November 30, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 242
Even the people who practice it have no idea what aroma therapy is all about, but they figure that if anybody is dumb enough to pay money to smell stuff, what the hell, it would be wrong not to take their cash.
THINGS YOU DON'T HEAR MUCH ABOUT
Today's world has more news and more information available to the masses than anytime ever. The advent of the internet and cable TV have given people access to whole worlds of information that previously they would have had to take a great deal of trouble to find. No more. At our fingertips is the greatest reference library in the world, right here, right now and no waiting in line. You want to know the population of Duluth Minnesota? (Why you would want to is another story and your own business.) Bam, look it up in seconds, maybe check the annual rainfall there too. You wonder who that street you live on is named for? Google the name and find out. There's probably 700,000 entries on that person who merited streetdom, more information than you could ever hope to absorb.
Say you are a fugitive financier, on the run with millions in stolen pension funds (a fairly common livelihood these days). You can look up extradition treaties or lack thereof in various Third World nations, the relative greed of your host government and even hook up with the best real estate dealers before you arrive, so your search for the perfect palatial seaside compound is narrowed considerably. You can even look up yacht dealerships in the Cayman Islands, an endeavor that previous generations of wealthy thieves had to do by trial and error. But there's a limit to the information on the internet, with some glaring omissions. For example, here's a list of things you might not find so easily:
GREAT UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH CENTERS FOUNDED WITH OIL REVENUES: Try as one may, the information about the oil-rich nations using their incredible incomes to improve the educational systems of their respective nations is pretty scarce. Also hard to find is any mention of these nations founding sustainable industries to employ and feed their people when the oil runs out or when some clever person figures out a viable alternative to burning the greasy remains of animals and vegetation. Similarly, other than mile-high towers being built just for the hell of it, most of the infrastructures of many of these nations appear to have remained the same as they were in the 1800s, all dusty roads and ramshackle housing, at least outside of a couple of showcase cities and tourist destinations.
UNITED NATIONS SUCCESS STORIES: The internet is also sorely lacking in data about successful U.N Peacekeeping missions. The news is full of horrible wars and genocide campaigns that could have been nipped in the bud but weren't. You've got to wonder if those blue-helmeted peacekeeping armies with their truckloads of food and medicines have ever done anything but make a bad situation worse. Do these people carry guns? That's pretty much what most armies have, but the U.N. troops never seem to use theirs to protect anybody from anything. Instead there's no shortage of stories about the "peacekeepers" helping themselves to the local teenage girls and boys for their own sexual amusement. That's not helping anybody.
MUSLIM LEADERS FOR PEACE: There are over a billion Muslims in this world, the vast majority of them no different from the vast majority of everyone else. That is; peaceful, law abiding and interested only in living their lives as best they can, providing for their families and trying to get ahead. Not too much drama and news in that. The squeaky wheels of terrorism and jihad seem to get all the publicity, what with them blowing people up, shooting them and declaring everybody they can think of to be the mortal enemies of their piss-poor idea of a God. You would think that a worldwide reaction to this by prominent religious and government Muslim leaders would be immediate and loud. An exhaustive search of the internet doesn't seem to bear that out. The denouncements of terror, murder and warfare by influential Muslim leaders are few and far between. Where are these people's spines? Or maybe they figure that if they shut up no one will notice that they hold in slavery half their population, the female half? There's not too much data available on that either.
LAW ABIDING MOTORCYCLE GANGS: There's no shortage of information about bully biker thugs ganging up on the vulnerable, shooting people, dealing drugs and firearms and generally behaving like cavemen on wheels. Almost everybody knows somebody who rides a motorcycle but has no gang, content to just enjoy their bike and ride around with like-minded friends from time to time, bothering no one else. These people seem to get no publicity at all. All the biker stories seem to be about big mean guys who are too afraid of life to stand on their own and so join a gang. Even respectable criminals look down on these dopes, figuring that if you are going to be an outlaw, don't spend half your time trying to tell people that you are a part of some sort of harmless club, like you were in a bowling league or something. Not too many guys in bowling leagues wind up being featured on "America's Most Wanted." And not too many guys in outlaw biker gangs command the kind of respect they imagine they do, the kind that lasts after you leave the room. The kind they get is simply fear, a healthy fear of dangerous and unstable man/children. And when authorities lock these people up they can't cry loud or long enough about how they are being unfairly singled out and persecuted. To which most of us say: "Well, boo-friggin-hoo, take it like the man you pretend to be. And do us a favor, don't find God in prison and write a book about it."
LAW ABIDING CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY: Perhaps taking their cue from biker gangs and the Saudi royal family, the chief executive officers of just about any industry you can name have been behaving like thugs with suits for a couple of decades now. Not content with selling the jobs of the workers who made them wealthy to the lowest overseas bidder, these guys decided that having access to trillions of dollars of other people's money was just too tempting to pass up. They made themselves into robber-princes, wealthy beyond gratification, soaring into the realm of greed for greed's sake, stealing all they could simply because they could and nobody was watching the cash register. Why have a country house when you can have a country? Why own a Porsche when you can own a dozen? Why answer to laws like mere mortals? The law-abiding CEOs have long been forced out of the corporate suites, their only crime being not speaking out against their larcenous successors. And now these new corporate princes crawl to Uncle Sam begging to be saved from themselves. To which most of us say: "We hope you like your new room mate Big Pete the biker. You'll have lots to talk about for the next 10 to 15 years. By the way, he's writing a book and needs help with his spelling, grammar and literacy. Turn him down at your own peril."
Say you are a fugitive financier, on the run with millions in stolen pension funds (a fairly common livelihood these days). You can look up extradition treaties or lack thereof in various Third World nations, the relative greed of your host government and even hook up with the best real estate dealers before you arrive, so your search for the perfect palatial seaside compound is narrowed considerably. You can even look up yacht dealerships in the Cayman Islands, an endeavor that previous generations of wealthy thieves had to do by trial and error. But there's a limit to the information on the internet, with some glaring omissions. For example, here's a list of things you might not find so easily:
GREAT UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH CENTERS FOUNDED WITH OIL REVENUES: Try as one may, the information about the oil-rich nations using their incredible incomes to improve the educational systems of their respective nations is pretty scarce. Also hard to find is any mention of these nations founding sustainable industries to employ and feed their people when the oil runs out or when some clever person figures out a viable alternative to burning the greasy remains of animals and vegetation. Similarly, other than mile-high towers being built just for the hell of it, most of the infrastructures of many of these nations appear to have remained the same as they were in the 1800s, all dusty roads and ramshackle housing, at least outside of a couple of showcase cities and tourist destinations.
UNITED NATIONS SUCCESS STORIES: The internet is also sorely lacking in data about successful U.N Peacekeeping missions. The news is full of horrible wars and genocide campaigns that could have been nipped in the bud but weren't. You've got to wonder if those blue-helmeted peacekeeping armies with their truckloads of food and medicines have ever done anything but make a bad situation worse. Do these people carry guns? That's pretty much what most armies have, but the U.N. troops never seem to use theirs to protect anybody from anything. Instead there's no shortage of stories about the "peacekeepers" helping themselves to the local teenage girls and boys for their own sexual amusement. That's not helping anybody.
MUSLIM LEADERS FOR PEACE: There are over a billion Muslims in this world, the vast majority of them no different from the vast majority of everyone else. That is; peaceful, law abiding and interested only in living their lives as best they can, providing for their families and trying to get ahead. Not too much drama and news in that. The squeaky wheels of terrorism and jihad seem to get all the publicity, what with them blowing people up, shooting them and declaring everybody they can think of to be the mortal enemies of their piss-poor idea of a God. You would think that a worldwide reaction to this by prominent religious and government Muslim leaders would be immediate and loud. An exhaustive search of the internet doesn't seem to bear that out. The denouncements of terror, murder and warfare by influential Muslim leaders are few and far between. Where are these people's spines? Or maybe they figure that if they shut up no one will notice that they hold in slavery half their population, the female half? There's not too much data available on that either.
LAW ABIDING MOTORCYCLE GANGS: There's no shortage of information about bully biker thugs ganging up on the vulnerable, shooting people, dealing drugs and firearms and generally behaving like cavemen on wheels. Almost everybody knows somebody who rides a motorcycle but has no gang, content to just enjoy their bike and ride around with like-minded friends from time to time, bothering no one else. These people seem to get no publicity at all. All the biker stories seem to be about big mean guys who are too afraid of life to stand on their own and so join a gang. Even respectable criminals look down on these dopes, figuring that if you are going to be an outlaw, don't spend half your time trying to tell people that you are a part of some sort of harmless club, like you were in a bowling league or something. Not too many guys in bowling leagues wind up being featured on "America's Most Wanted." And not too many guys in outlaw biker gangs command the kind of respect they imagine they do, the kind that lasts after you leave the room. The kind they get is simply fear, a healthy fear of dangerous and unstable man/children. And when authorities lock these people up they can't cry loud or long enough about how they are being unfairly singled out and persecuted. To which most of us say: "Well, boo-friggin-hoo, take it like the man you pretend to be. And do us a favor, don't find God in prison and write a book about it."
LAW ABIDING CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY: Perhaps taking their cue from biker gangs and the Saudi royal family, the chief executive officers of just about any industry you can name have been behaving like thugs with suits for a couple of decades now. Not content with selling the jobs of the workers who made them wealthy to the lowest overseas bidder, these guys decided that having access to trillions of dollars of other people's money was just too tempting to pass up. They made themselves into robber-princes, wealthy beyond gratification, soaring into the realm of greed for greed's sake, stealing all they could simply because they could and nobody was watching the cash register. Why have a country house when you can have a country? Why own a Porsche when you can own a dozen? Why answer to laws like mere mortals? The law-abiding CEOs have long been forced out of the corporate suites, their only crime being not speaking out against their larcenous successors. And now these new corporate princes crawl to Uncle Sam begging to be saved from themselves. To which most of us say: "We hope you like your new room mate Big Pete the biker. You'll have lots to talk about for the next 10 to 15 years. By the way, he's writing a book and needs help with his spelling, grammar and literacy. Turn him down at your own peril."
November 28, 2008
HERE'S A CLUE...
Sometimes you wonder if events have gotten beyond your control. Here's a clue: if you have to ask that question, they have.
If you feel like giving up and want to surrender, don't. There's nobody to take you prisoner.
If nobody notices you and no one seems to know your name, here's an idea: Introduce yourself. If the problem persists, well, you've got some work to do in the personality department.
If you feel the need to do anything but exist to "keep it real," either you're prone to hallucinations or a complete idiot. Here's a clue: The world is filled with tangible things and what's happening around you is just what it appears to be. Your opinion on the color of the sky doesn't make it any less blue.
People who disagree with you are not necessarily bad people or stupid, any more than you are for not seeing things their way. There's enough evil and stupid people to go around. Don't go imagining more of them.
If you require "handlers" and you're not a dancing bear or a mental patient, odds are you're a politician prone to saying stupid things. Realize this: the vast majority of human beings don't need to have the things they say approved by specialists or their actions carefully controlled. Get a grip.
Sometimes you say: "Why me?" Well, why not you? Do the math. Did you really think you were going to get through this whole ordeal in one piece?
What gets others mad or nervous isn't necessarily your cue to share their feelings. Think for yourself. After the first couple of times it doesn't hurt anymore.
Some people ask: If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it fall, does it still make a sound? Here's a clue: It sure as hell does! Those would be the stupid people who ask things like that. Don't encourage them.
Some people are helpless. Help them.
Kindness is certainly not weakness, and often takes courage. Cruelty, on the other hand, is always cowardly. Here's a handy tip: Be brave, be kind. Very often those who seem most undeserving of our love and kindness are those who need it most. It's easy being nice to nice people. Take the next step.
When enough people question your motives, odds are there's something fishy about you. When that happens, ask yourself some hard questions. Being dead wrong would hardly be unprecedented for any of us. These things happen.
The deepest wounds are those that leave no scar. Bones knit and bodies heal, but sometimes souls are wounded forever. Mind how you treat your brothers and sisters. And who might they be? Anybody you ever run across.
If you can't laugh at yourself, don't worry, there's plenty of people willing to fill that void. Lighten up.
No one is a bigger bore than the easily bored.
Don't complain about distractions. Upon these we build our lives. Not too many of us grow up to be the cowboy, the nurse, the movie star or the baseball player we dreamed of as children. Other things grab our attention and before you know it you're living your life and it's a pretty good one and damned interesting too. Keep your eyes wide open. You never know what cool things will present themselves. Don't hesitate.
If you feel like giving up and want to surrender, don't. There's nobody to take you prisoner.
If nobody notices you and no one seems to know your name, here's an idea: Introduce yourself. If the problem persists, well, you've got some work to do in the personality department.
If you feel the need to do anything but exist to "keep it real," either you're prone to hallucinations or a complete idiot. Here's a clue: The world is filled with tangible things and what's happening around you is just what it appears to be. Your opinion on the color of the sky doesn't make it any less blue.
People who disagree with you are not necessarily bad people or stupid, any more than you are for not seeing things their way. There's enough evil and stupid people to go around. Don't go imagining more of them.
If you require "handlers" and you're not a dancing bear or a mental patient, odds are you're a politician prone to saying stupid things. Realize this: the vast majority of human beings don't need to have the things they say approved by specialists or their actions carefully controlled. Get a grip.
Sometimes you say: "Why me?" Well, why not you? Do the math. Did you really think you were going to get through this whole ordeal in one piece?
What gets others mad or nervous isn't necessarily your cue to share their feelings. Think for yourself. After the first couple of times it doesn't hurt anymore.
Some people ask: If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it fall, does it still make a sound? Here's a clue: It sure as hell does! Those would be the stupid people who ask things like that. Don't encourage them.
Some people are helpless. Help them.
Kindness is certainly not weakness, and often takes courage. Cruelty, on the other hand, is always cowardly. Here's a handy tip: Be brave, be kind. Very often those who seem most undeserving of our love and kindness are those who need it most. It's easy being nice to nice people. Take the next step.
When enough people question your motives, odds are there's something fishy about you. When that happens, ask yourself some hard questions. Being dead wrong would hardly be unprecedented for any of us. These things happen.
The deepest wounds are those that leave no scar. Bones knit and bodies heal, but sometimes souls are wounded forever. Mind how you treat your brothers and sisters. And who might they be? Anybody you ever run across.
If you can't laugh at yourself, don't worry, there's plenty of people willing to fill that void. Lighten up.
No one is a bigger bore than the easily bored.
Don't complain about distractions. Upon these we build our lives. Not too many of us grow up to be the cowboy, the nurse, the movie star or the baseball player we dreamed of as children. Other things grab our attention and before you know it you're living your life and it's a pretty good one and damned interesting too. Keep your eyes wide open. You never know what cool things will present themselves. Don't hesitate.
November 27, 2008
HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2008
I wish to thank all who visit these pages for their kindness and love and wish everybody joy and peace for the coming year. May the wind be at our backs and our loved ones safe. Happy Thanksgiving.
November 26, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 239
The only way to avoid making mistakes is to never do anything. So if you want to keep your record perfect, don't do a damned thing. That's one option.
DO OIL COMPANIES HAVE SALESMEN?
You have to wonder if oil companies have a sales staff. And like any other large corporation, do they award their top performers prizes like a week in Santa Barbara or a wide screen TV or something? And you further have to wonder how you can get one of those jobs. The only easier gig for a sales person would be hawking insulin to diabetics.You could pretty much count on that golf outing to Santa Barbara every year with a job like that. What else are people going to buy to run their cars and heat their homes, wind?
The world is full of puzzling questions. Here's another: Is it possible yet in this world of A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder) A.A.D.D. (the adult-strength version), Bipolar Disease and other newly minted syndromes, to get a custom-made disease diagnosed to explain away your own shortcomings? They could be called George's Syndrome or Shiela's Disorder (the dreaded G.S. and S.D.!) and have as their list of symptoms everything about you that rubs people the wrong way. That would be ideal. No need for self-improvemment there! "Hey, back off, people, I can't help being a self-centered jerk! I have Jimmyitis, you know." No longer would we need to waste valuable time working on our faults.
Also looming large in the just wondering department are the disease-curing dynamos of science, as in "what-the-hell-ever-happened-to-those-people?" wondering. What, curing diseases turned out to be really brain busting activity so they decided to create phony new ones instead and "cure" them to pad the resume? Here's a flash, Einsteins: you're fooling nobody! Talk about your S.A.D.D. (Scientific Ability Deficit Disorder) situations.
Speaking of disappointing science, you also have to wonder what's the deal with our space program, such as it is. What started out as an exciting adventure sure petered out pretty quick after we sent a few guys to the moon. Sent them almost forty years ago, that is! Was that the only goal, to visit what we already knew was basically a giant sterile boulder and bring back a few rocks? If memory serves, anybody who was paying attention at the time (that would be the entire world) recalls all sorts of exciting and daring plans on the drawing boards, from space stations to mining asteroids to colonizing the nearby planets as a stepping stone to the stars.
Sorry, but was that boring anybody? And isn't a whole lot of the world-transforming technology base that we use today the direct by-products of the space program? Things like micro-chips, ultra-miniaturization and fiber optics? (That would be a yes.) Before the space scientists got busy the average computer was the size of a post office and couldn't do a fraction of the things any laptop can do these days and the term "digital" referred to an unpleasant finger examination in the doctor's office. You have to wonder if there's some other fun and beneficial technology we might stumble across on our way to the great unknown, maybe find out that some of those asteroids are edible, delicious and cure cancer. You just never know. Who knew moon rocks would lead to iPods?
And finally, you kind of have to wonder about all the constant mention of the Middle East being "The Cradle of Civilization." You know, that area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers chock full of Biblical history, which didn't seem all that civil in the first place upon close examination. Seems like the civilized people left The Cradle a long time ago and got on with their lives, moving elsewhere where there are actual trees and fertile soil and the like. These days it seems more like The Tomb of Civiization. Those living there now don't just seem to have the hang of civilized behavior, what with them slaughtering each other, chopping heads and hands off, enslaving their women and blaming the rest of the world for their enduring squalor.
And nobody ever accused the Middle East of being the Cradle of Comedy, that's for sure. Check out the Bible and the Koran. Not too many distracting laughs there getting in the way of teaching us how to hate one another and slaughter our "enemies" (our fellow humans who look just like us) down to the last man, woman and child. And today? No stand up comics, no ensemble skit comedy, zero satire and no understanding of irony at all, with little but grim and bitter documentaries when it comes to movies. A real frown fest of a region. Yet another pressing reason for America to get out of the fix-the-Middle-East-with-yet-another-war business. It's clearly only making these killjoys even more dour and hostile. They've already got no shortage of their own wars to fight between each other without our input.
Maybe sending over Dave Chappel and Larry the Cable guy would help (and just hope they don't say anything that will get them lashed in a public square). One of these days somebody's going to change the whole atmosphere over there by being really, really funny, one of their own. That will go a lot further towards making peace than a thousand treaties imposed by diplomats looking for Great Statesman points and big speaking fees who don't have to live there with the fatal results of their misreading of the situation. They really do have to lighten up over there. Let's see... an Imam, a Rabbi and an Ayatollah walk into a bar, and the bartender says: "So, why the long faces?" Hmmm... needs work...
The world is full of puzzling questions. Here's another: Is it possible yet in this world of A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder) A.A.D.D. (the adult-strength version), Bipolar Disease and other newly minted syndromes, to get a custom-made disease diagnosed to explain away your own shortcomings? They could be called George's Syndrome or Shiela's Disorder (the dreaded G.S. and S.D.!) and have as their list of symptoms everything about you that rubs people the wrong way. That would be ideal. No need for self-improvemment there! "Hey, back off, people, I can't help being a self-centered jerk! I have Jimmyitis, you know." No longer would we need to waste valuable time working on our faults.
Also looming large in the just wondering department are the disease-curing dynamos of science, as in "what-the-hell-ever-happened-to-those-people?" wondering. What, curing diseases turned out to be really brain busting activity so they decided to create phony new ones instead and "cure" them to pad the resume? Here's a flash, Einsteins: you're fooling nobody! Talk about your S.A.D.D. (Scientific Ability Deficit Disorder) situations.
Speaking of disappointing science, you also have to wonder what's the deal with our space program, such as it is. What started out as an exciting adventure sure petered out pretty quick after we sent a few guys to the moon. Sent them almost forty years ago, that is! Was that the only goal, to visit what we already knew was basically a giant sterile boulder and bring back a few rocks? If memory serves, anybody who was paying attention at the time (that would be the entire world) recalls all sorts of exciting and daring plans on the drawing boards, from space stations to mining asteroids to colonizing the nearby planets as a stepping stone to the stars.
Sorry, but was that boring anybody? And isn't a whole lot of the world-transforming technology base that we use today the direct by-products of the space program? Things like micro-chips, ultra-miniaturization and fiber optics? (That would be a yes.) Before the space scientists got busy the average computer was the size of a post office and couldn't do a fraction of the things any laptop can do these days and the term "digital" referred to an unpleasant finger examination in the doctor's office. You have to wonder if there's some other fun and beneficial technology we might stumble across on our way to the great unknown, maybe find out that some of those asteroids are edible, delicious and cure cancer. You just never know. Who knew moon rocks would lead to iPods?
And finally, you kind of have to wonder about all the constant mention of the Middle East being "The Cradle of Civilization." You know, that area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers chock full of Biblical history, which didn't seem all that civil in the first place upon close examination. Seems like the civilized people left The Cradle a long time ago and got on with their lives, moving elsewhere where there are actual trees and fertile soil and the like. These days it seems more like The Tomb of Civiization. Those living there now don't just seem to have the hang of civilized behavior, what with them slaughtering each other, chopping heads and hands off, enslaving their women and blaming the rest of the world for their enduring squalor.
And nobody ever accused the Middle East of being the Cradle of Comedy, that's for sure. Check out the Bible and the Koran. Not too many distracting laughs there getting in the way of teaching us how to hate one another and slaughter our "enemies" (our fellow humans who look just like us) down to the last man, woman and child. And today? No stand up comics, no ensemble skit comedy, zero satire and no understanding of irony at all, with little but grim and bitter documentaries when it comes to movies. A real frown fest of a region. Yet another pressing reason for America to get out of the fix-the-Middle-East-with-yet-another-war business. It's clearly only making these killjoys even more dour and hostile. They've already got no shortage of their own wars to fight between each other without our input.
Maybe sending over Dave Chappel and Larry the Cable guy would help (and just hope they don't say anything that will get them lashed in a public square). One of these days somebody's going to change the whole atmosphere over there by being really, really funny, one of their own. That will go a lot further towards making peace than a thousand treaties imposed by diplomats looking for Great Statesman points and big speaking fees who don't have to live there with the fatal results of their misreading of the situation. They really do have to lighten up over there. Let's see... an Imam, a Rabbi and an Ayatollah walk into a bar, and the bartender says: "So, why the long faces?" Hmmm... needs work...
November 25, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 238
Most people won't bother to try to fix you. More likely, your telephone not ringing all that much is the only wake-up call you're going to get when you screw up. Generally, the whole world is not wrong about these things, you are. Heed the deafening silence.
CEO EXCUSES IN EXACTLY 1,000 WORDS
Here we are in the year 2008 once again wondering where the money went. The last time this happened on anything approaching the scale of the Financial Meltdown of 2008 we wound up calling it The Great Depression. Things were a bit different back then. For one thing, cocaine was legal but booze was not. For another, the guys responsible for the Crash of '29 took the blame they deserved for screwing up the American economy and it rained stockbroker suicides from the gleaming towers of Wall Street. Nothing says "I fucked up" like a 50 story swan dive to the pavement.
That didn't happen this time. These greedy goons looked America in the eye and and swore they didn't do anything wrong. They blamed the government, they blamed each other, they blamed the news media (!) and some of these billionaires even had the balls to try to blame poor people. A few of them even tried to blame the lack of aggressive enforcement by the various police agencies that would have prevented them from stealing everything but the rubber bands from these publicly held corporations! And those are not even the most bizarre excuses they have offered. Check some of these out:
THE REALITY TV EXCUSE: One guy had the nerve to testify before Congress that he thought he was part of a reality show called "The Bosses," about a bunch of loose cannon executives in competition to see who could blow a trillion dollars the quickest and he was cast as The Bad Boy. He said there was no way his job was on he level or the life he was leading was an actual one, with its 21 million dollar annual salary, all sorts of free stock, his own jet and a provision called a golden parachute where he'd get another $30 million if he got voted off the show. He assumed the Board of Directors were the show's producers since the more crazy things he did with other people's money, the more they encouraged and rewarded him with $10 million bonuses. He figured the crazier and more greedy he acted, the better would be the show's ratings, so he went into overdrive and bought the Mona Lisa, a spaceship and several small nations for himself with company funds.
THE ETHICS DEFICIT DISORDER EXCUSE: One CEO cited new scientific studies identifying a new disease called EDD, short for Ethics Deficit Disorder (a.k.a. Special EDD), mostly striking con men, jewel thieves, mob bosses, dictators and middle aged executives with a God Complex. Symptoms include dishonesty, insatiable greed, colossal egotism, manipulation of earnings statements, unaccountability and an insatiable desire to accumulate wealth by any means necessary. He came to Congressional hearings with a doctors note, telling investigators that this explained his baker's dozen mansions, his personal aircraft carrier and his collection of rare and exotic supermodels.
THE PATRIOTIC EXCUSE: This one's a beaut, cited by the former head of a former bank. He testified that he was only doing what the government was doing, running up the highest possible deficit he could for his company, his stockholders and by God, his nation! To underscore his patriotic fervor, he arranged for aides to erect a giant American flag made of spun platinum as a backdrop while he testified and displayed photographs of Ronald Reagan, Bush The Younger, and Herbert Hoover, citing them as "The Holy Trinity of Deficit Disciples." This turned out to be a great ploy since the Congressmen holding the hearings were so creeped out that they declared the man innocent by reason of insanity.
THE RAPTURE EXCUSE: It seems that politics is not the only place where the oddball theology of Bible Belt Christian Fascists has taken root. A number of CEOs have stated under oath (with a straight face, no less) that they were behaving the way they did because they did not expect the system to last out the decade since Jesus was coming back any day now to slay the wicked, the nonbelievers, the liberals and the poor. Citing their constitutional right to freedom of religion, these guys told the Congress that they would be sorry for doubting God's messengers real soon when fire and brimstone rained down on their Antichrist asses. When asked why they felt the need to steal everything they could and ruin their nation's economy and that of the entire world too, they said they were humbly doing their part in fulfilling prophecy by creating the chaotic conditions that would usher in The Rapture. One of them further stated that he was investing his company's money in ways to create worldwide earthquakes, tidal waves and catastrophic volcanic eruptions. This man was quietly escorted from the building to a secure rest facility and is currently heavily sedated.
THE FUCK YOU EXCUSE: In perhaps the only breath of fresh air and the only honest words to pass the lips of the top executives, one man told the nation, the Congress and the world to "Go fuck yourself, I got mine!" He said he did what he did because he could and for no other reason. "There was nobody to stop me," he reasoned, citing the lack of regulations, oversight, investigations into all the laws he broke or even the hint of mild agitation over his openly illegal activities. "I was operating in a vacuum of supervision and accountability, making up my own rules as I went along, so long as they benefitted yours truly. If they did not, I changed them. Right now I have more money that the whole Congress put together, so go ahead and close my company and fire me. I unloaded that toilet paper that is its stock long ago at an incredibly inflated price and bought Krugerrands! Drop friggin' dead!" In one of the more embarrassing moments of the Congressional hearings, this speech drew a thunderous standing ovation from the rest of the CEOs waiting to testify, lasting a full twenty minutes while they demanded a curtain call. Order has yet to be restored.
That didn't happen this time. These greedy goons looked America in the eye and and swore they didn't do anything wrong. They blamed the government, they blamed each other, they blamed the news media (!) and some of these billionaires even had the balls to try to blame poor people. A few of them even tried to blame the lack of aggressive enforcement by the various police agencies that would have prevented them from stealing everything but the rubber bands from these publicly held corporations! And those are not even the most bizarre excuses they have offered. Check some of these out:
THE REALITY TV EXCUSE: One guy had the nerve to testify before Congress that he thought he was part of a reality show called "The Bosses," about a bunch of loose cannon executives in competition to see who could blow a trillion dollars the quickest and he was cast as The Bad Boy. He said there was no way his job was on he level or the life he was leading was an actual one, with its 21 million dollar annual salary, all sorts of free stock, his own jet and a provision called a golden parachute where he'd get another $30 million if he got voted off the show. He assumed the Board of Directors were the show's producers since the more crazy things he did with other people's money, the more they encouraged and rewarded him with $10 million bonuses. He figured the crazier and more greedy he acted, the better would be the show's ratings, so he went into overdrive and bought the Mona Lisa, a spaceship and several small nations for himself with company funds.
THE ETHICS DEFICIT DISORDER EXCUSE: One CEO cited new scientific studies identifying a new disease called EDD, short for Ethics Deficit Disorder (a.k.a. Special EDD), mostly striking con men, jewel thieves, mob bosses, dictators and middle aged executives with a God Complex. Symptoms include dishonesty, insatiable greed, colossal egotism, manipulation of earnings statements, unaccountability and an insatiable desire to accumulate wealth by any means necessary. He came to Congressional hearings with a doctors note, telling investigators that this explained his baker's dozen mansions, his personal aircraft carrier and his collection of rare and exotic supermodels.
THE PATRIOTIC EXCUSE: This one's a beaut, cited by the former head of a former bank. He testified that he was only doing what the government was doing, running up the highest possible deficit he could for his company, his stockholders and by God, his nation! To underscore his patriotic fervor, he arranged for aides to erect a giant American flag made of spun platinum as a backdrop while he testified and displayed photographs of Ronald Reagan, Bush The Younger, and Herbert Hoover, citing them as "The Holy Trinity of Deficit Disciples." This turned out to be a great ploy since the Congressmen holding the hearings were so creeped out that they declared the man innocent by reason of insanity.
THE RAPTURE EXCUSE: It seems that politics is not the only place where the oddball theology of Bible Belt Christian Fascists has taken root. A number of CEOs have stated under oath (with a straight face, no less) that they were behaving the way they did because they did not expect the system to last out the decade since Jesus was coming back any day now to slay the wicked, the nonbelievers, the liberals and the poor. Citing their constitutional right to freedom of religion, these guys told the Congress that they would be sorry for doubting God's messengers real soon when fire and brimstone rained down on their Antichrist asses. When asked why they felt the need to steal everything they could and ruin their nation's economy and that of the entire world too, they said they were humbly doing their part in fulfilling prophecy by creating the chaotic conditions that would usher in The Rapture. One of them further stated that he was investing his company's money in ways to create worldwide earthquakes, tidal waves and catastrophic volcanic eruptions. This man was quietly escorted from the building to a secure rest facility and is currently heavily sedated.
THE FUCK YOU EXCUSE: In perhaps the only breath of fresh air and the only honest words to pass the lips of the top executives, one man told the nation, the Congress and the world to "Go fuck yourself, I got mine!" He said he did what he did because he could and for no other reason. "There was nobody to stop me," he reasoned, citing the lack of regulations, oversight, investigations into all the laws he broke or even the hint of mild agitation over his openly illegal activities. "I was operating in a vacuum of supervision and accountability, making up my own rules as I went along, so long as they benefitted yours truly. If they did not, I changed them. Right now I have more money that the whole Congress put together, so go ahead and close my company and fire me. I unloaded that toilet paper that is its stock long ago at an incredibly inflated price and bought Krugerrands! Drop friggin' dead!" In one of the more embarrassing moments of the Congressional hearings, this speech drew a thunderous standing ovation from the rest of the CEOs waiting to testify, lasting a full twenty minutes while they demanded a curtain call. Order has yet to be restored.
November 24, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 237
Good roads will build a country a lot faster than good intentions. Isolated pockets of water and people tend to stagnate. Build roads and they will start a journey.
DOPOTO REPORTS: NO, IT'S YOUR FAT BODY THAT MAKES YOU LOOK FAT AND OTHER RISKY REPLIES
The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has long been in the business of pointing out the forest for the trees. As trained professionals in identifying the readily apparent, we sometimes overlook the need for not doing so at times. For example, the answer in the title is the logical reply to someone asking you if an article of clothing makes them look fat. However, furnishing that reply might not be in the best interests of your personal safety. Fat people can do significant damage when they charge in a rage. Besides, the questioner knows quite well they are a bit more hefty that they used to be and are simply asking you to deny that. Being aware of the obvious comes with the obligation to use that faculty with discretion.
Ask many of our staff, who have benefitted not only from their rigorous DOPOTO training, but also the powerful learning tools of black eyes, broken ribs, sleeping on the couch and alimony payments. We here at DOPOTO are only human and as such have generally learned the hard way. So, in the interest of public service and saving our readers a lot of grief, we have compiled a short list of answers to common questions that don't always call for direct answers. Some do, but discretion is advised and the need to bear in mind with whom you are speaking. Honesty is not always the best policy. Here goes:
THE QUESTION: "How old do I look?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "About the same age you looked during the Eisenhower administration."
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "Around 33 or 34." (Younger people don't ask that question so that's a safe bet. If it is a younger person asking that question the proper response is: "Shut the hell up!")
THE QUESTION: "Do you want fries with that?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Do you think I came to this friggin' grease emporium 'cause I'm watching my cholesterol, you pinhead?"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "Supersize me, dude."
THE QUESTION: "Do you know how fast you were going?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Well, Barney Fife, you're the one that pulled me over for speeding, so let's assume it was somewhere north of the speed limit. Enlighten me! I sort of knew I was going pretty fast when the G-forces started curling my upper lip and spilled the whiskey all over my bag of weed."
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "No, officer, I don't."
THE QUESTION: "Do you know that cigarettes are bad for you?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Really? I had no idea! Where'd you hear that? And I thought they were good for you! Dang! Thanks for telling me, I think I'll quit right now. You're so very considerate to have pointed that out!"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: See above.
THE QUESTION: "Want to play some video games?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Are you sure you wouldn't rather just tie me down and stab me repeatedly with a letter opener? I'd enjoy that just about as much as playing your virtual psycho killer video games."
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: " Whoa, look at the time! Gotta go. Maybe some other time..."
THE QUESTION: "Who do you think would win in a fight, Ali or Dempsey?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Well, let's see, Muhammed Ali has Alzheimer's Disease and is past 60, but on the other hand, Jack Dempsey's been dead for about 25 years, so I gotta go with Batman on this one."
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "They'd have had a great 3 fight trilogy ala Frazier/Ali and Bowe/Holyield, with Ali taking two out three." (Sometimes nonsense questions are interesting food for thought.)
THE QUESTION: "Even though I'm breaking up with you, can we still be friends?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "No."
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "No."
THE QUESTION: "If you could sleep with anyone else you wanted to, would you?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: '"In a heartbeat. You want the list?"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "No, of course not." (Don't overdo it here, they'll know you're full of it.)
THE QUESTION: "What color do you think we should paint the living room?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "We? We? You've got me speaking French, here! You know damned well it's you who always picks out some sappy color and me, not we, who paints the walls I just painted a couple of years ago! Make it turquoise for all I care. Better yet, skip it!"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "You decide, honey."
QUESTION: "Does this shoe come in my size?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "No, ma'am, but maybe you should check out the Costume Department. They've got a nice selection of those giant clown shoes that ought to just about cover those Sasquatch feet of yours. Barring that, might I suggest a nice pair of canoes from Sporting Goods?"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "I'll go check."
THE QUESTION: "Would you rather be rich or be happy?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Do I look that friggin' stupid to you? Every rich person I ever met looks happy as a pig in shit! They're rich, you idiot! Ask a rich person that question. Maybe they'll have one of their servants explain that being rich is pretty damned cool!"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "I'd rather be happy."
THE QUESTION: "Why won't you listen to reason?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Your idea of listening to reason is having me agree with every birdbrain idea that manages to penetrate your thick skull, that's why! Being reasonable is a two-way street. Besides, I like being unreasonable!"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "I'll try to be more flexible."
So, there you have a short seminar on social survival in the confusing realm of interpersonal relations. We here at DOPOTO wish you luck with figuring out human beings. We at the Department have found that to be a lifelong learning curve with no end in sight. Keep trying, but tread lightly.
Ask many of our staff, who have benefitted not only from their rigorous DOPOTO training, but also the powerful learning tools of black eyes, broken ribs, sleeping on the couch and alimony payments. We here at DOPOTO are only human and as such have generally learned the hard way. So, in the interest of public service and saving our readers a lot of grief, we have compiled a short list of answers to common questions that don't always call for direct answers. Some do, but discretion is advised and the need to bear in mind with whom you are speaking. Honesty is not always the best policy. Here goes:
THE QUESTION: "How old do I look?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "About the same age you looked during the Eisenhower administration."
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "Around 33 or 34." (Younger people don't ask that question so that's a safe bet. If it is a younger person asking that question the proper response is: "Shut the hell up!")
THE QUESTION: "Do you want fries with that?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Do you think I came to this friggin' grease emporium 'cause I'm watching my cholesterol, you pinhead?"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "Supersize me, dude."
THE QUESTION: "Do you know how fast you were going?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Well, Barney Fife, you're the one that pulled me over for speeding, so let's assume it was somewhere north of the speed limit. Enlighten me! I sort of knew I was going pretty fast when the G-forces started curling my upper lip and spilled the whiskey all over my bag of weed."
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "No, officer, I don't."
THE QUESTION: "Do you know that cigarettes are bad for you?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Really? I had no idea! Where'd you hear that? And I thought they were good for you! Dang! Thanks for telling me, I think I'll quit right now. You're so very considerate to have pointed that out!"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: See above.
THE QUESTION: "Want to play some video games?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Are you sure you wouldn't rather just tie me down and stab me repeatedly with a letter opener? I'd enjoy that just about as much as playing your virtual psycho killer video games."
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: " Whoa, look at the time! Gotta go. Maybe some other time..."
THE QUESTION: "Who do you think would win in a fight, Ali or Dempsey?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Well, let's see, Muhammed Ali has Alzheimer's Disease and is past 60, but on the other hand, Jack Dempsey's been dead for about 25 years, so I gotta go with Batman on this one."
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "They'd have had a great 3 fight trilogy ala Frazier/Ali and Bowe/Holyield, with Ali taking two out three." (Sometimes nonsense questions are interesting food for thought.)
THE QUESTION: "Even though I'm breaking up with you, can we still be friends?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "No."
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "No."
THE QUESTION: "If you could sleep with anyone else you wanted to, would you?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: '"In a heartbeat. You want the list?"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "No, of course not." (Don't overdo it here, they'll know you're full of it.)
THE QUESTION: "What color do you think we should paint the living room?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "We? We? You've got me speaking French, here! You know damned well it's you who always picks out some sappy color and me, not we, who paints the walls I just painted a couple of years ago! Make it turquoise for all I care. Better yet, skip it!"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "You decide, honey."
QUESTION: "Does this shoe come in my size?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "No, ma'am, but maybe you should check out the Costume Department. They've got a nice selection of those giant clown shoes that ought to just about cover those Sasquatch feet of yours. Barring that, might I suggest a nice pair of canoes from Sporting Goods?"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "I'll go check."
THE QUESTION: "Would you rather be rich or be happy?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Do I look that friggin' stupid to you? Every rich person I ever met looks happy as a pig in shit! They're rich, you idiot! Ask a rich person that question. Maybe they'll have one of their servants explain that being rich is pretty damned cool!"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "I'd rather be happy."
THE QUESTION: "Why won't you listen to reason?"
THE HONEST ANSWER: "Your idea of listening to reason is having me agree with every birdbrain idea that manages to penetrate your thick skull, that's why! Being reasonable is a two-way street. Besides, I like being unreasonable!"
WHAT YOU SHOULD SAY: "I'll try to be more flexible."
So, there you have a short seminar on social survival in the confusing realm of interpersonal relations. We here at DOPOTO wish you luck with figuring out human beings. We at the Department have found that to be a lifelong learning curve with no end in sight. Keep trying, but tread lightly.
November 23, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 236
The character of the God people worship tells you a lot more about those people than the actual nature of God. Inside information is hard to come by in the God industry, so we pretty much make up his character to suit ourselves and insist he's on our side in all matters great and small. Come Judgement Day, we're all going to have some explaining to do. Odds are that will be a real eye-opener when we find out the joke has always been on us. Stay flexible and humble. We are not God's spokesmen.
SO, WHO DOES KNOW HOW THE ECONOMY WORKS?
Regular people don't feel so bad anymore about not knowing exactly how the economy works; the stock markets, commodities markets, money markets, futures (!) markets, the role of the Federal Reserve Bank, crises of confidence and all sorts of intangible "market forces." Most of us figured, well, fine, if we don't know exactly how all this stuff works, then the trained professionals running these various industries and markets have to know. We don't know how to remove gall bladders either but have faith that our physicians do.
So if we were puzzled as to why one day a company is worth $300 billion and a week later is only worth one hundredth of that even though nothing has changed about the company, we just assumed there was a good reason for that and we just didn't understand it but the financial professionals did. Well, the joke sure was on us, eh? These doctors didn't even know where the gall ladder is located! Not a one of them has stepped up and explained exactly how trillions of dollars just disappeared overnight. It seems that nobody understands the economy anymore, not even Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, who's bailout plan needs a bailout plan. That's not good.
Is there anybody out there who can fix this mess, or even understand it? Or maybe just explain to the rest of us how having faith in something makes it worth a lot of dough but having no faith in it makes the identical item nearly worthless. What is this, economics or religion? Whether or not you have faith that your voice can be carried to the other side of the world through a telephone wire doesn't stop the person on the other end from hearing you just fine. And if you have all the faith in the world that very thin ice will hold your fat ass, you're still going to get soaking wet. That's just common sense. Why is big business any different?
A bird isn't a bird just because somebody tells you it's a bird, and it's no less a bird if they tell you that it is definitely not a bird, no matter what their alleged credentials in ornithology. It's a bird because that's what the hell it is and it's damned obvious. And the bird sure doesn't give a rat's ass one way or the next what anybody thinks. It knows it was a bird both before and after anybody identified it as such. And so does anybody else with a lick of sense. So how did we get to the point where people can define the economy only by their guesses about it, or their faith in it or lack of same. Is this how we built the most prosperous nation in history?
When you knock all those zeros off the dollar signs, everybody knows exactly what the deal is with economics. If you have twenty bucks and want to see a movie, the ticket eats up ten dollars, the subway ride back and forth costs another four, so you're left with six dollars for popcorn and Milk Duds. If those items cost you a 5 spot you go home with one dollar. That's pretty simple, no? If the movie was great or if it sucked, it was still a commodity worth the $10 dollar ticket, so your faith in that film doesn't mean you really spent twelve for admission, or your lack of faith in a crappy movie doesn't get you two bucks back. And when word gets out that one movie is great and another one sucks, it's still ten bucks apiece to see them. Of course one will attract a lot more business than the other but that's how going to the movies works. Successful films make the big dough on sheer volume, with a whole lot more of those ten dollar tickets sold than the crappy films.
When you buy a coat, a leather one costs more that a cotton one, a well made one more than a poorly made one. A Cadillac costs more than a Mini Cooper because you get more car and comfort and performance. Steak costs more than hamburger, butter more than margarine. Everybody understands this and the reasons why. But somewhere on the way from small sums of money to hundreds of billions of dollars the rules of mathematics apparently change radically and common sense is not necessarily an asset. Somehow General Motors, a company in possession of 100,000 Cadillacs, is begging Uncle Sam for a bailout. Somehow Washington Mutual Bank with its $300 billion in assets gets sold to J.P. Morgan-Chase for less than 3 billion dollars in the middle of the night and nobody gets arrested.
And nobody can explain any of these things. Not the Treasury Secretary, not the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and none of the CEO's who rose to the very pinnacles of their professions. Our current president Bush The Younger sure doesn't have a clue. He's still trying to figure out long division without much luck. Could it be incompetence, greed and larceny on a grand scale? You think? The flaw in any system is, after all, people. Capitalism built this nation and gave the people in it a pretty decent standard of living and made a great many of us wealthy. It couldn't always have been so mysterious or we'd have abandoned it long ago.
Maybe the answer here is to beat the current crop of top executives about the head and neck with blunt objects and fire their asses for screwing up such a good thing. You can't be put in charge of the goose that lays the golden eggs and cook it for dinner too. That's not just outrageously greedy, it's insane. Artists can be insane, actors can be insane, movie producers and directors can be as loony as they come. Writers and musicians are pretty much all nuts. That's how it is in the arts and we can all thank a lot if whacky people for some beautiful and interesting works of art and performances. Test pilots, astronauts and rugby players have to have a couple of screws loose to do what they do and that's also acceptable. But bankers? Bankers? Since when did bankers and business executives think they could get away with going nuts?
Money and business are not creative arts or daredevil high wire acts. This is other people's money you're dealing with here, their hard-earned that they work all their lives for and would like to have something to show for their efforts. They trust banks and businesses and the people who run them with the fruit of their life's labors. Madmen need not apply. If that's how you want to roll, fine, just stay away from everybody's money. You want to be a wild man? Join the circus and fly on a trapeze. Start a motorcycle gang or something. Meanwhile, release the boring, cautious, tubby old guys with the rimless spectacles that you corporate pirates have been holding hostage somewhere. You know, the guys that used to run the economy and understood it and knew how to explain it and never shit where they eat. Those guys. They weren't exciting or dynamic and maybe they were a little rigid when they were in the house but at least they painted the place once in a while and didn't steal the chandeliers or the knobs off the doors. The jig's up, and you people can leave now.
So if we were puzzled as to why one day a company is worth $300 billion and a week later is only worth one hundredth of that even though nothing has changed about the company, we just assumed there was a good reason for that and we just didn't understand it but the financial professionals did. Well, the joke sure was on us, eh? These doctors didn't even know where the gall ladder is located! Not a one of them has stepped up and explained exactly how trillions of dollars just disappeared overnight. It seems that nobody understands the economy anymore, not even Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, who's bailout plan needs a bailout plan. That's not good.
Is there anybody out there who can fix this mess, or even understand it? Or maybe just explain to the rest of us how having faith in something makes it worth a lot of dough but having no faith in it makes the identical item nearly worthless. What is this, economics or religion? Whether or not you have faith that your voice can be carried to the other side of the world through a telephone wire doesn't stop the person on the other end from hearing you just fine. And if you have all the faith in the world that very thin ice will hold your fat ass, you're still going to get soaking wet. That's just common sense. Why is big business any different?
A bird isn't a bird just because somebody tells you it's a bird, and it's no less a bird if they tell you that it is definitely not a bird, no matter what their alleged credentials in ornithology. It's a bird because that's what the hell it is and it's damned obvious. And the bird sure doesn't give a rat's ass one way or the next what anybody thinks. It knows it was a bird both before and after anybody identified it as such. And so does anybody else with a lick of sense. So how did we get to the point where people can define the economy only by their guesses about it, or their faith in it or lack of same. Is this how we built the most prosperous nation in history?
When you knock all those zeros off the dollar signs, everybody knows exactly what the deal is with economics. If you have twenty bucks and want to see a movie, the ticket eats up ten dollars, the subway ride back and forth costs another four, so you're left with six dollars for popcorn and Milk Duds. If those items cost you a 5 spot you go home with one dollar. That's pretty simple, no? If the movie was great or if it sucked, it was still a commodity worth the $10 dollar ticket, so your faith in that film doesn't mean you really spent twelve for admission, or your lack of faith in a crappy movie doesn't get you two bucks back. And when word gets out that one movie is great and another one sucks, it's still ten bucks apiece to see them. Of course one will attract a lot more business than the other but that's how going to the movies works. Successful films make the big dough on sheer volume, with a whole lot more of those ten dollar tickets sold than the crappy films.
When you buy a coat, a leather one costs more that a cotton one, a well made one more than a poorly made one. A Cadillac costs more than a Mini Cooper because you get more car and comfort and performance. Steak costs more than hamburger, butter more than margarine. Everybody understands this and the reasons why. But somewhere on the way from small sums of money to hundreds of billions of dollars the rules of mathematics apparently change radically and common sense is not necessarily an asset. Somehow General Motors, a company in possession of 100,000 Cadillacs, is begging Uncle Sam for a bailout. Somehow Washington Mutual Bank with its $300 billion in assets gets sold to J.P. Morgan-Chase for less than 3 billion dollars in the middle of the night and nobody gets arrested.
And nobody can explain any of these things. Not the Treasury Secretary, not the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and none of the CEO's who rose to the very pinnacles of their professions. Our current president Bush The Younger sure doesn't have a clue. He's still trying to figure out long division without much luck. Could it be incompetence, greed and larceny on a grand scale? You think? The flaw in any system is, after all, people. Capitalism built this nation and gave the people in it a pretty decent standard of living and made a great many of us wealthy. It couldn't always have been so mysterious or we'd have abandoned it long ago.
Maybe the answer here is to beat the current crop of top executives about the head and neck with blunt objects and fire their asses for screwing up such a good thing. You can't be put in charge of the goose that lays the golden eggs and cook it for dinner too. That's not just outrageously greedy, it's insane. Artists can be insane, actors can be insane, movie producers and directors can be as loony as they come. Writers and musicians are pretty much all nuts. That's how it is in the arts and we can all thank a lot if whacky people for some beautiful and interesting works of art and performances. Test pilots, astronauts and rugby players have to have a couple of screws loose to do what they do and that's also acceptable. But bankers? Bankers? Since when did bankers and business executives think they could get away with going nuts?
Money and business are not creative arts or daredevil high wire acts. This is other people's money you're dealing with here, their hard-earned that they work all their lives for and would like to have something to show for their efforts. They trust banks and businesses and the people who run them with the fruit of their life's labors. Madmen need not apply. If that's how you want to roll, fine, just stay away from everybody's money. You want to be a wild man? Join the circus and fly on a trapeze. Start a motorcycle gang or something. Meanwhile, release the boring, cautious, tubby old guys with the rimless spectacles that you corporate pirates have been holding hostage somewhere. You know, the guys that used to run the economy and understood it and knew how to explain it and never shit where they eat. Those guys. They weren't exciting or dynamic and maybe they were a little rigid when they were in the house but at least they painted the place once in a while and didn't steal the chandeliers or the knobs off the doors. The jig's up, and you people can leave now.
November 22, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 235
Love is the answer, no matter what the question is, unless of course the question is: "How do you feel about snakes?" No one can be blamed for not loving snakes.
COMPANIES THAT WON'T GET BAILED OUT
So here we are bailing out some of the richest people on the planet, leading bankers and industrialists, none of whom are volunteering any of their own vast personal wealth to help the companies they helped ruin. It's a pretty odd state of affairs for the United States of America, one-time poster child among nations for Capitalism with a capital C, yet in spite of all the public bleating to the contrary, government bail-outs of large corporations are nothing new. The Airline industry was saved by Uncle Sam in 2001, the Savings and Loan sector in 1989, The Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company in 1984, Chrysler Motors in 1979, Franklin National Bank in 1974, Lockheed Aircraft in 1971 and the Penn Central Railroad in 1970, most occurring under Republican presidents. So much for being the "Party of Business" and the champions of unbridled capitalism. So let's not quibble here about keeping some our vital industries afloat before they all wind up in Third World nations.
Bad enough we don't make our own electronic gear, but that's not nearly as embarrassing as our inability to make socks and underwear in the event of a war with China. Which leads one to wonder where they make toilet paper and soap and fervently hope those nations are staunch allies. We're going to have to get rid of the Lex Luthors who have been running these corporations as their own personal piggy banks and make sure they start doing what they are supposed to do, what they've always done until the new breed of uber-greedy executives took over and started buying Rembrandts with company funds for the bathroom walls in their summer palaces. But there are limits. In the interest of public service, here is a list of companies who are definitely not deserving of a bailout.
WOLF FILMS - The production company that created the hit TV show "Law and Order" and then proceeded to spin it off into a dozen or more separate but unequal Law and Order shows. They have now applied for a government grant to create yet another one, this one called Law and Order: Sidewalk Vendor Unit, profiling the investigation and prosecution of guys selling hot pretzels and plastic Statues of Liberty on New York sidewalks without a proper street vending license. That's one Law and Order too many.
MEGAGIANTBIGMART UNLIMITED- A box store company that sells everything that can possibly be sold, with each of their 12,000 stores the size of several football fields, so huge that they blot out the sun in the towns where they are located, killing all surrounding vegetation and adversely affecting the local climate. When they come to town every local business including the funeral parlor goes bankrupt and everyone in town is forced to work at MegaGiantBigMart for minimum wage.
METHANE ENERGY RECYCLERS - This company seems at first glance to be on the right track, providing a viable alternative energy source in a world crying out for alternative energy. But a closer look at their application for federal funds reveals that their whole plan is to install flatulence collectors on fat guys to harness their gaseous emissions. Their business profile includes providing the fat guys with a bean-heavy diet to improve yield. Whether or not it is feasible is beside the point. Let's take a pass on this one.
NASA - Yes, NASA is already a government agency, the organization in charge of our space program. Anything they've done since the 1969 Moon Landing exciting anybody? Enough said. Replace them with some of the adventurous types that used to work there before they got bogged down in cautious, boring commercial enterprises and unmanned probes that don't work all that well. Those flying tractor-trailer Space Shuttles are being mercifully phased out before another one blows up. And didn't they install the lens on the Hubbel Telescope backwards at first, having to send up a space handyman to fix it? Meanwhile, there's no shortage of skilled and daring aviators willing and eager to explore the solar system and beyond. Cut NASA's budget back to weather satellite deployment status and let real men and women in an entirely new space agency lead us to the stars.
DONALD TRUMP DEVELOPERS- While The Donald has yet to apply for a government bail-out, ironically he was once bailed out by some of the financial institutions that are now taking government bail-out funds. He declared business bankruptcy once and came near to personal bankruptcy but managed to rebound with some fancy footwork and by ceding partial ownership of some of his properties to his creditors, among them Citicorp and Chase. While Trump was once a gifted real estate developer, those days seem to be gone as he concentrates on being a public nuisance. Perhaps as a condition of the bailouts Uncle Sam might include a provision designed to deny Trump any further financing until he starts developing something other than his mouth and his colossal ego. It's a win-win public service situation, the banks regaining solvency and The Donald being effectively muzzled. A grateful nation would forgive the banks their incompetence and greed if they could make that small miracle happen.
AMERICAN EXPRESS - The credit card giant is in trouble in large part because they extended almost unlimited credit to wealthy customers. No problem there, you say? They're rich and can afford it, right? Well, AMEX let their debts build up to several million dollars before bothering to send these high rollers a bill. Here's the catch: In a stunning reversal of roles, in this latest financial collapse it was the rich who took the first hit, having lots of dough tied up in the stocks of those giant banks, insurance companies, investment houses and credit card companies than just blew trillions of dollars of their investors' money. Guess what? The rich are stiffing AMEX. After their snooty ad campaigns selling themselves as the preferred double-dippped-platinum-diamond-gold-frankincense-and-myrrh card of the filthy rich, well, nobody's shedding too many tears to see them fall victim to their own kind and their own pretensions. And it's refreshing to the rest of us delinquent credit card payers to see that the rich really aren't so different after all. We working stiffs have all been hard up against it for a long time now and as we all know, misery loves company and a lot of people love to see the mighty fall, especially the arrogant ones. See you guys at the unemployment office. And no cutting the line, either, Bub.
Bad enough we don't make our own electronic gear, but that's not nearly as embarrassing as our inability to make socks and underwear in the event of a war with China. Which leads one to wonder where they make toilet paper and soap and fervently hope those nations are staunch allies. We're going to have to get rid of the Lex Luthors who have been running these corporations as their own personal piggy banks and make sure they start doing what they are supposed to do, what they've always done until the new breed of uber-greedy executives took over and started buying Rembrandts with company funds for the bathroom walls in their summer palaces. But there are limits. In the interest of public service, here is a list of companies who are definitely not deserving of a bailout.
WOLF FILMS - The production company that created the hit TV show "Law and Order" and then proceeded to spin it off into a dozen or more separate but unequal Law and Order shows. They have now applied for a government grant to create yet another one, this one called Law and Order: Sidewalk Vendor Unit, profiling the investigation and prosecution of guys selling hot pretzels and plastic Statues of Liberty on New York sidewalks without a proper street vending license. That's one Law and Order too many.
MEGAGIANTBIGMART UNLIMITED- A box store company that sells everything that can possibly be sold, with each of their 12,000 stores the size of several football fields, so huge that they blot out the sun in the towns where they are located, killing all surrounding vegetation and adversely affecting the local climate. When they come to town every local business including the funeral parlor goes bankrupt and everyone in town is forced to work at MegaGiantBigMart for minimum wage.
METHANE ENERGY RECYCLERS - This company seems at first glance to be on the right track, providing a viable alternative energy source in a world crying out for alternative energy. But a closer look at their application for federal funds reveals that their whole plan is to install flatulence collectors on fat guys to harness their gaseous emissions. Their business profile includes providing the fat guys with a bean-heavy diet to improve yield. Whether or not it is feasible is beside the point. Let's take a pass on this one.
NASA - Yes, NASA is already a government agency, the organization in charge of our space program. Anything they've done since the 1969 Moon Landing exciting anybody? Enough said. Replace them with some of the adventurous types that used to work there before they got bogged down in cautious, boring commercial enterprises and unmanned probes that don't work all that well. Those flying tractor-trailer Space Shuttles are being mercifully phased out before another one blows up. And didn't they install the lens on the Hubbel Telescope backwards at first, having to send up a space handyman to fix it? Meanwhile, there's no shortage of skilled and daring aviators willing and eager to explore the solar system and beyond. Cut NASA's budget back to weather satellite deployment status and let real men and women in an entirely new space agency lead us to the stars.
DONALD TRUMP DEVELOPERS- While The Donald has yet to apply for a government bail-out, ironically he was once bailed out by some of the financial institutions that are now taking government bail-out funds. He declared business bankruptcy once and came near to personal bankruptcy but managed to rebound with some fancy footwork and by ceding partial ownership of some of his properties to his creditors, among them Citicorp and Chase. While Trump was once a gifted real estate developer, those days seem to be gone as he concentrates on being a public nuisance. Perhaps as a condition of the bailouts Uncle Sam might include a provision designed to deny Trump any further financing until he starts developing something other than his mouth and his colossal ego. It's a win-win public service situation, the banks regaining solvency and The Donald being effectively muzzled. A grateful nation would forgive the banks their incompetence and greed if they could make that small miracle happen.
AMERICAN EXPRESS - The credit card giant is in trouble in large part because they extended almost unlimited credit to wealthy customers. No problem there, you say? They're rich and can afford it, right? Well, AMEX let their debts build up to several million dollars before bothering to send these high rollers a bill. Here's the catch: In a stunning reversal of roles, in this latest financial collapse it was the rich who took the first hit, having lots of dough tied up in the stocks of those giant banks, insurance companies, investment houses and credit card companies than just blew trillions of dollars of their investors' money. Guess what? The rich are stiffing AMEX. After their snooty ad campaigns selling themselves as the preferred double-dippped-platinum-diamond-gold-frankincense-and-myrrh card of the filthy rich, well, nobody's shedding too many tears to see them fall victim to their own kind and their own pretensions. And it's refreshing to the rest of us delinquent credit card payers to see that the rich really aren't so different after all. We working stiffs have all been hard up against it for a long time now and as we all know, misery loves company and a lot of people love to see the mighty fall, especially the arrogant ones. See you guys at the unemployment office. And no cutting the line, either, Bub.
November 21, 2008
BLUE COLLAR BLUES
It's a good thing our steel mills, shipyards and auto manufacturers didn't go belly up in 1940, otherwise winning the two separate major wars in the Pacific and in Europe that together were called World War 2 might have been a problem for us. Odds are that Toyota wouldn't have retooled their Camry factories to build thousands of Sherman tanks, countless Jeeps and other military vehicles like the Big Three auto makers did. And having our ships built in China and South Korea might have been problematic, especially since the steel to build them would have had to come from Japanese mills, a country we were having fairly heated disagreements with starting in 1941.
What enabled us to win World War 2 in just three and a half years was our huge industrial base, an infrastructure of heavy industry unmatched before or since. We not only cranked out endless assembly lines of tanks, guns, artillery, bombs, planes, ships and landing craft for our own 12 million men under arms, but also sent these items in vast quantities to England, China, Russia and other allies. In the event of another huge war, never out of the realm of possibility in this dangerous world, we're screwed. We can make aircraft and guns alright, but that's not near enough to fight a global war, unless we plan to blow up the world with our nukes, not exactly an optimal course of action. For big wars, we need soldiers and the means to fully equip them and get them to and from the battlefields. Who's going to make their uniforms, China?
Likely the people who ruined the industrial capacity of the United States in the name of globalization and maximizing profits are going to be the first ones to bitch to the government when their foreign factories are overrun by enemy soldiers. That's what happens in wars. When the factories were here in the United States nobody attacked them. And now comes news that the Big Three auto makers are going the way of the Dodo bird and the textile industry and the government doesn't want to rescue them like they are doing with our giant banks.
The government has plenty of good reasons why they shouldn't help General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. These businesses have been completely mismanaged for 30 years and outperformed by foreign auto makers for even longer. In the forty years that America has stumbled around trying to formulate a coherent energy policy none of these companies stepped up and mass produced energy efficient cars. Their response to the common knowledge that petroleum reserves were shrinking and its fumes choking the planet? Sports Utility Vehicles getting 8 to 10 miles per gallon of gasoline. For that alone their stockholders should have cleaned house and hired people with some brains to run these publicly held corporations.
And the United States Government sure didn't lead the way towards 100 miles-per-gallon cars. It is within their power to mandate such goals but they consistently did not because so many legislators are in the pocket of Big Oil. Maybe the oil companies should bail out Detroit. They were the main reason why low mileage got such low priority. As always, corporations put profits ahead of country, but by letting Detroit collapse, the national security of this nation is further eroded. It's not Al Qaeda who dismantled our manufacturing capacity, it was fat guys with private jets full of insatiable greed.
The United States Government also contributed to the inability of American industry to compete with Japan and Europe by refusing to provide the basic right of health care to our citizens like every other advanced industrialized nation, thus forcing corporations to factor in the exorbitant cost of health care in their product costs. And in today's super high tech world, any potential war will involve extensive use of electronic and computer technology, and we are a nation that doesn't even make our own television sets anymore, never mind the highly advanced microchip devices essential to modern weaponry. Most of those things are made elsewhere too, just like this iMac computer made in Shanghai.
So what do we do about GM, Ford and Chrysler? Bail them out like the banks with no strings attached and watch them go crazy again? Hardly. Bail them out with steel cables attached, mandating that they immediately reverse their policy of building the same old, same old vehicles. A nation that put a guy on the moon forty years ago just for the hell of it can surely come up with a high-efficiency engine when the pressure's on to do so. The question before was always "Why should they?" and it was a legitimate question. The answer now has to be "Because they absolutely must." This nation allows no aspirin bottle to be sold without a child-proof cap, no step-ladder to be sold without a dozen warning stickers and requires all sorts of things of car manufacturers from seat belts to catalytic converters.
So now the law must state that cars absolutely must attain high energy efficiency if they take Uncle Sam's money, or even if they don't and still somehow survive. And the same laws should apply to imports as well, extreme high efficiency or go sell them elsewhere, and that applies to the many Japanese auto plants operating on U.S. soil. If they don't measure up to standards, they don't go on sale here, period. And while Uncle Sam is handing over $25 billion apiece to the Big Three, they should demand the resignations of the people in charge of these companies.
If they let these clueless boobs remain, then, bail out or no bail out, our auto industry will disappear like our railroads did. We can get by with a few less banks and credit card companies since the money will be handled by someone, no problem, but rebuilding an automotive industry on the fly during a national emergency like the one we faced in 1941 isn't something we should let happen, even if these companies were almost ruined by greedy assholes. A nation full of information processors and burger flippers but devoid of blue collar producers with calloused hands is a big fat target. Give them the dough, but ride them like rented mules until they deliver the goods.
What enabled us to win World War 2 in just three and a half years was our huge industrial base, an infrastructure of heavy industry unmatched before or since. We not only cranked out endless assembly lines of tanks, guns, artillery, bombs, planes, ships and landing craft for our own 12 million men under arms, but also sent these items in vast quantities to England, China, Russia and other allies. In the event of another huge war, never out of the realm of possibility in this dangerous world, we're screwed. We can make aircraft and guns alright, but that's not near enough to fight a global war, unless we plan to blow up the world with our nukes, not exactly an optimal course of action. For big wars, we need soldiers and the means to fully equip them and get them to and from the battlefields. Who's going to make their uniforms, China?
Likely the people who ruined the industrial capacity of the United States in the name of globalization and maximizing profits are going to be the first ones to bitch to the government when their foreign factories are overrun by enemy soldiers. That's what happens in wars. When the factories were here in the United States nobody attacked them. And now comes news that the Big Three auto makers are going the way of the Dodo bird and the textile industry and the government doesn't want to rescue them like they are doing with our giant banks.
The government has plenty of good reasons why they shouldn't help General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. These businesses have been completely mismanaged for 30 years and outperformed by foreign auto makers for even longer. In the forty years that America has stumbled around trying to formulate a coherent energy policy none of these companies stepped up and mass produced energy efficient cars. Their response to the common knowledge that petroleum reserves were shrinking and its fumes choking the planet? Sports Utility Vehicles getting 8 to 10 miles per gallon of gasoline. For that alone their stockholders should have cleaned house and hired people with some brains to run these publicly held corporations.
And the United States Government sure didn't lead the way towards 100 miles-per-gallon cars. It is within their power to mandate such goals but they consistently did not because so many legislators are in the pocket of Big Oil. Maybe the oil companies should bail out Detroit. They were the main reason why low mileage got such low priority. As always, corporations put profits ahead of country, but by letting Detroit collapse, the national security of this nation is further eroded. It's not Al Qaeda who dismantled our manufacturing capacity, it was fat guys with private jets full of insatiable greed.
The United States Government also contributed to the inability of American industry to compete with Japan and Europe by refusing to provide the basic right of health care to our citizens like every other advanced industrialized nation, thus forcing corporations to factor in the exorbitant cost of health care in their product costs. And in today's super high tech world, any potential war will involve extensive use of electronic and computer technology, and we are a nation that doesn't even make our own television sets anymore, never mind the highly advanced microchip devices essential to modern weaponry. Most of those things are made elsewhere too, just like this iMac computer made in Shanghai.
So what do we do about GM, Ford and Chrysler? Bail them out like the banks with no strings attached and watch them go crazy again? Hardly. Bail them out with steel cables attached, mandating that they immediately reverse their policy of building the same old, same old vehicles. A nation that put a guy on the moon forty years ago just for the hell of it can surely come up with a high-efficiency engine when the pressure's on to do so. The question before was always "Why should they?" and it was a legitimate question. The answer now has to be "Because they absolutely must." This nation allows no aspirin bottle to be sold without a child-proof cap, no step-ladder to be sold without a dozen warning stickers and requires all sorts of things of car manufacturers from seat belts to catalytic converters.
So now the law must state that cars absolutely must attain high energy efficiency if they take Uncle Sam's money, or even if they don't and still somehow survive. And the same laws should apply to imports as well, extreme high efficiency or go sell them elsewhere, and that applies to the many Japanese auto plants operating on U.S. soil. If they don't measure up to standards, they don't go on sale here, period. And while Uncle Sam is handing over $25 billion apiece to the Big Three, they should demand the resignations of the people in charge of these companies.
If they let these clueless boobs remain, then, bail out or no bail out, our auto industry will disappear like our railroads did. We can get by with a few less banks and credit card companies since the money will be handled by someone, no problem, but rebuilding an automotive industry on the fly during a national emergency like the one we faced in 1941 isn't something we should let happen, even if these companies were almost ruined by greedy assholes. A nation full of information processors and burger flippers but devoid of blue collar producers with calloused hands is a big fat target. Give them the dough, but ride them like rented mules until they deliver the goods.
November 20, 2008
NOW WE'RE TALKING! WOOLY MAMMOTHS TO RETURN!
Hot on the heels of the revelation that modern humans carry caveman DNA, scientists want to take the next logical step and take the DNA from tissue specimens of wooly mammoths to bring them back out of extinction. By modifying successive generations of a female elephant's eggs until the DNA matches the mammoths, an actual mammoth could be brought to term and born into this world for the first time in about 10,000 years. Scientists have ample material to work with since perfectly preserved frozen mammoths are not all that uncommon, and their DNA is in pristine condition.
What does this mean to the rest of the world? Not all that much in the great scheme of things, but the caveman DNA inside of us rejoices at the prospect of great herds of our most challenging prey once again roaming the frozen steppes of Russia, the Alaskan wilderness and northern Canada, about the only places with climates suitable to these Ice Age beasts. There were many subspecies of mammoth, many of them a lot larger than today's elephants and covered with long, greasy hair to insulate them from the cold and sporting curved tusks that could reach 10 feet in length.
These magnificent animals roamed the earth for over a million years and were considered dinner for enterprising cavemen willing to risk being trampled by 12 tons of angry pachyderm or being turned into caveman-kebab by getting skewered by those huge tusks. Since they were gigantic and travelled in herds, their natural enemies were also huge; saber tooth tigers, dire wolves and short-faced bears, all of these predators a lot bigger and fiercer than even their largest modern counterparts.
Of course bringing all these terrifying predators back to life could pose some pretty significant risks to people. But then again, scientists have not traditionally spent an excessive amount of time worrying about the effects of their work on the rest of us. Nuclear weapons and poison gas spring readily to mind. Love Canal, Chernobyl, Agent Orange and asbestos also place high on that list. Generally, when scientists can do something, they just do it and damn the consequences. So be on the lookout for mammoths, packs of dire wolves, Volkswagon-sized bears and prides of saber toothed tigers the size of mules any year now.
And science further informs us that these were all very adaptable creatures and won't necessarily stick to the frozen northern wastes, especially once they figure out that the further south they go, the more food there is to eat, with no stubborn tundra to break through to find plants for the Mammoths, and a lot of docile livestock for the predators. Not exactly good news for Iowa corn farmers and beef ranchers, and maybe a little disconcerting for townsfolk when the newly minted predators discover that humans are a lot easier to kill than mammoths. And you think the park rangers at Yellowstone have a tough time controlling the grizzly bears? Tourism there will become sort of like Russian roulette, seeing how many family members manage to get back in the Winnebago at the end of the day. Billy? Where's Billy?
So maybe the real significance of this news is that the world is not really in such dire financial straits as the news media would have us believe when you have bunches of scientists engaged in completely frivolous projects like resurrecting extinct prehistoric creatures. There seems to be plenty of money in the research and development budgets of industries that have provided mankind with such indispensable amenities as lemon scented toilet paper and garbage bags, chewable aspirin and cars the size of light tanks to drop off the dry cleaning and get little Susie safely to her aroma therapy appointment.
So let these DNA science dweebs dream of woolly mammoths roaming the earth again, or even barn-size dinosaurs while they're at it. They've proven themselves fairly useless when it comes to figuring out solutions to the real tricky problems around here, like curing cancer, diabetes, AIDs, dengue fever and even malaria, which still takes an impressive toll of human beings all over the world every year, or the problem of mass starvation which claims 36,000 victims every single day. Are they planning to feed the hungry mammoth steaks? Just one of those bad boys could feed an entire village for a month.
Or just maybe they're thinking that bringing back giant land mammals and dinosaurs will replenish the fossil fuels we're burning at an ever-increasing rate? Yeah, that ought to do it, repopulate the world with giant creatures, then kill them and let them rot and in a few million years we'll have plenty more oil to burn. It worked once, right? Only this time we'll control where they rot so that the oil is sitting underneath more reasonable countries, like our own! Diabolically clever, no? Perhaps there's a method to their madness. Or not.
What does this mean to the rest of the world? Not all that much in the great scheme of things, but the caveman DNA inside of us rejoices at the prospect of great herds of our most challenging prey once again roaming the frozen steppes of Russia, the Alaskan wilderness and northern Canada, about the only places with climates suitable to these Ice Age beasts. There were many subspecies of mammoth, many of them a lot larger than today's elephants and covered with long, greasy hair to insulate them from the cold and sporting curved tusks that could reach 10 feet in length.
These magnificent animals roamed the earth for over a million years and were considered dinner for enterprising cavemen willing to risk being trampled by 12 tons of angry pachyderm or being turned into caveman-kebab by getting skewered by those huge tusks. Since they were gigantic and travelled in herds, their natural enemies were also huge; saber tooth tigers, dire wolves and short-faced bears, all of these predators a lot bigger and fiercer than even their largest modern counterparts.
Of course bringing all these terrifying predators back to life could pose some pretty significant risks to people. But then again, scientists have not traditionally spent an excessive amount of time worrying about the effects of their work on the rest of us. Nuclear weapons and poison gas spring readily to mind. Love Canal, Chernobyl, Agent Orange and asbestos also place high on that list. Generally, when scientists can do something, they just do it and damn the consequences. So be on the lookout for mammoths, packs of dire wolves, Volkswagon-sized bears and prides of saber toothed tigers the size of mules any year now.
And science further informs us that these were all very adaptable creatures and won't necessarily stick to the frozen northern wastes, especially once they figure out that the further south they go, the more food there is to eat, with no stubborn tundra to break through to find plants for the Mammoths, and a lot of docile livestock for the predators. Not exactly good news for Iowa corn farmers and beef ranchers, and maybe a little disconcerting for townsfolk when the newly minted predators discover that humans are a lot easier to kill than mammoths. And you think the park rangers at Yellowstone have a tough time controlling the grizzly bears? Tourism there will become sort of like Russian roulette, seeing how many family members manage to get back in the Winnebago at the end of the day. Billy? Where's Billy?
So maybe the real significance of this news is that the world is not really in such dire financial straits as the news media would have us believe when you have bunches of scientists engaged in completely frivolous projects like resurrecting extinct prehistoric creatures. There seems to be plenty of money in the research and development budgets of industries that have provided mankind with such indispensable amenities as lemon scented toilet paper and garbage bags, chewable aspirin and cars the size of light tanks to drop off the dry cleaning and get little Susie safely to her aroma therapy appointment.
So let these DNA science dweebs dream of woolly mammoths roaming the earth again, or even barn-size dinosaurs while they're at it. They've proven themselves fairly useless when it comes to figuring out solutions to the real tricky problems around here, like curing cancer, diabetes, AIDs, dengue fever and even malaria, which still takes an impressive toll of human beings all over the world every year, or the problem of mass starvation which claims 36,000 victims every single day. Are they planning to feed the hungry mammoth steaks? Just one of those bad boys could feed an entire village for a month.
Or just maybe they're thinking that bringing back giant land mammals and dinosaurs will replenish the fossil fuels we're burning at an ever-increasing rate? Yeah, that ought to do it, repopulate the world with giant creatures, then kill them and let them rot and in a few million years we'll have plenty more oil to burn. It worked once, right? Only this time we'll control where they rot so that the oil is sitting underneath more reasonable countries, like our own! Diabolically clever, no? Perhaps there's a method to their madness. Or not.
November 19, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 232
Being right isn't always enough. If you sit back and wait for the world to come to you, it's a good idea to make yourself comfortable because it's going to be a very long wait. It's a better idea to work hard and be consistent.
DOPOTO REPORTS: THE CAMPAIGN IS OVER
Crossing the desk of the Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) are many reports of committees to elect Barack Obama continuing their e-mail campaigns to solicit volunteers and hold meetings of behalf of their "candidate." At the risk of being too obvious, even for The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious, we remind them that Mr. Obama won the election handily this past November 4th. You can go home now. Your lives are waiting. You won. Don't run the risk of some idle scientist diagnosing you with some made up disease and calling it Campaignitis or Change the World Syndrome and prescribing you powerful sedatives.
We laud you for your dedication and your success in helping America end a sad chapter in its history (the Bush The Younger Administration) by electing Barack Obama President of the United States and thank you for your unselfish work on his behalf. Go home now. The phone banks are switched off, the rented computers returned, the office furniture gone, the rents on the campaign centers running out and soon they will padlock the doors. Don't be a sad case reporting to a cold, empty storefront until you are finally turned away by the authorities for trespassing. The neighbors will talk and little children will point and stare. Face it, there are no more buttons to hand out, leaflets to mail, posters to staple up, polls to track or phone calls to make. There is no candidate anywhere in sight to approve this message. It's over.
It is understandable that you don't want the elation to wear off. You were part of an exciting political campaign that will go down in history, one that has changed America and the world forever. But it was a political campaign you were involved in; a presidential race, not an open-ended religious crusade. By definition, political campaigns are over once the people have spoken on election day. The jubilation you experienced when your candidate won was expected and well earned. The world shared in America's jubilation. Congratulations and expressions of good will poured in from all over the globe. So if the euphoric glow lasted a few days or a week, no one begrudges you that. But now two weeks later it is over and done with and Barack Obama goes about the serious business of putting together a cabinet and staff to run his administration.
Mr. Obama is a promising President-elect and seems to have the transition process well in hand. He's tackling the job in dead earnest and doing it in the same methodical and capable way he overcame all the odds in the past two years to become the first black man to be elected President of the United States. And believe it or not, he's doing this without your help. That's the deal with being president, he doesn't get to use the armies of zealous volunteers that got him elected but instead has to work within the framework of the United States Constitution, selecting responsible people to head the various government departments and agencies and who will faithfully carry out his policies.
With no phone banks, no slogans and no banners, the president-elect spends his time now getting briefed by government agencies on the state of the world, interviewing potential cabinet members and formulating policies to solve some very serious problems facing our nation. Being president is not exactly the team sport that campaigning is. While the president assembles the best possible team to advise him and keep him informed of developments, it is he alone who makes the final decisions and takes responsibility for his entire administration's work. Although many thousands were required to mobilize the nation to vote for their man, he's on his own now. Some Obama volunteers seem unwilling to accept this.
DOPOTO again reminds such souls that the campaign is officially over and that everyone knows you're using your own computers for those feverish e-mails. People are also being invited to Obama parties in people's living rooms and it's getting just a little creepy. Let it go, people! Your side won and now the party's over. It's not as if we were going to have to elect him all over again any day now. No, that would be four years from now at which time our next regularly scheduled presidential election will occur. Nobody anticipates expanding our already way too long presidential races to a state of permanent presidential campaigning. The American public simply won't stand for it. Go home already! Your families are learning to get along without you and your dog growls at you like a stranger.
The Department also reminds Obama volunteers that your service to the campaign gives you no input at all on any presidential decisions made by him. Just as the candidate himself called the shots strategy-wise during the long campaign, you're going to have to trust him come January 20th, 2009 to run the country, which, may we remind you, was the whole point of the campaign. Be glad of your memories and the satisfaction of having taken part in an important process and leave it a that. So, step away from the e-mail, people, put down the headsets and remain calm. Post-campaign emergency operators are standing by and special counselors will come to your homes if necessary to show you how to resume your lives. The number to reach them is 1-800-CHANGED. Mission accomplished.
We laud you for your dedication and your success in helping America end a sad chapter in its history (the Bush The Younger Administration) by electing Barack Obama President of the United States and thank you for your unselfish work on his behalf. Go home now. The phone banks are switched off, the rented computers returned, the office furniture gone, the rents on the campaign centers running out and soon they will padlock the doors. Don't be a sad case reporting to a cold, empty storefront until you are finally turned away by the authorities for trespassing. The neighbors will talk and little children will point and stare. Face it, there are no more buttons to hand out, leaflets to mail, posters to staple up, polls to track or phone calls to make. There is no candidate anywhere in sight to approve this message. It's over.
It is understandable that you don't want the elation to wear off. You were part of an exciting political campaign that will go down in history, one that has changed America and the world forever. But it was a political campaign you were involved in; a presidential race, not an open-ended religious crusade. By definition, political campaigns are over once the people have spoken on election day. The jubilation you experienced when your candidate won was expected and well earned. The world shared in America's jubilation. Congratulations and expressions of good will poured in from all over the globe. So if the euphoric glow lasted a few days or a week, no one begrudges you that. But now two weeks later it is over and done with and Barack Obama goes about the serious business of putting together a cabinet and staff to run his administration.
Mr. Obama is a promising President-elect and seems to have the transition process well in hand. He's tackling the job in dead earnest and doing it in the same methodical and capable way he overcame all the odds in the past two years to become the first black man to be elected President of the United States. And believe it or not, he's doing this without your help. That's the deal with being president, he doesn't get to use the armies of zealous volunteers that got him elected but instead has to work within the framework of the United States Constitution, selecting responsible people to head the various government departments and agencies and who will faithfully carry out his policies.
With no phone banks, no slogans and no banners, the president-elect spends his time now getting briefed by government agencies on the state of the world, interviewing potential cabinet members and formulating policies to solve some very serious problems facing our nation. Being president is not exactly the team sport that campaigning is. While the president assembles the best possible team to advise him and keep him informed of developments, it is he alone who makes the final decisions and takes responsibility for his entire administration's work. Although many thousands were required to mobilize the nation to vote for their man, he's on his own now. Some Obama volunteers seem unwilling to accept this.
DOPOTO again reminds such souls that the campaign is officially over and that everyone knows you're using your own computers for those feverish e-mails. People are also being invited to Obama parties in people's living rooms and it's getting just a little creepy. Let it go, people! Your side won and now the party's over. It's not as if we were going to have to elect him all over again any day now. No, that would be four years from now at which time our next regularly scheduled presidential election will occur. Nobody anticipates expanding our already way too long presidential races to a state of permanent presidential campaigning. The American public simply won't stand for it. Go home already! Your families are learning to get along without you and your dog growls at you like a stranger.
The Department also reminds Obama volunteers that your service to the campaign gives you no input at all on any presidential decisions made by him. Just as the candidate himself called the shots strategy-wise during the long campaign, you're going to have to trust him come January 20th, 2009 to run the country, which, may we remind you, was the whole point of the campaign. Be glad of your memories and the satisfaction of having taken part in an important process and leave it a that. So, step away from the e-mail, people, put down the headsets and remain calm. Post-campaign emergency operators are standing by and special counselors will come to your homes if necessary to show you how to resume your lives. The number to reach them is 1-800-CHANGED. Mission accomplished.
November 18, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 231
Nobody's plotting against you, unless maybe you're an evil dictator or a crime lord or something. Barring that, people have better things to do than to think about you all that much, never mind holding meetings on how to ruin your alleged life. You're doing just fine with that yourself and need no assistance.
BAIL OUT BOBCRESPO.COM!
This is on behalf of my other website, bobcrespo.com:
Loyal readers, it has come to our attention that there's still around 40 or 50 billion immediate bailout dollars available from The United States Treasury, with another $350 billion out of the original $700 billion being held in reserve for future bailouts. Well, all we at bobcrespo.com can say is, Ahem! Like America's giant corporations, hard times have hit bobcrespo.com and our affiliate The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO). I know many of you were under the impression that DOPOTO was itself an agency of the government, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of bobcrespo.com and, like its parent company, is in immediate need of an infusion of cash to meet operating costs and stave off financial disaster (that disaster being us not getting the big dough).
We're not looking for tens of billions of the taxpayers' money here like the giant banks and auto makers, folks. Just one ought to do it. And unlike the great conglomerates, we're not looking for a complicated loan here with dubious prospects of a return in our investment. A handout is more like it, no strings attached. And for that one lousy billion, we promise to continue to provide the public with our unparalleled reporting on everything under the sun and never bother Uncle Sam again. You won't hear about bobcrespo.com coming back to the government next year claiming the bailout didn't work and more dough is needed. No sirree, bobcrespo, we'll use that money wisely to streamline our operation and make it eco-friendly, fiscally responsible or whatever else the Treasury wants to hear. And this time, we'll mean it! Besides, it will be difficult to complain from within the confines of the luxurious new headquarters staffed with many servants in an exotic location that this bailout will get us.
After all, bobcrespo.com never plowed through hundreds of billions of dollars of our shareholders' money by acting greedy and irresponsible, mainly because we never had that chance. We also never continued with destructive company policies that fabulously enriched a few executives at the expense of company performance (but wouldn't mind trying). Never have we put hundreds of thousands of people's life savings and retirements in jeopardy or laid off tens of thousands of loyal and dedicated American workers (hard to do when you're a one-man operation). That's not how we roll around here. Instead, bobcrespo.com has been the very model of whatever the hell kind of company we are, (we're just not all that sure).
So we put this question to the United States Government: Can America afford not to bail out bobcrespo.com? Who would provide this vital service to the American public, and at no charge? Unlike the New York Times, CNN, BBC News, The Washington Post and the other gigantic corporate media outlets, bobcrespo.com does not operate under the constraints of telling the truth all the time and providing fair and unbiased coverage, nor do we pretend to display any modicum of journalistic standards (sort of like Fox News without the wealth or propaganda). This is truly free press here, people, and we tell you things you won't hear elsewhere, and be thankful for that!
Where else can the average Joe and Jane America read Life Explained every day? Without this cash infusion, what is to become of The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious? Who would point out the 800 pound gorilla in the room without DOPOTO on the job 24/7? And where will the money come from to record new songs for the Music Page? Those songs don't write and record themselves! The songwriter and performers(Ahem!) and the studio rental and studio personnel must be paid. Free only means free on your end of the deal. Blogs, Life Explained, short stories and DOPOTO reports take time and money to manufacture. This is brain-busting work here, ladies and gentlemen, and our model-thin budget just isn't cutting it. It's time for the government to step up to the plate and decide if it wants America to be as American as it always was or to be less American by not bailing out bobcrespo.com (we learned that argument from Bush The Younger and his clever buddies in the Bailed-out Billionaires Club).
Our question to loyal readers is this: Any of you know this Henry Paulson guy who's in charge of handing out all this moolah? More to the point, does he have any exploitable vices? You know, drugs, sex, criminal acts, that sort of thing. Maybe one of his kids has something hide that will embarrass the old man? We can only keep our fingers crossed. Which is not to say we'd blackmail the man with such information (and also not to say we won't). It's just that such important data just might help us elbow our way to the front of the line considering that our lobbyist budget is also quite slim. The incredibly wealthy multinationals have all sorts of hooks into the Washington establishment and we want to get ours before these corporations siphon off all the bailout money like they did with everybody else's dough. These leeches are like ten deep at the free smorgasbord and open bar that is the U.S Treasury right now and getting even fatter and drunker than they've been lately, if that's possible.
So, anybody know anything useful? Teenage hookers, crystal meth? Maybe the guy killed somebody just for the hell of it and covered it up? Don't forget that for many years he was a CEO of a huge financial house, and you know how those guys act sometimes, getting all coked up on their yachts and throwing poor people overboard on the high seas just for sport. Maybe Paul Jr. is a cross-dressing crack whore, who knows? We're not particular. Or particularly scrupulous. Videotape is preferable but doctored still photographs or audio tape will suffice. We learn what we can from the big boys when it comes to leverage. We're certainly not going to ask our customers to pay for our services. God forbid, the cheapskates! Just kidding (maybe).
No, bobcrespo.com wants to achieve fiscal solvency the old fashioned American way: blow all our dough on questionable business practices, hookers, cocaine, private jets and giving executives huge bonuses and then alternately begging and bullying the government to hand us a lot of the taxpayers' hard-earned. If you thought we were going to say (!) earn it, where have you been for the last 8 years? That was the old America and the tubby old careful businessmen who built all these failing industries before the greedy corporate pirate princes took over. Did anybody think that the Enron scandal was an isolated incident? Hell, that was just the pebble that triggered the avalanche.
The fact that the government and America in general closed their eyes and hoped the bogeymen would go away didn't stop the corner office masterminds from looting the nation's wealth to the tune of trillions of dollars. Well, being a nickel-and-dime small time outfit, we've never had that opportunity to crash and burn in any spectacular way like the multinationals, but just give bobcrespo.com a chance and we can be as much a part of the fabric of American life as General Motorheads or Merril Lynched. Write to your government representatives today about the plight of this great American institution and demand that they give 'til it hurts. Hurts someone else, that is. We may be greedy and irresponsible, but we're not stupid. Bail out bobcrespo.com today and help create the monster we know we can become!
Loyal readers, it has come to our attention that there's still around 40 or 50 billion immediate bailout dollars available from The United States Treasury, with another $350 billion out of the original $700 billion being held in reserve for future bailouts. Well, all we at bobcrespo.com can say is, Ahem! Like America's giant corporations, hard times have hit bobcrespo.com and our affiliate The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO). I know many of you were under the impression that DOPOTO was itself an agency of the government, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of bobcrespo.com and, like its parent company, is in immediate need of an infusion of cash to meet operating costs and stave off financial disaster (that disaster being us not getting the big dough).
We're not looking for tens of billions of the taxpayers' money here like the giant banks and auto makers, folks. Just one ought to do it. And unlike the great conglomerates, we're not looking for a complicated loan here with dubious prospects of a return in our investment. A handout is more like it, no strings attached. And for that one lousy billion, we promise to continue to provide the public with our unparalleled reporting on everything under the sun and never bother Uncle Sam again. You won't hear about bobcrespo.com coming back to the government next year claiming the bailout didn't work and more dough is needed. No sirree, bobcrespo, we'll use that money wisely to streamline our operation and make it eco-friendly, fiscally responsible or whatever else the Treasury wants to hear. And this time, we'll mean it! Besides, it will be difficult to complain from within the confines of the luxurious new headquarters staffed with many servants in an exotic location that this bailout will get us.
After all, bobcrespo.com never plowed through hundreds of billions of dollars of our shareholders' money by acting greedy and irresponsible, mainly because we never had that chance. We also never continued with destructive company policies that fabulously enriched a few executives at the expense of company performance (but wouldn't mind trying). Never have we put hundreds of thousands of people's life savings and retirements in jeopardy or laid off tens of thousands of loyal and dedicated American workers (hard to do when you're a one-man operation). That's not how we roll around here. Instead, bobcrespo.com has been the very model of whatever the hell kind of company we are, (we're just not all that sure).
So we put this question to the United States Government: Can America afford not to bail out bobcrespo.com? Who would provide this vital service to the American public, and at no charge? Unlike the New York Times, CNN, BBC News, The Washington Post and the other gigantic corporate media outlets, bobcrespo.com does not operate under the constraints of telling the truth all the time and providing fair and unbiased coverage, nor do we pretend to display any modicum of journalistic standards (sort of like Fox News without the wealth or propaganda). This is truly free press here, people, and we tell you things you won't hear elsewhere, and be thankful for that!
Where else can the average Joe and Jane America read Life Explained every day? Without this cash infusion, what is to become of The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious? Who would point out the 800 pound gorilla in the room without DOPOTO on the job 24/7? And where will the money come from to record new songs for the Music Page? Those songs don't write and record themselves! The songwriter and performers(Ahem!) and the studio rental and studio personnel must be paid. Free only means free on your end of the deal. Blogs, Life Explained, short stories and DOPOTO reports take time and money to manufacture. This is brain-busting work here, ladies and gentlemen, and our model-thin budget just isn't cutting it. It's time for the government to step up to the plate and decide if it wants America to be as American as it always was or to be less American by not bailing out bobcrespo.com (we learned that argument from Bush The Younger and his clever buddies in the Bailed-out Billionaires Club).
Our question to loyal readers is this: Any of you know this Henry Paulson guy who's in charge of handing out all this moolah? More to the point, does he have any exploitable vices? You know, drugs, sex, criminal acts, that sort of thing. Maybe one of his kids has something hide that will embarrass the old man? We can only keep our fingers crossed. Which is not to say we'd blackmail the man with such information (and also not to say we won't). It's just that such important data just might help us elbow our way to the front of the line considering that our lobbyist budget is also quite slim. The incredibly wealthy multinationals have all sorts of hooks into the Washington establishment and we want to get ours before these corporations siphon off all the bailout money like they did with everybody else's dough. These leeches are like ten deep at the free smorgasbord and open bar that is the U.S Treasury right now and getting even fatter and drunker than they've been lately, if that's possible.
So, anybody know anything useful? Teenage hookers, crystal meth? Maybe the guy killed somebody just for the hell of it and covered it up? Don't forget that for many years he was a CEO of a huge financial house, and you know how those guys act sometimes, getting all coked up on their yachts and throwing poor people overboard on the high seas just for sport. Maybe Paul Jr. is a cross-dressing crack whore, who knows? We're not particular. Or particularly scrupulous. Videotape is preferable but doctored still photographs or audio tape will suffice. We learn what we can from the big boys when it comes to leverage. We're certainly not going to ask our customers to pay for our services. God forbid, the cheapskates! Just kidding (maybe).
No, bobcrespo.com wants to achieve fiscal solvency the old fashioned American way: blow all our dough on questionable business practices, hookers, cocaine, private jets and giving executives huge bonuses and then alternately begging and bullying the government to hand us a lot of the taxpayers' hard-earned. If you thought we were going to say (!) earn it, where have you been for the last 8 years? That was the old America and the tubby old careful businessmen who built all these failing industries before the greedy corporate pirate princes took over. Did anybody think that the Enron scandal was an isolated incident? Hell, that was just the pebble that triggered the avalanche.
The fact that the government and America in general closed their eyes and hoped the bogeymen would go away didn't stop the corner office masterminds from looting the nation's wealth to the tune of trillions of dollars. Well, being a nickel-and-dime small time outfit, we've never had that opportunity to crash and burn in any spectacular way like the multinationals, but just give bobcrespo.com a chance and we can be as much a part of the fabric of American life as General Motorheads or Merril Lynched. Write to your government representatives today about the plight of this great American institution and demand that they give 'til it hurts. Hurts someone else, that is. We may be greedy and irresponsible, but we're not stupid. Bail out bobcrespo.com today and help create the monster we know we can become!
November 17, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 230
It's not right to make fun of somebody just because they don't agree with you. It is, however, unavoidable, lots of fun and very satisfying. We all do it, but it's still not right. Just so you know.
CAVEMEN IN SPACE!
The news that caveman DNA has been passed down to modern man is sweeping the world. To some misguided souls that is an unsavory revelation, an aberration even, and they would have us believe that caveman DNA makes up only a tiny part of our genetic code. And this from people whose genetic code is 95 percent identical to that of chimpanzees! So let's not get all purist about homo sapiens. While most scientists feel that Neanderthals and our immediate predecessors in the evolutionary sweepstakes parted genetic ways around 500,000 years ago, the people who won out over Neanderthal Man weren't exactly sleek specimens of humanity out of the pages of Elle and GQ.
Any race of beings who out-Neanderthaled the brutal and sturdy Neanderthals had to be pretty damned aggressive and beastly to survive and thrive in the killing fields that were the entire world at the time. And once having exterminated their rivals, they didn't commence building the Taj Mahal right away and writing the Magna Carta. They lived in caves, many of those caves the former homes of their vanquished rivals. One of the few improvements they made were the first attempts at written communication, the beautiful and dramatic cave paintings of saber-tooth tigers, giant elk, buffalo, mastodons and bears the size of a minivan being poked with spears by hunting parties of puny cavemen, with often one or two of the hunting party getting gored or trampled by the huge animals. Not exactly a particularly sophisticated or genteel beginning for humanity, but the paintings were pretty nice.
But what are my credentials for interpreting DNA data and human prehistory, you ask? To which I reply: Caveman no hear, pencil neck! Maybe me bash in head of you for make ugly disagree noise! This scientific finding is very liberating, my friends. I've already started decorating my computer desk with bones, feathers and smooth stones. If we are part caveman, well, pretty much anything goes, no? Because if one human being has caveman DNA, then we all do. That much I do know, and that's all I need. They say a little knowledge is dangerous, and I couldn't agree more and have the scars to prove it. But I'm not unique in my density. The whole history of the human race is a perfect example of having too little knowledge and too much aggression. Sound familiar, History Channel buffs?
Who can deny that? Crack a history book, any history book written by any culture and what do you see? History is basically a bloody mess interrupted by brief periods of enlightenment. Very brief. And what's the model for all this bloody aggression? Bingo, the caveman, of course! What started as turf wars over hunting grounds and berry patches has been refined and expanded with mankind as we populated the earth, forming clans, tribes, farming communities, villages, cities and finally nations with sizable armies, with all of these groupings of humans practicing incessant warfare on their neighbors, almost always over land and water, which ultimately translates into food, the first and most basic form of wealth. Without food no gold and silver gets beaten into jewelry and currency, no diamonds mined and polished, no castles and cathedrals get built and no Mona Lisa ever gets painted.
Presumably, the cavemen with the least amount of talent for warfare wound up living in deserts, where wild beasts, berries and water are pretty damned scarce, with the victors inhabiting the bountiful portions of this earth. And, all of us being part caveman, the desert dwellers stubbornly insist they like it there! Yeah, right. That statement hasn't stopped them throughout history from attacking countries that are actually pleasant to live in to try to take their land and get out of the scorching sun already. At least that's how things stood until oil was found under some of those deserts. Now they're pretty okay with living in the barren wastes, and pretty smug about having many of their former conquerors lining up to kiss their butts for their precious petroleum.
Be that as it many, we humans as a race have cavemanned our way through our relatively short time on this planet, bashing skulls, taking over hunting grounds and berry patches and refusing to listen to reason, then blaming our behavior on some god or another that we made up and the other cavemen disrespected and said their god that they invented was tougher than our god so we had to bash in their bony heads, take their land and drag off their women. Works for me! Who am I to argue with my genetic commands? Me am what me am! And who knows, maybe it is this aggressive, competitive caveman DNA that has propelled humanity's progress even into the heavens.
So far as we know, when the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, famously stated: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," what he was really thinking was: "This white stone all mine! Me call Neilmoon! Me bash head who try take from me!" By the same caveman logic cited above, Neil Armstrong never denied thinking that, so it is probably true. Cavemen in space! If it wasn't for the damned spacesuit, no doubt he would have marked his territory properly and there would be a bright yellow stain beside the American flag he planted up there.
So, how do we reconcile our sophisticated, space-exploring, high tech world with our caveman DNA? We don't! Check out the globe in recent days. Peace broken out anywhere lately? Are cavemen of different gods and skin colors holding hands and singing Kumbaya by campfires all over the world? Doesn't seem to be much of that going on outside of America, where a brown man was finally elected president, and he's going to inherit two wars against countries filled with people of different gods and skin colors, pretty much the same as his own skin color. Go figure.
So, let's embrace our inner caveman, since it seems that genetically we have few options. The chimpanzee model sure doesn't seem so alluring. The presence of that caveman DNA goes a long way towards explaining the contradictions that define man, both as a race and within each individual. We see something good that others have and a part of us says, "Hey, that's a good thing to work towards," while our caveman DNA cries out: "Me want shiny object! You give or me bash head good!" Mostly we pick what's behind Door # 2 in that situation, then the tanks start rolling and a lot of mothers bury a lot of sons.
But at least with real cavemen, everybody in the cave went bashing together, unlike us, where the old guys stay home and send the young caveman off to bash or be bashed while the old cavemen eat their food and steal their women. Cavemen weren't quite as dumb as we are. Don't let those bony brow ridges fool you. For all we know, and that's not all that much even in his Information Age, the dumber and more brutal humanoids were the ones that won out evolution-wise back in the Stone Age and the caveman DNA in our genes is the smartest part of us. Anyway, let me conclude with: Caveman head hurt! Stop make silly talk! Me do what feel like do and bash in head who say no! Funny, but that feels a lot more comfortable to say than I thought it would. Well, what did you expect? I'm part caveman.
Any race of beings who out-Neanderthaled the brutal and sturdy Neanderthals had to be pretty damned aggressive and beastly to survive and thrive in the killing fields that were the entire world at the time. And once having exterminated their rivals, they didn't commence building the Taj Mahal right away and writing the Magna Carta. They lived in caves, many of those caves the former homes of their vanquished rivals. One of the few improvements they made were the first attempts at written communication, the beautiful and dramatic cave paintings of saber-tooth tigers, giant elk, buffalo, mastodons and bears the size of a minivan being poked with spears by hunting parties of puny cavemen, with often one or two of the hunting party getting gored or trampled by the huge animals. Not exactly a particularly sophisticated or genteel beginning for humanity, but the paintings were pretty nice.
But what are my credentials for interpreting DNA data and human prehistory, you ask? To which I reply: Caveman no hear, pencil neck! Maybe me bash in head of you for make ugly disagree noise! This scientific finding is very liberating, my friends. I've already started decorating my computer desk with bones, feathers and smooth stones. If we are part caveman, well, pretty much anything goes, no? Because if one human being has caveman DNA, then we all do. That much I do know, and that's all I need. They say a little knowledge is dangerous, and I couldn't agree more and have the scars to prove it. But I'm not unique in my density. The whole history of the human race is a perfect example of having too little knowledge and too much aggression. Sound familiar, History Channel buffs?
Who can deny that? Crack a history book, any history book written by any culture and what do you see? History is basically a bloody mess interrupted by brief periods of enlightenment. Very brief. And what's the model for all this bloody aggression? Bingo, the caveman, of course! What started as turf wars over hunting grounds and berry patches has been refined and expanded with mankind as we populated the earth, forming clans, tribes, farming communities, villages, cities and finally nations with sizable armies, with all of these groupings of humans practicing incessant warfare on their neighbors, almost always over land and water, which ultimately translates into food, the first and most basic form of wealth. Without food no gold and silver gets beaten into jewelry and currency, no diamonds mined and polished, no castles and cathedrals get built and no Mona Lisa ever gets painted.
Presumably, the cavemen with the least amount of talent for warfare wound up living in deserts, where wild beasts, berries and water are pretty damned scarce, with the victors inhabiting the bountiful portions of this earth. And, all of us being part caveman, the desert dwellers stubbornly insist they like it there! Yeah, right. That statement hasn't stopped them throughout history from attacking countries that are actually pleasant to live in to try to take their land and get out of the scorching sun already. At least that's how things stood until oil was found under some of those deserts. Now they're pretty okay with living in the barren wastes, and pretty smug about having many of their former conquerors lining up to kiss their butts for their precious petroleum.
Be that as it many, we humans as a race have cavemanned our way through our relatively short time on this planet, bashing skulls, taking over hunting grounds and berry patches and refusing to listen to reason, then blaming our behavior on some god or another that we made up and the other cavemen disrespected and said their god that they invented was tougher than our god so we had to bash in their bony heads, take their land and drag off their women. Works for me! Who am I to argue with my genetic commands? Me am what me am! And who knows, maybe it is this aggressive, competitive caveman DNA that has propelled humanity's progress even into the heavens.
So far as we know, when the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, famously stated: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," what he was really thinking was: "This white stone all mine! Me call Neilmoon! Me bash head who try take from me!" By the same caveman logic cited above, Neil Armstrong never denied thinking that, so it is probably true. Cavemen in space! If it wasn't for the damned spacesuit, no doubt he would have marked his territory properly and there would be a bright yellow stain beside the American flag he planted up there.
So, how do we reconcile our sophisticated, space-exploring, high tech world with our caveman DNA? We don't! Check out the globe in recent days. Peace broken out anywhere lately? Are cavemen of different gods and skin colors holding hands and singing Kumbaya by campfires all over the world? Doesn't seem to be much of that going on outside of America, where a brown man was finally elected president, and he's going to inherit two wars against countries filled with people of different gods and skin colors, pretty much the same as his own skin color. Go figure.
So, let's embrace our inner caveman, since it seems that genetically we have few options. The chimpanzee model sure doesn't seem so alluring. The presence of that caveman DNA goes a long way towards explaining the contradictions that define man, both as a race and within each individual. We see something good that others have and a part of us says, "Hey, that's a good thing to work towards," while our caveman DNA cries out: "Me want shiny object! You give or me bash head good!" Mostly we pick what's behind Door # 2 in that situation, then the tanks start rolling and a lot of mothers bury a lot of sons.
But at least with real cavemen, everybody in the cave went bashing together, unlike us, where the old guys stay home and send the young caveman off to bash or be bashed while the old cavemen eat their food and steal their women. Cavemen weren't quite as dumb as we are. Don't let those bony brow ridges fool you. For all we know, and that's not all that much even in his Information Age, the dumber and more brutal humanoids were the ones that won out evolution-wise back in the Stone Age and the caveman DNA in our genes is the smartest part of us. Anyway, let me conclude with: Caveman head hurt! Stop make silly talk! Me do what feel like do and bash in head who say no! Funny, but that feels a lot more comfortable to say than I thought it would. Well, what did you expect? I'm part caveman.
November 16, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 229
Being a man doesn't mean you can't do housework too. It just means you won't. Others are advised to get over it. And fellows, always procrastinate as long as possible before performing a difficult chore (man's work). If you get right on it, you run the risk of high expectations. Don't go there.
YES! CAVEMAN DNA FLOWS IN OUR VEINS!
Thank you, Science Dweebs. You guys finally came up with something worthwhile to the average man. Screw all that black hole crap and super colliders and inventing dumbass diseases like Attention Deficit Disorder and Bipolar Disease. Of course nobody pays attention to you when you bore the hell out of them with stupid questions and convoluted blatherings about stuff that means nothing to anybody without a long white lab coat. Might as well diagnose the whole world with attention deficit disorder when it comes to contemplating your body of work in recent years.
What ever happened to sending guys to the moon? Curing terrible diseases? Inventing plastics and designing supersonic airplanes? Who's on the ball with jet packs these days? Flying cars? Nobody is the answer to those. Reinventing the iPod every six months isn't fooling anybody. Sending us electronic memos telling us you've come up with an upgrade for our computers isn't exactly knocking anybody out with your uncanny brilliance. The computers were invented already, Einstein, and for all we know it's a hoax since our computers perform exactly the same after we download your "updates." And what's the deal with alternative energy? What have you got, wind? What, you guys visited Holland and noticed all the windmills? That's not science, that's common sense! How about something the size of a mothball you toss into a tank full of water to turn it into high octane fuel? You want to impress us with your cleverness, that'd be a good place to start. Dust off that chemistry set and get to work!
But at last there's some good science news. The DNA detectives, previously sidetracked in figuring out who was part Phoenician and who wasn't and other tedious drivel, have announced that Caveman DNA was passed down to modern man.YES! We really are cavemen to a great degree. I knew it! Men, do you know the ramifications of this announcement? Vindication, boys, vindication! Talk about your breakthroughs! A built-in alibi for our Neanderthal behavior! My brow is forming a bony ridge just thinking about it. Guess who's not shaving today?
I've all of a sudden got a new motto; "What do you expect? I'm part caveman!" It's a go-anywhere, do-anything excuse, for everything from leaving the toilet seat in its proper, upright position to getting arrested for brawling at your wife's best friend's wedding. You haven't washed your car since 2006? Even caveman know it rain plenty! You've sat around all weekend watching boxing and football and now you're surrounded by empty beer cans, take-out food containers and pizza crusts? Well, so what? Caveman no need eat vegetables and watch stupid wussy sit com! Caveman eat meat, watch blood sport!
You can even claim to have more caveman DNA than most people. Who could prove otherwise? New vistas of insensitive and surly behavior open up. Piles of unwashed clothes is just marking your territory. You can buy tools you don't really need just because they're shiny and sharp and make a very loud noise. You can claim not to understand opposing points of view in arguments of any sort: Caveman head hurt! Stop making silly talk! No longer will you need to feel guilty about not being remotely interested in things like flower beds, window treatments (whatever the hell they are), The View, decaffeinated anything, salads, throw pillows, ballet, Hillary Clinton, Sex And The City, wallpaper, minivans, text messaging or anything else that rubs you the wrong way.
Your whole philosophy can boil down to this: Cave man work hard, hunt and gather all day. Me come home, want eat meat, have hot sex and no hear complaint! Of course getting everyone else on board with this whole concept might be an uphill struggle, but some causes are well worth the fight. You just have to believe that the music you play is not too loud, the things you think and say are absolutely correct and your business is your own damned business and nobody else's. Being unreasonable is not necessarily a bad thing, disdain of all things politically correct is a desirable trait and baseball takes precedence over painting the living room some creepy pastel shade. If all this sounds a little extreme, well, all I can grunt is: What did you expect? I'm part caveman!
What ever happened to sending guys to the moon? Curing terrible diseases? Inventing plastics and designing supersonic airplanes? Who's on the ball with jet packs these days? Flying cars? Nobody is the answer to those. Reinventing the iPod every six months isn't fooling anybody. Sending us electronic memos telling us you've come up with an upgrade for our computers isn't exactly knocking anybody out with your uncanny brilliance. The computers were invented already, Einstein, and for all we know it's a hoax since our computers perform exactly the same after we download your "updates." And what's the deal with alternative energy? What have you got, wind? What, you guys visited Holland and noticed all the windmills? That's not science, that's common sense! How about something the size of a mothball you toss into a tank full of water to turn it into high octane fuel? You want to impress us with your cleverness, that'd be a good place to start. Dust off that chemistry set and get to work!
But at last there's some good science news. The DNA detectives, previously sidetracked in figuring out who was part Phoenician and who wasn't and other tedious drivel, have announced that Caveman DNA was passed down to modern man.YES! We really are cavemen to a great degree. I knew it! Men, do you know the ramifications of this announcement? Vindication, boys, vindication! Talk about your breakthroughs! A built-in alibi for our Neanderthal behavior! My brow is forming a bony ridge just thinking about it. Guess who's not shaving today?
I've all of a sudden got a new motto; "What do you expect? I'm part caveman!" It's a go-anywhere, do-anything excuse, for everything from leaving the toilet seat in its proper, upright position to getting arrested for brawling at your wife's best friend's wedding. You haven't washed your car since 2006? Even caveman know it rain plenty! You've sat around all weekend watching boxing and football and now you're surrounded by empty beer cans, take-out food containers and pizza crusts? Well, so what? Caveman no need eat vegetables and watch stupid wussy sit com! Caveman eat meat, watch blood sport!
You can even claim to have more caveman DNA than most people. Who could prove otherwise? New vistas of insensitive and surly behavior open up. Piles of unwashed clothes is just marking your territory. You can buy tools you don't really need just because they're shiny and sharp and make a very loud noise. You can claim not to understand opposing points of view in arguments of any sort: Caveman head hurt! Stop making silly talk! No longer will you need to feel guilty about not being remotely interested in things like flower beds, window treatments (whatever the hell they are), The View, decaffeinated anything, salads, throw pillows, ballet, Hillary Clinton, Sex And The City, wallpaper, minivans, text messaging or anything else that rubs you the wrong way.
Your whole philosophy can boil down to this: Cave man work hard, hunt and gather all day. Me come home, want eat meat, have hot sex and no hear complaint! Of course getting everyone else on board with this whole concept might be an uphill struggle, but some causes are well worth the fight. You just have to believe that the music you play is not too loud, the things you think and say are absolutely correct and your business is your own damned business and nobody else's. Being unreasonable is not necessarily a bad thing, disdain of all things politically correct is a desirable trait and baseball takes precedence over painting the living room some creepy pastel shade. If all this sounds a little extreme, well, all I can grunt is: What did you expect? I'm part caveman!
November 14, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 228
What you think and how you live should be the same. No sense being at war with yourself. Even if you win, you lose, and the only prisoner you get to take is yourself.
SORE LOSERS? WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? THESE PEOPLE WERE SORE WINNERS!
The right wing conservatives were soundly defeated at the polls in November 2008, the American people handing over the Executive Branch and both Houses of Congress to the Democrats to see if they can't screw up a good thing like America a little less aggressively than Bush The Younger and his insane henchmen. It was a simple message, telling them in essence: Shut the hell up and go away! Given the magnitude of the mess in which they are leaving America after 8 disastrous years, you'd think they'd take heed and go somewhere to take stock of the situation, maybe resolve to base their ideology on reality or something close to it. You know, a little soul-searching, some examining where they went wrong and a little discussion on how they can do better in the future, that sort of thing.
But who are we kidding here? Come on! These are the people who when they won big and enjoyed power were sore winners! They couldn't demonize their opponents enough, even in victory. They waged extensive campaigns attacking the personal character and the patriotism of anybody who disagreed with them, the very definition of scoundrels. Did anybody expect these lunatics to be gracious losers? To accept the olive branch offered by President-elect Obama? To see the wisdom of working together as one nation to tackle some of the biggest crises our nation has faced in many decades? Hah! Their insane world-view is far more important to these clowns than the welfare of their own nation, the exact thing they accuse those who disagree with them.
There are already Impeach Obama websites out there, and he won't even be president for more than 2 months yet. Already a hound-the-administration campaign like that of the 1990's directed against President Clinton is being waged and there is no Obama Administration in existence yet! Can you impeach a president-elect? While nobody expects anybody in America to hold their tongues when they disagree with a president, well, let the man be president first and do something before you denounce any policies or smear any characters. But that would make sense, wouldn't it? And we are taking about people who want the story of Adam and Eve taught in science classes here, aren't we?
So, America being America, free speech reigns, even gibberish, and smart people wouldn't have it any other way. When the right wing was in power they cried crocodile tears about the wrong people enjoying free speech, namely anybody but themselves. And they used that free speech to do all they could to drive wedges between Americans rather than trying to unite the nation. So what you wind up with in 2008 is a lot of people who consider their fellow citizens their blood enemies, not out of any overt acts committed, but over disagreements on how to best solve our common problems. And so the e-mail hate campaigns begin and tiny little hate committees form, issuing press releases and manifestos having nothing to do with truth and everything to do with the politics of hatred and divisiveness. What fun!
Unfortunately for them, the American people are less and less fooled by these dense clods and know exactly what are their motives. All they need to do is look around them and see the results of the Neo-Cons' 8 years in the seat of power and their legacy of fear mongering, character assassination, lies, corruption, war and thievery: a wrecked economy, a drowned city, 2 wars against small nations with no end in sight, tortured prisoners, unemployment and foreclosures soaring, and on and on. Neo-Con Artists is more like it, and the whole world knows it at this point. But don't expect these transparent oafs to disguise who they are during their renewed campaign. The thing is, they don't think they've done anything wrong! They think that the majority of the people still want them around. Go figure. Admitting mistakes has never been their long suit.
They truly believe their resounding defeat at the polls and America finally seeing them for what they are has to be some sort of mistake, or a massive fraud perpetrated by the winners of the elections, just like the ones they themselves pulled off in 2000 an 2004. Why else would that occur to them? Well, the margin of defeat was beyond close, and the message was clear to all but delusional fools. Namely, the Neo-Cons and their Christian Fascist allies, the kind of people who used to be called Jesus Freaks and carefully avoided in earlier, more sensible times. They make no more sense now than they did then, their political ideology just as misinformed, contradictory, shallow, mean-spirited and garbled as their so-called theology. Now that they are not running anything but their mouths, America gets to be entertained by them instead of having the crap scared out of us.
So let them wage their spiteful little campaigns and bite the hands of peace extended to them. Their kind is dying so they run in packs, making up all sorts of crazy bullshit about normal, regular people. The whole world knows they have no shame, no dignity and no restraint. And this can be pretty funny sometimes, when you see just how dumb they can get, but you'd think these people would use their time to maybe learn something, anything from their mistakes, but that doesn't look like it's in the cards. Which is just fine with people who enjoyed the nastiness of the presidential campaign and some of the off-the-wall accusations and theories put forward. In a perverse way, it sure was a lot of fun, and will be even more amusing now knowing that none of this canned crap will become official policy.
So, barring a reflective return of the Republican Party to the sober-minded party of business and practical, intelligent men, the rest of us can only hope they come up with some real doozies to lead them, real rootin'-tootin' whack jobs on the order of Ross Perot or Rudy "The Savior of 9/11" Giuliani. A promising sign is Sarah Palin salivating to escape the frozen north and get back on the national stage, making loud presidential noises for 2012 or 2016, maybe even appointing herself to Ted Stevens' Senate seat if he can survive the recount but not the ethics committee's wrath. Democrats can only pray for such a gift, and the nation's comedians will rejoice.
There's always Mike "Creationism" Huckabee, or Mitt Romney, trying to be who his father was, minus the old man's brains and integrity, or their own Barack Obama, 37-year old rising star Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana and the son of immigrants from the Indian state of Punjab. His real first name is Piyush but he adopted the nickname Bobby after a character named Bobby Brady (!) in "The Brady Bunch" TV show. You can't make that one up! He's another Creationism nut too, a convert from Hindu to Roman Catholic who has also preached to Pentecostal and Baptist congregations, so maybe another conversion is in the offing, to a more properly Fascist Christian denomination that Neo-Cons can relate to easily. He might be pretty entertaining, especially when the crazies start to sell the Republicans as the party of minorities, the Punjabi-American-Roman Catholic-Antiscience-Creationist minority, that is, a minority of one crazy guy. Yeah, that guy! Take that, rainbow Coalition!
It ought to be an interesting sabotage campaign, one that is just getting started. When Barack Obama actually does something as President we'll hear anguished cries and wails about the end of life as we know it and the crumbling of the Republic and rumors of cannibalism at the White house. Bill O'Really will shift into mouth-foaming overdrive, babbling some incoherent nonsense about "real Americans" and turning a hilarious shade of red. Those few right wing big name politicians not caught up in deviant sexual scandals or bribery investigations will appear on cable news shows calling for America to come to its senses and return the Congress to the Neo-Cons to thwart President Obama's secret socialist/jihadi/Marxist/Nazi agenda. Americans real and otherwise will laugh heartily and encourage their whacky antics, fascinated with the show. Our inboxes will be loaded with crazy funny e-mails from all kinds of committees and political action organizations with names like The John Wayne Eternal War Society, the Ronald Reagan Brigade or Virgins for Jesus.
Obama proved that the internet is the new battleground for political discourse and that that lesson won't be lost on the Neo-Con artists, except maybe the serious, lucid content part of the deal. While his presidential record so far is perfect since he's not president yet, he's bound to make a mistake or two once he's sworn in and actually on the job. Everything he does both good and bad will result in a cry for his impeachment, a recount of his landslide vote count and maybe even a demand to allow "real Americans" to declare that he is not "their" president. Pandora's box is open for business, and the gutter's the limit. For fans of this sort of thing, the fun is just beginning.
But who are we kidding here? Come on! These are the people who when they won big and enjoyed power were sore winners! They couldn't demonize their opponents enough, even in victory. They waged extensive campaigns attacking the personal character and the patriotism of anybody who disagreed with them, the very definition of scoundrels. Did anybody expect these lunatics to be gracious losers? To accept the olive branch offered by President-elect Obama? To see the wisdom of working together as one nation to tackle some of the biggest crises our nation has faced in many decades? Hah! Their insane world-view is far more important to these clowns than the welfare of their own nation, the exact thing they accuse those who disagree with them.
There are already Impeach Obama websites out there, and he won't even be president for more than 2 months yet. Already a hound-the-administration campaign like that of the 1990's directed against President Clinton is being waged and there is no Obama Administration in existence yet! Can you impeach a president-elect? While nobody expects anybody in America to hold their tongues when they disagree with a president, well, let the man be president first and do something before you denounce any policies or smear any characters. But that would make sense, wouldn't it? And we are taking about people who want the story of Adam and Eve taught in science classes here, aren't we?
So, America being America, free speech reigns, even gibberish, and smart people wouldn't have it any other way. When the right wing was in power they cried crocodile tears about the wrong people enjoying free speech, namely anybody but themselves. And they used that free speech to do all they could to drive wedges between Americans rather than trying to unite the nation. So what you wind up with in 2008 is a lot of people who consider their fellow citizens their blood enemies, not out of any overt acts committed, but over disagreements on how to best solve our common problems. And so the e-mail hate campaigns begin and tiny little hate committees form, issuing press releases and manifestos having nothing to do with truth and everything to do with the politics of hatred and divisiveness. What fun!
Unfortunately for them, the American people are less and less fooled by these dense clods and know exactly what are their motives. All they need to do is look around them and see the results of the Neo-Cons' 8 years in the seat of power and their legacy of fear mongering, character assassination, lies, corruption, war and thievery: a wrecked economy, a drowned city, 2 wars against small nations with no end in sight, tortured prisoners, unemployment and foreclosures soaring, and on and on. Neo-Con Artists is more like it, and the whole world knows it at this point. But don't expect these transparent oafs to disguise who they are during their renewed campaign. The thing is, they don't think they've done anything wrong! They think that the majority of the people still want them around. Go figure. Admitting mistakes has never been their long suit.
They truly believe their resounding defeat at the polls and America finally seeing them for what they are has to be some sort of mistake, or a massive fraud perpetrated by the winners of the elections, just like the ones they themselves pulled off in 2000 an 2004. Why else would that occur to them? Well, the margin of defeat was beyond close, and the message was clear to all but delusional fools. Namely, the Neo-Cons and their Christian Fascist allies, the kind of people who used to be called Jesus Freaks and carefully avoided in earlier, more sensible times. They make no more sense now than they did then, their political ideology just as misinformed, contradictory, shallow, mean-spirited and garbled as their so-called theology. Now that they are not running anything but their mouths, America gets to be entertained by them instead of having the crap scared out of us.
So let them wage their spiteful little campaigns and bite the hands of peace extended to them. Their kind is dying so they run in packs, making up all sorts of crazy bullshit about normal, regular people. The whole world knows they have no shame, no dignity and no restraint. And this can be pretty funny sometimes, when you see just how dumb they can get, but you'd think these people would use their time to maybe learn something, anything from their mistakes, but that doesn't look like it's in the cards. Which is just fine with people who enjoyed the nastiness of the presidential campaign and some of the off-the-wall accusations and theories put forward. In a perverse way, it sure was a lot of fun, and will be even more amusing now knowing that none of this canned crap will become official policy.
So, barring a reflective return of the Republican Party to the sober-minded party of business and practical, intelligent men, the rest of us can only hope they come up with some real doozies to lead them, real rootin'-tootin' whack jobs on the order of Ross Perot or Rudy "The Savior of 9/11" Giuliani. A promising sign is Sarah Palin salivating to escape the frozen north and get back on the national stage, making loud presidential noises for 2012 or 2016, maybe even appointing herself to Ted Stevens' Senate seat if he can survive the recount but not the ethics committee's wrath. Democrats can only pray for such a gift, and the nation's comedians will rejoice.
There's always Mike "Creationism" Huckabee, or Mitt Romney, trying to be who his father was, minus the old man's brains and integrity, or their own Barack Obama, 37-year old rising star Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana and the son of immigrants from the Indian state of Punjab. His real first name is Piyush but he adopted the nickname Bobby after a character named Bobby Brady (!) in "The Brady Bunch" TV show. You can't make that one up! He's another Creationism nut too, a convert from Hindu to Roman Catholic who has also preached to Pentecostal and Baptist congregations, so maybe another conversion is in the offing, to a more properly Fascist Christian denomination that Neo-Cons can relate to easily. He might be pretty entertaining, especially when the crazies start to sell the Republicans as the party of minorities, the Punjabi-American-Roman Catholic-Antiscience-Creationist minority, that is, a minority of one crazy guy. Yeah, that guy! Take that, rainbow Coalition!
It ought to be an interesting sabotage campaign, one that is just getting started. When Barack Obama actually does something as President we'll hear anguished cries and wails about the end of life as we know it and the crumbling of the Republic and rumors of cannibalism at the White house. Bill O'Really will shift into mouth-foaming overdrive, babbling some incoherent nonsense about "real Americans" and turning a hilarious shade of red. Those few right wing big name politicians not caught up in deviant sexual scandals or bribery investigations will appear on cable news shows calling for America to come to its senses and return the Congress to the Neo-Cons to thwart President Obama's secret socialist/jihadi/Marxist/Nazi agenda. Americans real and otherwise will laugh heartily and encourage their whacky antics, fascinated with the show. Our inboxes will be loaded with crazy funny e-mails from all kinds of committees and political action organizations with names like The John Wayne Eternal War Society, the Ronald Reagan Brigade or Virgins for Jesus.
Obama proved that the internet is the new battleground for political discourse and that that lesson won't be lost on the Neo-Con artists, except maybe the serious, lucid content part of the deal. While his presidential record so far is perfect since he's not president yet, he's bound to make a mistake or two once he's sworn in and actually on the job. Everything he does both good and bad will result in a cry for his impeachment, a recount of his landslide vote count and maybe even a demand to allow "real Americans" to declare that he is not "their" president. Pandora's box is open for business, and the gutter's the limit. For fans of this sort of thing, the fun is just beginning.
November 13, 2008
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 227
Life is a show and you're the star. It's show time and you're on! Break a leg.
SPAM IS MAIL TOO!
What's all this nonsense about the dangers of SPAM Mail? Some of us like our SPAM, thank you very much. Spam stand for Special Pain-in-the-Ass Mail and can be found in its own special folder in our e-mail. Some computers call this folder Bulk Mail, others Junk Mail, but it's best known as SPAM. Like regular junk mail that come to our mailboxes, it is filled with all sorts of unsolicited nonsense that we we can either throw away or open and read or simply toss in the shredder. In computers the shredder is the delete button, which tells you theses e-mails will be lost forever, unlike in your regular e-mail inbox, where deleting them sends them to your TRASH folder, where they sit until you feel like emptying that bin too.
It is widely reported that some SPAM is designed to rob your identity, and by simply opening the e-mail you let your electronic guard down for thieves to retrieve your personal information which is then used to empty your bank accounts, obtain lines of credit, loans and to purchase expensive items in your name and for which you will be liable. But that is the rare SPAM mail, so opening junk mail becomes an exciting game of chance as well as an opportunity to read advertisements for products ranging from practically free life insurance to hi-tech spot removers. Kind of like the Russian roulette of e-communications.
I for one would welcome an identity thief to steal my identity. If he or she could obtain substantial loans, buy expensive items and even purchase a new home in my name, well, they're better than me since I've been trying to do those same tricks with my own personal profile of electronic IDs without much luck at all. Maybe I've been going about it all wrong. Maybe if I steal my own identity then presumably the financial world will open up its vaults and credit lines to me. Since I open a lot of strange SPAM e-mail, perhaps some enterprising hacker out there is earnestly doing what I have failed to do over and over, to make me appear like a solid citizen worthy of unlimited credit and a sound investment for mortgage lenders.
One can only hope. I'd like to meet some of these diabolically clever hackers and glean some trade secrets. In today's world, though, nobody seems to ever meet anybody in person, so bulking up your electronic profile seems to be the way to go to gain prosperity. The loans, the mortgage and the meager credit that I have been able to secure in recent years have required me to meet exactly no one in person, with the occasional phone conversation wondering where last month's payment is being the only human interaction involved. Those phone calls are a welcome respite from anonymous electronic communication and an opportunity to meet people from India, many time zones away and in a pretty exotic place, too. I like to ask all sorts of cultural questions during these exchanges and have had some fruitful conversations.
At least fruitful on my end of the phone, since I get to learn a bit about life in India while on their end they rarely achieve the prompt payment they sought when they placed the call. I do like to think, however, that I made it worth their while anyway by teaching them some colorful American expressions and good old Brooklyn wisdom that can only help them in their job of dealing with payment-challenged Americans. The only disappointment is that the collectors from India all seem to have names like Freddy and Wendy and George, a surprising thing to me when my own Indian-American doctor here in Brooklyn is named Sanjay. You'd thing he'd be the one named George, no?
At any rate, who decides which mail is SPAM and which goes to the Inbox? My regular Inbox seems to attract just as much, if not more junk mail than my SPAM box, and I'm beginning to suspect that laws and regulations have been passed to limit the amount of SPAM on the internet. Where were all these legislators and regulators when the fat, aging and greedy preppies were breaking laws and shredding ethics rules while they almost destroyed our financial industries? That would have been a good area upon which to concentrate their righteous vigilance.
Instead, we're reduced to opening e-mails from the fictitious directors of the banks of China or Estonia telling us we've won millions of dollars or Euros in some internet lottery, just to dream of solvency, even if we know what a scam it is. And the regulators want to take that away too, our daydeams? This is not like physical junk mail that chops down entire forests to sell us abdomen exercise machines and miracle hair growth products, but resource-neutral electronic signals on an internet with infinite room for more and more information. The coaxial cables that carry the internet data are capable of handling many more times the information currently available. Beside, without SPAM, how would we keep up with all the psycho fringe groups advocating the immediate extermination of P.O.D.O., short for People Of Different Opinions. There's solid entertainment value there!
Or how about those groups who would have us worrying about people's cast-off pets in a world where 36,000 cast-off people die every single day from starvation? 36,000 cats and dogs sure don't die everyday from hunger! And a lot of World Hunger information comes to us as SPAM, and the ensuing Google searches some of these e-mails inspire can be valuable learning experiences. Lots of other SPAM mail sends us to search engines for more information, and if some of the information is frivolous, think of it like a parent encouraging their children to read: maybe the kids are reading silly comic books, but at least they're reading!
And think abut China, a nation that censors the internet. There's a ton of software engineers in China and no shortage of hackers. If anyone can get around official censorship, it's hackers, and who knows, maybe SPAM will one day set China free? The Chinese are a curious and industrious people, and what better way to pique their interest than SPAM mail from the SPCA babbling on about dogs, an integral part of the South Asian diet? The concept of their food as our pets ought to open up whole worlds of amusing dialogue and lead the Chinese to exploring the entire internet in spite of their government's attempts to shield them from some truly awful SPAM. SPAM leads to everything else out there in ether land, so who knows where their curiosity will take them? Perhaps to a new form of government. And just maybe the rest of the world can get a piece of the industrial action currently monopolized by the Chinese while they're distracted reading e-mails discussing better ways to wok their dogs. You never know. Long live SPAM!
It is widely reported that some SPAM is designed to rob your identity, and by simply opening the e-mail you let your electronic guard down for thieves to retrieve your personal information which is then used to empty your bank accounts, obtain lines of credit, loans and to purchase expensive items in your name and for which you will be liable. But that is the rare SPAM mail, so opening junk mail becomes an exciting game of chance as well as an opportunity to read advertisements for products ranging from practically free life insurance to hi-tech spot removers. Kind of like the Russian roulette of e-communications.
I for one would welcome an identity thief to steal my identity. If he or she could obtain substantial loans, buy expensive items and even purchase a new home in my name, well, they're better than me since I've been trying to do those same tricks with my own personal profile of electronic IDs without much luck at all. Maybe I've been going about it all wrong. Maybe if I steal my own identity then presumably the financial world will open up its vaults and credit lines to me. Since I open a lot of strange SPAM e-mail, perhaps some enterprising hacker out there is earnestly doing what I have failed to do over and over, to make me appear like a solid citizen worthy of unlimited credit and a sound investment for mortgage lenders.
One can only hope. I'd like to meet some of these diabolically clever hackers and glean some trade secrets. In today's world, though, nobody seems to ever meet anybody in person, so bulking up your electronic profile seems to be the way to go to gain prosperity. The loans, the mortgage and the meager credit that I have been able to secure in recent years have required me to meet exactly no one in person, with the occasional phone conversation wondering where last month's payment is being the only human interaction involved. Those phone calls are a welcome respite from anonymous electronic communication and an opportunity to meet people from India, many time zones away and in a pretty exotic place, too. I like to ask all sorts of cultural questions during these exchanges and have had some fruitful conversations.
At least fruitful on my end of the phone, since I get to learn a bit about life in India while on their end they rarely achieve the prompt payment they sought when they placed the call. I do like to think, however, that I made it worth their while anyway by teaching them some colorful American expressions and good old Brooklyn wisdom that can only help them in their job of dealing with payment-challenged Americans. The only disappointment is that the collectors from India all seem to have names like Freddy and Wendy and George, a surprising thing to me when my own Indian-American doctor here in Brooklyn is named Sanjay. You'd thing he'd be the one named George, no?
At any rate, who decides which mail is SPAM and which goes to the Inbox? My regular Inbox seems to attract just as much, if not more junk mail than my SPAM box, and I'm beginning to suspect that laws and regulations have been passed to limit the amount of SPAM on the internet. Where were all these legislators and regulators when the fat, aging and greedy preppies were breaking laws and shredding ethics rules while they almost destroyed our financial industries? That would have been a good area upon which to concentrate their righteous vigilance.
Instead, we're reduced to opening e-mails from the fictitious directors of the banks of China or Estonia telling us we've won millions of dollars or Euros in some internet lottery, just to dream of solvency, even if we know what a scam it is. And the regulators want to take that away too, our daydeams? This is not like physical junk mail that chops down entire forests to sell us abdomen exercise machines and miracle hair growth products, but resource-neutral electronic signals on an internet with infinite room for more and more information. The coaxial cables that carry the internet data are capable of handling many more times the information currently available. Beside, without SPAM, how would we keep up with all the psycho fringe groups advocating the immediate extermination of P.O.D.O., short for People Of Different Opinions. There's solid entertainment value there!
Or how about those groups who would have us worrying about people's cast-off pets in a world where 36,000 cast-off people die every single day from starvation? 36,000 cats and dogs sure don't die everyday from hunger! And a lot of World Hunger information comes to us as SPAM, and the ensuing Google searches some of these e-mails inspire can be valuable learning experiences. Lots of other SPAM mail sends us to search engines for more information, and if some of the information is frivolous, think of it like a parent encouraging their children to read: maybe the kids are reading silly comic books, but at least they're reading!
And think abut China, a nation that censors the internet. There's a ton of software engineers in China and no shortage of hackers. If anyone can get around official censorship, it's hackers, and who knows, maybe SPAM will one day set China free? The Chinese are a curious and industrious people, and what better way to pique their interest than SPAM mail from the SPCA babbling on about dogs, an integral part of the South Asian diet? The concept of their food as our pets ought to open up whole worlds of amusing dialogue and lead the Chinese to exploring the entire internet in spite of their government's attempts to shield them from some truly awful SPAM. SPAM leads to everything else out there in ether land, so who knows where their curiosity will take them? Perhaps to a new form of government. And just maybe the rest of the world can get a piece of the industrial action currently monopolized by the Chinese while they're distracted reading e-mails discussing better ways to wok their dogs. You never know. Long live SPAM!
LIFE EXPLAINED, PART 226
The descriptions of our operations are covered by self-stranger privilege when in public, legally preventing us from divulging unpleasant details and ruining the appetites of innocent bystanders. Do try to obey that law.
AND THEN THEN WERE NONE: MITCH MITCHELL DIES, LAST OF THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE
Yesterday Mitch Mitchell died, the last surviving member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, a band that changed rock & roll music forever. The band consisted of Jimi Hendrix on guitar and vocals, Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass and beginning in 1967, made three studio albums of music that would still sound fresh, new, and innovative if they were released tomorrow. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was a sensation not only with music fans but with their fellow musicians. The combination of Jimi Hendrix' innovative guitar work and Mr. Mitchell's propulsive and sensational drumming laid over Noel Redding's solid bass lines redefined the rock band. They didn't just expand the definition, they did away with any attempt to pigeonhole their music. It was Hendrix music, period, and it was great.
And for all the well-deserved acclaim given to Jimi Hendrix, he was not the only architect of his distinct sound. Mitchell's drumming was a unique hybrid of jazz and rock & roll drumming that was at once rhythmic and daring and at the same time dead square on the beat and muscularly locomotive in it's power. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was often called free-form in acknowledgement of the daring places it took the listener but the twin sherriffs of Mitchell on drums and the solid Noel Redding on bass laid down the law and kept order in town and forced the listener's foot to tap squarely in rock & roll four-four time. Upon that solid foundation Hendrix was free to build his electric guitar castles in the air. If that sounds like a contradiction, it was, and yet it worked, and that was the beauty of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Drummers ever since have considered Mitch Mitchell one of the true giants of percussion, a man who was all at once a solid drummer and an adventurous percussionist, his work sounding like that of two very busy musicians. But it was just him, a pale, skinny Englishman with outrageous hair and wild clothes flailing away behind a half dozen drums and cymbals, creating sinuous rhythms that seemed sometimes on the verge of getting away from him but never did. The man played the song, never doing more than was necessary and his playing always perfectly complementing the material. He was a musician's musician, never showing off what he knew just because he could, but serving the song at hand, quiet if it was called for, wild and off-the-wall if required, and always superbly tasteful and unique to himself.
Many of his drum riffs became an integral part of the compositions, like in "Manic Depression," "Fire" or the ballad "Little Wing," to name but a bare handful. When Jimi Hendrix turned his guitar sound inside out on songs like his great cover of Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower," Mitchell was the rock of Gibraltar holding back the raging sea, but also subtly playing with the beat right in synch with Jimi's guitar safaris to uncharted territory. Not many drummers could go where Jimi Hendrix did, but Mitch Mitchell could and did, his partner onstage and in the studio as an explorer, a musician and an innovator. Many time Hendrix would record basic tracks with just himself and Michell playing and feeding off one another to see where the music would take them, an unusual approach but a rewarding collaboration.
Jimi died at only 27 years old, but along with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, who passed away in 2003, these three men created some of the best rock & roll music ever created from 1967 to 1969. The 3 studio albums this trio recorded were: "Are You Experienced," "Electric Ladyland" and "Axis: Bold as Love." After Noel Redding left the group in 1969 Mitchell recorded 3 more albums with Hendrix, continuing to grow and build on the Jimi Hendrix Experience sound with "Cry Of Love," "Rainbow Bridge" and "War heroes." Theses last 3 were released after Jimi's untimely death in September, 1970, drawing on the wealth of unreleased Hendrix tracks.
Mitch Mitchell was 61 years old and had just finished playing a show of Hendrix material when he was found dead of natural causes in a Portland, Oregon hotel room. He never stopped paying drums and never stopped loving what he did for a living. The rest of us will never stop being in awe of his skill, his passion and his bold innovation. Bold as Love, indeed. Thank you Mitch Mitchell. You gave a lot more than you got, and there is no better legacy.
And for all the well-deserved acclaim given to Jimi Hendrix, he was not the only architect of his distinct sound. Mitchell's drumming was a unique hybrid of jazz and rock & roll drumming that was at once rhythmic and daring and at the same time dead square on the beat and muscularly locomotive in it's power. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was often called free-form in acknowledgement of the daring places it took the listener but the twin sherriffs of Mitchell on drums and the solid Noel Redding on bass laid down the law and kept order in town and forced the listener's foot to tap squarely in rock & roll four-four time. Upon that solid foundation Hendrix was free to build his electric guitar castles in the air. If that sounds like a contradiction, it was, and yet it worked, and that was the beauty of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Drummers ever since have considered Mitch Mitchell one of the true giants of percussion, a man who was all at once a solid drummer and an adventurous percussionist, his work sounding like that of two very busy musicians. But it was just him, a pale, skinny Englishman with outrageous hair and wild clothes flailing away behind a half dozen drums and cymbals, creating sinuous rhythms that seemed sometimes on the verge of getting away from him but never did. The man played the song, never doing more than was necessary and his playing always perfectly complementing the material. He was a musician's musician, never showing off what he knew just because he could, but serving the song at hand, quiet if it was called for, wild and off-the-wall if required, and always superbly tasteful and unique to himself.
Many of his drum riffs became an integral part of the compositions, like in "Manic Depression," "Fire" or the ballad "Little Wing," to name but a bare handful. When Jimi Hendrix turned his guitar sound inside out on songs like his great cover of Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower," Mitchell was the rock of Gibraltar holding back the raging sea, but also subtly playing with the beat right in synch with Jimi's guitar safaris to uncharted territory. Not many drummers could go where Jimi Hendrix did, but Mitch Mitchell could and did, his partner onstage and in the studio as an explorer, a musician and an innovator. Many time Hendrix would record basic tracks with just himself and Michell playing and feeding off one another to see where the music would take them, an unusual approach but a rewarding collaboration.
Jimi died at only 27 years old, but along with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, who passed away in 2003, these three men created some of the best rock & roll music ever created from 1967 to 1969. The 3 studio albums this trio recorded were: "Are You Experienced," "Electric Ladyland" and "Axis: Bold as Love." After Noel Redding left the group in 1969 Mitchell recorded 3 more albums with Hendrix, continuing to grow and build on the Jimi Hendrix Experience sound with "Cry Of Love," "Rainbow Bridge" and "War heroes." Theses last 3 were released after Jimi's untimely death in September, 1970, drawing on the wealth of unreleased Hendrix tracks.
Mitch Mitchell was 61 years old and had just finished playing a show of Hendrix material when he was found dead of natural causes in a Portland, Oregon hotel room. He never stopped paying drums and never stopped loving what he did for a living. The rest of us will never stop being in awe of his skill, his passion and his bold innovation. Bold as Love, indeed. Thank you Mitch Mitchell. You gave a lot more than you got, and there is no better legacy.
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