INFOGRAPHIC: ACCEPTABLE FORMS OF NYC CAMPING

On Thursday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Occupy Wall Street protesters would have to vacate Zuccotti Park, their place of occupation, so the park could be cleaned. After that, they would not be permitted to re-enter the park with sleeping bags, tents or other necessary occupation supplies.

The Occupiers refused to move, delaying their eviction. They suspected a trap: after all, having watched Boston police swarm protesters in riot gear and drive them out with all the subtlety of Hungary in '56, the smart play for Bloomberg and the NYPD would be to lure the protesters out, then keep them locked out. A decidedly non-aggressive tactic such as that would provide few stirring images of victimization. Then, in the streets, protesters on the move could be arrested, as they have been for weeks.

However, one particular group of campers is more than welcome on the streets of New York. My friend Robert even worked up a handy graphic to explain it:

The Internet's Little iDeath for Steve Jobs

Note: Mark Brendle is a former media critic for BarnesandNoble.com, a short-fiction writer and the author of both book reviews and the Criterion Recollection series for Et tu, Mr. Destructo?. Today he takes a break from books and cinema to address the first great humanitarian crisis of the 21st century: the potential that Apple gadgets might become less awesome before you've paid off your iPhone 4. You can follow him on Twitter.

Last week, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs stepped down from his position — a purely formal change in the Apple Corporation's executive management — it struck a chord with many people who feel invested in Apple, despite having no shareholder investment. Why this over-response about an insignificant event in a private company? Because, as even email and Twitter spam can tell you, the latest Apple release is the commodity-object of our time.

Apple proponents often cite innovation as the reason behind both their idolization and Apple's success. But what does innovation mean in this context and what has Apple innovated? Mp3 players? Tablet computers? Touch screens?—these existed long before their Apple versions came out. One would be hard pressed to find a single significant innovation on a fundamental level made by Apple computers since their very early days.

Despite this, Apple has innovated since, and it is this innovation that dominates their markets and the minds of their fans. What initially set the iPod apart from the numerous other Mp3 players with identical functionality was its coolness.

Apple campaigned heavily for the iPod, in much the same way they did for the iMac, forcing connotations of coolness, taste and style onto the device. It is through what David Riesman calls marginal differentiation that Apple innovated and continues to innovate. This marginal differentiation expresses itself through form (everyone has heard Apple products called "sleek"), through social consumer-competition (kids don't want an Mp3 player; they want an iPod) and through self-referential endorsement (our heroes in the film, music, art and publishing industries often use Macs).

Alan Greenspan: I Saw Black Jesus' BMW

Note: we, the good people of Et tu, Mr. Destructo?, like to broaden our coverage of the national discourse by occasionally turning to voices and viewpoints not represented by our regular contributors. To address a luxury automobile of potentially divine provenance, we turn to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who previously wrote about his sexual adventures with Ayn Rand, explained our Ten Favorite Albums of the Decade and offered Birther Queen Orly Taitz asylum in his bedroom.

I Will Holy Ghostride This Whip
by ALAN GREENSPAN

The other day, I'm rolling through a neighborhood I don't normally visit, keeping the car kinda slow, worrying about pre-teens ripping out of driveways on motorized scooters, piece-of-shit teenagers throwing crap into the road and trying to fuck up my ride, idiot toddlers crabwalking into traffic, the usual bullshit.

I'm a good driver. I roll like fucking velvet. I'm cautious on narrow residential streets, especially when there are bigass trucks blocking half of them and making it even more likely than I'm gonna pancake someone's HONORS STUDENT AT PICKNOSE ELEMENTARY. I'm cautious, but I'm sexy. I'm playing Otis Redding at the time.

Just as I'm keeping my fingers on the wheel all clit-slippery supple and coasting past another car parked way off the curb, I spot something. It's this:


Like, holy shit. HOLY SHIT. What the fuck is that? I dunno, so I turn to my co-pilot, Jesus, and I'm like, "Yo, is that your car, Man, Son of Man?" and he's all, "Fuck no!"

'Amish Grace': All the Amish You Need, None of the Explicit Amish Pornography You Crave

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The Yankees Are Cancer: World Series, 2009

You already know the outcome, so welcome to the last bit of liveblogging doom, gloom, angst and loathing for the 2009 baseball season. Think of this as the sports equivalent of watching Glenn Beck read a newspaper. Only I'm not actually insane. Let us instead enter a legitimate Chamber of Loathing:

Being a baseball fan and rooting for the Yankees is like being an oncologist and rooting for cancer.

I don't remember when I wrote that. I want to say the 7th inning. And while I recognize that it is partially histrionic, I think also that it's true.

Most baseball fans want to see their teams win, and aside from a few sociopaths or fans of teams who've been so horrible for so long that they've earned a malicious desire, very few fans want to see their teams stomp holy hell all season and win a championship effortlessly. In video games, it's one thing to play in God Mode, to force trades and make your team a roster of monsters, but in real life I think we all acknowledge that victories are sweeter for being won rather than being taken and walked off with. I think any Red Sox fan would, in a candid moment, admit that 2004 and 2007 would have been dreadfully dull without the 0-3 and 1-3 comeback runs in the ALCS to get to the World Series, because those Series games were almost painfully lopsided. (I think any good Red Sox fan would also admit that the team had an obscenely large payroll and reaped the rich benefits of the same.)

Having a McCarver Moment: ALCS Games 1 & 2

It was not a day well-planned. When you spend about four hours watching DVDs of The A-Team looking for godawful effects shots that you can rip off and insert in a deliberately godawful promotional video and then feel too wiped out to watch playoff baseball, you have gravely miscalculated.

But I had fun. I was with good people, and I think I strained something laughing when I saw the guy who played Rasczak in Starship Troopers guest starring as an evil taxi company mastermind who wore skin-tight nylon pants with no zippers or buttons up front, a prominent dong-bulge and a 1980s-sized cell phone improbably jammed in a pocket.

Still, when you wind up falling asleep in your chair after one inning of the first game of the American League Championship Series, you have managed your time poorly. You've done worse when you wake up and realize you didn't set the DVR to record the game. Consider this my McCarver Moment of the 2009 playoffs. Because of it, the Game One recap is going to be awfully short.

I'm Aborting Right Now

From the National Review, former home of William F. Buckley's son (who was probably told, like Kathleen Parker, that he should have been aborted):

The Palin Trig-ger
Looking behind the hostility.

By Kevin Burke

Some of the very personal and often uncharitable criticism of vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her family may have a relationship to the collective grief, shame, and guilt from personal involvement in the abortion of an unborn child.

Seeing the Palin family, in a very visible public forum, with an uncompromising and public pro life philosophy arouses deeply repressed feelings in post abortive parents, as well as media members, counselors, health care professionals, politicians and others who promote abortion rights, especially the abortion of children with challenges such as Down Syndrome. These powerful repressed feelings of grief, guilt and shame can be deflected from the source of the wound (i.e., abortion) and projected onto an often uncharitable focus upon the trigger of these painful emotions…the Palin family.

This editorial really speaks to my problems because — I gotta be honest — I'm aborting right now. I was gonna kick my girlfriend down the stairs for a quick "Irish miscarriage," but as pithy as it is, it's just not the same. Now, abortion: that's just something my folk do. It's seeped into the language of my daily life. For instance: