I get why people complain about the LIRR

I grew up taking the LIRR into the city. It takes the exact same amount of time to get from Stony Brook to Penn Station today as it did when we moved to Long Island when I was about three years old. Seriously. In general, I like taking the train. I have probably driven into the city four or five times in my life. Maybe not even that. I hate driving into the city and there is no reason to do it with the train less than a mile from my house. I can see people in their cars and they all look like they are millimeters away from committing mass murder. Who wants to get that angry? Not me.

Yesterday was different. Part of a track on the Port Jefferson line (the only line they haven’t fully electrified) was broken and that happens but the confusion that ensued was nuts. We stopped on the track for a while and no one said anything. We just sat there. I had taken an earlier train so I could do some things in the city before I met someone but that time was eaten up sitting on the track. Finally, someone announced the problem and assured us that a train would be waiting to take us to Penn Station at Hicksville. When we got to that station, there was a train waiting but it was headed for Ronkonkoma. Not exactly where we were going. The LIRR staff member said a train was coming in 15 minutes, which was met with all the enthusiasm you can imagine. I am not the only inpatient New Yorker.

The good news is that person was wrong (surprise!) and a train came right after the Ronkonkoma train departed. But it was annoying. Things break, we all get that but get your shit together, LIRR.

Then on the way home, there was some issue. We were about nine minutes late getting to Huntington (maybe the same track issue?) and then once we were at Huntington, we all had to wait until the train we were on left. For some reason, this took about 15 minutes. We kept seeing people walk up and down in the train we had just exited. What the hell were they doing? No idea but it was super cold on the platform and no one was happy.

It seems the Port Jefferson line is the red-headed stepchild of the LIRR system. I don’t get it. Stony Brook University is often called the flagship school of the SUNY system (the largest public university system in the country) and it sits on the Port Jeff line. Why not make it easier for people to get to and from this university? I get that Stony Brook, the town, has mixed feelings about the university (across the street from the university is a sign, “Welcome to Stony Brook! Home of the Stony Brook School!” — that school is a private school housed in the middle of the Three Village School District, which is a great school district, but I digress) but shouldn’t everyone see the benefit in improving this line? WTF?

I am hosting a show!

If you are in the Mt. Sinai area on December 10, you will be able to come see me host a show! How awesome is that? Very! Check it out!

I drink too much Diet Coke. I have had friends tell me that it is bad for me to drink it at all but the chances of me giving it up hover around “never gonna happen” and “when monkeys fly out of my butt.” I am cutting down because I think it is causing panic attacks.

Of course, they also could be caused by other stresses. Like the rest of my life.

Stop selling #GenocideGems

In less than two weeks I have a protest scheduled in New York City. (New York City! Where Pace salsa is made!) Working with No Business with Genocide, the International Campaign for the Rohingya and the Campaign for a New Myanmar, I hope to meet up with activists in front of the US Mission to the UN and march to Harry Winston’s HQ and flagship store where I will present them with the petitions we have collected telling them to stop selling #GenocideGems that fund the brutal Myanmar military. The Associated Press contacted me and they want to come and get some good video visuals to include in a piece they are doing on oil and gas sanctions on Burma. So now I have to make sure there are some decent visuals for them to get. Now, truth be told, a group of people with the signs I am having made up with the UN as a backdrop would be a pretty sweet visual but I need there to be those people to hold the signs.

No, I am not nervous at all. That’s why when after a night where I got a whole 41 minutes of sleep, I took a nap and woke up to Ari Melber on TV and thought Fuck, Ari Melber is on TV. We are all going to die. Never mind that I have nothing against Melber, I actually like him, but that made my heart rate climb to some speed approaching that of light and I thought I was going to die. Eventually, I changed the channel and did some breathing exercises and no one died (at least not at Chateau Squirrel).

I am still working to #FreePaulRusesabagina

That’s not my only event. On January 11, 2022, I am hosting (along with Two Joke Minimum and the New York Comedy Club, No Business with Genocide and the Paul Rusesabagina Hotel Rwanda Foundation) another comedy fundraiser for Paul. I desperately want this to go well. My stress level here is high because I just feel like I need to do more for him and his family and don’t think I am doing enough. Not nearly enough.

To make matters on that front more stressful, I fell asleep watching the King of Queens and woke up to Hotel Rwanda. At first, I thought I was having some kind of auditory hallucination as I think about Rwanda a lot. I thought is this so much in my head that the movie just plays randomly in my brain? Then I turned over and it was on the TV and I was relieved that I had preserved at least a tiny amount of sanity.

No more #GenocideGems!

Here are some links to my other writing:

• Little Alyson, angry no more
• Ending cash bond is good for everyone
• On World Genocide Day, we are bringing our message to Harry Winston, will you join us?

Pussycats are the best, right?

I am going to start taking some of my more personal posts over to Medium. Wil Wheaton inspired me to do that. I just read this piece. He talks about his childhood and some of the gaslighting he was subjected to. When I read this, I thought Wow! I can totally relate to that.

So, I am going to put some new stuff up today and tomorrow. I may even post images of my two pussycats.

But, I have some news for this place. I have A LOT of comedy coming up. If you want to see me, you can check out the calendar but here are some of the places I will be:

• October 17, 8:00 PM: Contest at Paradise Studios. 20 Broadway, Massapeaqua
• October 20, 8:00 PM: Broadway Comedy Club, 318 W. 53rd, NYC
• October 22, 8:00 PM: Suffolk’s Best Comic FINALS, Clyde’s (was Barton’s Place), 25A Mt. Sinai
• November 6, 8:00 PM: St. Marks Comedy Club, 12 St. Marks Place, NYC
• November 13, 8:00 PM: Governor’s ‘Lil Room, 90 Division Ave, Levittown

I am pretty sure I will have more to add soon. Please let me know if you have any questions.

All the cool pussycats are doing it…

New social media! There may even be a video (or more) of adorable pussycats!

I am on TikTok now!

I am also adding videos to my YouTube channel. Have you subscribed yet? Please do!

Non-pussycat news to share

Ok, I have to admit that I have recently allowed myself to be pulled into a black hole on Twitter. I wrote about this. It started when someone I know told me their parents were not vaccinated but would use #ivermectin if they got Covid. Not knowing anything about it, I was all, “Ok.”

The next day, I heard it mentioned on TV and asked, “Is ivermectin the drug you were talking about?” It was and I still didn’t have an opinion but they sent me a link to a Joe Rogan podcast and I thought, Right, I am going to take medical advice from the guy who makes people eat sheep uteruses. Not gonna happen.

The narrative this person pushes is that ivermectin is safe (it is) and effective at treating Covid (it isn’t). The reason the FDA, CDC, NIH, and WHO aren’t on board is that big pharma can’t make money off of it and are pressuring those organizations to suppress anything that counters their current stance. While I think there needs to be more transparency — especially at the FDA as they regulate pharma and receive at least 45% of their funding from the industry — in all of these organizations and I also think big pharma is evil — I don’t know if that means they are suppressing data that a cheap drug can be used here. Moreover, I know some doctors are raking in the $$$ by charging patients for consultations for the drug and not billing insurance.

Pussycats don’t tweet about ivermectin

So, I have been critical on Twitter. I have also seen a lot of misinformation. Because I need to get this out of my system before I puke, this is what I have seen and what my responses are:

1. The Indian province of Uttar Pradesh has eradicated Covid with ivermectin. No. Just NO. If this was true, the Indian government would not have removed it fron their Covid protocol.
2. Hundreds of members of Congress and theis staff and families have taken ivermectin. (This also has been reported as all of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House.) This was something Dr. Pierre Kory wrote about but he cited no sources. Given how rabid the GOP is, I can assure you, if they took this, they would be shouting it from the rooftops. President Biden has received all three vaccine shots on camera. None of the people I know in government have taken ivermectin.
3. InfoWars, Breitbart, Project Veritas, and Judicial Watch are credible news sources. NO THEY ARE NOT!!! I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. I have worked for organizations targeted by Breitbart/Project Veritas. InfoWars founder just lost a suit from the parents of the Sandy Hook victime. Alex Jones had been waging a campaign that the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut was a “false flag” and he has been harassing them for years. Is this the person you want to trust for health information (I know Joe Rogan likes him but Rogan told the BBC, “”I’m not a doctor. I’m not a respected source of information, even for me.”). When Andrew Breitbart started his website, he wanted it to be a “Huffington Post for the right.” Now, I see a lot of pro-ivermectin peeps complain about propaganda and them spew their own. Why is right-wing propaganda trustworthy when what you think is official propaganda?
4. #FollowTheMoney. The people who think this is a wonder drug often use this hashtag. See, big pharma won’t make money from ivermectin but they rake it in from vaccines! #followthemoney. I wish they would #followthemoney. Then they might see how doctors, in the U.S. anyway are making a small fortune off this medication.
5. This video is from a protest in France against vaccine mandates. I saw a tweet about a video that was supposed to be from October 2021 but was really from 2018. I have no doubt that the French would be willing to protest mandates, they protest just about anything. You can see my response here. What I don’t get is these complain about misinformation from people who don’t trust ivermectin for covid but then post their own. How does this made them MORE credible?
6. Regulatory agencies like the FDA and the CDC are funded by big pharma and are biased as a result. First, the CDC is “NOT a regulatory agency.” The lion’s share of its funding from the federal government and the gifts they receive are pubished. This is the report from 2020. It is true that the FDA gets too much funding from outside sources but there is a difference between corralation and causation. This is one area where the #IVMworks peeps have a point but it isn’t as simple as they like to think.

This pussycat won’t take ivermectin but it isn’t all horse paste

One thing, I am guilty of this because I make jokes about it in my act, that people who are skeptical of the antiparasitic medication get wrong is that it is NOT only for animals. In 2015, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was split. One half went to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura “for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites.” This was for their formulation of ivermectin for humans. It is TRUE that this is a safe medication that has been used to treat millions (if not billions) of people worldwide. I have never said it isn’t safe, I am not convinced it works against covid.