No need to panic...

...yet! The Grande Enchilada is happy to report that even though the giant gas leak is allegedly coming from very close to her lair, she, who is extraordinarily sensitive to smells, has been unable to smell anything funny today except for her own rank emissions (went to the gym, has not showered yet, because providing her readers with up to the minute info is her first priority).
According to CNN, it looked like New York City was about to be engulfed in a giant, malignant fart designed to scare the hell out of us, if not kill us all. For about two seconds, I panicked mildly. But then a) I could not smell anything b) nobody at the gym seemed to give a fuck 3) life went on.
I hate it when CNN does that! They scare people needlessly and they repeat the same wrong information over and over. It comes from Jersey (nah, really?); no it's on Bleecker and 4th; nah, it's Bleecker and 6th.
It's kinda nice when something scary happens near you because you can be heroic about it and recount your exploits to your friends later (I was there when the giant fart, etc...). As long as you are not blown up yourself, that is. I'd rather live an unheroic long life than enjoy my proximity to potential explosions.
In any case, Mayor Bloomberg came on TV and brushed everything off with the kind of reassuring protestations of ignorance that should calm people down but instead make me more fearful, such as:
"We don't know where it's coming from"; "We don't really know what it is", etc. Gee, that makes us feel way better, Mayor, thanks a lot.
With the disbursement of information it's always feast or famine, it seems.
On airplanes (sadistic) pilots sometimes decide to confide in their passengers that an engine is being fixed prior to departure because it has a short circuit or the control panel or landing gear are not working correctly. Such information, my dear Captain, I do not care to get as I pray to be delivered from the skies by you in one piece and as I wonder what the hell am I doing sitting on a potentially crashing plane, when I could be safely at home, eating ice cream and watching Netflix.
To be fair, it was reassuring that Bloomberg showed up so soon and so totally relaxed. It turned out he was there anyway for his weekly press conference, where he enthusiastically toots his own horn.
Which leads me to this:
Perhaps the foul smell of gas, Mayor, is due to the bloated infestation of banks and chain pharmacies in this city. Yesterday I went to the Met Museum, and on 86th St everything is a bank, and what is not a bank is a Duane Reade. And I thought we downtowners had it bad. Like Adam Gopnik pointed out in last week's New Yorker, we are very happy that the city is safe and livable but thanks to our current prosperity and unchecked market forces, we are becoming a giant, generic mall, we are losing the small businesses that gave us character and soon, if prices keep rising for everything, from food to housing, we are going to lose the middle class as well. The city will be overrun by those detestable people who get billions of dollars in bonuses from Wall Street. I think they should get their bonuses, but does the money have to be so utterly obscene? Couldn't the financial houses give half the billions away to good causes and the rest to their employees?
I read somewhere that in the US CEO's make like 700 times more money than us, the idiots who work for them. In Europe it's 11 times.
This is NOT right. I think the Masses should rise or something.
Plus, why are most of the new buildings sprouting all over town so hideous?

This has been a free-form Monday morning rant, as free form as the smell of gas, live from New York, where we never stop kvetching. Have a wonderful day.