chris christie said - "stop working on your tan and get off the beach!" and you know he added "dumbasses!" but they couldn't report that on the news.

NYC's mayor says - "stay inside." it's gonna rain, see. a whole lot. i was watching some news coverage today of the preparations in NYC for the arrival of hurricane irene, and NYC'ers are taking this seriously. they've shut down the subway and other trains, buses, airports. the officials told folks to get out of town, and while i am sure the millions of citizens of gotham have not all left, a good number probably heeded the advice. why stay? it'll be difficult to get around and pouring down rain. i mean, you could sit inside for a couple days and read a book, but who does that? on this news report i was watching, they showed construction sites around NYC all packed up and put away, loose equipment and supplies battened down. probably many millions of dollars being lost having to pay the union workers for time not on the job.

NYC is not a city like other cities. it's many small cities all mushed together. queens and the bronx are not like manhattan, brooklyn, staten island. so many people, so many neighborhoods. for a while i dated a guy from jamaica, queens. that's jamaica, queens, new york, new york. it's like a city in a city in a city. neighborhood, borough, city, state. that's just not how it is anywhere else in the USA. most places, the city is in the county. in this case, the boroughs are counties, and they're inside the city.

i'd say the government of a monstrosity (monstercity!) like this would be a playground for corruption, but maybe i'm just being negative. i mean, i am sure all those NYC politicians are honest and have their constituents' best interests at heart. (i heart NYC!)

current NYC boundaries were created in 1898. old! until 1975, the borough of staten island was known as the borough of richmond. huh! manhattan borough is new york county. staten island is richmond county. the bronx is bronx county. queens is queens county. brooklyn is kings county. kings! NYC was originally nieuw amsterdam and was founded by the dutch in 1625. no word on whether they split the cost of the purchase from the indians. (oh, shut up. it's humour!)

here's a final interesting tidbit: jonas bronck came to the new world from sweden and settled land that bordered a river which was in turn called "bronck's river" and which in turn gave the name to the bronx borough.

in conclusion, if you live on the east coast - stay inside, dumbass!