing when you hear it mentioned. Natasha Richardson died yesterday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, following her family’s decision to remove the life support sustaining her body’s physical functions. She had been declared brain dead and not likely to survive. It had been only two days; this passed Monday, since the actress took what at first appeared to be a harmless spill on a bunny slope, while taking a private skiing lesson at a mountain resort in Quebec. The resort’s instructor and staff said Natasha did not hit anything; there was no blood or other visible injury. The mountains were not hard or icy. In fact, they say, she giggled with her sons at her own clumsiness, refused medical treatment at first and even got down the ...

You would think that with all of the medical adventures and misadventures in my life and with all of the countless hours spent in hospitals, waiting rooms and dialysis centers, and with all of the drama that ensued following my diagnosis and daily existence, I would have had the wherewithal to keep a journal. Well, I did not. I did not keep one for the same reason I hesitated to start a blog. I am no good at keeping up with things. In fact, sometimes I completely forget I have a blog. I forget that I haven’t written a thing in days. And it is only when I see it again that I realize how long it has been. Crazy me! Part of the reason for me starting a blog was to give myself the time and space to exercise my writing skills. It was meant to be a place where I could freely express my thoughts and feelings about me and about the world around me. From this I learned that my love for writing remains as powerful as ever. From it I learned that I could still recapture the ease and flow of th...

If you’re a fan of American Idol , as I have made clear that I am, then you know exactly whom Tatiana Del Toro is. If you do, then you’re probably wondering two things. The first is why would I devote time and energy to write about one of the most nails-on-chalk-board annoying people to cross the small screen since Omorosa appeared on The Apprentice’s first season. The second is why the hell do I think she merits such an honor? Well, let’s start with the obvious. Tatiana Del Toro is anything but ordinary. She leapt onto Season 8 of Idol’s San Francisco auditions lugging a trunk of over-the-top drama right behind her. She has portrayed herself as some sort of victim of an industry that is missing out on her talents as a singer. It is all about her life, her dream, her existence, and her magnificence. It’s Tatiana Del Toro’s planet – we’re just chilling on it. The child is a delusional drama queen in the most vulgar sense of the word. She will use her crying and whi...