Bloomberg & Occupy Wall St.

A laughable quandary: Demonstrators Test Mayor, a Backer of Wall St. and Free Speech.

The mayor wonders "...why don't you [Occupy Wall Street] get out there and try to do something about the things that you don't like, create the jobs that we are lacking, rather than just yell and scream?"

He's unaware, because of the billions clogging his empathy gland, that not everyone is a member of the divine Job Creator class he belongs to. 

He figures he's engineered the perfect NYC, where anyone with initiative is worth millions, and where the rest of us should be content to Occupy Ourselves with the corporate morphine dripping out of iPhones and advertising as we underbid each other for the honor of running errands for the rich.

The mayor's done everything he can to make the city dependent on and servile to his Wall Street / 1% cohort, which has drowned the power of all speech but its own and turned democracy into a joke by purchasing the political process (see Oligarchy, American Style).

A few years after our banker-inflicted crisis, the world economy is still hostage to hidden dependencies buried in the shadow system built by Wall Street "innovation," with 29 global banks deemed 'too big to fail' and with a distant collapse bound to have side effects here (see Sad Proof of Europe’s Fallout).

But nothing's been done about personal debt, employment, or the next brewing crisis, and we can't do a thing about it through the political process because nowadays, thanks to people like Bloomberg, meaningful citizenship is restricted to the 1%, and its money chokes out any form of life that does not serve it.

American Standard

The American Standard Building on 40th St., overlooking Bryant Park.

Summertime from the west above (with the Setai II behind it), street level to the left, two sides of the top just below, and wintertime from the east at the bottom.

William St. & Maiden Lane 1

Above, looking south on William St. from near Maiden Lane, the "yellow jacket building," also clearly visible in this aerial shot of lower Manhattan.  In the background, below left, the top of 20 Exchange Place.  Below right, the top of the Woolworth Building from further up William.

Steve Jobs / Apple Cult 2

iPhone 5 Cargo Cult
Following up on Part 1...

I think technology -- forget all the claims to a new world of participatory democracy, etc. -- has mainly been geared toward bourgeois personal convenience, toward making life as effortless and comfy as possible, so users are always connected to people and things they know.

Their iProducts make them feel safe, confident and powerful -- never far from a friend who can help, never lost, never going where no one else has gone before.

I accidentally deleted an anonymous comment on Part 1 that basically said "Jobs didn't make people zombies; people are free to choose to become zombies or not."  And I thought: But didn't Jobs, just like a heroin dealer, make it a whole lot easier for people -- who naturally gravitate to the lowest common denominator -- to become zombies?  Didn't he grease the skids to a world where it's considered wonderful that people can watch video as they walk down the sidewalk, and in essence bring their living room with them?

Never mind that the video they watch is the same old crap, and that the buzz they're addicted to is about the same old Pop crap, just updated every few years for a new crop of suckers.

So I think people who say Apple products have made this a better world really mean that the products -- by boosting their ability to be comfortable wherever they go -- have made them feel sleeker and more powerful than they would if disconnected from their Apple product.

They probably don't notice how they constantly consult their device as they walk down the street, seeking its confirmation that they still belong to the shiny world it connects, so it's hard to tell if the device is an appendage, or they're the appendage.  And they probably don't notice what pliant consumers they've become, of a corporation that's always sought maximum control of its platforms.

So when you factor in Apple's paranoid approach to leaks and criticism, Jobs' ruthless treatment of underlings, and the near-spiritual devotion of Apple consumers, it's not a stretch to consider the term "cult," even if Apple devotees belong to something a little closer to a cargo cult than a proper one.

Steve Jobs / Apple Cult

Jobs memorial; photo courtesy NY Times
I've always found the seductive nature of Apple products creepy, the way people fetishize their iPhones and laptops, petting them like a vain movie villain petting a cat.

It doesn't bother me as much that, say, custom car owners fetishize their shiny objects -- at least they built the object themselves.  And I love computers as much as the next geek, but it's not the same magical/mystical relationship Apple encourages with its sealed, candy-coated architecture.

UWS Temple

And I don't think the world Mr. Jobs has helped create is much better than the one he found, because his cultists come to believe that wi-fi is a necessity -- a human right! -- so they can stay in immediate touch with their petty concerns no matter where they are or how much it intrudes on others, so they can commandeer any and every place on earth, and help degrade our relationship to the physical world and others in it.  Now people consult their smartphone to see what's popular nearby instead of letting the unexpected happen; now people flee through museums taking pictures to flip through later, rather than look at the real thing.

At least devotees lighting candles for musicians (like at John Lennon's Strawberry Fields memorial) are in love with something intangible -- the music and/or the personality -- and not a shiny consumer object.

I think there's an important difference between the way an object makes you feel and the way a song or story makes you feel, and I think there's a huge price to pay when the world is given over to the immediate, narcissistic convenience embodied in Mr. Jobs' shiny "magical" objects.

Subway Cellphone Etiquette

A woman laughs her head off watching cartoons on her iPad.  An idiot speeds down the platform on a scooter.  A pungent homeless man lives on the unattended side of the 3rd Ave. L station, kept company by containers for bodily input and output, reminding us of our caveman past and likely future.

But nothing promises more subway discomfort than cellphone service, so here are some tips on how to behave inside the communal phone booth:

- If a cellphone user drops their phone on the platform, you should "accidentally" kick it onto the tracks.

- If an oblivious, gesticulating cellphone user has their arms ripped off by an arriving train -- and they do not have a Bluetooth thing clipped to their ear -- find the nearest pay phone, call 911, and report that someone has vandalized a train.

- If they DO have a Bluetooth, ask them to call 911, then feel free to be amused at the hands-free irony of the situation.

- If a cellphone user is talking at you from a foot away like you're invisible, summon your most deadly germs and cough directly in their face.

- If they persist in talking at you, unleash a loud stream of curses at them with your hand cupped over your ear as if you're on the phone.  If they express irritation, look offended and say "Could you mind your own business?  I'm talking to my mother!" ™ ^[1]

- If all else fails, douse them with the Cellphone Repellent pictured below -- armadillos don't belong in the garden, and cellphones don't belong in the subway!

Also repels armadillos, snakes, moles and geese!
[1] Pretty sure I've used that before, and I like it so much I'll take this opportunity to trademark it.