Victor Jara has had his second funeral.
Impossible to juxtapose that death and that voice. Not without getting into Jesus talk. People are such stupid brutes; he'd just been a rather lovely folk singer before. Now juxtaposed forever with some ugly foul-mouthed troglodytes in Washington who thought the world was dominoes.
What a life.
Visualizzazione post con etichetta nice one free world. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta nice one free world. Mostra tutti i post
giovedì, dicembre 03, 2009
giovedì, giugno 25, 2009
Death, monkeys, and dancing bears
Thinking about the meaning of death in different cultures these days. My study of non-European cultures has been either so academic or so pop, so Bhagavad Gita or else Monkey!, that I have no practical idea what death means to people outside Europe. There's something rather brutal about the dominant thread we have in Europe and North America now. Centuries of training by our religion to see life as a linear progression to death and to the subsequent judgement of our selves, as we now understand our selves, by God, who we comprehend as another self. I think we still have that pattern, if you can call something so simple a pattern, in our minds. But now, for so many of us, especially in Europe, who have been repelled by the church, we've lost even the small complication of the assumption of judgement at the end - just the simple linear sentence of our selves, growing and aging and dying, and then a sudden full stop.
But in early Christian theology (well, not REALLY early - really early, it was a death and apocalypse cult) there was a conception of the afterlife that was less deeply personal. An idea that on death, we came to understand the will of God, and being in heaven was the same thing as being part of God's will. The release of one's own will, which leads inexorably to the idea of the release of the self - of our consciousnesses in any way that we can understand consciousness. Though from what I remember that's an idea that was resisted by the people who wrote about heaven, and when I listen to Christians going on about God's will they're able to contort their mind into believing that surrendering yourself to God doesn't mean not being your self anymore. Too pagan? Too frightening? I don't know. But the release of the self. Imagine that. You could spend years trying to imagine it. A lifetime. And once you did - once you could imagine that - surely you're no longer your self . . .
I think being alive is the process of being able to release your self. I think I'm very excited to be moving close to Asia and to start taking my holidays in countries and societies I don't know a fucking thing about in any practical sense. My head was full of it last weekend when we were in Brussels Far East museum - Congo-era colonial visioning of the east extraordinaire, to the tackiest effect possible, and I was standing there in the middle of all the Chineuropean fantasization, thinking - I don't know shit. I don't know shit. No cleverer than that fat corrupt shitful bastard Leopold II. I've never gone outside of my cultural comfort zone whilst travelling so I'm really not used to thinking like that. I don't know shit. A bit like death, really.
Sorry if this post is coming off as morbid or (retch) "emo". I'm actually in top form. Rather in the grip of pity for Michael Jackson, though. I don't know about iconography but I think historians will look back on him as a sort of textbook figure about what obsessive fame in our era can do to a delicate person. I was going to post a video of a "Love You Save" performance from the late 70's - that song's in the running for my 'Best Song Ever' trophy - but having just looked at it again I couldn't help but feel, as I was watching him grin and dance around superbly, that I was geeking on a dancing bear with a ring through its nose and no more memory of the wild, no conception of the bad it might do, nothing except not fucking up, not fucking up and getting burned by its trainer . . . Couldn't do it. Poor dead dancing bear. Poor thing.
In testament to pity, here's the only joke about his death I've heard so far that had nothing to do with little boys (and I've heard at least a dozen already):
But in early Christian theology (well, not REALLY early - really early, it was a death and apocalypse cult) there was a conception of the afterlife that was less deeply personal. An idea that on death, we came to understand the will of God, and being in heaven was the same thing as being part of God's will. The release of one's own will, which leads inexorably to the idea of the release of the self - of our consciousnesses in any way that we can understand consciousness. Though from what I remember that's an idea that was resisted by the people who wrote about heaven, and when I listen to Christians going on about God's will they're able to contort their mind into believing that surrendering yourself to God doesn't mean not being your self anymore. Too pagan? Too frightening? I don't know. But the release of the self. Imagine that. You could spend years trying to imagine it. A lifetime. And once you did - once you could imagine that - surely you're no longer your self . . .
I think being alive is the process of being able to release your self. I think I'm very excited to be moving close to Asia and to start taking my holidays in countries and societies I don't know a fucking thing about in any practical sense. My head was full of it last weekend when we were in Brussels Far East museum - Congo-era colonial visioning of the east extraordinaire, to the tackiest effect possible, and I was standing there in the middle of all the Chineuropean fantasization, thinking - I don't know shit. I don't know shit. No cleverer than that fat corrupt shitful bastard Leopold II. I've never gone outside of my cultural comfort zone whilst travelling so I'm really not used to thinking like that. I don't know shit. A bit like death, really.
Sorry if this post is coming off as morbid or (retch) "emo". I'm actually in top form. Rather in the grip of pity for Michael Jackson, though. I don't know about iconography but I think historians will look back on him as a sort of textbook figure about what obsessive fame in our era can do to a delicate person. I was going to post a video of a "Love You Save" performance from the late 70's - that song's in the running for my 'Best Song Ever' trophy - but having just looked at it again I couldn't help but feel, as I was watching him grin and dance around superbly, that I was geeking on a dancing bear with a ring through its nose and no more memory of the wild, no conception of the bad it might do, nothing except not fucking up, not fucking up and getting burned by its trainer . . . Couldn't do it. Poor dead dancing bear. Poor thing.
In testament to pity, here's the only joke about his death I've heard so far that had nothing to do with little boys (and I've heard at least a dozen already):
A post-mortem will be held to determine which was the cause of death:
A) Sunshine
B) Moonlight
C) Good Times
D) Boogie
A) Sunshine
B) Moonlight
C) Good Times
D) Boogie
martedì, giugno 16, 2009
Given the history of US and Iranian relations . . .
So considering what's happened with Iran, the US, and regime change over the last 40 years, I was rather relieved to read this this morning. It's really fantastic that people are demonstrating there for what they believe in, in the face of a repressive security apparatus. It's really awful that the repressive security apparatus is being repressive. And if there were irregularities or corruptions in the voting patterns, I really hope they're exposed and dealt with. But take a deep fucking breath.
The percentage Ahmadinejad's supposed to have got this time - low 60%'s - is about the same as he was supposed to have got in 2005 without raising eyebrows. That was in the second round, true - but his opponent in the second round wasn't a 'reformist', he was another conservative. A reformist candidate came third in 2005, just topping out 17% of the vote. 'Reformers' performed worse in the last election, without everybody screaming foul.
We've known for a long time that educated urbanites in Iran thought Ahmadinejad's a dangerous hick and that everybody else there rather liked him. And now he's spent the last five years offering politically popular subsidies to the bulk of the population against any rational economic advice. When they've caused piss-off, his domestic policies have mainly pissed off middle-class urbanites - not really the bulk of the electorate. And his posturing on Iran's nuclear programme hasn't resulted in the disasters people warn about yet, and indeed surely Iranians have remarked that without Ahmadinejad tempering his speech, the US has nonetheless voted for the man who didn't sing 'bomb bomb Iran', and whose administration has spent the last few months indicating it's interested in a better relationship.
Based on what we know - why would we assume that now, in 2009, it's impossible for Ahmadinejad to get the votes he got in 2005? Why would we assume there has been a 30% + shift in voting patterns that has been fraudulently covered up, just because the educated urbanites who are sick of the dangerous hick - and yeah, he's a dangerous hick - are bravely and efficiently hitting the streets? Why are we assuming so readily that democracy has failed, instead of asking if the demonstrators are just extremely disappointed about the way democracy has gone? Why are so many Americans assuming that just because they managed to vote for the least embarassing candidate for once last year, every other country is going to start doing the same?
I'm very, very sorry people are getting killed, and apparently getting disappeared into the bargain, and that it's a big fucking mess. Election or not, this government, like so many Iranian governments before it, bears the responsibility for murder. But look - this is a country where, 45 years ago, democracy was snuffed out - with a great deal of international help - under the guise of massive protests. This was followed by a quarter of a century of extremely repressive absolutist rule and massive international resource exploitation. The revolution that ended the situation in 1979 was attacked with both barrels by the international community, up to and including arming a thug like Saddam Hussein to the teeth to fight a brutal proxy war.
Morally revolting or not, it's not a surprise that the government is trigger-happy now. History and our common sense has to tell us there's a very real prospect that the election results were legitimate, and that it wouldn't take a paranoid schizophrenic government to imagine that the massive anti-government demonstrations represent yet another internationally-sponsored, anti-democratic coup attempt. Is murdering and disappearing the right way to deal with that? No. It's an awful way to deal with that. But - given the history of US and Iranian relations - I understand why it's being dealt with this way. Tragic. But there you are. You spend forty years fucking a country, and what have you got? A fucked country.
Obama knows what he's talking about, which I'm really not used to thinking about things American presidents say. I hope he means it.
The percentage Ahmadinejad's supposed to have got this time - low 60%'s - is about the same as he was supposed to have got in 2005 without raising eyebrows. That was in the second round, true - but his opponent in the second round wasn't a 'reformist', he was another conservative. A reformist candidate came third in 2005, just topping out 17% of the vote. 'Reformers' performed worse in the last election, without everybody screaming foul.
We've known for a long time that educated urbanites in Iran thought Ahmadinejad's a dangerous hick and that everybody else there rather liked him. And now he's spent the last five years offering politically popular subsidies to the bulk of the population against any rational economic advice. When they've caused piss-off, his domestic policies have mainly pissed off middle-class urbanites - not really the bulk of the electorate. And his posturing on Iran's nuclear programme hasn't resulted in the disasters people warn about yet, and indeed surely Iranians have remarked that without Ahmadinejad tempering his speech, the US has nonetheless voted for the man who didn't sing 'bomb bomb Iran', and whose administration has spent the last few months indicating it's interested in a better relationship.
Based on what we know - why would we assume that now, in 2009, it's impossible for Ahmadinejad to get the votes he got in 2005? Why would we assume there has been a 30% + shift in voting patterns that has been fraudulently covered up, just because the educated urbanites who are sick of the dangerous hick - and yeah, he's a dangerous hick - are bravely and efficiently hitting the streets? Why are we assuming so readily that democracy has failed, instead of asking if the demonstrators are just extremely disappointed about the way democracy has gone? Why are so many Americans assuming that just because they managed to vote for the least embarassing candidate for once last year, every other country is going to start doing the same?
I'm very, very sorry people are getting killed, and apparently getting disappeared into the bargain, and that it's a big fucking mess. Election or not, this government, like so many Iranian governments before it, bears the responsibility for murder. But look - this is a country where, 45 years ago, democracy was snuffed out - with a great deal of international help - under the guise of massive protests. This was followed by a quarter of a century of extremely repressive absolutist rule and massive international resource exploitation. The revolution that ended the situation in 1979 was attacked with both barrels by the international community, up to and including arming a thug like Saddam Hussein to the teeth to fight a brutal proxy war.
Morally revolting or not, it's not a surprise that the government is trigger-happy now. History and our common sense has to tell us there's a very real prospect that the election results were legitimate, and that it wouldn't take a paranoid schizophrenic government to imagine that the massive anti-government demonstrations represent yet another internationally-sponsored, anti-democratic coup attempt. Is murdering and disappearing the right way to deal with that? No. It's an awful way to deal with that. But - given the history of US and Iranian relations - I understand why it's being dealt with this way. Tragic. But there you are. You spend forty years fucking a country, and what have you got? A fucked country.
Obama knows what he's talking about, which I'm really not used to thinking about things American presidents say. I hope he means it.
lunedì, aprile 20, 2009
Actually, I can use the things it don't get, but let's skirt over that for the moment
The confrontationality that had been scheduled for Wednesday is now scheduled for this afternoon. I would have liked it to be before the vacation, because the interesting thing is there can't really be a bad outcome to all this, and I would have liked the time off to either celebrate or process what had happened . . . nervous today nonetheless though. Strange, isn't it? But I'm going to play with this idea that somebody else's fuckups can either be your problem, or theirs. In my case, the most obvious fuckup is that on paper I've got a promotion and big percentages worth of raises since I started working . . . the reality is I'm netting almost exactly a same a month as when I started, due to Belgian taxation laws.
I would be a lousy little worm if I let that be my problem, and the good thing about that is that money is something everybody understands. I can say 'I want to set my own hours, I want to live in a less crappy city, I want to work from home', and all of those things look magnificently concrete and sensible to me, and actually rather more important than money. But they remain subjective, since not everybody thinks about work or Brussels or home that way. However, 'I'm netting exactly what I was netting during my probationary period two years ago despite a promotion, big raises on paper, and record-setting inflation, to which my rent is indexed' is something objective - something anybody with a job anywhere could understand - because it's money.
Money. It's like a code - like a bunch of social symbols for energy - my analyst explained it to me in those terms once when I shuddered at the thought of spending my dead grandfather's legacy. 'This is his energy that he stored up as money and gave to you.' I think that's why our economic system is so obviously objectionable now - money isn't a symbol for effort anymore. A woman can work for thirty years, be informed her factory is closing down, and not even get her severance if she leaves for another job before her employers tell her to, while at the same time those assholes on top of the pile pull in huge bonuses and salaries. And of course I understand there are good reasons for those huge bonuses and salaries - that is, they're good if you accept the absolutely rotten and unproductive framework in which the reasons are good.
If I hadn't been a pinko before the rot started showing with a vengeance, I'd feel a lot stupider now. But let's all get over that and have a revolution. Anyways. Onwards and upwards.
I would be a lousy little worm if I let that be my problem, and the good thing about that is that money is something everybody understands. I can say 'I want to set my own hours, I want to live in a less crappy city, I want to work from home', and all of those things look magnificently concrete and sensible to me, and actually rather more important than money. But they remain subjective, since not everybody thinks about work or Brussels or home that way. However, 'I'm netting exactly what I was netting during my probationary period two years ago despite a promotion, big raises on paper, and record-setting inflation, to which my rent is indexed' is something objective - something anybody with a job anywhere could understand - because it's money.
Money. It's like a code - like a bunch of social symbols for energy - my analyst explained it to me in those terms once when I shuddered at the thought of spending my dead grandfather's legacy. 'This is his energy that he stored up as money and gave to you.' I think that's why our economic system is so obviously objectionable now - money isn't a symbol for effort anymore. A woman can work for thirty years, be informed her factory is closing down, and not even get her severance if she leaves for another job before her employers tell her to, while at the same time those assholes on top of the pile pull in huge bonuses and salaries. And of course I understand there are good reasons for those huge bonuses and salaries - that is, they're good if you accept the absolutely rotten and unproductive framework in which the reasons are good.
If I hadn't been a pinko before the rot started showing with a vengeance, I'd feel a lot stupider now. But let's all get over that and have a revolution. Anyways. Onwards and upwards.
martedì, febbraio 24, 2009
There is a planetary conspiracy against the likes of you and me in this idiot constituency of the moon
Alright, fucking seriously: all this crap about companies getting government aid and then, gasp choke, funding parties or bonuses is getting fucking ridiculous. Let me make something clear that I've learnt through painful and tedious experience over the last three years: a lot of the people involved in a certain level of corporatism have social lives almost completely wrapped up in business events. Unless you count interactions with prostitutes and strippers, which is by no means a completely separate issue. Don't like it? Me neither! But you know what, a single little complete economic meltdown is not going to change that, no matter how angry it makes normal everyday assholes with functioning emotional lives feel. Do you think those fuckin' events are fun? Do you think it's emotionally satisfying for those fat fucks to drink inappropriately and then try to grope the nearest member of the under-represented female sex? But it's the best they've got. Don't take it away from them.
As for the bonuses . . . look, the numbers are opaque, but I have a feeling my company lost money in 2008. Nonetheless if I hadn't got my bonus after working me fingers to the bone all year, I would have screamed to high heaven. Okay, we're not talking seven digits after I oversee the greatest losses in my company's history. But bonuses are part of why people take jobs, and there's no fuckin' reason in the world why some middle-management asshole who busts her ass all year long to make whatever she's in charge of work properly shouldn't get the bonus she's been banking on just because some upper-echelon cunts have decided to equivocate or outright lie about the security of some fund package.
What I'm saying is the money for the parties and conferences and bonuses are drops in the fucking ocean, and what's more, legitimate drops, as far as the ocean is legitimate. There's a reason those drops are dripped. Advertising or marketing drops. HR drops. But they don't make sense to you? They make you angry? Well then, buddy, they're also Chinese water torture drops distracting you from the main fuckin' gushing cataract of an issue: the ideas of growth on which these companies and investment groups are based are completely fucking untenable for the likes of you and me.
We're squealing like dumbfuck little pigs now that things have gone bad, and taxpayer money is bailing out these quagmires, and company people are still giving themselves bonuses. But where were the squeals in the 'good times' when property investment groups were making money with their speculations - when professional couples had to take out 50-year mortgages at extortionate rates if they wanted to live in a decent house in a metropolitan region? Where were the squeals as people with average-to-'good' incomes were pushed out of our capital cities by galloping property prices, while thousands of speculative units stayed empty? Where were the squeals as university tuition shot up, forcing students to take out private loans, again at rates extortionate relative to their income, and then take the first dumbfuck job they could find after graduating so they could start servicing those loans, benefiting fucking no one except the bank's shareholders? Where were the squeals when Western governments stripped down public and private pension schemes, telling us to try our luck in the stock market with private retirement savings instead, thereby massively fuelling the overheated engine of our financial 'organization'?
Were we actually stupid enough to believe that the stock market was just going to get better forever so it was okay to give up the retirement benefits that the labouring classes had fought like devils for over more than a century, or were we just watching too much television to bother protesting? And when the stock market was turning in 12% returns for those of us who bet on the Asians, did we ever sit in our fucking Priuses planning our early retirement and reflecting on what that sort of investment in a series of overheated, under-regulated economies was doing to them socially and ecologically?
And where are the squealers now, when things are bad, and every government initiative to make things 'good' again focuses on rebuilding this shitty, shitty system? I'll tell you where the squealers are, whining themselves hoarse on the idea that everything sucks now because people who work at these companies and banks are greedy, and that the present meltdown has any fucking thing to do with conferences, parties, and bonuses - and not on the absolutely wrong-headed ideas of growth that come from publicly floated companies and from people's retirement savings being forced onto something as fucking bestially stupid, unstable and immoral as the stock market. I tell you it gets my fucking goat. Oh sorry, that's not my goat, it's John Kerry. My fucking mistake.
As for the bonuses . . . look, the numbers are opaque, but I have a feeling my company lost money in 2008. Nonetheless if I hadn't got my bonus after working me fingers to the bone all year, I would have screamed to high heaven. Okay, we're not talking seven digits after I oversee the greatest losses in my company's history. But bonuses are part of why people take jobs, and there's no fuckin' reason in the world why some middle-management asshole who busts her ass all year long to make whatever she's in charge of work properly shouldn't get the bonus she's been banking on just because some upper-echelon cunts have decided to equivocate or outright lie about the security of some fund package.
What I'm saying is the money for the parties and conferences and bonuses are drops in the fucking ocean, and what's more, legitimate drops, as far as the ocean is legitimate. There's a reason those drops are dripped. Advertising or marketing drops. HR drops. But they don't make sense to you? They make you angry? Well then, buddy, they're also Chinese water torture drops distracting you from the main fuckin' gushing cataract of an issue: the ideas of growth on which these companies and investment groups are based are completely fucking untenable for the likes of you and me.
We're squealing like dumbfuck little pigs now that things have gone bad, and taxpayer money is bailing out these quagmires, and company people are still giving themselves bonuses. But where were the squeals in the 'good times' when property investment groups were making money with their speculations - when professional couples had to take out 50-year mortgages at extortionate rates if they wanted to live in a decent house in a metropolitan region? Where were the squeals as people with average-to-'good' incomes were pushed out of our capital cities by galloping property prices, while thousands of speculative units stayed empty? Where were the squeals as university tuition shot up, forcing students to take out private loans, again at rates extortionate relative to their income, and then take the first dumbfuck job they could find after graduating so they could start servicing those loans, benefiting fucking no one except the bank's shareholders? Where were the squeals when Western governments stripped down public and private pension schemes, telling us to try our luck in the stock market with private retirement savings instead, thereby massively fuelling the overheated engine of our financial 'organization'?
Were we actually stupid enough to believe that the stock market was just going to get better forever so it was okay to give up the retirement benefits that the labouring classes had fought like devils for over more than a century, or were we just watching too much television to bother protesting? And when the stock market was turning in 12% returns for those of us who bet on the Asians, did we ever sit in our fucking Priuses planning our early retirement and reflecting on what that sort of investment in a series of overheated, under-regulated economies was doing to them socially and ecologically?
And where are the squealers now, when things are bad, and every government initiative to make things 'good' again focuses on rebuilding this shitty, shitty system? I'll tell you where the squealers are, whining themselves hoarse on the idea that everything sucks now because people who work at these companies and banks are greedy, and that the present meltdown has any fucking thing to do with conferences, parties, and bonuses - and not on the absolutely wrong-headed ideas of growth that come from publicly floated companies and from people's retirement savings being forced onto something as fucking bestially stupid, unstable and immoral as the stock market. I tell you it gets my fucking goat. Oh sorry, that's not my goat, it's John Kerry. My fucking mistake.
martedì, dicembre 09, 2008
Provided that he or she gives notice or pays compensation as prescribed by FUCKING CIVILISED law
Hungover after celebrating San Francisca’s dismissal with her briefly but efficiently on my way home last night. She’s ecstatic - she's been working here more than five years, which means she gets half a year's severance pay instead of the standard three months, and the timing couldn't have been better in terms of her family's move to Amsterdam. Not to mention she’s feeling as though she’s dodged a bullet, having turned down a transfer back to San Francisco a few months back, which would have seen her get handed a box and a fortnight’s pay, instead of half a year, minimum, upwards-ly negotiable . . . Unworthy as it is, I'm having to deal with jealousy issues where she's concerned, not to mention upset because I'm going to miss her so much, but I'm trying to just focus on being happy for her.
I feel a bit sad in an abstract sense* about all the Americans who got canned, though. Here's a box and two weeks pay, merry Christmas, fuck off now. I don't know how Americans, or Canadians for that matter, can bear it . . . those are some of the worst labour laws in the eurocentric world, in a couple of countries that pride themselves on being the best in the eurocentric world, with that sort of ‘we rock, you suck’ nationalism. And now here we are in this crumbling economic edifice we call the 2008 financial year, and thousands of North Americans are learning the hard way that their political and employment structures don't give a shit . . . they can watch middle class assholes who bought more house than they could afford get mortgage holidays so that whole neighbourhoods don’t run to seed and erode general property values, while the unemployed queue at overstretched soup kitchens. If this all gets as bad as I fear it will it’s going to be really dreadful, and the Marxist lizard part of my brain says ‘about fucking time’. I don't know how long I'll still be able to keep hearing that if this downturn touches my friends and family harder than it has, but something has to give, as they say, and people have to see how powerless they are to get their power back.
*BTW, I say 'abstract sense' because out of the nine Americans who got canned, I only knew two personally, and one probably needed canning, and the other apparently did too, despite being a piece of ass. Ho hum.
I feel a bit sad in an abstract sense* about all the Americans who got canned, though. Here's a box and two weeks pay, merry Christmas, fuck off now. I don't know how Americans, or Canadians for that matter, can bear it . . . those are some of the worst labour laws in the eurocentric world, in a couple of countries that pride themselves on being the best in the eurocentric world, with that sort of ‘we rock, you suck’ nationalism. And now here we are in this crumbling economic edifice we call the 2008 financial year, and thousands of North Americans are learning the hard way that their political and employment structures don't give a shit . . . they can watch middle class assholes who bought more house than they could afford get mortgage holidays so that whole neighbourhoods don’t run to seed and erode general property values, while the unemployed queue at overstretched soup kitchens. If this all gets as bad as I fear it will it’s going to be really dreadful, and the Marxist lizard part of my brain says ‘about fucking time’. I don't know how long I'll still be able to keep hearing that if this downturn touches my friends and family harder than it has, but something has to give, as they say, and people have to see how powerless they are to get their power back.
*BTW, I say 'abstract sense' because out of the nine Americans who got canned, I only knew two personally, and one probably needed canning, and the other apparently did too, despite being a piece of ass. Ho hum.
giovedì, dicembre 04, 2008
Consider the lilies
I don't like detailing the minutae of my life, but to prove something of a point this morning I must. Yesterday, started feeling very sick at work yesterday, flu-like symptoms, and went home for the afternoon. Got here, felt better, and sewed one of these. The F-word came home, had a nice chat about stuff, he did his carpentry thing while I finished off the circle pad (if it works, I'm fucking sold - lovely easy pattern and relatively tidy-looking once done). Spent some more pleasant time with the love of my life, he cooked dinner, I did laundry, we ate dinner, watched the funniest episode of Bottom I've seen so far. I felt quite tender towards him, so baked some oatmeal cookies (these ones, though giving the butter flavoured shortening [????] a miss in flavour of more butter, and used crunchy evaporated cane juice instead of white and brown suger, and gave the raisins a miss altogether for the simple reason of not having any), which were good. Spent more pleasant time. Finished reading the Periodic Table. Went to bed happy.
Woke up this morning. Realized I had to go to work all day. Nearly puked, got headache, nose started running.
My point is, even at the laziest of times I'm not a lily of the field, who neither spins nor toils, and Solomon in his glory was probably arrayed rather more tidily than me (Matthew 6). Left to my own devices I find things to do - tender things, utilitarian things, things that exercise my spatial relations, which I realized as I was executing yesterday's simple pattern have not been much exercised for a long, long time - and oh, it felt so good to exercise them just a wee bit yesterday!
I have a sort of unfocussed hunger for a life with more time, for an escape from the slavery we've imposed on ourselves; before the Industrial Revolution nobody incinerated so much of their lives in a profession, even the farmers got the winter off! It's contrary to our genetic makeup to do the same damn thing all day every day, and then try to cram our entire animal existence into our weekends - to devote the bulk of our waking hours to the abstract accumulation of money, of an intangible, of something whose value fluctuates on the whims of markets and speculators, and is totally beyond our control as individuals, or even a society!
In short, feeling like I have quite a strong Messianic lifestyle message this morning. I wonder how many Messiahs this credit crunch is going to produce.
Woke up this morning. Realized I had to go to work all day. Nearly puked, got headache, nose started running.
My point is, even at the laziest of times I'm not a lily of the field, who neither spins nor toils, and Solomon in his glory was probably arrayed rather more tidily than me (Matthew 6). Left to my own devices I find things to do - tender things, utilitarian things, things that exercise my spatial relations, which I realized as I was executing yesterday's simple pattern have not been much exercised for a long, long time - and oh, it felt so good to exercise them just a wee bit yesterday!
I have a sort of unfocussed hunger for a life with more time, for an escape from the slavery we've imposed on ourselves; before the Industrial Revolution nobody incinerated so much of their lives in a profession, even the farmers got the winter off! It's contrary to our genetic makeup to do the same damn thing all day every day, and then try to cram our entire animal existence into our weekends - to devote the bulk of our waking hours to the abstract accumulation of money, of an intangible, of something whose value fluctuates on the whims of markets and speculators, and is totally beyond our control as individuals, or even a society!
In short, feeling like I have quite a strong Messianic lifestyle message this morning. I wonder how many Messiahs this credit crunch is going to produce.
giovedì, novembre 06, 2008
I now pronounce you unsympathetic
The Dutch intimidate me. But, as I've mentioned before, in the sort of way that makes me wish they ran the world. That's on my mind this morning not only because those crazy beautiful fuckers are talking about building islands to make their country bigger, and not only because it looks as though a mate of mine here is moving to Amstelveen, which rocks because then we can crash with him in Amstelveen, and not only because we're going to Amsterdam in a couple of weeks to see the Fleidermaus and some marionettes for my 30th birthday, but also because a high proportion of my acquaintance from the Netherlands are gay men, and I've seldom heard people express themselves so clearly about their animosity with certain kinds of ethnic groups as they do, because those gay men sometimes feel in physical danger from these ethnic groups whilst walking down the street being obviously gay, and now this morning MSNBC is blaming blacks and Latinos for getting rid of same-sex marriage in California.
In terms of those statistics or polling numbers or whatever out of California, it's really interesting, the way it's partly instinctual to think any socially marginalized group is automatically going to feel sympathy for and supportive of other socially marginalized groups. But it's also a completely unreasonable thing to think, because let's face it: if marginalized groups all felt sympathy for each other, they wouldn't fucking be marginalized anymore, would they?
The whole process makes me impatient. I'm a big believer in direct democracy, but I can't help but feel that matters of legal and familial obligations like marriage or adoption should be left for courts and religious groups to decide - it beggars belief that something so civil should be decided by political processes. That's like asking for a referendum on McDonald's being liable if I burn my twat by spilling one of their coffees on her. Marriage is either a legal contract or a religious sacrament with a direct bearing on the contracted parties, and not on the wider community - that's all it fucking well is - it's not stockpiling machine guns, for fuck's sake - and that means either religious figures should decide within their own religious community or that judges should decide for the secular community. Especially in a place like the States, that's blessed with civil law. Maybe I'm full of shit and I'd be cheering on another victory for direct democracy if California had voted the way that I'd sort of wanted it to. I doubt it though. I'm actually not that keen on gay marriage. I think it would strengthen an institution that outlived its usefulness, but not its iniquities, when women were given legal status as humans. Anyways, in this case it really doesn't matter what I think. That's sort of my point.
In a torturous sort of way this all comes back to the Netherlands in my head, where gay marriage has been legal since 2001, and civil unions for some time before that, and adoption laws are more or less straightened out (all through the political process, necessary as they're still having a Napoleonic hangover - but whatever, it seems to work for them), and there are no political parties on either side of the spectrum even mentioning taking these rights away again, and you can have a character like Pim Fortuyn dominate the political landscape for awhile, and then get murdered, apparently partly because of the way he laid into Islam, and whose party can sort of win the election after he dies . . . Super-gay, and not marginalized. Not at all. The splits are different and there are no illusions about mutual support among minority groups.
What's my point? I don't have one. It's just so interesting how things get so different from one democracy to another, from one developed country to another. And now I have to go keep writing about the economic meltdown at work.
In terms of those statistics or polling numbers or whatever out of California, it's really interesting, the way it's partly instinctual to think any socially marginalized group is automatically going to feel sympathy for and supportive of other socially marginalized groups. But it's also a completely unreasonable thing to think, because let's face it: if marginalized groups all felt sympathy for each other, they wouldn't fucking be marginalized anymore, would they?
The whole process makes me impatient. I'm a big believer in direct democracy, but I can't help but feel that matters of legal and familial obligations like marriage or adoption should be left for courts and religious groups to decide - it beggars belief that something so civil should be decided by political processes. That's like asking for a referendum on McDonald's being liable if I burn my twat by spilling one of their coffees on her. Marriage is either a legal contract or a religious sacrament with a direct bearing on the contracted parties, and not on the wider community - that's all it fucking well is - it's not stockpiling machine guns, for fuck's sake - and that means either religious figures should decide within their own religious community or that judges should decide for the secular community. Especially in a place like the States, that's blessed with civil law. Maybe I'm full of shit and I'd be cheering on another victory for direct democracy if California had voted the way that I'd sort of wanted it to. I doubt it though. I'm actually not that keen on gay marriage. I think it would strengthen an institution that outlived its usefulness, but not its iniquities, when women were given legal status as humans. Anyways, in this case it really doesn't matter what I think. That's sort of my point.
In a torturous sort of way this all comes back to the Netherlands in my head, where gay marriage has been legal since 2001, and civil unions for some time before that, and adoption laws are more or less straightened out (all through the political process, necessary as they're still having a Napoleonic hangover - but whatever, it seems to work for them), and there are no political parties on either side of the spectrum even mentioning taking these rights away again, and you can have a character like Pim Fortuyn dominate the political landscape for awhile, and then get murdered, apparently partly because of the way he laid into Islam, and whose party can sort of win the election after he dies . . . Super-gay, and not marginalized. Not at all. The splits are different and there are no illusions about mutual support among minority groups.
What's my point? I don't have one. It's just so interesting how things get so different from one democracy to another, from one developed country to another. And now I have to go keep writing about the economic meltdown at work.
martedì, novembre 04, 2008
For all the American people who want change
So this morning when I checked the news after a lovely night's sleep made visionarily tumultuous by some excellent new grass, I couldn't believe how relieved I felt. As the news page loaded I prepared for the worst, and told myself to enjoy these last few moments of not having to think Americans actively wanted the End Times, and even started wondering if I could persuade the F-word on New Zealand instead of Australia for our future home, because it's that much more isolated from a world I'd want to avoid if Americans did actively want the End Times. And then seeing the 'Historic Victory' headline was like taking a shit. A lovely big shit on a Sunday morning.
But in the spirit of me shitting on things: hey, people who voted Democrat, you won! And you won big. Congratulations! The senate probably won't be filibuster proof but otherwise, by winning 52% of the popular vote, you've precluded the 47% of voters who voted Republican from having any control of your legislative process. After what happened in 2004 and 2000 - you know, when the Democrats lost after getting 48.3% and 48.4% respectively, even winning the popular vote in 2004 - it must feel really good. But you also know that's bullshit, right? You know first hand that that's bullshit. I don't know what would have persuaded someone to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket, but millions did, and democracy should be about popular representation, not the nearly complete disenfranchisement of a HUGE (though in this case apparently apocalyptic) minority.
I'm not going to praise the Canadian system, though it's much more representative; it would be hard to be any less representative, so there's no great virtue in that. Any first-past-the-post system is going to end up crap. And as happened a few weeks ago, the Green Party can get 7% of the Canadian vote and lack any seats in Parliament, whereas a regional party like the Bloc Quebecois can get around 10% of the Canadian vote and 49 out of 308 seats. And we still have a fucking Queen, like a bunch of medieval thistle munchers. So no, I'm not going to praise it. But I am going to praise parliamentary systems in general, as something American decision makers should be forced to think about by you, the American People Who Want Change, and mention one that is set up quite well - Australia's. Seriously. Read about it and think about it. Manage that sort of thing without letting the motherfucking Queen step in and slap you down when you're getting too pinkoist, and you would be a proper beacon of democracy throughout the world.
And if you're feeling really ambitious, check out Switzerland. You won't believe your fucking eyes. Nobody ever knows, and then nobody can ever believe that Switzerland does this shit. And nobody can ever believe it works, but it does. You know when you're watching war documentaries, and all the battle lines just sort of stop at the Swiss border while ploughing through other neutral countries? That's why. You know why Swiss people are all fucking rich - even the poor ones? That's why. You know why that country can function as a multi-lingual (4, officially) republican entity, and has done so over centuries despite being located in the thick of the highest, shittiest mountain ranges in Europe with no marketable natural resources besides skihills? That's why. A fundamentally representative political system. And no fucking Queen. Though I bet she keeps a lot of her money there.
Don't get defensive, like this is some sort of commentary about Canada or Australia or Switzerland being better than the US. It's a commentary about their political systems being better than the US's. I've got no personal affinity for the Swiss - full disclosure - Bluebird was Swiss and you know how that went - and some of his more objectionable attitudes to the blacks and the gays were reflected by the other Swiss I met, leaving me with a bad impression overall. And Australians sometimes seem like a bunch of oiks who, like Canadians, still bizarrely tolerate the Queen (though the new leader of the opposition, silver spoon merchant Malcolm Turnbull, used to be the head of the Republican movement, and I believe the ruling Labor party still has republicanism listed as a basic platform, giving me a sliver of hope that by the time we move there that relic of an uglier time will be off the fucking money). And Canadians also shocked me last time I was home by the profligacies of their day-to-day lifestyle. I contemn pretty much everybody, in short. But everybody being contemptible in their own special way should not preclude an examination of that they do right politically, and then ripping off what they do right politically to use in your own country.
So. You want change you can believe in? How about change that's actually change?
But in the spirit of me shitting on things: hey, people who voted Democrat, you won! And you won big. Congratulations! The senate probably won't be filibuster proof but otherwise, by winning 52% of the popular vote, you've precluded the 47% of voters who voted Republican from having any control of your legislative process. After what happened in 2004 and 2000 - you know, when the Democrats lost after getting 48.3% and 48.4% respectively, even winning the popular vote in 2004 - it must feel really good. But you also know that's bullshit, right? You know first hand that that's bullshit. I don't know what would have persuaded someone to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket, but millions did, and democracy should be about popular representation, not the nearly complete disenfranchisement of a HUGE (though in this case apparently apocalyptic) minority.
I'm not going to praise the Canadian system, though it's much more representative; it would be hard to be any less representative, so there's no great virtue in that. Any first-past-the-post system is going to end up crap. And as happened a few weeks ago, the Green Party can get 7% of the Canadian vote and lack any seats in Parliament, whereas a regional party like the Bloc Quebecois can get around 10% of the Canadian vote and 49 out of 308 seats. And we still have a fucking Queen, like a bunch of medieval thistle munchers. So no, I'm not going to praise it. But I am going to praise parliamentary systems in general, as something American decision makers should be forced to think about by you, the American People Who Want Change, and mention one that is set up quite well - Australia's. Seriously. Read about it and think about it. Manage that sort of thing without letting the motherfucking Queen step in and slap you down when you're getting too pinkoist, and you would be a proper beacon of democracy throughout the world.
And if you're feeling really ambitious, check out Switzerland. You won't believe your fucking eyes. Nobody ever knows, and then nobody can ever believe that Switzerland does this shit. And nobody can ever believe it works, but it does. You know when you're watching war documentaries, and all the battle lines just sort of stop at the Swiss border while ploughing through other neutral countries? That's why. You know why Swiss people are all fucking rich - even the poor ones? That's why. You know why that country can function as a multi-lingual (4, officially) republican entity, and has done so over centuries despite being located in the thick of the highest, shittiest mountain ranges in Europe with no marketable natural resources besides skihills? That's why. A fundamentally representative political system. And no fucking Queen. Though I bet she keeps a lot of her money there.
Don't get defensive, like this is some sort of commentary about Canada or Australia or Switzerland being better than the US. It's a commentary about their political systems being better than the US's. I've got no personal affinity for the Swiss - full disclosure - Bluebird was Swiss and you know how that went - and some of his more objectionable attitudes to the blacks and the gays were reflected by the other Swiss I met, leaving me with a bad impression overall. And Australians sometimes seem like a bunch of oiks who, like Canadians, still bizarrely tolerate the Queen (though the new leader of the opposition, silver spoon merchant Malcolm Turnbull, used to be the head of the Republican movement, and I believe the ruling Labor party still has republicanism listed as a basic platform, giving me a sliver of hope that by the time we move there that relic of an uglier time will be off the fucking money). And Canadians also shocked me last time I was home by the profligacies of their day-to-day lifestyle. I contemn pretty much everybody, in short. But everybody being contemptible in their own special way should not preclude an examination of that they do right politically, and then ripping off what they do right politically to use in your own country.
So. You want change you can believe in? How about change that's actually change?
mercoledì, settembre 24, 2008
Get ready to economize
So, whilst on vacation I read rather less than usual. Part of this was due to the old demon foe television. Especially BBC World News, I can't look away from that shit, even though it's nonsense. Everything's a fucking catastrophe there. And everything is black and white. Russia black, Georgia white. Buyouts white, government inaction black. Jesus, it annoys the hell out of me even though I can't look away. But at a peak moment of displeasure with it all, I had a sudden flash of something that's flashing on me increasingly these days - thank god I'm not American. If I think the BBC is bad, I guess it's the mercy of all fucking time my only relationship with CNN is to laugh at the home page occasionally. Not to mention the others . . . ugh.
But to mention this ridiculous $700 billion bail out - those poor people are going to foot the bill towards keeping the global financial markets liquid enough for an orderly global retreat from it. I always wondered how their economy being owned from abroad was going to ruin them and I think I'm finding the answer now - those people will be subjected to insane inflation and increased taxation without any fucking improvement of their services, because with all this public fuss aver the national debt, whoever wins the presidency in November will have a great excuse to not improve health care coverage or social security or anything, for that matter.
And all so that foreign countries and entities that have relied on the stock market to get good returns for capital funds, superannuation and pension plans - the sort of pension plans that most Americans can only dream of - and such won't be unhappy enough to fuck around with their reserves or pull out their investment dollars wholesale. America is becoming the bitch of the world. And that's alright with America, because the ruling class has figured out how to make the larger classes take the pain. Jesus. It's not Africa but it's nasty.
I don't have incredible faith in the financial stability of Europe but I'm fucking glad to live in a fiscal place where protecting residents from inflation and hits to their purchasing power is mandated above encouraging wild economic growth at the central bank, and that the bank actually practices what it preaches despite massive industry pressure and lobbying. But then I guess Europeans have always been a little more ready than Americans to challenge their governments and governmental structures, and so Europeans keep their governments scared and attentive. For better or for worse. Sometimes that means fantastic social services and sometimes that means Nazis.
Anyways, I was going to write about the only book I did actually read during my vacation, The General in His Labyrinth, but I guess that will have to wait until tomorrow.
But to mention this ridiculous $700 billion bail out - those poor people are going to foot the bill towards keeping the global financial markets liquid enough for an orderly global retreat from it. I always wondered how their economy being owned from abroad was going to ruin them and I think I'm finding the answer now - those people will be subjected to insane inflation and increased taxation without any fucking improvement of their services, because with all this public fuss aver the national debt, whoever wins the presidency in November will have a great excuse to not improve health care coverage or social security or anything, for that matter.
And all so that foreign countries and entities that have relied on the stock market to get good returns for capital funds, superannuation and pension plans - the sort of pension plans that most Americans can only dream of - and such won't be unhappy enough to fuck around with their reserves or pull out their investment dollars wholesale. America is becoming the bitch of the world. And that's alright with America, because the ruling class has figured out how to make the larger classes take the pain. Jesus. It's not Africa but it's nasty.
I don't have incredible faith in the financial stability of Europe but I'm fucking glad to live in a fiscal place where protecting residents from inflation and hits to their purchasing power is mandated above encouraging wild economic growth at the central bank, and that the bank actually practices what it preaches despite massive industry pressure and lobbying. But then I guess Europeans have always been a little more ready than Americans to challenge their governments and governmental structures, and so Europeans keep their governments scared and attentive. For better or for worse. Sometimes that means fantastic social services and sometimes that means Nazis.
Anyways, I was going to write about the only book I did actually read during my vacation, The General in His Labyrinth, but I guess that will have to wait until tomorrow.
lunedì, settembre 08, 2008
Why Europeans age with some small grace
Got an email from my conference flame yesterday, checking if I'll be at the next one. Tush, you say, or some other disapproving sound. But don't fret. My conference flame is simply the man who I would allow myself to be pursued by every time our paths cross at conferences (which they often do) if I was on the market (which I'm not) and if I was the sort of girl who baited men at conferences (which I'm not) and if I was attracted to Teutons (which, you've guessed it, I'm not). Things being what they are, our relationship is comprised of eating our buffet breakfasts together and chatting about things that are more interesting than our jobs or the conferences at hand, like Brazilian cuisine or European foreign policy.
Obviously I'm touched to have heard from my conference flame because my self-esteem is a voracious monster that undiscriminatingly devours any reinforcement at all. But he is illustrative of a larger point, or rather I am, by enjoying his company, and it is this: business people, yuppies, are not by definition boring, soulless creatures. They haven't necessarily given up their dreams (although if he's ever dreamt of us having room service instead of buffet breakfast, he should) or their interest in life. I'm talking out of more than defensiveness here - I have an escape strategy from Businesswomanland, so I have a hard time identifying myself as a current denizen. I'm talking against the conviction that I see from far too many people from where I come from that once you take the good upwardly mobile job and decide to keep it, that's it - that's the end of a thoughtful life.
Most Europeans, I think, would agree that's wrong. A small part of this is that Europeans tend to have a better generalist knowledge of the world around them than your average Anglo because of all the things that get crammed into their head in highschool, and it gives them the right background to stay interested in things in general as they age. Anglos, Brits included, are the ones who tend to fall into the trap of thinking yuppies can't possibly be interesting or interested. And yet I appreciate the Anglophone method of education, which is far more self-directed, far more critical, far more egalitarian, and far more creative than methods in France, here, Italy, and Germany - also far less generalist; I did one non-arts course in my final year of highschool in Ontario, which I was quite happy about at the time but which is also a fucking travesty which has left me, at the grand old age of 29, furrowing my oft-furrowed brows at the 1946 British version of 'Geology for Dummies'.
But I don't blame Anglos' education for the way they think a thinking, thoughtworthy life ends upon entry into the rat race, to be re-started again only with the sort of midlife crisis that has spawned an entire revolting genre of movies about wretched men getting their boners back and wretched women getting their groove back. No. I blame how our holidays are too short, our working hours are too long, and we watch too much television.
I would love to think that sort of quality of life issue was up for debate in the upcoming Canadian election (which I won't be participating in, not paying taxes there anymore) or the upcoming American election. But no. No, no, no. God fucking forbid. Instead it's all bread and circuses without the bread. Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country; for example, you can work twice as many hours as is necessary from a productivity point of view, and you can abstain from clinging to any 'spare time' that would give you the freedom to learn about the most urgent political issues at hand, or to make informed decisions as an electorate, and or to educate your children to be anything but a semi-literate cog in the wheel of a car that's lost it's brakes and is careering down into the rising sea levels of our own suicidal societal stupidity.
Obviously I'm touched to have heard from my conference flame because my self-esteem is a voracious monster that undiscriminatingly devours any reinforcement at all. But he is illustrative of a larger point, or rather I am, by enjoying his company, and it is this: business people, yuppies, are not by definition boring, soulless creatures. They haven't necessarily given up their dreams (although if he's ever dreamt of us having room service instead of buffet breakfast, he should) or their interest in life. I'm talking out of more than defensiveness here - I have an escape strategy from Businesswomanland, so I have a hard time identifying myself as a current denizen. I'm talking against the conviction that I see from far too many people from where I come from that once you take the good upwardly mobile job and decide to keep it, that's it - that's the end of a thoughtful life.
Most Europeans, I think, would agree that's wrong. A small part of this is that Europeans tend to have a better generalist knowledge of the world around them than your average Anglo because of all the things that get crammed into their head in highschool, and it gives them the right background to stay interested in things in general as they age. Anglos, Brits included, are the ones who tend to fall into the trap of thinking yuppies can't possibly be interesting or interested. And yet I appreciate the Anglophone method of education, which is far more self-directed, far more critical, far more egalitarian, and far more creative than methods in France, here, Italy, and Germany - also far less generalist; I did one non-arts course in my final year of highschool in Ontario, which I was quite happy about at the time but which is also a fucking travesty which has left me, at the grand old age of 29, furrowing my oft-furrowed brows at the 1946 British version of 'Geology for Dummies'.
But I don't blame Anglos' education for the way they think a thinking, thoughtworthy life ends upon entry into the rat race, to be re-started again only with the sort of midlife crisis that has spawned an entire revolting genre of movies about wretched men getting their boners back and wretched women getting their groove back. No. I blame how our holidays are too short, our working hours are too long, and we watch too much television.
I would love to think that sort of quality of life issue was up for debate in the upcoming Canadian election (which I won't be participating in, not paying taxes there anymore) or the upcoming American election. But no. No, no, no. God fucking forbid. Instead it's all bread and circuses without the bread. Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country; for example, you can work twice as many hours as is necessary from a productivity point of view, and you can abstain from clinging to any 'spare time' that would give you the freedom to learn about the most urgent political issues at hand, or to make informed decisions as an electorate, and or to educate your children to be anything but a semi-literate cog in the wheel of a car that's lost it's brakes and is careering down into the rising sea levels of our own suicidal societal stupidity.
lunedì, luglio 21, 2008
Tuesday morning mounting moral disappointment extravaganza
Hey, all my fellow guinea descendants who are tired of mobster-and-pasta stereotyping - tired of letting ol' Tony Soprano speak for us, especially now that the show's been (belatedly) cancelled - how about a new stereotype? I think we can call it INHUMAN FUCKING CUNTS.
What the fuck is the matter with us, anyways? Any Italian you meet will be able to explain some of the modern unpleasantnesses of our culture by telling you about the years of oppression in the countries they immigrate to and the centuries of oppression in Italy itself, but you know what, assholes? So could the Irish, Spanish, and everybody from Asia, and you don't hear about THEM fucking sunbathing next to children's corpses. Or voting for that grinning cunt-eyed motherfucker Berlusconi. Fuck me.
And while we're on the subject of vicious retardation, how the fuck is this shit legal, let alone vastly profitable? My last job in advertising brought home to me that the moral corruption of the entertainment industry is greater than any hysterical Biblesucker who doesn't like seeing gays kiss could imagine. And my present job is bringing home to me that the way we've been dealing with capital, at least over the last 100 years, is how a clever pan trog chimp would deal with a machine gun. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand does indeed exist; the Market is using it to wank its Invisible Penis, spilling its Invisible Jissom into your coffee, and using its other Invisible Hand to wipe Invisible Tears of laughter from its Invisible Eyes over what a fucking sucker you are.
Sometimes I feel like if there is a Satan, he'd be feeling really redundant these days. Silly to feel that way, of course. People have always found a way to be congratulated for doing bad things, and people have always sought to do bad things not out of naughtiness, but because they seemed the thing to do. People ain't no good. Sigh.
What the fuck is the matter with us, anyways? Any Italian you meet will be able to explain some of the modern unpleasantnesses of our culture by telling you about the years of oppression in the countries they immigrate to and the centuries of oppression in Italy itself, but you know what, assholes? So could the Irish, Spanish, and everybody from Asia, and you don't hear about THEM fucking sunbathing next to children's corpses. Or voting for that grinning cunt-eyed motherfucker Berlusconi. Fuck me.
And while we're on the subject of vicious retardation, how the fuck is this shit legal, let alone vastly profitable? My last job in advertising brought home to me that the moral corruption of the entertainment industry is greater than any hysterical Biblesucker who doesn't like seeing gays kiss could imagine. And my present job is bringing home to me that the way we've been dealing with capital, at least over the last 100 years, is how a clever pan trog chimp would deal with a machine gun. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand does indeed exist; the Market is using it to wank its Invisible Penis, spilling its Invisible Jissom into your coffee, and using its other Invisible Hand to wipe Invisible Tears of laughter from its Invisible Eyes over what a fucking sucker you are.
Sometimes I feel like if there is a Satan, he'd be feeling really redundant these days. Silly to feel that way, of course. People have always found a way to be congratulated for doing bad things, and people have always sought to do bad things not out of naughtiness, but because they seemed the thing to do. People ain't no good. Sigh.
martedì, giugno 17, 2008
The Red Dragon is educated by the internets
Thank you, BBC, for being good for more than keeping Dr. Who alive and trying to convince Britain and the World that the crappy ruling party isn't absolute crap. Their 'On This Day' feature yesterday informed me that on June 17 1961, Rudolf Nureyev made his break for the strong arms of capitalism, crying 'I want to be free!' Yes. Come to us, Rudolf. It also informed me that Rudolf Nureyev and Anthony Perkins had a thing, and what can I say except fuckin' A, Anthony - atta give hope to normal looking people everywhere. I mean, look at this:
And then this (and if you image google Rudolf Nureyev, by the way, even nakeder portraits from the 60's come up, and he was packing just the right amount of heat, I'd say):
Learning that Rudolf Nureyev and Anthony Perkins had a thing led me to learning that Victoria Principal was the one who turned Anthony Perkins on to women, and that Victoria Principal is sort of cool, and that Principal Victoria from South Park is named after her. Huh. And speaking of turn-on women: Cyd Charisse died, which is sad, though she had good long innings. She's one of the first women I can remember who made me think it might be nice to get intimate with a woman. She and Marlene Dietrich. To this day I understand, not merely as a sexual preference but as a fact, that women have incomparably better legs than men, both on average and in terms of the créme de la créme. Charisse, like Dietrich, was the créme. Look at those suckers:
You've got them as a point of comparison with Rudolf's, just above. And while Rudolf Nureyev may well have had the best legs a human male has ever had, honestly the only way you could pretend his legs were better than Cyd Charisse's legs is by pointing out that Rudolf's led to a fine package of heat at their junction, whilst Cyd's led up to something which I find about as entertaining and easy to solve as a Rubix cube, which isn't very, in case you were wondering.
lunedì, aprile 28, 2008
The importance of importance
Sometimes the future frightens me. I think that started in the heatwave of 2003, when all those old people died while I was in Paris. Maybe that's why I chose military strategy instead of economy for my masters there - maybe I had some paranoid expectation that one day the overheating world would be so resource-poor and violent that I would have to protect my family through assymmetrical warfare and the deft use of international alliances. It was either because of that paranoia that I chose military strategy, or because I'd already figured out that it doesn't fucking matter what you study in university in terms of getting a job so I might as well do something interesting and with fewer numbers than economy. That's pretty likely.
What is probably the most likely reason that I studied military strategy (and do bear in mind this is all speculation - I couldn't swear to my reasons for doing anything I did between 2001 and 2005) is an understanding it was important. Not just the hows of people killing each other en masse, but the whys, and the way to get them to perhaps stop it or at least ways to get them to not do it elsewhere as part of the same conflict.
This is on my mind now because Iraq has turned into even more of a hecatomb in a way that will impact all our lives, yet all the papers in Europe are front-paging instead with the Austrian who spent 24 years raping and impregnating his daughter. I'm not saying that's something that should be taken lightly, but it's not very important to know all the details about it. Not unless you like feeling slightly sick, or unless you want tips on how to keep your own enslaved, abused, ever-growing incestuous family captive in your fucking basement. And honestly, looking at the headlines - "Images Emerge from the 'House of Horror'" and whatnot - it looks as though that's the way the coverage is leaning. A how-to guide in extreme and violent perversion. Fuck, we live in degenerate times.
It's something we talk about at work once in awhile, you know - relief we don't have to titillate our readers, or struggle like jackals in a pack to wring interviews out of impossibly emotionally vulnerable or pathetically evil people. And our industry is important in that it effects a bunch of people at once in ways the people effected don't understand. And our job in terms of reporting on the industry is a little more key to the operations of that industry than, say, the role of the mainstream media is in terms of rescuing a woman who'd been imprisoned by her father 24 years ago by reporting on it in obsessive detail after she'd been rescued. No investigation - just scandal written up through police reports and after-the-fact interviews . . . providing one more ordeal, the ordeal of scrutiny, that could finish off any victims who had survived.
My head is full of thinking about the role of the media at the moment, as you might be able to tell, and also of the importance of importance in the media. I watched the Frontline special about it last week when I was in my hayfever half-coma and I do reccommend it, if you have four hours of loose ends at your fingertips.
What is probably the most likely reason that I studied military strategy (and do bear in mind this is all speculation - I couldn't swear to my reasons for doing anything I did between 2001 and 2005) is an understanding it was important. Not just the hows of people killing each other en masse, but the whys, and the way to get them to perhaps stop it or at least ways to get them to not do it elsewhere as part of the same conflict.
This is on my mind now because Iraq has turned into even more of a hecatomb in a way that will impact all our lives, yet all the papers in Europe are front-paging instead with the Austrian who spent 24 years raping and impregnating his daughter. I'm not saying that's something that should be taken lightly, but it's not very important to know all the details about it. Not unless you like feeling slightly sick, or unless you want tips on how to keep your own enslaved, abused, ever-growing incestuous family captive in your fucking basement. And honestly, looking at the headlines - "Images Emerge from the 'House of Horror'" and whatnot - it looks as though that's the way the coverage is leaning. A how-to guide in extreme and violent perversion. Fuck, we live in degenerate times.
It's something we talk about at work once in awhile, you know - relief we don't have to titillate our readers, or struggle like jackals in a pack to wring interviews out of impossibly emotionally vulnerable or pathetically evil people. And our industry is important in that it effects a bunch of people at once in ways the people effected don't understand. And our job in terms of reporting on the industry is a little more key to the operations of that industry than, say, the role of the mainstream media is in terms of rescuing a woman who'd been imprisoned by her father 24 years ago by reporting on it in obsessive detail after she'd been rescued. No investigation - just scandal written up through police reports and after-the-fact interviews . . . providing one more ordeal, the ordeal of scrutiny, that could finish off any victims who had survived.
My head is full of thinking about the role of the media at the moment, as you might be able to tell, and also of the importance of importance in the media. I watched the Frontline special about it last week when I was in my hayfever half-coma and I do reccommend it, if you have four hours of loose ends at your fingertips.
lunedì, aprile 14, 2008
Third time fucky
To my father's people:
Congratulations! You're now the joke of the universe, and you've really done something for my relationship with the French by making me resolve to never mock them again without adding "but at least they're not ass-clenchingly moronic enough to vote Silvio Berlusconi into office three fucking times." Thank you for illustrating so beautifully that this goddamn sexist, racist, kleptocratic knucklefucker is the governor you deserve, so I can stop feeling sorry for you. Thank you for giving me a warm fuzzy feeling about my family and all the other people of Italian descent who live outside of Italy, by convincing me that the useful ones have all left.
So have you simply accepted that sponging off your parents until they die of some cancer triggered by the foul miasma of toxins with which your industrial and waste disposal practices have flooded the country is an adequate response to your long-term economic shambles? Have you decided that the enslavement of the south to politically connected organized crime is an august tradition that must not be interfered with? Have you decided that the enslavement of your political system to the industrial class (not such a seperate issue from the last) is the best way to approach the challenges of the new millenium? Or have you just stopped caring?
Well, this year, not caring was the same as participating. Motherfuck, even the Economist was recomending that Roman communist over the fucking thieving filthy monkey you've chosen for the third time. You can't blame the CIA anymore. This was your fault. I cannot wait until he finishes running your institutions into the ground and you get kicked out of the Eurozone because of your incredibly huge national debt, so that I can go on holiday in your country and take advantage of your laughably weak currency (remember that?) to buy up your physical patrimony and ship it to a country that works. That is my hope for Italy now.
Oh, and if you, who benefit from a functioning multi-party system, ever lay into Americans for voting George Bush into office whilst they were stuck with their shitty two party system in my hearing again, I will vomit on you. Do you understand? I will tilt my head back, aim carefully, and vomit all over your overpriced, ill-fitting brand name clothes that make your legs look like sausages and your heads look like pins.
Holy titfuck, three times,
Mistress La Spliffe
Congratulations! You're now the joke of the universe, and you've really done something for my relationship with the French by making me resolve to never mock them again without adding "but at least they're not ass-clenchingly moronic enough to vote Silvio Berlusconi into office three fucking times." Thank you for illustrating so beautifully that this goddamn sexist, racist, kleptocratic knucklefucker is the governor you deserve, so I can stop feeling sorry for you. Thank you for giving me a warm fuzzy feeling about my family and all the other people of Italian descent who live outside of Italy, by convincing me that the useful ones have all left.
So have you simply accepted that sponging off your parents until they die of some cancer triggered by the foul miasma of toxins with which your industrial and waste disposal practices have flooded the country is an adequate response to your long-term economic shambles? Have you decided that the enslavement of the south to politically connected organized crime is an august tradition that must not be interfered with? Have you decided that the enslavement of your political system to the industrial class (not such a seperate issue from the last) is the best way to approach the challenges of the new millenium? Or have you just stopped caring?
Well, this year, not caring was the same as participating. Motherfuck, even the Economist was recomending that Roman communist over the fucking thieving filthy monkey you've chosen for the third time. You can't blame the CIA anymore. This was your fault. I cannot wait until he finishes running your institutions into the ground and you get kicked out of the Eurozone because of your incredibly huge national debt, so that I can go on holiday in your country and take advantage of your laughably weak currency (remember that?) to buy up your physical patrimony and ship it to a country that works. That is my hope for Italy now.
Oh, and if you, who benefit from a functioning multi-party system, ever lay into Americans for voting George Bush into office whilst they were stuck with their shitty two party system in my hearing again, I will vomit on you. Do you understand? I will tilt my head back, aim carefully, and vomit all over your overpriced, ill-fitting brand name clothes that make your legs look like sausages and your heads look like pins.
Holy titfuck, three times,
Mistress La Spliffe
lunedì, febbraio 25, 2008
Why Ralph Nader is a fucking dick
You know what's hilarious, like, Russia-hilarious, about the United States? Even the Lebanese laugh at it and, you know, their country's been blown up. It's the absolutely unrepresentative nature of the national executive structure. And until this structure is changed, third parties in the presidentials are tools the two main parties welcome with open arms, and Ralph Nader is a fucking dick.
The reason third, fourth, fifth, sixth, et cetera parties count in normal, functioning democracies isn't simply because they exist; it's because of their ability to form coalition governments with larger parties and shape policy through these coalitions. This way they demonstrate their effectiveness, and then win or fail to win the trust of the electorate. But in the U.S. presidentials, you're voting for a president and a vice president - one winner. Votes that go to candidates from a third party are gone forever. Sometimes that works out for the Democrats (like when Ross Perot split the dingbat vote), and sometimes for the Republicans (when Ralph Nader being a fucking dick in 2000 helped them mask that the recounts weren't making sense).
Either way these marginal third parties are something that the two main ones welcome and incorporate into their electoral strategies, in terms of dealing with each other - not in terms of how it works in France, for example. France features multi-party presidential elections followed by a two-party run-off election, in which the smaller parties that don't make it into the run-off still manage to frame the debate there by endorsing the best of the front-runners, for example, or by forcing the front-runners to adopt part of their platform to capture new run-off voters. Ralph Nader does not frame the debate. Ross Perot did not frame the debate. When there is only one winner in an ideologically blah, one-run system, all a third party does is make the party least like it more likely to win. There is no scope for debate-framing for smaller parties in a one-off presidential run - the scope is limited to vote-splitting.
That's hilarious. It means that not only is voting for a third party a way of participating in the strategy of the two main parties, but also that voting for a third party is an utterly ineffective way of seeking electoral reform, which the United States is in such crazy need of, because it's participating so effectively in the strategy of the two main parties. And thus the absolutely unrepresentative nature of the national executive structure suffers zero challenge.
So far, so already covered by dozens of 'center-left' broadsheets. But surely calling Ralph Nader a fucking dick is slightly harsh? No. He's a fucking dick and I don't trust him as far as I can throw him.
The thing is, though the United States is one of the more fucked up of the major democratic systems, they do have some of the 'checks and balances' that they claim to have, or at least they have Congress. Theoretically, at least, voting blocks can be formed in those houses, and, say, the Green Party could have a major voice in terms of passing and funding legislation, or a large-ish independent party with even a few congressmen could make major electoral reform part of its platform and bargain aggressively for it through their coalition or voting agreements. That's how non-direct democracy works, when it works. Messy and sometimes effective.
So why does Nader silently hold his hose during the congressionals? Why not found or find a party he can run with or endorse, why not make some goddamn speeches or something during the congressionals, if not run? Why not give up trying to raise the cash to run for the president and devote that cash to running a viable party in the congressionals? Why not pursue a long-term plan to form a national party that the electorate will find credible instead of throwing in his own little hat every time the presidentials roll around? In short, why not make one of his vaunted bids for democratic reform when reform is actually possible, instead of during the presidentials, when it isn't?
I haven't met the man so I can only guess. None of the guesses do him credit. And all of them, at their fundament, boil down to him being a fucking dick.
The reason third, fourth, fifth, sixth, et cetera parties count in normal, functioning democracies isn't simply because they exist; it's because of their ability to form coalition governments with larger parties and shape policy through these coalitions. This way they demonstrate their effectiveness, and then win or fail to win the trust of the electorate. But in the U.S. presidentials, you're voting for a president and a vice president - one winner. Votes that go to candidates from a third party are gone forever. Sometimes that works out for the Democrats (like when Ross Perot split the dingbat vote), and sometimes for the Republicans (when Ralph Nader being a fucking dick in 2000 helped them mask that the recounts weren't making sense).
Either way these marginal third parties are something that the two main ones welcome and incorporate into their electoral strategies, in terms of dealing with each other - not in terms of how it works in France, for example. France features multi-party presidential elections followed by a two-party run-off election, in which the smaller parties that don't make it into the run-off still manage to frame the debate there by endorsing the best of the front-runners, for example, or by forcing the front-runners to adopt part of their platform to capture new run-off voters. Ralph Nader does not frame the debate. Ross Perot did not frame the debate. When there is only one winner in an ideologically blah, one-run system, all a third party does is make the party least like it more likely to win. There is no scope for debate-framing for smaller parties in a one-off presidential run - the scope is limited to vote-splitting.
That's hilarious. It means that not only is voting for a third party a way of participating in the strategy of the two main parties, but also that voting for a third party is an utterly ineffective way of seeking electoral reform, which the United States is in such crazy need of, because it's participating so effectively in the strategy of the two main parties. And thus the absolutely unrepresentative nature of the national executive structure suffers zero challenge.
So far, so already covered by dozens of 'center-left' broadsheets. But surely calling Ralph Nader a fucking dick is slightly harsh? No. He's a fucking dick and I don't trust him as far as I can throw him.
The thing is, though the United States is one of the more fucked up of the major democratic systems, they do have some of the 'checks and balances' that they claim to have, or at least they have Congress. Theoretically, at least, voting blocks can be formed in those houses, and, say, the Green Party could have a major voice in terms of passing and funding legislation, or a large-ish independent party with even a few congressmen could make major electoral reform part of its platform and bargain aggressively for it through their coalition or voting agreements. That's how non-direct democracy works, when it works. Messy and sometimes effective.
So why does Nader silently hold his hose during the congressionals? Why not found or find a party he can run with or endorse, why not make some goddamn speeches or something during the congressionals, if not run? Why not give up trying to raise the cash to run for the president and devote that cash to running a viable party in the congressionals? Why not pursue a long-term plan to form a national party that the electorate will find credible instead of throwing in his own little hat every time the presidentials roll around? In short, why not make one of his vaunted bids for democratic reform when reform is actually possible, instead of during the presidentials, when it isn't?
I haven't met the man so I can only guess. None of the guesses do him credit. And all of them, at their fundament, boil down to him being a fucking dick.
mercoledì, febbraio 20, 2008
Pomp and heroin
First, because it's awesome, more Bill Withers, and more of his drummer. I like his drummer because looks just like me the first time I took pills for fun, except black and a man.
I think I also like my job. It's letting me visit Scandinavia for the first week of June for something that sounds like even less effort than a conference. Scandinavia is one of those places that I always said I'd visit if someone else paid, and hey, here they are paying. Considering extending my stay a bit and going to Copenhagen to hang out in Christiania - I figure either the powers that be (politicians or gangs, the 'tax-free' version of Wal-Mart coming in and shitting all over a community's economy) will crush it, or it'll be the epicentre of Europe's next revolution. Either way worth visiting.
Speaking of places that should be the epicentre of Europe's next revolution but everybody's too busy getting fucked up. Last night I had a couple of drinks with a Welsh girl and fuck, do you know how cheap heroin is in Great Britain? It is so fucking cheap. And it's got cheaper since the 'liberation' of the Afghanistan. Nice one, free world. I wonder if that's been the case all over the place. It was super cheap in the south of Italy for as long as I've paid attention to these things but I figured that's because it was doing the black market version of 'falling off the back of a truck' whilst in transit to some other part of Europe. I wonder what colour market that would be. What's blacker than black? I think I'll call it the jet market. Jet's pretty.
I think I also like my job. It's letting me visit Scandinavia for the first week of June for something that sounds like even less effort than a conference. Scandinavia is one of those places that I always said I'd visit if someone else paid, and hey, here they are paying. Considering extending my stay a bit and going to Copenhagen to hang out in Christiania - I figure either the powers that be (politicians or gangs, the 'tax-free' version of Wal-Mart coming in and shitting all over a community's economy) will crush it, or it'll be the epicentre of Europe's next revolution. Either way worth visiting.
Speaking of places that should be the epicentre of Europe's next revolution but everybody's too busy getting fucked up. Last night I had a couple of drinks with a Welsh girl and fuck, do you know how cheap heroin is in Great Britain? It is so fucking cheap. And it's got cheaper since the 'liberation' of the Afghanistan. Nice one, free world. I wonder if that's been the case all over the place. It was super cheap in the south of Italy for as long as I've paid attention to these things but I figured that's because it was doing the black market version of 'falling off the back of a truck' whilst in transit to some other part of Europe. I wonder what colour market that would be. What's blacker than black? I think I'll call it the jet market. Jet's pretty.
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