The Great American Mistake

Coca-Cola is America. Or so they are always telling us.

Can anybody really argue? It was invented in America, patented in America, peddled in America, and mutated into a thriving international megacorporation by generations of enterprising American businessmen over the last 125 years (happy anniversary, btw).

Coca-Cola is a potent symbol of American ingenuity, a shining emblem of American capitalism, and the perfect example of everything that is wrong about where we have come as a nation.

Fact: The syrup used by Coca-Cola bottlers (who are largely independently-owned and operated, although Coca-Cola, Inc. is a minority owner in most of them) is manufactured in the United States, the process involves spent coca leaves imported from South America, and the story is fascinating.

Fact: Foreign bottlers have the option of sweetening their country's Coca-Cola to local taste--the syrup is just the patented secret flavor and contains no sweeteners.

Fact: I buy my Coca-Cola from Mexico because they use real sugar instead of corn syrup.

Fact: Any American who tastes Mexican Coca-Cola will never go back to American Coca-Cola.

Fact: This should be phenomenally embarrassing for Coca-Cola, Inc. and yet they don't seem to care at all or have any plans to revert to using real sugar. Why would they? They are making a shit-ton of money ["Shit-ton" = 1 with 100 million zeroes after it. -Ed.] and sugar costs $0.02 more per shit-ton than corn syrup, so it makes NO sense from a corporate-bottom-line standpoint to make their beverage taste the way it used to and always should.

Fact: This is proof that American businessmen have their heads so far up their asses they only think in the short-term and don't care what customers want, only what they are willing to consume because they don't think they have a better option.

Estimated Market Price of a Rental Baby in Johannesburg

Is three dollars per day, according to the Harper's Index in the Jan.2011 issue.

Who rents these babies, you ask? Why, panhandlers, of course! Who else would you rent your defenseless baby to? It makes perfect sense--the panhandlers rent these babies to increase their daily wages by preying on sympathetic strangers and I guess the cost outweighs the benefit or there wouldn't be a market for it.

I also guess that for the most part these babies are returned unharmed or there wouldn't be a steady supply of babies, although that is just a guess. For all I know, the odds are 50/50 and the parents' desire to have the child/burden back is 50/50.

 
What sort of person rents out their baby to a panhandler in Johannesburg for the day? Is this person so desperate that they don't have any other choice and have thrown caution to the wind in the hopes of mere survival? Is it easier to let your baby do the work while you chill at home eating a $3 package of protein-enriched (hopefully) bonbons?

Or is this proof of yet another impending global movement backward--engineered by a bitter father named Karl Rove, most likely--where the babysitter pays the parent/s and the baby gets exactly the kind of crash-course in life he will need to survive, the Right gets an unregulated, cheap supply of labor/altar-boys, and everybody's too tired and malnourished to mount an effective rebellion?

Or is this baby rental thing all about the economy and I'm an idiot? Is this bonus baby-rental money allowing the impoverished parent/s of these children the luxury of purchasing a carton of "so cool" American cigarettes every week and it's so good for the American economy that all the rich people and their duped grassroots puppets will shoot you in the face with their concealed weapons if you try to be all communist and poke a hole in what is a mostly sorta-fine scheme they have going on? Well, if you discount the visceral discomfort experienced every waking moment by every single baby involved, that is--especially by those poor souls that never make it back to the rental house.

You know what? I should probably stop talking about it right now, lest I be branded un-American by the uneducated. I can't:

Will these poor children grow up at a record clip? What sort of indignities will they witness while lying on the sidewalk, teething on dirty broken beer bottles and used condoms, covering themselves in their own filth, occasionally getting yelled at by their smelly drunken homeless master, on whom his/her survival depends? What manner of squalor will they one day consider luxurious by comparison to their daily existence?

Don't Forget to Vote Today, Democrats!

Now that the Republicans have cast all those votes for every Representative up for election, it is time for the Democrats to take their turn.

Don't be intimidated by how many votes you will need to defeat the Party of No or by how many people tell you the polling place is no longer accepting votes--JUST DO YOUR CIVIC DUTY and get Democrats into office.

Why? Well, because although most of them are reprehensible human beings, they are slightly better than Republicans.

Here's why:

- They actually want to pass laws, rather than just say "No" to everything and accept bribes
- Most of them are in favor of stopping the ridiculous tax cuts for the rich and providing aid to the poor and unemployed
- They do not want to eliminate the IRS, EPA, Department of Education, or Social Security because they are smart enough to realize we would be TOTALLY FUCKED if that happened.
- They weren't members of the party that got us involved in two expensive wars, deregulated and then got into bed with the financial industry, and bailed out Wall Street with no strings attached

Do you need any other reasons?

Okay, they seem to frequent prostitutes a bit less than Repubs, fewer of them are self-loathing homosexual gaybashers, and their party chairman's wife makes the best potato pancakes you have ever eaten.

So get out there and vote, Democratic America!

Or risk 2 years of frustratingly constipated government/name-calling, as the Dark Side plots and rubs hands together mirthfully in a dark room, ushering in a 4-year period of pain, torture, and destruction unrivaled since the days of Sodom, after some as-yet-unnamed Teabagger demon rides a throne of skulls from the banks of the River Styx all the way to Warshington, atop a tidal wave of disembodied souls, and turns back the clock to 1848, when "shit was pure" and the evil corrupt rich white man ruled unequivocally, sans pesky liberal fruit flies buzzing around their luscious picnic basket full of money.

Your choice.

With love,
Your Senator

_

Inside Job

I have been covering the financial sector for quite some time now, as the sole correspondent for Tell It Like It Is News, so the facts, figures, and villains on display in Charles Ferguson's Inside Job were hardly new to me. I know what happened, I know who did it, and I know exactly why--greed.

With that in mind, there were a few moments I felt the movie dragged (1h45m felt like 2h30m), but overall it was a surprisingly slick production chock-full of beautiful visuals and some highly-entertaining gotcha moments that make it well-worth watching.

And, as an added bonus for the ladies out there, Matt Damon's voice is also on display for at least twenty minutes in total. Although I am so manly I shave the bottoms of my feet, I got chills everywhere whenever he spoke. Money well-spent, Sony Pictures Ltd Intl Inc Megacorporation Nation-State.

Much like the villains in this tragedy have always claimed, there will be plenty of people out there who will hem and haw and tell you everything isn't black and white and it's really complicated but actually rich people getting richer helps poor people somehow.

If you believe these people you are dumb and you know it, which strikes at an important point of similarity that people in the media never seem to point out:

Just as the financial market demolition expert (aka 'Investment Banker') gets his conscience to swallow enormous lies in a series of more easily digestible incremental white lies, truth-bending, and questionable justifications, the Average American engages in a similar series of incremental lies regarding their limited exposure to ruin, the volatile nature of the "free-market" economy, the trustworthiness of those in power, the priorities of the rich, and the extent to which pure evil has permeated our society.

In other words, just as the banker knowingly swallows the lie that he is not evil, his victim also swallows the lie that the banker is not evil.

And so, whether he realizes it or not, the victim is kicked down another rung on that great big ladder from serfdom to Lord, forced to scramble to make ends meet, cut back on spending, get another job, get deeper in debt, etc, until the house of cards ultimately crumbles--at which point he is hopefully old enough to die.

I am a firm believer that the root of most of the problems facing America today is the fact that people don't want to know what is happening in the annals of power. They intentionally ignore the news, ignore the altruistic activists, ignore the canaries in the coal mines, because deep down they know the Warshington/Wall Street elite is so evil they would rather not know the details. Ignorance is bliss, none of my business, everything seems fine, that's just the way things go, the market is cyclical, the Matrix is actually pretty cool, yadda yadda yadda.

Well, to all of you out there who think ignoring a problem of this magnitude is okay because you have yet to be turned out on the street yourself, remember this:

The ostrich with his head in the sand eventually gets bitten in the ass.

_

Return to Serfdom

How do you know your job sucks? When they attach semi-permanent suicide nets to your employee housing:

Foxconn Technology Group — the Taiwanese company that manufactures hardware for Apple, Dell, HP, Nokia and Sony and has been hit by a dozen suicides at its plants this year — is holding rallies at all of its factories to raise morale. The theme? “Treasure Your Life, Love Your Family, Care for Each Other to Build a Wonderful Future.” The impact so far? Check out the picture above.

In case the rallies, slogans and pay increases don’t raise morale enough to stem the tide of suicides, Foxconn left suicide nets in place at its facilities that are designed to catch workers before they hit the ground, although it removed them from one facility.
"No matter how hard we try, such things will continue to happen,” is how Louis Woo, assistant to the founder of Foxconn’s parent company Hon Hai Precision Industry explained the situation at its factories, in a statement.

After the rallies, Foxconn left them up at all of its factories except for its Taiyuan Campus location, said Woo in his phone statement, because more employees there have the support of their friends and family. The nets remain in place at the other facilities.

(courtesy Wired)

Strange that an employee workforce of 470,000 people [Literally! -Ed.] living in dormitories on the same campus would not make some friends to build support networks.

Or maybe when they try the prison guards dump barrels of hot oil on them and stretch them on one of the racks in the mess hall?

If there was ever a more direct modern parallel to medieval serfdom, I don't know I don't what that would be...

Long live King Woo, Lord of Foxconn Castle, loyal subject of King American Corporations!

_

Beware the Conservative Constrictor

My first reaction to the news that the Governor of Louisiana has just signed into law legislation that makes it legal for permit holders to carry concealed weapons in houses of worship was laughter. 

Finally, some crazy legislation that I can get behind!

Maybe if laws like these make church even scarier for those people on the religious fence, less of them will go there to waste their time and money getting brainwashed by creeps.

On top of that, why not segregate the armed fanatics and let them kill each other over some minor difference in the interpretation of the Bible as it may--or may not--relate to the local sports team.

Give that fly-on-the-wall Christ-on-his-Cross some goddamned entertainment, I say.

And then my second realization struck me--this is simply one more in a long series of backwards Conservative victories of late--legalized racism, leniency for the banks, revolts over better health care, corporate-sponsored elections--and it seems like it is happening all too easily.

Like they've practiced it. Like they're well-practiced at it.

After all, we are in a fairly catastrophic economic depression right now--that they caused, of course--and yet they are successfully using it as ammunition against the Liberals and the forces of good.

The total lack of logic here is startling only until you think about how easily controlled people are by the forces of evil. I mean, look how powerful the Church is, despite the fact there is not one bit of logic associated with it (faith being allergic to logic, of course), despite the fact that the number of Christian fanatics these days seems favorably tied to the number of exposed serial child molesters in their ranks.

If we take the bait and assume the Conservatives are forces of evil, then they must also be capable of using frighteningly awful deeds to further their interests.

What if, throughout history, the Conservatives (who have worn many different political uniforms over the years, mind you--generally whatever was in fashion) have not only deliberately underfunded education in order to keep the sheep content with the ass-end of life, but also intentionally caused recessions and depressions in order for The Men in Charge, in the ensuing panic, to get a tighter grip on the throat of the populace, to stir up trouble that warrants extreme measures of their choosing, to gorge themselves on the public coffers, to gradually get power and weapons in subservient hands?

What if the these Reagan/Bush years we have endured of late represent the crowning achievement of The Men in Charge in their millenia-long struggle to tax its serfdom to unbelievable yet invisible amounts and their struggle to raise the largest army in the world without paying a dime?

They enact a big tax cut for the rich and a small tax cut for the working classes, then use all of it to pay their companies too much money to do things that are not needed, to let the banks they all own borrow our money interest-free and gamble it for profit--with no promise of repayment, and to reward themselves with exotic holidays to places where gay prostitutes know how to keep their mouths shut.

All it takes to achieve such heights, after all, is a nation of self-absorbed rubes, a tight grip on the reins of power, subtle yet effective propaganda, clever empty promises, the patience to turn the screws slowly, a complete lack of compassion when breaking a few billion eggs, and the wisdom to know the best time to strike.

It may not be true, but it may not be wrong. Regardless, every time you wonder how it is that we are living in such a fucked-up society, remember the wisdom of the Dude: "It's like Lenin said, you know? You look for the person who benefits and...y'know?"

Well, the Conservatives are the only ones benefiting these days, so it's not as far-fetched as it may sound at first blush that their generations-long agenda is crushing the blue-collar torso of our country like a gargantuan boa constrictor.

Every time the Liberals come in to rescue us after a bad stretch and we breathe a sigh of relief at their arrival, the Conservative Constrictor just laughs and squeezes a little tighter, that much closer to their goal.

It's all part of the plan.

_

Politics is Politics is Politics

It's so weird that the Democrats are not sticking it to Wall Street right now in the much-blathered-about Financial Reform Bill, considering they have the votes and there is a bipartisan public outcry for real reform, right?

There has never been a better chance to help the little guys, right?

Wrong. While the time is certainly ripe for reform, there is unfortunately an election this fall and, therefore, the financial titans are in the perfect position to play one side against the other to get the watered-down 'reform' they want.

If incumbent Republicans don't use every childish trick in the book to delay votes, reject amendments, and extract toothless compromises, they won't get any money and they will lose their elections to even-more-nutjobby Teabaggers.

If Democrats (who receive more funding from Wall Street than the GOP, by the way) stand tall and clamp down on derivatives (among other issues), Goldman Sachs--who stands to lose 41% of their earnings--will make sure Republicans won every seat in November to overturn the law before it takes effect.

Thus, the pickle we are in and why we will stay in this pickle we have been in for quite some time now. Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and those pesky SEC lawsuits against Goldman will ultimately amount to little more than huffing and puffing and a whole bag full of money for a bunch of lawyers.


Sadly, in order to perform any potential future good, the Democrats need to take a dive in order to stockpile every penny they can get from Wall Street or the Republicans nutjobs will crush them and the nation will be handed once again to the heedless, farting toddlers obsessed with deficit nonchalance, corporate tax cuts, propaganda, environmental destruction, "family values for you not me," and the raping of the middle-class-cum-working-poor.

The really bad news, however, is that there will always be another election waiting in the shadows and there will always be those--on either side of our two-headed monster--that will vote against what is just in order to line their pockets with gold.

...and you wonder why not a single city in the United States made it into the top thirty in Mercer's Best Places to Live in the World survey (Honolulu was 31st).

How have all these other (European, Canadian, Oceanic) nations figured out how to bribe and steal while also giving the people a better quality of life? Are they just slightly less greedy? I might have to head over to Germany and do some research...

Gute Nacht!

_

Trojan Horse Capitalism

Sit down here on my knee, little boy, and let me tell you a story. Don't worry, I'm not a priest--you have nothing to fear.

That's a good boy...now where was I...oh, yeah:


Once upon a time, there was a successful family company that got a bit too big for its britches, was bursting at the seams, shall we say, and one of the owner's sons, the greedy one, decided this company had a great opportunity to balloon into a massive money machine. After much in-fighting, and maybe even the death of the old man, the greedy son got his way and sought the advice of a greedy banker, who was more experienced in this sort of thing.

In exchange for a large sum of money, the banker advised the company to seek outside capital in order to expand at an unreasonable rate, undercut competition, corner the market, and raise prices. Once the company went public, there was no turning back and everything went according to plan. The stock became increasingly valuable, the family grew wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, the wolfiest wolves in the wolf business acquired as much stock as they could get their hands on, and they quickly began hounding the executives for increasingly outlandish profits to satisfy their bottomless appetites.

Manufacturing was streamlined, raw materials were either bargained down to extortionate deals or vertically integrated right into the monster, labor unions were fought tooth and nail, pennies were pinched, and still it was not enough.

Over time, the family and its loyalists were either phased out, neutered, or converted. Hired guns were brought in, unsympathetic to the needs of other humans, and the successful business was rewired from the ground up.


Manufacturing was outsourced to China, customer service inquiries were fed to call centers in India, benefits were reduced for every employee not in the executive ranks, millions of dollars were spent in order to avoid responsibility for environmental damage, taxes were dodged, and lawyers and lobbyists were hired by the dozen to insulate the new company from all responsibility, to protect it from all restrictions.

Millions more were funneled to media conglomerates through Madison Avenue, in order to make this cold behemoth appear friendly. A revisionist vintage logo was drawn up, folksy commercials were produced, corporate practices were greenwashed, the truth was buried, and what had once been a profitable family company with visible virtues and flaws, with a sense of community, a (relative) sense of decency, is now little more than a cuddly, helpful, responsible wooden horse with a perverted profit monster inside, lying in wait for the best opportunity to murder the entire world in their sleep, as soon as there is a buck in it.

Now, who wants a fucking Twinkie?


_

Health Care and the Assholes Who Hate America

I'm not entirely sure why I've waited so long to weigh-in on the health care issue, but I have.

I think my reluctance is partially due to the fact that I believed nothing save disappointment would come of it. Lofty goals dragged through the mud by greedy politicians on both sides of the aisle, etcetera.

Yes, un/fortunately, I've gotten to the point in my life where I have read enough books, read enough newspapers, known enough people, lived in the world as a man with my eyes and ears open, and been burned too many times before.

In short, I have become far too jaded for a man of my years and the zaniness of the health care debate just made me sick and tired of it all, made me want to withdraw even farther from the world outside my window, lest I get to the point where I do something so crazy it would work, like recruiting a willing prostitute and paying her to fuck her way through Congress, as I strangle every sonuvabitch post-coitus and we all start over.


Many people in this country with the best of intentions have railed against Obama. I'm not talking about the Teabaggers here, or your typical corporate-lackey Republican dickbags. I'm talking about everyday Americans, many of whom are Democrats, many of whom who voted for Obama. They have mostly spoken out in private, like my accountant's wife did the other day, but others have stepped out in public with their critique.

What are they angry about? That Obama is spending too much time dealing with the health care situation and not enough time creating jobs. As if that was easy to do in the world we live in.

I hate to call you out on it, Mrs. Accountant, et al, but if you think long and hard about it, you will see the connection, you will realize that Obama is fighting on your side and doing the best he can.

You see, what he and the Congressional Democrats worth their salt have been doing for the past year is only in part battling for health care reform. Obviously, they have also been dealing with the Great Depression Redux and normal day-to-day matters of state, but, most importantly, they have been scrapping behind the scenes with the greatest enemy our country has ever known--our own greed.

This greed is manifest in a Brobdingnagian python called "Special Interest" that has nearly strangled the life out of our political establishment, as it twists around the Capitol Building, squeezing harder every time the nation exhales.

Until you slay this python, nothing is possible, much less creating jobs out of thin air. This task is not an easy one--in ancient times, it would have called for a Theseus, in modern times, apparently it called for an Obama.


Now, I am not a blind fan of his, mind you--nor am I even a Democrat. I am an independent thinker who is smart enough to align myself with the Democrats for the time-being--although they themselves are far from perfect--since we live in a country that unfortunately allows us only two realistic choices.

I definitely had my doubts about Obama's performance, and continued to have them for quite some time. I started to believe he was crumbling under his own inability to recognize the impossibility of non-partisan politics, the true strength of special interests, the futility of his efforts, the precarious nature of his position.

His grand plan didn't hit me until health care gave its final push, seemed suddenly on the verge of success, and it was then I realized the full effect of his masterstroke--he spent the entire last year trying to reach across the aisle and get Republican input because he knew that either way it would work out in the nation's favor.

Either the Republicans would participate and help to hammer something out, or they would strut around the henyard looking like deranged assholes in the media for an entire year, and he would ram it down their throats anyway.

Clearly, the latter scenario has played out and I must say I am in awe of his patience, his plotting. The Republicans (and many Democratic beards) have been assholes for decades, but they have always been able to skate, have never really been called out en masse.

The beauty of Obama's method is that the health care debate went on long enough that too many Republicans said too many idiotic things, too many Republicans went down in homosexual/extramarital/corruption scandals, too many Republicans came up with zero alternative plans, and right when they thought they were ramping-up to take over Congress and set themselves up for a repeat of the 'glorious' Bush years, they have been decimated.

They not only lost the health care battle, but looked like complete assholes in the bargain. Everything they said was recorded, everything was written about. Best of all, the drama went on long enough that it even managed to filter down to people who don't ordinarily follow politics or watch the news. Many Republican supporters have come out against them as a result of their actions, of their ridiculously juvenile and sinister methods.

This new, energized environment will hopefully allow for easier passage of other necessary measures--jobs legislation, financial reform, gay marriage, education, etc.--and those wavering, could-be converts to the Democratic cause might finally realize that the Republicans do not care a lick about their plight, about America, about true freedom. Their one goal is make more money for their masters, since they know they will get a nice fat cut when it's time to retire and they somehow land a cushy part-time job that pays them 6-7 figures for playing golf all week.

Yes, the health care victory has emboldened Democratic leadership, buoyed them in the polls, inspired the previously lackadaisical electorate, and, most importantly, stomped on the throat of the Republican Misinformation Asshole Authority (DC Local 600).

The dawning of a new era seems possible.


Which isn't to say that I have just dropped acid, decked myself out in flowers, and done a rain dance out of deluded excitement for a world without evil, but we are now, without a doubt, living in a world where evil has at the very least been taken down a notch, and I need to take what I can get.

Of course, the Republicans are not one to admit this defeat and have responded in typical fashion:

1. 32 Republicans have filed ridiculous amendments to the health care bill, knowing that all Democrats will have to vote against them to ensure passage of the bill. Get ready for election commercials along these lines: "He voted against a measure to deny Viagra to known pedophiles. Is this the kind of man you want in charge of the future of your children?"

2. Others went home crying, like sore losers do, their flaccid penises dragging between their legs, whined to their loyal asshole cronies that it isn't fair, that they need to do something about this fast, and are now fighting the health care bill in state courts, where you know it can unfortunately take an eternity to get a result--while rich lawyers rake in taxpayer dollars, while benefits are potentially delayed.

Meanwhile, the Republican leadership tries to regroup, tries to brainstorm how a relative handful of crazy assholes can reclaim the most powerful country on Earth and use it for evil.

Meanwhile, all the corporations shaking in their boots at what the future may hold will continue to fund them, will increase their lobbying efforts, will continue to buy everyone that is to be bought, will do everything in their power to maintain the regrettable pre-health-care status quo.


Like it or not, we are at a tipping point. We can be redeemed or we can tumble down the bottomless pit.

Only time will reveal our fate, but everything on me is crossed right now--even my eyes--and my hope for the future has been restored.

Let's not blow this.

_

A Little of the Old In-Out, In-Out

It pleases me to report some good news on the economic front, friends, for Great Britain has struck a mighty blow for the little bloke!

Alistair Darling, the U.K.'s Chancellor of the Exchequer -- sort of like a Treasury Secretary, but with more pluck -- announced today that he will impose an immediate, one-time 50-percent tax on bonuses of more than 25,000 pounds (about $40,800). That's on top of regular income taxes.

The New York Times calls it"the most direct attack on bonuses anywhere in the world."

(courtesy Huffington Post)

Indeed! And rightly so, all things considered.

Meanwhile, as Goldman Sachs tries to hustle through their $16.7 billion bonus pool and Lehman Brothers...oh, yeah--they died without our support...nevermind, President Obama and the fine fellows in Congress have responded with...silence.

Nobody is even half-heartedly saying something, testing the waters, or making hollow promises to look into it. Nothing.

Huh? Is this not the perfect situation for a bandwagon ride? Like dominoes, these bonuses should fall, but our government is too afraid of their pinstripe-suited master, and so, once again, a grand opportunity for change will pass.

Hey, Obama--remember this?


It should be more than just a sexy graphic, you know...

_

The Smiley Face Is the New Fuck You

So I was told recently by a group of friends that I am too negative, that my glass isn't even half-empty, but broken. "Why don't you just slit your wrists?" one of them sai

I tried to explain that just because I believe mankind’s Achilles heel is its own human nature, that a world full of 95% beatific lovebirds would unfortunately be enslaved by the other 5% with guns and no conscience, that there is no way to fix the American/global political/economic system, does not mean that I find my own existence hopeless.

Convincing them proved impossible. Was it because they weren’t listening, just acting on their own instincts and jumping to conclusions? Was it because I wasn’t clear? Was it because I am wrong and I do want to kill myself but just don’t know it yet?

Fear not, loyal reader who stumbled upon this site when Googling “Real Dolls”"Face Fuck" (it works--try it!), my end shan't come by mine own hand. I am not that kind of guy.

You see, I want nothing more than to live, to experience as much as I can while I can. Life is an adventure that I wish could last forever, but it can't--I will die some day. It is inevitable.

Equally as inevitable is the fact that while drinking in the endless beauty in this world, I too-frequently choke on a spot of sewage. Hey, whoa, whatever--sweetness and shit...that's life, right?

Right. Which was really the only point I was trying to make--no matter what we good people do, no matter how many wonderful happy things there are in the world, there will always be evil lurking. Always. And much like in Star Wars, the Dark Side is far more powerful, far wealthier; less like Star Wars, we have no Jedi on which to pin our hopes.

It is not pessimism that leads me to such a conclusion--it is realism. A common excuse, I know, but hear me out. Have you optimists not studied your history? Have you optimists not been reading the paper the last...since you've been alive? Has our government--or any government, for that matter--ever not been corrupt? Have there ever not been wars? Have many of these wars not been fought for religious reasons, of all hypocrisies? If we can't even trust our monks to not rape our children, whom can we trust?

(check this out)

Unfortunately, groups of people need leaders or nothing good ever happens (what does that say about us, by the way?). Have you ever gone to Las Vegas with 13 people who are "just there to have some fun and don't really care what they do?" I have--they do nothing. Or they do 13 things for five minutes each and spend the entire weekend in a taxi, stopping only to pay covers. Either way nobody has any fun or gets anything done and that's my point. They need a leader.

Whether that/those leader(s) is a monarch, a Parliament, a triumvirate, a President, or a Chieftan, it makes no difference. Those in power will eventually exploit those not in power, whether for sadistic or materialistic reasons.

If you are lucky enough to be a citizen of the Western World, your politicians smile and make promises, purport to be moral--all the while doing whatever is in their own best interests, which almost always makes your life worse and usually involves one of two ploys:

1. Talking a lot and doing nothing, when not in a hotel room with a prostitute (or sometimes even when they are in said hotel room, it makes me smile to say). This is a great tactic if they don't want their opponent in the next election (which they need to start thinking about as soon as they win the last one) to be able to say they supported a nefarious cause.

2. Blowing with the evil wind as they Kowtow to the quasi-legal bribes--campaign contributions, vacations, consultancies post-term, and/or favors for their otherwise inert offspring--offered by corporations through lobbyists (who I think we should just start referring to as Hessians), when not in a hotel room with a prostitute, because this not only makes them wealthy, but greatly aids their reelection since they will never want for campaign funds against a more honest candidate. Besides, if everybody else in their party is doing the same thing, it's hard for somebody to stand out as a bad guy--it just becomes 'party politics.'

If you are a citizen of the rest of the world, if you don't join them, you had better do as you're goddamn told or they kill you--or put you in a dungeon for the rest of your life. Your choice!

But just as there are happy people in China who lead good, honest lives beneath the shadow of an oppressive regime, I lead a good honest life in America. Just because I am aware that history has my back on the whole 'power corrupts' angle (and the whole 'the corrupt seek power' angle, while we're at it) doesn't mean that I let it bring me down. Much like the farmer in China, I simply am aware of the menace and try to avoid it at all costs while I do my own thing in a bubble of relative contentment. It's what I do.

It's what we all do--when we walk by a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk in the freezing cold, when we pay $12 for a beer at a basketball game, when our second consecutive governor is indicted, when the first four stories on the news involve grisly murders and rapes. We pretend it didn't happen, that it couldn't be as pervasive as it seems. It must just be the media exaggerating things, it couldn't be true that these problems were actually worse in the era before cameras, fingerprints, DNA tests, democracy, laws, the internet...right?

We bury our heads in our asses and get on with our lives.

But every time I come up for air, I find the world smells even worse than I remember, upon close examination of its inhabitants. Whether or not we like to admit it, the beauty that we know and love has a dark side that is something fierce and eventually it will swallow us whole before sashaying off as if nothing happened.

This will not happen in my lifetime, nor yours, nor that of any lawmaker, which is why many of them act as if they don't care about global warming, a fair distribution of wealth, or education--they are greediest when there are no direct consequences. As are most of us.

The reason we don't admit this to ourselves is because it is much better to imagine that our instincts are pure, the world will go on forever, good will triumph over evil, and there are only tiny pockets of problems in an otherwise gorgeous Garden of Eden. This is a comforting thought. Most people believe in God or follow a religion for the same reason--it is far easier than being burdened with the truth, that there is no meaning of life, that we are just here as one of many quirks in the universe, much like the badger, or bacteria.

Ever since I was younger than I should have been to know what a CEO was, I wanted to be one. I was a smart kid with lavish dreams and I wanted to be fabulously wealthy. CEOs are paid obscene amounts of money for decision-making and never have to break a sweat; it made sense.

I had a brain for business, as it turned out, and things were looking good. In high school, my favorite electives were Intro to Business, Business Law, Business Management, Accounting...I even won an accounting trophy! (Don't ask) I entered Northwestern University as an Economics major, but one of the reasons I went there over other schools was that they offered many more options should I change my career goals--top journalism, music, and theater programs, as well as a great film program (although not these days).

This was important because the more I learned about how to succeed in business, the less I wanted to be in business. To the detriment of mankind, good business decisions are rarely good decisions.

Fire a talented, loyal employee because you can pay a replacement less money? Done. Demand that your $20,000/year secretary have at least a master's degree and five years' experience? Done. Cancel your employee pension plan because the overpaid executives made too many bad decisions and your stockholders reaped too many dividends too soon? Done. Pay slave wages to Asians toiling in horrific work environments and pollute at will, in order to compete with all the other companies doing the same thing? Done. Bribe the government to let you keep making money at the expense of the health and happiness of the world? Done.

Once I gave up on my businessman dreams, I went searching for something that I would enjoy doing, something I was good at and felt good about doing.

I flirted with journalism, but realized that I did not want to spend ten years writing about PTA meetings at the fifth-grade level, a helpless puppet of some vast, self-serving media empire that wears its politics in its wallet. Political science? Yeah, right--try getting ahead in politics while still being able to look at yourself in the mirror.

Eventually, I realized that the most fun I ever had was making movies for class projects in high school, despite the fact that I spent easily 100 grueling hours to create a 30-45 minute low-budget costume epic that could have been a 5-minute unedited piece of shit shot in my kitchen by a dad with the shakes.

For better or worse, the fates and I chose the arduous path of the idealistic artist, easily the least-lucrative career I could devise. Especially if you have a bit of a motivation problem.

Once entrenched in the film industry in Los Angeles, however, I quickly confirmed that the film business is little more than a business these days, even for respected artists. Great movies still get made, but they are so rare it is embarrassing. Most movie ideas come from untalented film executives worried about their jobs at Must Have More Profit At Any Cost Corporation, Inc. And so P.T. Anderson struggles to get a movie made because easily-frightened investors would rather shell out for Shrek 4: His Shit is Green.

If Mr. Boogie Nights/There Will Be Blood has that much trouble, as an established auteur, what would it take for me to break in and how would it be any different once I got there?

There needs to be a game change if the movie biz is to survive, one which I believe is nigh. Nigh, I tell you! Online video is clearly the future, but its ultimate channels of distribution remain chaotically unclear. The necessary revenue streams are not yet visible. The art of cinema is in flux and, unlike photography, painting, and sculpting, movies are not only crazy expensive but require much more manpower. I can make it for the web, but how does this help me eat and pay rent? I can make it for the theaters, but how would I get a 1970s character piece without a love interest distributed by the big guys in a marketplace overrun by vampires, romcoms, and children's toys?

This continues to be a disheartening revelation. Short of moving to upstate New York and selling handcrafted furniture out of my garage as I fill the basement with banker's boxes of unpublished fiction and philosophy tomes, what the 'F' am I gonna do with my life that I can feel good about?

As much as it sucks, I guess I need to be an artist who works outside of the system, even if that means nobody notices, and I need to be really productive without encouragement, even if I never make any money. Besides, how many artists died penniless, only to be revered centuries later, when rich men start measuring their dicks with VanGoghs and Latrecs?

I don't have a figure, but I'm sure it is a lot, or too many, at any rate. So the next time you see one, hug a starving artist--especially if he seems depressed. Hell, give him a few bucks while you're at it--he's way more lovable than your average bum or banker and you just might melt away a bit of his disenchantment with the world.

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His and Hers Apocalypse

If I must choose, I will go with Team Jacob, since his lone fan in this photo
is also the only one with whom I would ever consider having sex.

There has been a lot of barking from the men around here lately that New Moon is one of the foretold horsemen signaling 'the end of cinema as an art form,' or something to that effect, and that women--especially teenage girls--are to blame.

I have no bone to pick with this assertion, as I am inclined to agree, but I wonder if we would have the same opinion as to which horseman it was, although I'm sure we would all agree it wasn't the first.

After all, many of these same poo-pooing men paid money to see Transformers 2, even though they figured they wouldn't like it--and were correct.

Was the first Transformers movie not a previous horseman of said apocalypse? And yet they allowed their ticket revenue to fuel at least two sequels (yes, a third one is already slated for a 2011 release), thereby actively supporting the creation of the same awful movies they lament.


The problem here is not that women are supporting movie franchises that pander to the fifth-grade-educated masses, like Harry Potter and Twilight, but that men are doing the same thing on the other side of the aisle with Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Star Trek (I won't mention the second Star Wars trilogy, out of reverence for the first, but I should, so I kinda half-did).

The bottom line: It's the same as it was with Bush's eight year reign--people from all walks of life and of both sexes are to blame.

If Lord of the Rings proved anything to movie executives, it's that special effects tied to a popular fantasy book series can reap billions of dollars for rich white men, whether or not there is an interesting, enjoyable, well-paced story. As a result, we live in a PG-13 world and our movie screens are now filled with little but superheroes, animated toys, hobbits, wizards, and vampires.

Until everybody realizes their money is their vote, as far as which movies get made, and starts treating their moviegoing decisions more seriously, there will be no reversal of course. Nobody is going to take the time, effort, and risk required to make good movies if they can make more money making bad ones. It is simple supply & demand economics: the more money these awful movies make, the more awful movies there will be to choose from at the multiplex.

Hell, there may be 100 Transformers/Twilight movies by the time they stop turning a profit. How long was Cats on Broadway? 18 years. How many episodes of Guiding Light have aired so far? 15,000.

Perhaps we have slipped into a second 'age of the serial' without even knowing it, where $300 million tentpoles have replaced 10-minute Keystone Cops shorts. If this is true, at least we can assume it is cyclical and we will once again see the light, once again have a decade like the 1970s. If it isn't...the Earth will either need to be blasted by an intelligence ray or a Roland-Emmerich-style world-exploding death ray.

I'm rooting for the intelligence ray, although my wager is modest.


Speaking of the apocalypse, beloved film icon Michael Bay has decided to put his spin on the Mayan 2012 prediction. Here is a summary of 2012: The War for Souls, set for a 2010 release, courtesy of imdbpro:

An academic researcher who opens a portal into a parallel universe and makes contact with his double in order to stop an apocalypse foreseen by the villainous ancient Mayans. And he also discovers that there are multiple copies of the Earth that co-exist in different dimensions. All of the versions of Earth are threatened by an apocalypse that is to occur in December 21, 2012! December 21, 2012 is the date of an apocalypse prophesied in the ancient Mayan calendar. The researcher makes contact with another version of himself on another Earth by opening a portal into a parallel universe. He contacts the double to try and stop the prophecy from being fulfilled at all costs.

Summary written by Anthony Pereyra

Not the best grammarian, that Anthony Pereyra, but I think he was able to communicate clearly on one point--this movie will suck in many dimensions.

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AOL Not Done Hemorrhaging Money Quite Yet

AOL--once worth $164 billion only nine years ago when they bought Time Warner--is now worth a relatively meager $5.7 billion, loses 200,000 subscribers a month, and is getting unceremoniously kicked out of the Time Warner fold on December 9th, six years after the AOL was dropped from AOL Time Warner after a $99 billion loss in one year.

Despite the fact that things have only been looking down for AOL, they assure you they are still relevant.

Seriously! Just because everybody who has an AOL account is over the age of 45 and thinks AOL is the internet does not mean they can't compete with Google. I mean...they just have so many unique products to offer...like...uhm...web advertising and stuff.

Aware they needed a massive directional shift, they recently brought in a former Google executive to turn things around, handed out millions to Madison Avenue ad/research firms, and decided that on December 9th their new logo will look like this:

What more could they possibly need, right? Careful not to blink--you might miss their instant, meteoric rise to the top of the technology industry.

In case you are an idiot and don't get it, let the overpaid AOL peeps explain:

"The period in the logo was added to suggest “confidence, completeness,” Ms. Wilson said, by declaring that “AOL is the place to go for the best content online, period.”

Mr. Armstrong said he liked to describe the period as “the AOL dot” because “the dot is the pivot point for what comes after AOL,” whether it is e-mail, Web sites or coming offerings that will “surprise people.”

The constantly changing images behind the logo are also intended to elicit surprise, said Ms. Wilson and Jordan Crane, creative director at Wolff Olins New York.

“It’s a mix of do-it-yourself and high production values, crazy stuff and elegant stuff,” Mr. Crane said, “simple and engaging and bizarre — all the things the Internet is.”

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

Man, do those folks at Leo Burnett, Wolff Olins, and AOL know how to milk money out of a dying cow! Maybe they would do a more thorough, effective job if their salaries actually depended on the performance of the company?

But what do I know--I'm (sadly?) not in the bullshit business and I didn't lose $16 billion in the first three months of this year...I got no cred!

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Entire Peruvian Nation Now On Master Cleanse

You're looking at about 3.6 million pounds...sterling!

No matter what the fashion, cosmetics, and film industries say, there is new and undeniable evidence that fat people ARE worth something these days.

And it is turning them into walking targets:

LIMA, Peru — A gang in the remote Peruvian jungle has been killing people for their fat, police charged Thursday, draining it from their corpses and offering it on the black market for use in cosmetics. Medical experts expressed skepticism that a major market for fat might exist.

Three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, said Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police. He said the suspects, two of whom were arrested carrying bottles of liquid fat, told police it was worth $60,000 a gallon ($15,000 a liter).

...Mejia said Castillejos confessed that the gang would cut off its victims' heads, arms and legs, remove the organs, then suspend the torsos from hooks above candles that warmed the flesh as the fat dripped into tubs below.

Six members of the gang remain at large, Mejia said, adding that in addition to the five killings the suspects confessed to, the gang may be involved in dozens more. Castillejos told police that the band's fugitive leader, 56-year-old Hilario Cudena, has been killing to extract fat from victims for more than three decades.

At least 60 people are listed as missing in Huanuco province, where the gang allegedly operated, this year alone, though the province is also home to drug-trafficking leftist rebels.

Mejia said police received a tip four months ago that human fat from the jungle was being sold in Lima. In August, he said, police infiltrated the band and later obtained some of the amber fluid, which a police lab confirmed as human fat.

...Police named the band the "Pishtacos" after a Peruvian myth dating to pre-Columbian times of men who killed to extract human fat, quartering their victims with machetes.

Mejia said Castillejos claimed his was not the only gang engaged in such killings.

...Dr. Adam Katz, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia medical school, was incredulous when told about the Peruvian ring.

"I can't see why there would be a black market for fat," he said. "It doesn't make any sense at all because in most countries we can get fat so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing and ready to donate that I don't see why there would ever be a black market for fat, of all tissues." (read full article here)

Whether or not the existence of a black market for human fat should exist is irrelevant--it seems unlikely that these gang members would go through all that disgusting butchery/rendering for no reason, so they MUST be selling that fat to somebody for something.

Can it really be that hard to figure out whom? Or are the culprits too well-connected to face consequences? If this is all part of another risky Wall Street investment scheme, I swear I'm gonna...wait a minute--this could be just the miracle cure we've been looking for all this time!

Considering the favorable trade-off between liposuction costs and black-market fat prices--especially once costs go down as the number of procedures skyrockets--there might be some real money to be made here, America!

Maybe if 'the powers that be' were to turn our abundant fat reserves into a tradeable commodity and create a Cellulite Czar to control the flow to the marketplace--in order to keep prices high through manufactured scarcity, like DeBeers has perfected with diamonds--the Great Depression Redux might finally become a blip in our rearview mirror and America can proudly stand atop the world once more, stomping our rivals to dust as we laugh our way to the bank and increase consumption to even more grotesque levels.

Ahhh--a return to the good ole days would be nice...

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The Unspoken Evil In the Housing Market, Country

(photo courtesy Sally Ryan/New York Times)

The New York Times printed an article today about the house next door to that of the Obamas (pictured above) being put on the market recently. It was an interesting article for many reasons, but hidden amidst the facts and figures is a phenomenon that is sadly not getting enough attention:

Very few people I know--college educated, with jobs--can afford to buy a house, regardless of record-low mortgage rates and falling home prices. Some of them have settled for overpriced condos, some have moved into farm country and face ridiculous commutes, most are prepared to stay in rental apartments far longer than previous generations ever did.

This is not healthy for our country, as we are now firmly on the path to becoming a two-class nation--working-poor renters and fabulously-wealthy landlords, the modern-day equivalent of ever-toiling serfs and their wealthy land-owning lords.


For Your Consideration:

The year is 1973. The house next to the Obamas, a beautiful 17-room mansion on the south side of Chicago, sells to a young couple for $35,000. The median household income for that year was $12,051; assuming they were average, the house cost 3 times their annual salary.

The year is now 2009. In 36 years, their house is now worth in the neighborhood of $1-3 million--an increase of between 28 and 85 times the original purchase price and a fabulously lucrative investment. In 2006 (the last year figures are available), the median household income was $58,407; the same house would now cost the new owner 17-51 times their annual salary.

[Also, keep in mind that the inflated 2006 figure reflects double-breadwinning households, which was not common in 1974, so the difference is even greater than it appears.]

And you wonder why so many people took out bad loans? They felt they deserved to live in a house, as hard-working, gainfully-employed couples--and they were right--but the market was such that there was actually no way they could afford to pay for one. Between greedy real estate developers, corrupt politicians, predatory bankers, insatiable real estate trusts, real estate speculation, and bidding wars, prices became artificially, unsustainably high. Wannabe homeowners forced their hand and they lost. Big time.

The Man: 9,941,994, Men: 0.


Meanwhile, the bleeding doesn't stop there, of course.

Real wages (adjusted for inflation) have remained stagnant since 1974, despite enormous increases in productivity and work hours. In other words, while costs have risen dramatically, you are making the same amount--or, in most cases, less--than your father did in 1974, when gas was $0.55 a gallon and a beer at a ballpark cost ten cents. A beer at a recent LA Dodger game set me back $12, or 1/12 of my daily take-home pay.

In the last 36 years, health care costs have skyrocketed, retirement benefits have dwindled or disappeared, and the cost of a private university education has gone from $10,000 a year to $32,000 a year (for public universities, costs have increased 37% in the last 10 years alone).


How are we supposed to live like this? How are intelligent people who have a soul--and, therefore, did not become shady bankers, selfish corporate executives, or lawyers--supposed to afford to buy a house somewhere that could be classified as 'non-bumblefuck?'

Homeowners’ equity fell to 41.4 percent of the total value of household real estate at the end of the first quarter of 2009. This percentage has decreased sharply since the end of 2005. It first fell below 50 in the fourth quarter of 2007 – marking the first time that homeowners’ mortgage debts exceeded their equity in their homes since 1945, when the Fed’s data begins.

(source: American Institute for Economic Research)

There you have it, folks--sixty-four years of 'progress' has resulted in a net-loss of equity. Thank you, corporate America, for shipping all the wealth not in your own pockets overseas.

Are we reaching a point where intelligent, rational people are going to start moving off the grid in droves and repopulate depressed rural areas in their quest for an affordable house? Will we all have to live in factories abandoned by 'patriotic' corporations who moved all their non-executive jobs to China? Where will all these newly-rural people work? How far will they have to drive to shop somewhere that isn't evil-incarnate WalMart? How are they supposed to afford to send their children to school?

Or, since everyone has a college degree these days (thanks, University of Phoenix!) and a diploma doesn't even guarantee a job at Starbucks, will people eventually stop sending their children to college?

I know that sounds crazy, or at least illogical, but if we look at the matter honestly, and perform a simple cost/benefit analysis, at some point the costs will outweigh the benefits. Who wants to graduate college $100,000 in debt, with an ever-dwindling prospect of gainful employment and the looming fear that they will need to locate another $750,000 just to buy a house in the city they grew up in?


It wasn't even 100 years ago that most intelligent, productive people got their education in the real world, unable to afford a college education. They got menial or entry-level jobs and worked their way up from there.

However, what with unemployed PhDs fighting each other over janitorial jobs these days, another, more exotic option is becoming increasingly enticing, and probably as useful:

Formerly an option only for wealthy members of the aristocracy, these days a high-school graduate could choose--instead of going to college--to live, frugally, in a string of major European cities over a four year period, immersing him/herself in language, culture, and the arts. This would not only provide a well-rounded liberal arts education and--shockingly, but truthfully--be cheaper than attending a 4-year American college, but it also comes with free, top-o-the-line health care! Invent a time machine and sign me up!

Time to dust off your Grand Tour brochures, travel agents!
(If the Internet didn't kill you all slowly...)


You may think this is all a joke. You may think these ideas are radical, ridiculous, and ill-informed. You may be right, you may be wrong, but the way I see it, this is the very real, human side of the matter, one that is rarely discussed in the media, or over the dinner table.

The exorbitant cost of a comfortable, quality life in the United States these days--now more unattainable than ever--is the dubious result of three main factors:

1. Decades of unnecessary, harmful real estate speculation by wealthy American freelance speculators, deep-pocketed real estate trusts, investment organizations, and corporations.
2. The insatiable hunger for profit that defines the modern corporation.
3. The fact that our government has failed to act on behalf of its less-moneyed-yet-vastly-more-numerous constituents, failed to step in with laws/oversight/restrictions, and is therefore complicit in allowing the situation to spiral out of control.

For all their blustery talk about America being the richest and most powerful nation on Earth, the rich and greedy oligopoly has created a country its own hard-working citizens can barely afford to live in.

What, may I ask, is the benefit of that, aside from the pieces of silver lining their pockets?

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