Poetry With an Explanation: "Indoctrinated Youth"

I know what your thinking

but its not exactly what you predicted

Rush hour in Brooklyn

A cacophony of smells and noise

Now your pocket concerns you,

not your face.

We all move with great speed

A mixed heard of sheep, cattle, and some predators too

Our destinations vary our purpose is the same

Lo the R train is it coming will I have to wait?

Again!

Then.

The fluid solids waves of man, women, and

and whats this...

A Child?

He may have been 12 but he was lurching, sidestepping, and nudging all with the deftness of a seasoned commuter. I moving watched as he almost ran over a pleasantly plump woman and then dove elbows first into the train. Society's impact on a 12 year old, he, like many of our youth, has been indoctrinated.

He knows he must run but does he know why?

Is he the same when he visits small town Connecticut?

Does he realize that one acts like a Roman only when in Rome?

Is THIS what we have succeeded in imparting?

Indoctrinated youth, tell me what else have you learned?

Is “Human Surfing” Another Effect of the Internet Age?

A friend and I were discussing the relationship between social-milieu and dating. He mentioned that his friend had been in the singles capital of NYC Friday evening. As is “customary” there, following the evening service everyone exits the ordered chapel into a mass of mingling singles. My friends friend wished a women good evening and as she shook his hand her eyes instinctively shifted to another man. This man in turn was shaking another’s hand and staring at a third person.

My psychology inclined friend explained that these individuals had taken their individuality so far that now they resemble a collective of the highly superficial and selfish. Which explains the tremendous success they have at the office were individualism is prized, and the dearth of more than one-night-stand-couples.

I agree that the pervasive state of singleness that exists there is underpinned by an extreme of individualism –selfishness. Yet this does not explain their inability to focus on one person for any appreciable amount of time. Thus beyond the uniformly negative opinion outsiders have of this little island of loneliness, and the close minded bubble that many of the insiders live in, the whole episode rings a familiar tune.

It seems that the above vignette, reflects an unexplored tributary of a much discussed phenomena. Surly we have all heard the doomsayers and observers postulating the ramifications of the age of internet surfing: short attention spans the rewiring of individuals and societies brain paths etc. Is it possible that my friends friend encountered the first waves of “human surfing”? People who exist in an individual bubble may see the other as just another page to be surfed and then forgotten, if the platform is bursting with pages – as the singles capital bursts with singles –then there is so much to be surfed and so little time…

Of course very few people living in this “area” would assert that a person should be treated like an interesting-but-common internet page. Except, if their individualism doesn’t allow them to recognize their actions. If everyone is selfish then selfish becomes the norm, just as if everyone is single then single becomes the norm. Like the internet surfing era, if everyone is rewired to think in a certain way then there is no one to ask “why are you surfing for relationships, (jdate/e-harmony is one thing), but in person?”

So I ask, is “human surfing” another effect of the internet age?

Poetry with an Explanation: "Cut-off shorts and designer shirts"

Cut-off shorts and designer shirts.

Nice apartment, no occupation,

mixed up devotion.

“Do you work?"

“No, but I went to college."

“Do you like the neighborhood?"

“Yeah but it’s not for the weak at heart."

I’m confused. You’re drinking Starbucks.

Shouldn’t you be buying your coffee at the bodega,

nameless sign white cup?

Your wearing a wife-beater and shorts that were once long?

Are you a yuppie or a hipster?

An urban aristocrat or,

a Crown-Heights citizen who is just white?


It’s interesting observing the emergence of yet another sub-type of urban dweller. First you had the stereotypical Park-Slop yuppie: a city dweller from lower-upper-class suburbia. Or the formulaic Bed-Stuy hipster the the child of “middle-class" suburbia with no front lawn. The former loves a wild-night out, without the threat of violence. The latter walks late at night and mingles with the “local” population.


But what about that period of transition? The time when a part of the city begins to gentrify. Changes from a mix of shanties interspersed amongst dozens of monotonous red brick buildings with ominous entrances and perpetual loitering?


The hipster cannot afford the raise in rent nor the dearth of block-parties next-door. The yuppie despises the construction, the noise, the new building, and the gym on the first floor, but not doorman. Or the moment they/you/us realize that your view of the bridge from your breezy balcony is about to be cut off by the gray brick, “luxury apartments” next door. Who fills the void during the transition from hipster to yuppie?

From Crown Heights to Prospect Heights?

Then it occurs to the observer that

the word is out; The neighborhood is changing and

the hipster has moved on -

three subway stops to the left.

The yuppie is waiting for the amenities.

What is this that remains?

Is it possible?

Have the hipster and the yuppie converged?

Is this what is confounding the onlooker?

Starbucks and improvised shorts.

Cut-off shorts and designer shirts.

Yuppie and hipster...

What do you know? It's a "yipster"!

Politics with Humor: What happens when you elect a health-freak/businessman as your mayor?

What happens when you elect a health-freak/businessman as your mayor?

Mayor Bloomberg who is in fact a health-freak, is the healthiest mayor New York City has ever had. Frankly, I don't mind. I am, after all, a gym-loving-healthy-food-craving citizen of this rather indefinable city myself.

But my appreciation for the mayor's personal belly-busting fixation does not mean I support his unremitting effort to impose ALL his habits on the city.

Yes, I can’t help but like that he spearheaded the effort to get rid of trans-fat from chain restaurants; or his efforts to reduce sodium use in foods. In the long run I haven’t heard anyone complaining about the way KFC tastes different –and I assure that here in Brooklyn you hear every type of complaint. And I can attest to the fact that replacing the salt in your morning omelet, say with olives and garlic, becomes as obvious as the "watery" fat-free milk that after two weeks is just better milk.

All that said, I can’t help but gripe about Bloomberg's anti-cigarette, tax-revenue boosting methodology.
Yes that’s right, I’m taking a break from the usual and ranting about local, relatively unimportant, issues.

I concede cigarettes are cancer sticks; the crutch some use to escape social-settings; and even functions to wash down that grainy morning cup of Joe.

And I agree that ads like the one with the Marlboro man (he is now dead from lung cancer) should not be displayed in public. At the same time I strongly disagree with the latest episode of The Simpsons being interrupted by disturbed middle-aged men who explain to you in a mechanical voice the reason that they speak out of their neck is cigarettes. Most of us know how bad cigarettes are from the unavoidable poster at the corner bodega, with a blown up but vividly clear image of a yellow/green lung, if not from the sanctimonious, never-tried a cigarette, “I don’t get it…” person -yes we all agree cigarettes are terrible.

However our mayor has taken the fight against cigarettes to a whole new level. Enter the “Bloomberg Business Approach” (BBA, an acronym only found here) to raise revenue.

You see when the city was riding a wave of pre-housing-bubble wall-street revenue, Bloomberg argued that a big tax increase on tobacco products would help convince people that now was the time to get off the cigarette and onto free nicotine patches offered by the city.

Now Bloomberg, after somehow managing in the interim to make three dollar packs of cigarettes into 10 dollar bills, pushed and got a one dollar plus tax hike on cigarettes. This time to fund anti-cigarette ads in a time when we can longer rely on Wall Street to pay for our big fat -except for Bloomberg- bureaucracy.

On both occasions Bloomberg added “besides smokers are a burden on our public health-care costs”. Never mind that it mostly individuals on private health care, or young people with no health care smoking 10 dollar packs. I am still waiting for Bloomberg’s attempt to rain in the epidemic of old people already adding significant fat, no pun intended, to our health care costs.

Mayor, many otherwise healthy people enjoy an occasional cigarette, just like they enjoy an infrequent beer, or a rare saturated with saturated-fat burgers for that matter. If you want to drive cigarettes off the streets -because it is a public health threat- then make it illegal, but don't make us, or the hard core smoker, your personal cash cow. Remember that the cigarettes are bad not the people smoking them!

Then again this is what happens when you make a businessman/health-freak your mayor.