Military Island

As I was leaving my sometime office building in times square today, i heard some chanting going on. my friends and i looked over to military island and saw a sad little group of people holding McCain/Palin signs and shouting "Vote McCain, not Hussein!!" I didn't even have time to form my thoughts about how this angered me before we noticed the mob on our side of the street. our mob was not organized nor planned, as theirs was. our mob was just a huge group (probably bigger than theirs) of pissed off people that had collected probably whilst on their ways to the train from work. many were heckling the mccain lovers. it was awesome, mostly because i didn't think they expected any sort of retaliation. the best part is that some of new york's finest had to come out and line the streets on the side of our mob so no one would break free and bum rush the republicans. not that anyone would carve backwards m's in their faces anyway.

go kensington!

my little quiet unassuming neighbeehood is gonna be in the movies! the taking of pelham 123 has been shooting a little here a little there three blocks from where i live. things you can look forward to seeing in this movie that will bring you closer to me are as follows:

- my subway station (which they kind of took over part of yesterday, but i ain't mad at them)

- my post office (doubling as the federal reserve)

- my future fling, Denzel Washington

- james gandolfini (because my dad loves the sopranos)

some other things that you will see in this movie that won't bring you closer to me

- John Travolta

i kind of wish there was a secret hand signal i could've flashed to the crew so they would know i was one of their kind, but it's been so long since i've worked on a movie, that the hand signal i know of is probably way outdated. also, as i told a friend of mine, there were a lot of coppers hanging around, and you don't want to flash ambiguous hand signals around a bunch of popo.

nice knowing ya

I had the news on this morning as I was getting ready for work, and there was a story about an explosion that went off in times square. since i work in times square, i started paying attention. There is this little traffic island in the middle of times square known as Military Island (a recruiting center), and apparently there was some sort of explosion early this morning resulting in a pile of glass right outside the building. This made me a little nervous, but the news didn't seem too concerned, so i headed off to work. When i walked past military island (it's like, half a block from my building) i indeed saw the pile of glass and the broken glass doors. cops were surrounding the island (luckily, military island is right next to a little cop station [but not like cops can protect anyone from explosions]) looking all official. My attention was drawn to the helicopter that was just hanging out above us. this actually made me more nervous because it seemed like the helicopter wanted to be there to catch footage in case anything else happened. I continued into my building and opened my google reader, where i was greeted with this story. As my friend bill said, "a biker in new york with a backpack. should stick out like a sore thumb."

My run-in with the cops

Firstly, I'd like to announce that, although there wasn't much (or any) fanfare, Becca's most recent post was Cooler Than Stupid's big 400th post!!! YES! We're WINNERS!!!!

moving on..

today was one of those days where i did something that i had to do, even though i reeeeely did not want to do it. i'm still kind of dealing with that bank fraud crap i mentioned a few posts ago (bucharest!! grrrrr), and even though i've gone through what i believe are all the proper steps to take in a situation like this (tell my bank, get a new card, put out fraud alerts) my mother insisted that i go to my local po po station and file a report. after giving her some lip about how the nypd has better things to do than blow me off, i buck up and call my local precinct. the friendly man who answers tells me that i just need to print up a statement showing where the fraudulent activity occurred and to either call 911 to have the cops come to my house or head down to the station and talk to a detective in person. and because i'm not about to invite coppers into my house (they make me nervous) i printed out my statement, highlighted the offending transactions, and headed to the 70th precinct.

i'm not too sure what i expected to see when i got there. maybe in the back of my mind i was thinking angie harmon or mariska hargitay would put an arm around me, tell me things would be okay, and lead me to a desk where we would hatch a plan to catch this criminal. considering that i'm not a special victim and this is not a murder case, that scenario was just not to be. and since there's no Law & Order: Bank Fraud, i had nothing to base my expectations on. i entered the police station and got all nervous (as i mentioned earlier, police make me nervous)...especially because there were like, 3 different reception desks, no sort of order anywhere in the station, and clusters of cops chilling with each other and shooting the shit. oh yeah and some dude getting his possessions returned to him. my plan was to be in and out as quickly as possible, but was met with my first obstacle -- which desk to go to. so i just kind of stood around hoping one of the cops would say 'can i help you?' (i mean sheesh, you are public servants!) for about 10 minutes, then eenie meenie miney moe-d and went up to one of the desks. i told the officer that i was there to file a bank fraud report and he said to just have a seat. then some old bat gets all huffy because this dude got helped before her. it took all i had in me to not push her out of the way and point out that i'd been there much longer than either of them. so after i waited for about 15 more minutes and witnessed a fellow get brought in cuffed, the officer that told me to take a seat got up from behind his desk, walked around to the second desk and called me up. (yes that happened.)

i explained my situation to this winner and he looked my bank statement up and down. he asked if my bank had issued a second card and i responded that they had, thinking he meant did they cancel my old card and issue me a new one. he said, 'oh well that's the problem.' so then i explained that i had misunderstood and corrected the error. he told me i needed to get a letter from them saying that they hadn't issued a second card because the statement clearly shows that these fraudulent transactions were done via atm. once i get the letter, i can come back with my statement and then file a report. oh and he also was like 'do you have an id?' and i said yes and he said 'ok...because you need an id to file a report. you have one?' i was not sure if this was a comment on me looking 10 years younger than i am or my ethnicity, but either way it kind of pissed me off. this whole interaction pissed me off but i had to remind myself that i was in a police station and must reign it in lest i get cuffed (and not in an exciting way). he tells me again the steps i need to take and then excuses his french and says that he thinks its bullshit and that this is the banks fault. and like...i'm pretty positive that my bank did not fucking authorize a second atm card to be given to a random romanian without notifying me and then played dumb when i called in to report it. yeah, mr. cop, i'm really fucking sure that it's the bank's fault. there haven't been any sort of technological advances that would allow someone who knows what they are doing to clone an atm card (as my bank told me is what probably happened) with information taken from the internet or even straight from an atm machine.