Financial observers and English teachers at the time noted that my failed post was simply a consequence of the blog market adjusting itself, and that no regulatory oversight by grammar or syntax was needed.
However, a recent groundswell of demand for that failed post has led to several more near-collapses on Wall Street, thus making my piece relevant again. All I can say is -- thank you. I'm humbled. Your $700 billion check will be arriving shortly.
Ah, for the heady days of March 2008 and the winsome innocence of $30-billion bailouts. Come with me and bask in the notalgia...
All the recent discussion about poor people, high mortgage interest rates, and how they turned out to be a foundation of clay for our magnificent financial edifices has masked the discussion of a much larger issue than the market in subprime mortgages. Namely, the market in credit default swaps.
No one seems to know exactly what credit default swaps are or what their real value is, only that you can make money by selling them to people. Something like $45 trillion (yes, trillion) in credit-default-swap business has been transacted. That's three times the annual US GDP.
So what are credit default swaps? They are explained as being something like insurance against institutions defaulting or otherwise not paying their debts. Until its near-default, Bear Stearns was a major player in this market.
A near-default that was avoided by a $30 billion dollar loan from the Fed.
So. Pop quiz. In order to save the market in institution-default insurance, when one of those market institutions threatens to default, you need:
a) $45 trillion in institution-default insurance, or
b) $30 billion in taxpayer monies.
Apparently, the choice is clear.
Given the Fed's stellar performance in their first test of economic-fiasco avoidance, they might be looking for new Everests to climb. Here is one suggestion: bail out the US Mint.
Since the decline of the dollar, the cost of manufacturing Benjamins has risen by nearly three thousand percent. To print a single dollar bill now costs $100.05. Clearly action is needed.
If the Fed bails out the Mint, the Mint can provide a sizeable long-term return by only printing money that already exists. Aside from the obvious benefit of slashing waste, this has the added bonus of getting the Mint in on the ground floor of the Green Economy. It will simply recycle those dollars back to the Federal Reserve, where they will be stored safe for reborrowing by the Mint. The real winner will be the U.S. taxpayer.
However, some critics say this will only work until the world runs out of Scotch Tape to hold the aging bills together. At which point the Fed may be forced to declare that each shred of a $100 bill is worth $10. This seems appealing at first glance, but it is simply manufacturing money out of nothing. In the best case, the government will be forced to nationalize the manufacture of Scotch Tape, absorbing the cost by borrowing against future money-recycling revenues.
In the end, the best option might be to offshore the printing of US money to more business-friendly countries. This would give us the best return for the lowest cost. Now, protection of the US Mint from overseas competition might appear desirable, but in the long run it reduces our competitiveness and weakens the economy. In these troubled times, it's critical for everyone to support free trade.
]]>Yes, the collective feeling inspired by 9/11 belongs to all Americans, and it will last a lifetime. But that doesn't mean it's "one-9/11-fits-all!" Now, on the seventh anniversary of the most deadly attack on US soil, we bring to you --
My911.
My911. With all the power you've come to expect from the 9/11 brand, but now with the flexibility to match even the most 9/11-demanding lifestyle.
Do you appreciate the sense of resolve that the deaths of 3,000 victims gave you and your leaders, but wish the victims themselves had been a little more deserving? My911 is the answer. With one click of the mouse, you can change the full list of 3,000 names -- of stock traders, maintenance staff and first responders -- to be the editorial staff of Mother Jones magazine. Now, when the remaining liberals and east-coast elites carp about the administration's systematic lack of preparedness for 9/11, you can enjoy a shiver of schadenfreude.
As a bonus, New York's first responders need not risk their own lives for fifth columnists such as these. Instead of dying on that day and slowly sickening over the years to follow, as happened on the conventional 9/11 -- these heroes can stay safe in their fire stations and police stations and emergency rooms, secure in the knowledge that a blow has been struck against America's enemies.
As a safety feature, My911 lets you customize all first responders to be immune to airborne toxins. This way, none of them will sicken -- and thus be ungrateful when they are denied medical coverage for their conditions. But this is probably overdoing it. After all, any first responder is welcome in the emergency room at any time. In reality, none of them lack medical coverage.
But not only can you save the lives of those worth saving. For the first time ever, My911 gives you the power to say "I told you so!"
Sure -- just like everyone else, you rallied around the President when he vowed to take down the imminent threat of Saddam Hussein -- before he made an even worse attack on us. You cheered when Baghdad fell, and you cheered when we shipped demonstrators into Baghdad to cheer when we pulled down Saddam's statue.
But then, every claim the President made turned out to be false. Worse, we were stuck in Iraq for years to come, overextended and unable to deal effectively with genuine threats to our security. Oops.
But wait! It's My911, here to rescue you and everyone you love from the crumbling tower of your own hubris!
With My911, there's no need for the mushroom cloud of all that Iraqi hot air to leave a smoking gun of embarrassment in your life. My911 has an embarrassment-removal feature that enables you to go back in time, so you can bury all the WMD you want anyplace you want. Now, when they dig up Saddam's army of atomic Republican Guards, slumbering in burqas of depleted uranium, only awaiting the command "Jihad!" to awake and lay waste to the world -- now you can say "I told you so."
If you want to go all the way, you can even erase the unfinished chemical plant that US firm Bechtel contracted to build in Iraq after the gassing of all those Kurds in 1988. Now, San-Francisco-based Bechtel need never face the shame of having threatened to evade the sanctions against Iraq which Congress was on the point of signing into law -- because none of it ever happened! With a clean slate, Bechtel can now accept all those no-bid Iraq contracts with no doubt as to the purity of its intentions.
Talk about your San Francisco values!
But why reverse-engineer Iraq when you can edit al-Qaeda? My911 is there to help. Prior to 9/11, Osama bin Laden and his cohorts complained of the American presence in Saudi Arabia -- in effect, an army of infidels occupying the Muslim holy land. In fact, al-Qaeda did more than complain -- they vowed to strike back.
But now, you can just waft our pre-9/11 troops out of Saudi Arabia and plop them down in Iraq. Now we win the war on terror before we've even had to fight it! And not least, Osama bin Laden's complaints have been cleansed of any taint of legitimacy. Now, if he ever attacks us again, we can have the comfort of knowing that it's truly because he hates our freedom.
Are you a leader in one of our two major political parties -- at least, the only one of the two parties that counts? Want to hold a convention in St. Paul Minnesota to select a presidential nominee, and want a high level of security -- but worry that having police make warrantless raids on organizations with names like "Food Not Bombs" will send the wrong message? Even if it's generally agreed that terrorists enjoy food?
That's a lot of responsibility, but now you can master it. My911 crashes through the door of political discourse, armed with a concussion grenade of free expression. My911 can create a custom-tailored video of the finest moments of your 9/11 -- moments powerful enough to put the opposition on the ground with its hands behind its head, all in the cause of sound public policy. Because unless you show a montage of suffering and destruction, how will Americans know you're on their side?
In fact, there's nothing that My911 can't do for you. Unhappy that the Afghan regime we've fought to preserve produces ninety percent of the world's heroin? Not to worry -- you're just a few keystrokes away from a joint announcement from the DOE and the FDA that poppies are the revolutionary biofuel of the future -- second only to terrorists themselves. Just imagine -- the freedom of the open road, powered by the corpses of those who hate it!
Unhappy that our troops are stuck in Iraq for tour after tour, enduring merciless heat? Just tell My911 to say "No" to global warming and get the next Ice Age going. Then take that thickening Arctic polar cap and ship it to Iraq, where it can do some good. At last, we can put those transportation biofuels to worthy use -- and our troops can be proud of their new responsibilities, guarding polar bears from extinction!
Irked at the shortsightedness of the bygone British Empire, which drew the Afghanistan/Pakistan border straight through the Pashtun tribal lands -- thus making the border porous and indefensible against modern-day evildoers? My911 can not only change 9/11 -- it can give you a whole new Fourth of July. Now, thanks to My911, instead of just having declared our independence from Britain, we conquered them. In one day. And drew the borders of their empire, and all world's countries, where they should have damn well been drawn in the first place.
My911. The only 9/11 you'll ever need.
]]>Time is money.
Thus I have all the money in the world.
No, you can't have any.
]]>This weekend's nominees:
Winner: Vampire Cop Ricky
Runner-Up: Attack the Gas Station!
Both films are Korean. Is it possible they know something Hollywood doesn't?
]]>]]>
Description Quantity Price Euthanasia 1 60.40 Cremation 1 121.00 With Sympathy 1 0.00
No, no gloating here. No, I'm here to make a joke.
The day of the primaries, there were signs plastered all over my workplace reading "Vote Today!" So far so good. But after that, whoever was in charge of GOTV really fell down on the job. The next morning, not one of the signs had been updated to say "Vote Yesterday!"
I am so cool.
]]>I have to admit I don't know a fair proportion of the people in the list. I just like the pictures.
Sometimes I try to keep up with the news, since knowing stuff makes end-of-year lists about stuff more meaningful. But to tell the truth, whenever I read a headline, my eyes glaze over by the second or third word.
For example, just from today's New York Times: "Delay Expected In...". Well, what else is new. The delay is always expected to be in. At least, that's what the delay's secretary always tells me when I call. That is, when she's not telling me the delay is currently in a meeting, and can she take a message? Frankly, the New York Times needs better sources.
A more newsworthy headline would be "Delay Expected To Be Late". Except that's more than two or three words, so I wouldn't read it.
"Outside Groups Spend...". Well, duh. Outside groups are always spending. With all that money, you'd think the outside groups would at least offer decent compensation and benefits. But since you're outside the group, they pay you freelance rates at best. With zero health coverage. Such working conditions are particularly exploitative because, outside the group, on assignment all alone, it's easy to get lost and die of exposure. So write your congressman, and dress appropriately!
"U.S. Diplomat Killed...". This headline leaves me hanging. Who did the U.S. diplomat kill, and why? Well, it probably doesn't matter. The U.S. has a hard-line policy of refusing to negotiate with diplomats, no matter how many innocents are killed. And rightly so: to give in would demonstrate to diplomats everywhere that diplomacy gets results.
Anyway, it's all academic. I'm just not motivated to care about the world or anything in it. How can I possibly care about what's going on in the world when the world is so aggressively disinterested in how kissable my lips are?
Benazir Bhutto assassinated? Well, if she didn't want to be assassinated, she shouldn't have had herself flown to where the assassins are! She should have skipped assassin country and had herself flown straight to my lips. Lips aren't well-known for their ability to share political power in Muslim nations, but neither are they known for assassinating anybody. Well -- sometimes lips perform character assassination, but everybody knows that characters aren't people.
Third anniversary of the catastrophic tidal wave hitting Indonesia? Feh. How about the ninth anniversary of my face getting hit by a tongue wave?
Now, Indonesians are known for many things -- being Muslim, making Nike sneakers, drowning when underwater -- but they are not known for the frequency with which they make out. If they had wanted to solve that particular national crisis, all they had to do was hop a plane to my house. Then they wouldn't have been on the beach when the wave hit. Really, they have no one but themselves to blame for how things turned out.
Iowa primaries neck-and-neck? Candidates pleading for last-minute donations to put them over the top? No thanks. They don't talk about the issues that matter. If any of them even hinted at imposing term limits on my lack of lip-locking, I would donate like a shot. I would go door-to-door in any weather to talk passionately about this pressing issue. But my lips are off the table. It's just another example of the disconnect between Washington insiders and the American people.
]]>As you can tell, I haven't had too many words lately. I've been more into pictures than words, because pictures are easier to point at. If you want to see, here are some of the things I've pointed at lately.
Now that it's getting cold, though, I may have to get back to dealing with words. The pictures outside are too chilly. And words keep my mouth warm.
I have some things to say about photography, but not right now. In the meantime, it did occur to me that we might have to start canonizing lawyers.
Say you've got your typical ambulance-chasing lawyer. One day he gets run down in the road and badly injured. Irony, right?
But then, as soon as the ambulance takes him away, that lawyer is chasing the same ambulance that he's in! That's bilocation, which in the eyes of the Church is a miracle. It would take only one more miracle for the lawyer to be officially recognized as a saint.
So please. Drive carefully.
The problem with summaries is that they have a way, after enough time has passed, of becoming the thing itself. And no summary could do justice to this trip, since it was unlike much of anything I'd ever experienced before. Except, maybe, for gym class.
Anyway, here's your summary. It was fantastic, it was painful, it was humiliating. And it involved lots and lots of hackey-sack.
More later. I'm about to head off to a movie at one of our local multiplexes. The town I live in has two multiplexes, and by unspoken consent I and everyone I know shuns the northern one. It is much more lame and corporate than the southern multiplex. This is how we convince ourselves that we're ethical.
Speaking of movies, Zabriskie Point is playing at Chicago's Music Box Theater next weekend. First, see my writeup a couple of posts back. Then, if you love me or in any way respect what I think, you will go. And you will stay until the end.
]]>Does literacy hibernate in the winter? Is summer the time when literacy fattens up on pulp for those long, lean winters, when the only food to be had is the backs of cereal boxes and Ayn Rand?
Or is winter just the time when literacy gets really cold and is forced to survive by burning the contents of school libraries? (Which, admittedly, keeps the children warm).
Or maybe literacy is solar-powered. If so, no wonder it's underfunded.
Bad jokes aside, I'm off to Glacier National Park at 6:30 tomorrow morning. We will definitely see who is solar-powered and who's not.
On my way out: here's an indirect put-down, if one is required and you're fresh out.
"Considering that 'self' is the first word in 'self-important', it's funny how the natural place to be self-important is around other people."
Enjoy.
]]>This evening I was winding down at work with some desultory websurfing. Click, click, click. Hm, an obituary. Click, scroll. Antonioni Died Monday. Click. Save.
Getting home half an hour later, I reached into my mailbox and pulled out a Russian copy of his film Zabriskie Point. The only DVD copy I have ever been able to find.
I got it for the ending. I have never worked so hard to find a movie just so I could see the ending. I think all that straining might have done something to Antonioni's soul. Enough to part it from the rest of him, anyway.
I hope I don't have his soul. He probably deserves better. Better, anyway than this obituarist is willing to grant:
"As with later Antonioni films, the settings were stark, the scenes fussily composed, the shots held a few beats longer than necessary."
Now hold on there. Just hold on. If -- like this guy -- you've seen L'Avventura and Blow-Up and are salivating to write their maker off as artsy, hang on a second before you chew him up and swallow.
In a not-well-known novel called Who's Who In Hell, the characters play a game called "Oliver". The game is to think of something, then give your partner some clues to help them guess what you're thinking of. In the case of Oliver, the clues are the opposites of the words you'd normally use to describe what you're thinking of.
So. An Oliver for Antonioni:
"Kinetic".
Your classic Antonioni film does not move fast. Even if the plot calls for death, no one is in physical danger. In place of danger, people look at people, or look at things, or say things to each other. Amusement is attempted, ennui is felt. People want more, or less, or nothing. In showing what is unable to fill the soul, the soul is defined.
"Kinetic".
Antonioni's movies are the speed at which the soul moves. In an Antonioni film, as in real life, Heaven is a place where nothing happens. And Hell is a place where the same thing happens, over and over and over.
"Kinetic".
Kinetic.
You want to see how fast the soul can move?
Watch Zabriskie Point.
I've written about this movie before. Basically, the movie is a mess that critics of the time loathed and moviegoers of the time didn't go to. It's yet another Antonioni movie about defining the soul through soullessness, only with a bigger budget and less Italian upper class.
Zabriskie Point is a place near Death Valley, California. Nothing grows there. According to the movie, however, it's a good place to fall in love because it's one of the few places on earth that human beings don't monkey with. Love is found, the desert is survived. It's when people leave it that the world goes back to killing them.
But -- unlike the classic Antonioni ending of accommodating the soullessness through resignation, or finding some small peace -- something is done. Instead of greeting yet another day after yet another party that's worn down the part of you that looks for anything in any other human being, instead of fading away in a field after losing your grip on a crime you couldn't have done anything about anyway, and, instead of doing something, fading away while watching mimes fake a game of tennis: something is done. Something is finally, finally done about all that soullessness.
I can't tell you what that ending does to me. I've tried to explain it, but I can't. If you ever find the movie and get through the first part, and the second part, and the third part -- and there are things to like in the messy desert of each -- then you're home.
Watch the part just before the famous ending. In the desert, there is a comfy vacation stop for land developers. These developers hope to turn the place into a whole colony of vacation spots. Proposals are made and denied, prices are haggled over. Rights are trotted out: land rights, mineral rights, water rights, inalienable rights. All kind of rights go flying around. Whee!
Meanwhile, the people who used to call this desert home now serve these vacationers. Bring their food and water, change their beds, wash their plates and cups and underthings. In exchange they receive an income barely sufficient to rent a room, let alone buy beads and blankets and booze. They receive just enough for a crisp white uniform.
Whee.
On top of this, all possibility of love has just been annihilated.
Now. Something must be done.
Sleep well, dear Michelangelo.
]]>Heads will become viewed less as repositories of the soul or consciousness, and more as recycling bins.
Skulls will become hinged, much like foot-operated trash cans. Of course, the skulls will literally be foot-operated.
As a result, slow dancing will become even riskier.
As usual, this development will be motivated by the defense and entertainment industries. The military will fund development of hinged skulls ostensibly to have resilient new bodies for the brains of top commanders -- along with their guts. However, the skulls will be used mainly by hawkish congressmen who desire credit for not exempting their children from war service. Before any brave congresschildren ship out for duty, their cortexes will be secretly rescued -- and the bodies will ship out with the brains of illegal immigrants instead.
As repayment for this generosity, the sons and daughters will work on their parents' home renovations and landscaping projects. Meanwhile, the sudden upsurge in non-English-speaking recruits will have no measurable effect on the ability of officers to communicate with their men.
On the entertainment side, Hollywood superstars will rush to take advantage of hinged skulls. Actors who have been typecast and want a fresh start will exchange brains with drama students who are impatient for a public. And stars who are just plain tired of fame will change brains with housepets.
As a result, acting will much more frequently be described as "uneven".
On the professional-sports end, eager children will sign up to exchange brains with their favorite basketball stars. However, the kids will soon realize that, even though their allowances get bigger, every day is just like PE. Minus the bathroom breaks.
For a while, though, trading cards will display the faces of star kindergarten dribblers. Autographs in flesh-colored crayon will drive auction prices through the roof.
In the end, the demographic with the highest demand for brain-exchange service will be aging bachelors. However, their only takers will be other aging bachelors.
Meanwhile, stem-cell researches will think all this is silly. As far as they're concerned, a brain isn't something you swap out -- it's something you grow into.
]]>Not bad, if you don't mind precluding any possibility of character development.
You see? It's things like this that keep me from writing.
]]>Yes. I am that old.
After I stopped marveling at the fact that every line of dialogue in that film has been burned into my midbrain for thirty-three years (hey, no wonder I never have room for anything else), and then after I stopped wondering how many people on the screen are now dead (and how many have been reanimated), I started to wonder about Dr. Frankenstein himself.
Whenever the man dies, he leaves exactly one heir. This makes probate a snap, but it could also make for some interesting family dynamics. How, after all, would Frankenstein Junior feel about having no mother, yet suddenly gaining a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall younger brother? And then gaining a six-foot younger sister the younger brother wanted to marry? Whom the Doctor disowned, and then followed all over the world? Junior would gain some interesting assumptions about family values.
He would never be able to make his own real sister. He would never even get one for Christmas. But at least he and Igor could make sweet, sweet heirs together.
Perhaps, ironically, we have to chalk up Dr. Frankenstein's production of a single heir to a failure of imagination. After all, the man could make as many heirs as he wanted.
Imagine a reading of the Frankenstein will, attended by a dozen contentious, squabbling Creatures. Which Creature would get Dr. Frankenstein's brain? Why -- the head of the household, of course. And which Creature would get the hands? Probably whichever one had become a secret criminal mastermind and needed a new set of prints to throw off the CSIs. And so on.
As the will was being read, and each Creature got something it didn't realize it had needed, the Creatures' former rivalries would be forgotten. All scars would be mended in the healing balm of the late Doctor's benevolence. For the first time they would stop squabbling about who gotten the choicest body parts or the most electricity -- and come together, as a family.
Then they would marry each other.
Lately people have been giving me things. This is a great way to remind me I have a mailing address.
My friend Dawn sent me a couple issues of Collier's. These are autobiographical graphic novels in booklet form, written and drawn by David Collier. The booklets contain vignettes about the things you did and the people you knew, if you were on the fringes of the punk scene in early-eighties Toronto.
Oh, the things you didn't know about yourself!
The issues Dawn sent me are homages to people who are now deceased. Each panel is a sort of tableau, containing a title with a narrative point and then a homely little picture to illustrate or foil the point. This is how memory works: you remember a split-second scene or a several-second anecdote, which you then fit into whatever narrative you've decided your life is. If you're lucky, you don't have to work too hard to make things fit.
One of my favorite scenes:
Good stuff. Thank you, Dawn.
Other things I've been given:
My family talks a lot about what's on HBO. To help me make sense of more than forty percent of their conversations, my parents help me watch some of the HBO series.
The latest offering is John From Cincinnati. So far it's fascinating. It's a sort of Being There for surfer families. It contains possible divine intervention, so it's rated TV-MA.
So far there have been no will-reading scenes of lawyers divvying up the divine intervention to mutually resentful family members, but I remain hopeful. I want to see if the surfer grandson gets the sun to stand still so he can finish his promo video for potential sponsors, thereby avenging himself on the family members who scoffed at his lack of marketability.
Oh -- I started up a MySpace page. For those of you who wonder why this weblog contains no pictures of me, visit MySpace to find out.
Then be my friend, won't you?
For a while, everyone told me that fire was my friend. Then they'd blame me when I'd burn my thumb and go on a rampage. They'd actually wave torches in my face, claiming they were here as allies to help fire confront me about my behavior.
As you can imagine, we weren't able to resolve our differences. I've been blocked from fire's MySpace page, but I've stayed in the loop enough to hear that fire has been blackballed from several national forests.
I bet you're easier to get along with than that.
]]>