You probably don’t know who I am but after reading your op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about not getting into any of the Ivy League schools you applied to, I felt I had to reach out. You see, I’m the girl who took your spot at Harvard.

I know this with absolute certainty. On my acceptance letter from Harvard, your name had been crossed out and mine had been written above it.

I know this must be really upsetting for you. You worked really hard for four years. You took all of the AP classes your high school offered. Your parents paid for expensive SAT prep courses and you did really well on the test. You did all kinds of volunteer work even though you had hours of TV unwatched on your DVR. Basically, you earned this.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I did some work, too. I went to class and paid attention when the lesson wasn’t disrupted by a fight in the hallway. My textbooks might still reflect a Cold War world but not needing to know the names of all the Soviet republics made it much easier to study for global studies exams. Much less to memorize that way. That’s probably the only reason I managed an “A” in that course.

But when my parents got divorced and my mom came out of the closet and hooked up with the ¼ Navajo lady neighbor, I closed my textbooks and put down my pen. I figured—why bother? I’m a black female from the inner city with divorced parents, a gay mother, and a part-Native American stepmother. Every college was going to recruit me like I had a great jump shot.

Not only did Harvard accept me and shower me with financial aid, they put my photo on the cover of all of their recruiting materials. You were totally right—being a minority in 21st Century America only has upside!

It must be really tough to learn that you didn’t get what you totally deserved, but I’m sure you’ll do well at a state school. And I’m certain your parents will be able to find it in their hearts to love a daughter without an Ivy League pedigree.

As for me—I’m set for life. Obama is president, racism has ended, and law schools have already come a-callin.

Best to you in life,

Aaliyah Martin

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The post Dear Suzy Lee Weiss, I Took Your Spot At Harvard appeared first on The Faster Times.

September means many things to many people.

For football fans, it’s the beginning of how they will shape their lives for the next five months as the NFL gets its season underway.

For the parents of youngsters, it’s a small sigh of relief as school once again resumes, bringing more of a set schedule to their children and more peace to the household.

Here at the Jersey Shore, it means the fist-pumping, club-going crowds that unfortunately represent this scenic stretch of coastline return to points north, a sort of migration carried out under the power of Escalades and new Camaros.

And for a good percentage of those who graduated high school in the spring, it means heading off to college and entering one of the most important phases of a young adult’s life. While nearly all colleges and universities are physically the same as they were in the ‘80s and ‘90s, there are some pretty significant differences in how incoming freshmen from decades past and those who are a part of the class of 2016 settle in to campus life.

Here is a look at the differences between heading off to college in the age of Facebook and text-speak and going off to college in the awesome ‘80s.

Keep It Light

In the ‘80s, things were bigger. Hair was bigger (although it still is at the Jersey Shore). Microwaves were bigger. TV’s were bigger. And PCs were bigger and something your girlfriend’s nerdy older brother had in his bedroom (along with Dungeons & Dragons posters). Moving into your dorm room in the ‘80s required some heavy lifting, as it seems electronics of the ‘80s defied logic and physics (how could a black-and-white TV with a 13-inch screen require three people to carry it?)

Flat-screen TVs of today can be carried under one arm while keeping your other hand free to take video of your first steps on campus while simultaneously checking out your new roommate’s Facebook photos.

Make a Connection

Keeping in touch with family back home and friends now scattered throughout the country once required breaking out pen and paper and finding a stamp (a “stamp” is something issued by the government that allowed you to send something hundreds, even thousands, of miles away for just pennies) and mailing a letter.

Or if you really wanted to summon the wrath of your parents, who just shelled out $1,500 for your first year of university schooling (yes, things were cheaper in the ‘80s), you’d dial up your buddy at UNLV, talk on a land line for 20 minutes, and rack up a $75 phone bill (yes, some things were more expensive in the ‘80s).

Today, there really is no disconnect. Communicating is for the most part cheaper, and something you can do instantaneously. Perfect for requesting more Top Ramen or a regional delicacy from home, such as pork roll. Pork roll is a Jersey thing, often traded like a precious metal on faraway campuses.

Book Smart, Pound Foolish

Doing research and writing papers used to require a bit more heavy lifting, from the 42-pound word processor used to churn out Psych 101 papers to the 8-inch-thick book on Chaucer checked out from your school’s library.

Of course, students today still use books and libraries, but there is a growing reliance on, and acceptance of, using tablet computers for everything from note-taking to conducting research to actually replacing college textbooks.

Fashion-Forward

One would like to say the fashion of the ‘80s remains just where it belongs – 30 years in the past and seen only in dog-eared photographs in some forgotten box in the attic. But what’s old is new again, and from neon sunglasses to polos with the collar raised, elements of the ‘80s are alive and well at today’s institutions of higher learning.

Let’s just hope these don’t make a comeback.

Fast facts from August 1986 and August 2012

Weekend Box Office:

1986: Stand By Me, Top Gun

2012: The Expendables 2, The Bourne Legacy

Top of the Charts:

1986: Madonna, “True Blue”; Top Gun Soundtrack

2012: Taylor Swift, “We Are Never Getting Back Together”; Flo Rida, “Whistle”

Car of Choice:

1986: Chevrolet Celebrity; Ford Escort

2012: Ford F-Series truck; Toyota Camry

Cost of Annual Tuition, Private, Non-Profit Four-Year School:

1986: $10,000

2012: $35,000

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The post Flat Screen TVs, Smartphones and Popped Collars: How College Has Changed Since the 80’s appeared first on The Faster Times.

I’d been selfish. God, I’d even become beautiful.

But I needed to feel lonely.

Home this spring break was Northern Massachusetts (set of Girls Gone Wild). From a bridge, I stared onto the wide country river my family lived on. It was a natural Blue 40, calm as the calm morning it reflected, unmoved by the flamboyancy of even small boats. It felt classically beautiful to me, overgrown—but streaked by red canoes, and dry reflections of condos, enough to speak on modernity. The nostalgia of local fathers was still alive. Fathers calmer than I, and stronger in the upper body. I hadn’t canoed in years, but I was about to Instagram the ones sleeping before me.

Like Thoreau.

Lately, I’d been thinking—lazily, but at least, perhaps, for the benefit of my spirit—how Instagram had perforated whatever solitude I’d held onto. With every picture I took—a mewing church in the moon, my cat in the street—the first-person narrator of my novel interrupted his thought process, turned to the readers, and winked.

In my recent thinking, I’d broken down the procedure; I found a scene or detail beautiful, and as I was devastated, the moment I reached for my phone was the “boiling point,” when I predicted, without Instagram, I would be delivered from evil; struck like I must have been a year ago.

My problems…have expiration dates, I thought, sitting cross-legged on the bench of my school’s garden. Hydrangea leapt over the fence; sunlight got its prison jumpsuit caught in the cherry buds. What was more timeless, I was hoping, and pitiable, was the problem of my tension between modern practice and soul; I wanted a self-clarifying solitude, a more visceral experience of scenery. I wanted transcendence.

I glanced at the license plates mounted like bear heads on the wall of Spike’s Junkyard Dogs. Each one from a different state, I presumed, of those who’d finished The Monster Dog. Surely, one picture more wouldn’t mean my ennui.

I mowed into my relish dog and curly fries, also Instagrammed. Thoreau’s wife was patient. She sat by the window, ovulating till her husband returned. He would walk up the dirt path, she knew, and lay her back in his arms, whispering—in poetic detail—about the forest he slept in, the lush elegies of factories.

Just kidding, Thoreau was gay. (Trust me. My friend stick-and-poked the Walden SparkNotes on my ribs.)

As the second weekend of spring break lit up, we drank Powerade Rubinoff in a guy named Mike’s dorm. I was visiting my friend Doug at his university in Boston. Selena Gomez seeped from the speakers, the context of which I was unsure. I hadn’t been “out” (in the sunlight / not at my blender) in a while, so, ebullient, I asked my new friend Mike to Instagram Doug and me. A friend shot, I begged.

A little tipsy, I wrapped my arms candidly around Doug. He smiled professionally. He didn’t have an Instagram.

I did.

I always had a social boner. I loved to joke, obviously, with close friends, and even friends, and even acquaintances (whom I’d always greeted with the most flare). Scrolling through my Instagram feed, it was not devoid of heart—in this constant gallery opening were the narratives of my loved ones. I couldn’t help, though, feeling like I was reading their SparkNotes, like I had come to undervalue their stories.

“I went to Coney Island this weekend,” a friend shared.

“Yeah, I saw,” I would say suddenly, without thinking. Story over.

Sunday morning, what the Lebanese call “not hungover,” I said goodbye to Doug and took the Green Line from Copley to North Station. I had forty minutes, I checked on my phone, before my train left for home. I wavered, a small human, under the larger Tobin Bridge. With its great support beams of white, converging at Heaven, the bridge had been designed to look like a book, proudly being opened by the cars.

At night, the shafts glowed bright violet.

The smell of hot construction rubber poured over the islands outside North Station. The patient bridge looked over me.

The post Instagram is the Worst appeared first on The Faster Times.

PROFESSOR Required for teaching, guiding, and developing students in degree program for a leading Online University. info@edplacements.com

I was suspicious that so little information was given, but as an underemployed adjunct professor, I thought I had little to lose by forwarding my CV. Boy, was I wrong.

I was contacted by “Kennedy University,” (a .com, not .edu) which informed me that I was “one of the 5% candidates selected for the position of Honorary Faculty.” I was assured that this “will add value to your current profile” and I “will be offered a commission of up to 20% on the number of students that enroll for your chosen subject. The amount of commission varies with the number of students you will refer for enrollment.”

Yesterday, I was contacted by phone by another representative who continued the “tough sell” pitch. Sounding like he was calling from a call center and speaking from a script, he repeated that I would not be paid for my efforts, and was not able to tell me what courses I would be teaching or what department I would be attached to, but that I would be paid a percentage for any family or friends I signed up. He also repeated the value this would add to my “profile.” When I said that this did not sound like the model of any reputable university I had ever heard of, he became very defensive.

Kennedy’s Web site claims the school is accredited by the “United States Distance Learning Association,” which, as far as I can tell, is an industry trade group not recognized by the US Department of Eduction as an accrediting association. (You can check this yourself on the D of E’s Web site.)

In short, this is not only an out-and-out scam, but dead shameful. The New York Times should not accept any more advertising from these people, and nobody should be fooled by their little scam.

The post Online “Universities” Begin Scamming Professors appeared first on The Faster Times.

As “M.S.” points out in this insightful, if cynical, post on The Economist, the idea of a “right” is itself pretty complicated. We take the idea that we have “rights”—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from torture, freedom to have sex in hotel rooms while dressing up as Disney characters—as inherent to the human condition. Yet, the “right” to reduce another human being to a fine red mist didn’t come from God, as conservatives maintain (“And the LORD spake, saying, ‘First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less…’ “). Rights, as anyone who’s survived Cambodia in the ’70s or Germany in the ’40s can tell you, are a social convention. In other words, they’re created by human beings interacting as a society. Once civil society goes away, so do your rights. In Bartertown, your rights are what Tina Turner says they are. In nature, the only “right” you have is to be eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger. In a totalitarian dictatorship, the only “right” you have is to obey; that things might be otherwise has to be suggested from an outside voice (which is why totalitarian states are so damn totalitarian).

“M.S.” argues the fact that rights are not inherent is seen by the fact that they’re not the same from culture to culture. If your average North Korean doesn’t know he has the right to free speech and a wardrobe not taken from “fashion faux pas of 1960s China,” he’s not going to miss them. Conversely, citizens of European countries are taking to the streets to preserve their “rights” to healthcare and retirement benefits, which are being threatened by the Eurozone crisis. It’s readily apparent that the rhetoric of “rights” only comes out when a perceived prerogative, particularly a longstanding one, is threatened. Rights, in other words, are historically constructed.

So where does the right to that Glock come from? It’s an interesting fact that the modern idea of the right to bear arms goes back to the Middle Ages. Let’s start with the medieval idea of rights which, much like the modern, was a constructivist one. The Framers, influenced by Locke, put in “life, liberty, and property the pursuit of happiness” to the Declaration of Independence, but it was only under pressure from the Anti-Federalists that a Bill of Rights was introduced. In the same way, the Magna Carta, written in the wake of the English nobility’s revolt against King John’s high-handed policies, proclaimed the “rights” of the English Church (that is, that its property wouldn’t be seized by the Crown) and that London and other towns had special privileges of self-government and that clergy didn’t have to pay taxes—all of which strike us as ridiculous in a modern context, but were a real concern back then. By writing down these “rights,” they were fixed in place so they couldn’t be violated again.

Now, most of the American Bill of Rights is in the tradition of the English Bill of Rights of 1689. (Newsflash: Modern democracy was founded not by the American Revolution, but by the English Glorious Revolution of 1688.) For instance, the militia spoken of in the Second Amendment comes directly from the English provision “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” This article came about because the Catholic James II had just been overthrown by a Protestant Parliament who had feared that he was going to crack down on their other “rights” such as property ownership.*

But this weapons-ownership goes back a long way before the seventeenth century. In fact, in the Middle Ages, English commoners were commanded to have weapons—specifically, bows—and to practice with them. The reason, however, wasn’t defense against the government, but in order to serve the government. English archers contributed to the famous victories against the French aristocracy at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt. This wasn’t unique in the medieval world: There were shooting and fencing guilds in France and the Low Countries who participated in urban defense, and William Tell and his Swiss homeboys kept crossbows and halberds in their houses before they had government-issued assault rifles. Not coincidentally, Switzerland and the Low Countries were also cradles of European democracy. However, it was only in England that philosophers such as Locke came up with novel ideas explaining how the person of the king and his government could be separate from the nation itself. In other words, patriotism to your country could mean taking up arms against your government.

Historians since Stanislav Andreski (in his 1954 Military Organization and Society) have argued that the relationship between arms and political power was significant. The fact that common people not only were taxed to support the national army and kept and bore arms in the service of their nascent countries led ultimately not just to a feeling of enfranchisement, but enfranchisement in fact—and, ultimately, modern parliamentary democracy. After all, in the medieval world, where the ruling class was the fighting class, to bear arms was to assert your enfranchisement.** Or, as Shakespeare’s Henry V puts it, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother, Be he ne’er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition.” In other words, by fighting alongside the king, you yourself become akin to the king.

So, the right to bear arms and the right to democratic self-determination are inherently intertwined. The British legal system, through legislation, has since separated them. Extricating the two ideas in the United States will be trickier.

*Much of the land that the well-to-do in England owned had originally been confiscated by Henry VIII from the Catholic Church back in the 16th century—thus, incidentally, violating that particular provision of the Magna Carta!

**Enfranchisement” is itself an interesting word—it means to have legal standing as a citizen, but it came from the idea to have the rights of a Frank, that is, to be a member of the warrior-aristocracy. In other words, to be armed and French. Plus ça change!

The post On the History of Gun “Rights” appeared first on The Faster Times.

UC Davis Campus Police Serving a Healthful Snack

In a stunning reversal, it was announced today that Lt. John Pike was not dousing seated, nonviolent UC Davis protesters with pepper spray—he was feeding them a healthful snack.

“In line with recent Federal lobbying to have pizza declared a vegetable, and the proud traditions begun by Governor Ronald Reagan at Berkeley in 1966 and in the USDA in 1981, the USDA has declared pepper spray a vegetable,” UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehei told members of the press today.

“We hold students’ welfare in the highest regard,” she added. “The protestors had been out on the quad for hours and missed several meals, and some in Campus Security were concerned that they might be getting hungry. While I am deeply sorry for the manner in which the snack food was administered, I maintain that I did not order it to be delivered in such a manner, had no knowledge of it being delivered, and am refunding the $7.37 in Aggie Cash they were charged.

“I would like to point out that aerosolized, weaponized vegetables are in keeping with UC Davis’ long history of innovation and excellence in the agriculture and food sciences. Our labs are currently working in cooperation with DARPA and Monsanto on many other such innovations, such as anti-tank radishes, antipersonnel fragmentation pumpkins, and hunter-killer tomatoes.

“Finally, I assure you that justice will be done in this case. In keeping with UC policy that all food served on campus must come from approved caterers, Lt. Pike will be reassigned to Food Services.”

The post USDA Reclassifies Pepper Spray as a Vegetable appeared first on The Faster Times.

Well, this morning, in between Emails from my mother imploring me to apply for better paying jobs (thanks Patti!), I received some follow-up hate mail from aforesaid hater, who I shall call Himmelfarb. Given my newfound proclivity for engaging in screaming matches, I took this as a welcome opportunity to flex my admittedly awkward verbal attack muscles. So I wrote back to Himmelfarb and we bickered, and it was beautiful. Below is our exchange. Happy Monday!

To the death, Himmelfarb

Note to reader: by “jokes I find funny” Himmelfarb is referring to his strangely punctuated Email signature —a 19-line-long ditty that includes observations such as “never . .raw dog a , random!!!1″

PS: yes I have considered the distinct possibility that Himmelfarb is a computer.

It is not A.hate mail B. A complicated riddle that will solve the world’s problem ,it is merely a series of jokes I find funny , Miss Post.Harvard.edu and p.s. lose the bow .

From: Me

To: Himmelfarb

Oooh, a little slow on the uptake, Himmelfarb. But then you seem a little slow all around–not to mention bitter. Instead of obsessing over me, you should probably go get yourself a writing tutor (someone to coach you on grammar, punctuation, and spelling). I’d help you out myself except I charge $225 an hour and make a point of not hanging out with assholes.

Xoxo

Sent from my Halefone

From: Me

I guess I just don’t understand why you have so much trouble with spacing. Do you only have one finger on each hand, and is one of them gnarled? That must be the answer.

I’m so sorry about your deformity. Also what is a “hipster”?

Sent from my Halefone

From: Me

OOPS! YOU HAVE ENGAGED WITH KATHLEEN HALE PAST YOUR “FIRST FIVE MINUTES FREE.” TO CONTINUE WITH YOUR CONVERSATION, PLEASE INSERT $20 INTO YOUR COMPUTER

No, Himmelfarb. No, it does not.

The post Damned Again: More Hate From Himmelfarb appeared first on The Faster Times.

This is Iris Greene (no you cannot see her face)

Kathleen Hale (KH): What do you think makes you a good stripper—aside from the fact that you are very attractive? (Note to readers: Iris Greene is very attractive.)

Iris Greene (IG): I think I’m quite adept at asking questions to keep my customers talking. I don’t think people ask them a lot of questions. Clients need to vent most of the time.

KH: What’s the saddest story you’ve heard at work?

IG: This guy came in. He was 21 and was in a wheelchair. He couldn’t talk or really move his head. His dad had brought him in. He said he needed some fun..

KH: Do you have to pay taxes as a stripper?

IG: I’m supposed to. (Laughs) It’s very…I can’t talk…like about…it that much. You know because I’m not American.

KH: Is stripping dangerous? I feel like that’s a common perception. Along with the whole exploitation thing.

IG: As far as I can tell, the girls who work with me are there because they want to be, and because they need the money. In terms of safety, what’s important to me is to know all the security guards by their first names. And to be really nice with them. And to make sure nothing bad ever happens to me.

KH: What’s the most you’ve made in a week?

IG: 4 or 5 thousand dollars.

KH: Jesus. What about the least?

IG: The least? Oh, negative. I lost two dollars once.

KH: How?

IG: You know how hair dressers rent chairs in a salons? Well it’s the same at strip clubs. You show up and you give the club $100. It’s $20 a dance, so it takes 5 dances to pay back…then it’s $20 to DJ, $10 to the house, $20 for taxi, so my overhead every night is $150. So that night I made $148 including tips and whatever, and my overhead is $150, so I went home with less money than I showed up with.

KH: Can you tell me about secret stripper perfume? That probably sounds crazy. But I’ve only been to a strip club once, and the guy next to me got a lap dance, and the girl who was dancing on him smelled…so good. Like, really good. Like, this (KH smiles like baby with gas).

IG: The girl you’re talking about was probably ovulating. When you’re ovulating you can make more money. Like as a lesbian, I know this. Like girls smell way sexier and hotter.

KH: Do you use a special perfume when you’re not ovulating?

IG: Meh. I used to put a lot of effort into my makeup regime, but a lot of the clubs in New York are so dark, like you can’t even see. Like you can’t even see anything. A lot of girls spray tan, so that they show up better in the dark, I don’t. Like I said, smell is important, and I think spray tans smell like easy bake oven.

KH: You wrote a little bit about your beautification process after being on vacation for a while. What’s the most important thing for a stripper aesthetically, like on a regular basis.

IG: You gotta be ready to put a little bit of concealer on your ass. Butt pimples look like STDs.

KH: (Laughs). What’s the most common response when someone finds out you’re a stripper?

IG: Women tell me, “I always wanted to be a stripper.” Like a lot—to the extent that I tend to be very private about what I do, because I don’t want some conversation I have to be the basis—or even part of the basis—for some girl becoming a stripper.

It’s not because I don’t want to be a stripper, or because I don’t think other people should be strippers, but I have a very unique approach to stripping. I’m a lesbian for one thing, so the stuff with men, it’s never confusing for me. It’s never painful. I don’t get caught up, emotionally. Some of the girls get attached or even kiss their clients, but my feelings never get hurt. I can’t be responsible, even a little bit, for someone else choosing this vocation. And I don’t want anyone’s boyfriend coming after me because his girlfriend talked to me once and decided she wanted my job.

Read more about Iris Greene’s adventures here.

The post “Butt Pimples Look Like STDs” An Interview With Iris Greene appeared first on The Faster Times.

The number one criticism leveled at the Occupy Wall Street protests is the lack of coherent message. The second is that the protestors themselves are a bunch of middle-class kids, which in the critics’ eyes, makes them automatic hypocrites.

Not only are both of these statements wrong, they display an astonishing lack of historical perspective. If we look at the 99-percenter movement in context, its goals become pretty clear. After all, they’re the same as every similar movement since the Middle Ages.

If history teaches us anything, it’s that revolutions are made not by the sans-culottes, but by the middle class. The poor are too busy with day-to-day survival to organize. The poor don’t participate in the information economy. It’s the middle class who controls the media—the printing press in the sixteenth century, the Internet in the twenty-first. Every time someone at Zuccotti Park whipped out a smartphone to upload a picture of a sign to their Facebook page, they were doing the same thing Martin Luther did when he nailed his 95 Theses to the church door—only rather than spreading information at the speed of a fast horse, they were doing it at lightspeed.

It’s also the middle class that has the education, the organizational skills, and the frustrations from stifled aspirations to make a mass movement. This has been true of every revolution in Western history. The English Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 wasn’t a starving rabble clamoring for bread: It was a well-organized rebellion by newly prosperous farmers who resented a parasitic nobility trying to turn back the socioeconomic clock. The first thing they did was burn the books that recorded their taxes and debts. The French Revolution was kicked off by the well-off Third Estaters who were sick of a dysfunctional social structure that was literally stuck in the Middle Ages. France’s second revolution began in 1830 when Charles X sank the economy and limited the freedoms of the middle class; the reign of his successor, Louis Philippe, ended when the petit bourgeoisie agitated for their share of the pie. The Chartist movement in England wanted universal suffrage and to do away with a system that benefited the few at the expense of the many. The Civil Rights Movement wasn’t led by the poor, but by middle-class church leaders and college students. Arab Spring happened because a viable and hungry middle class had formed—just like Turkey had when Atatürk led that nation kicking and screaming into the modern age. The list goes on.

What’s the lesson here? The economic and political are one. We see in Western history a steady, if not unbroken, march towards constitutionality, rights, and democracy—that which we call “liberalism.” It’s when someone tries to stem the tide that movements happen. You can’t have political freedom and real democracy in a world with radical disparities in class.

No one using an Apple product to broadcast the Occupy happenings all around the nation will make a serious argument against capitalism, but all will say that the abuses of the system need to be rectified. Citizens United means that an artificial person gets more of a say in the national discourse than one of flesh and blood. Millions of people declare bankruptcy because our supposedly Christian society does not see that stockholder profit and healing the sick are mutually incompatible goals. Education, the supposed path to upward mobility in our meritocracy, carries with it the price tag of lifelong debt. This is why the goals of Occupy Wall Street are no more and no less than those of any popular movement since the beginnings of the middle class: Economic opportunity, property rights, freedom of expression, and freedom from unjust laws and tyrannical concentrations of power.

This is why the 99-percenters aren’t the disorganized, disaffected Balaclava Bloc types from the Battle of Seattle 10 years ago. Nor are they idealistic college kids or a bunch of filthy street punks. The people in Zuccotti Park are teachers, grandmothers, and union members. They are African-American churchgoers and fathers and mothers. They are well-connected, well-educated, well-socialized ordinary people who have taken to the streets because they feel that they have no choice but to brave the physical discomfort and the potential risk of NYPD brutality. The rights their parents and grandparents fought for in the 1930s and the era of postwar prosperity have been whittled to nothing. We are the first generation of Americans to expect less out of life than our parents, and we are pissed.

The juggernaut of the middle class has awakened, and woe to those who do not heed the lessons of history.

The post Time will Tell: Occupy Wall Street in Historical Context appeared first on The Faster Times.

Speaking of your subway system: it hasn’t always been easy. Trying to get anywhere here sometimes feels like trying to push a rusty shopping cart with one funky wheel up a mountain while being pursued by snakes; it’s a frenzied claustrophobic feeling that makes you want to scream and hit things with sticks—especially on the R-train, a behemoth that rumbles along so jankily that four miles takes an hour and you’re perpetually falling over into some old woman’s lap. But I’m starting to get used to it. And after having visited The High Line and the polar bears, living in Queens and then Brooklyn, I think it’s time to talk more about my feelings toward you.

This isn’t exactly a love letter, believe me.

***

What is it about New York that makes you want to scream at people? I have always been impatient and impulsive and a little bit crazy, but, until now, I have never shuffled behind people on a subway platform and started screaming in my head because they’re slower than me. Who knew that I was capable of ire like this—that so much temper could sit coiled in one tiny hurt locker?

Before moving here, I was effusive and sensitive, a walking fear grin. I’d visit New York and see Midwestern tourists (MY BRETHREN!) and think, “THIS PLACE IS AWESOME RIGHT (albeit a little bit dirty)?? I’M SO GLAD YOU’RE ENJOYING THE STREET MUSICIANS—WOW YEAH THAT $20 CHARCOAL PORTRAIT LOOKS JUST LIKE YOU!” Nowadays I watch them block approaching subway doors and feel even more claustrophobic than when I was stuck behind them on the stairs—because I know they’ll just giggle or stand there confused with their backpacks on backward until some skinny bitch with a dog on her arm tries to get off the train and sends them scattering with, “YO FATSOS, FUCKING MOVE.”

Out here, no one stops for anything. The other day I saw an SUV almost slam a bicyclist—and when the cyclist gave a palms out “WTF?” gesture , the driver screamed out the window to get the fuck out of her way because she was taking her daughter to acting class. On the same day, I saw somebody walking while dressing a wound.

In New York, every single person is that person, who, after a four-hour-or-some bus ride—at the first faraway sighting of the final destination—stands with his or her back bent underneath those overhead jets, bags clutched, prepared to jump into the aisle so that they might get off the bus one second sooner.

***

In Wisconsin, no one honks their horn, not even in traffic, not ever—civility is mandatory, even in subzero weather—a fact of life that did not exactly prepare me for my first real New York City confrontation.

It happened in the checkout line at K-Mart. Things had started off nicely enough with Gloria, the cashier—by which I mean I approached her with a typically forced and probably obnoxious (but at that point, knee jerk) Midwestern mojo: “I finally got a place!” I blurted to her, gesturing at the sheets and pillows on the conveyor belt, folding my exhausted face into a big, fake smile.

Gloria didn’t care. She squinted at me, then started yelling about not pressing enter on the credit card slide thing before she told me to. When I said it was not my fault, she called me a moron. I demanded to see her manager, and while other customers stood in line looking angry or bored, or embarrassed for me, she and I stomped over to her superior. “Her highness is having a tantrum,” Gloria mumbled as we walked. “Nice fake teeth,” I blurted. I don’t know why I said this, as Gloria had nice teeth, but she quickly shot back, “Nice fake tits.” I stood there for a moment, shocked, looking down at my egg-sized bosoms, feeling vaguely delighted.

***

Between the shouting there’s crying. The New York Street Cry is apparently something people know about. Maybe there’s just never enough space at home—with all the roommates and Ikea furniture—to get a proper wail in.

I indulged in a few street cries my first month here. When my boyfriend was still considering moving to Qatar instead of to New York, I staggered into Union Square and spent $90 on beauty projects and then walked around bawling my eyes out, smelling like a perfume called “Lust.”

Midwestern tourists stopped and clucked softly at me, eyes agape—and at first I thought it was some kind of inherent ESP bond based on shared homelands. But then I remembered that I was basically naked that day, wearing shorts that looked like black underpants and a crop top, and big sunglasses—“Lolita-esque,” said the friend who eventually rescued me. Given my sometimes prepubescent-looking body, these tourists probably thought that I was a child prostitute.

***

Don’t get me wrong—I’m as infatuated with this place in the same clichéd way of any twenty-something, though not necessarily in the clichéd way of poems and literature that try to tote the “bright lights big city” as something romantic; I love New York like you love an interesting or provocative friend who isn’t necessarily very nice and desperately needs to shower. Ultimately, it isn’t the bright lights that get to me. But I like how sometimes when the train whizzes by, garbage on the tracks catches fire.

And maybe, in a way, I like what New York is doing to me. Because before settling in here, I could be passive to the point of infuriating. Back when I first lived here, I remember walking through Chinatown to get a “manicure five dollar,” and when the manicurist asked me if I wanted my fingernails “rounded” or “square,” I responded unhelpfully, but earnestly, “WHATEVER’S EASIEST!”

At least now I know how to say what I want. Whether it’s a free drink because the busboy threw away my meal before I was finished, or for someone to “go straight to hell” because they nearly football-tackled me trying to get off the train.

I guess in the end there’s something sort of great about fighting and weeping with strangers. Maybe there’s something romantic, even, about being on the warpath. Because in New York, screaming in someone’s face can be a form of much needed connectivity—a release from the scuttling of crowds.

It’s like with Gloria and me: we raised our voices and said mean things; her voice wavered and my pulse raced. And even though in the moment I couldn’t shake the embarrassed feeling of being one of those awful and entitled customers, in retrospect I think we probably both really needed someone to yell at. My only regret is that we didn’t end the sparring session by crying together—our bodies coming together in a warm embrace as K-Mart customers stumbled by unfeelingly.

***

My boyfriend lived in Minnesota for a while and says that Midwestern niceties are more fake, and that New York kindness, when it appears, is more sincere. I think that out here, you’re just so hungry for what you can get that when you do get it, you’re that much more grateful. And because of that there is something more beautiful about New York kindness, when it does appear. With so many reference points for coldness, suspicion, and rage, simple niceties feel profound and charged with kinship.

Like, the other day I sat next to this woman, who warned me about rapists in the area and told me how, when her kids were younger and she had more energy, she’d sew them little pants. And even though we eventually ran out of things to talk about—because it was the R train, which, as I’ve insinuated, shuffles along at the pace of a blind woolly mammoth—it was nice. Or rather, she was nice, and because of that, I thought about her all day.

There’s other things I like: like those homeless women who are always yelling at my boyfriend for no reason to appreciate me more. I like those crazy homeless women.

I like the Chinese grocer-woman near my apartment, who, the minute I step through the door, begins screaming about the greed of her competitors and about how her cilantro only costs 50 cents, and then gives me a jar of free salsa because, “YOU MAKING FROM SCRATCH SALSA, THAT STUPID, EVERY TIME YOU COME HERE I GIVE YOU A PRESENT, YOU REMEMBER!”

I like the irrelevance of traffic laws in New York—and how, when I’m riding my bike, I’m usually breaking many of them, but no one arrests me. In Wisconsin, with nothing else happening really (except the regular ticketing of black people), sloppy biking would be grounds enough for sirens, a talking to, a written warning. In New York, the other cyclists might be uppity, but the police officers have murderers to catch.

***

So there it is, New York: I guess you’ve changed me. It’s not true love, exactly. It’s more of an arranged marriage—a growing familiarity and bond forged from struggles. I’m slowly adjusting to everything from the screaming baristas to the constant motion—the never stoppingness. These days, when the R train lurches under me I stay upright.

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