Obambi Turns into Chief Knockahoma?

I am looking at stories one, two and three at the Daily Beast. Senate Ratifies START treaty. Obama Signs DADT. Senate Passes 9/11 Health Bill. And that does not include the surprisingly well-received tax bill he got passed.

Is this not like the champion coming off the ropes near the end of his stamina (it seems)--then flying forth with a left right left that lands hard upon the Obamahaters' collective chins?

Does this not show a man resilient enough to come off the ropes with plans intact and executable? Almost by slipping through a closing portal, he emerged with these votes in his favor, first the tax bill, then three fairly major pieces of legislation the success of any of which no one was even talking about a month and a half ago.

This is akin, for what it is worth, to a third baseman down on his luck in the playoffs suddenly going 3 for 4 with several ribbies in a deciding contest. Kind of stuff stars are made of.

Anyone who forgot Obama is a Brainiac had better remember now. Whether you like him or not, he's got the bully pulpit and he's got more grey matter and fortitude than a dozen others like him. And this one-two-three salvo is the opening of Obama 2012.

We've always suspected Obama simply has to "not be lame" to be re-elected, given the Republicans' distinct lack of big-tentedness (Sarah: 30% and holding; Barbour: Confederate confederacy; Romney: Mormon with dog on car roof; Pawlenty: oh, that was last time, sorry; Huckabee: Christer homilies'll get you to the Arkansas statehouse but not the White House; Jindal: okay, as long as this is for extra credit; Rand Paul: too smart for you guys); but there have been times when, having lost his footing some, Obama may have appeared vulnerable to a creditable primary challenge. I believe now when people look back on years one and two,they will have to admit: Saved Economy From Depression On First Day in Office; Created Platform for a National Health; Appointed Two Super-smart New York Women to the High Bench; Kept Sharron Angle out of the Senate; Extended Middle-Class Tax Cuts; Ratified START; Ended DADT; Passed 9/11 Health Bill. 'Nuf?

Anyone who cares, and understands what it would be like with the Insane Clown Posse in charge, knows that, whether or not you feel he gets a big smiley face on his half-term paper, you will be swinging the lever for the big O come 2012.

Liberals and Airport Security

Hello Liberals, ye so-called true patriots and defenders of all that is good and fine in our troubled union.

Now that your tarnished lion is nursing a split jaw behind White House curtains, and as the Bush-spawned TSA is putting you through an i-see-your-hiney bodyscanner in vain search of that lone gramps with a shiv up his kilt, where is your powerful voice in defense of all that is good and fine?

There is nothing good and fine about the body scanner or the disgraceful pawing of American citizens as they prepare meekly to travel from Oklahoma City to Portland, Oregon by air. There is only blunt, careless, ineffective, insulting disruption of the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution in which we are protected against illegal search and seizure.

O Liberal, have ye lost your voice? Are ye now waking to the call of yon Partisan Idol who whispers to you that you must defend Bad in the long term interest of Good? So it seems. And it is certainly a surprise that the so-called Liberal Media has decided that, since Republicans seem to be leading the charge against invasiveness (because they are "against the government snicker snicker"), you must downplay and poo-poo the whole thing as Redi-Whipped hysteria.

American pollsters seem to say you are politically correct to do so--most Americans seem either to support the erosion of their own rights (didn't need 'em anyway!) as long as it provides that infinitesimally small measure of additional security for them that they will not be confronted with boxcutters while cramped on the way to Tampa. But Americans, having elected GWB not once but twice and then apparently duped by a man who claimed he was Change Itself, need not apply for the National Perceptiveness Award.

But you, Liberals! Ye who saw early the insane clown folly of the WMD farrago, who railed against torture and illegal detention, who bawled in our faces that we would have a Better, Finer America if only Liberals were empowered to see to our collective betterment--where are ye now that we are being driven like cattle to machine-enabled nakedness; or, if we refuse that, a ten-times-more disgraceful manhandling by rubber-gloved flunkeys (who probably mean well, as do so many flunkeys)? In either case our hands are up like perpetrators; cops are searching us as if we had been pulled over on the highway drunk like Charlie Sheen and shotgun shells littering the floor of our car.

We are stripped bare in the name of airtight security but without good reason or sense, and certainly no sensibility. And Liberals are just pretty okay with it for some reason only the electoral map can help us discern.

Our rights deserve better than that.

Hating on Air Travel

I am a hater.

Of air travel.

I did not used to be.

Now I try to avoid it unless it cannot be avoided (trips over 1500 miles; overseas).

The MAIN REASON: airport security.

One supposes there is an argument for all the security on airplanes these days but I doubt it could not be done as efficiently and at no inconvenience to the traveler. Our current mindset (post-Osama) is that rights can be abrogated without a second thought.

The dressing down at the gates had become distasteful enough (and time-consuming)--an exercise in authoritarian-induced paranoia and humiliation--but now we hear it's to get worse, with more invasive pat-downs and full-body scans at the gate.

I actually don't give a hoot about full-body scans. It does not inconvenience me. Let them do it for everyone at the airport, all the time. Fine. And if you find a weapon, go for it. Or, put an armed air-marshal on every flight (which cannot be more expensive than the current horror).

But the current innocent's perp-walk through the officious security line reeks of the police state we have become, and I would love to know how many bombers have been caught this way. Can I have some hands for "none"? Maybe they are just being deterred. Or maybe we just had to stop being utterly effing lame about letting people on with weapons.

My personal opinion is that the TSA itself should be abolished and replaced with a police force trained to spot trouble. The notion that everyone must wait in line to be scanned and their liquids examined, seems lazy and wildly inconsiderate of the American "leave me alone" spirit. To me it seems a disgraceful waste and a huge entitlement program for security wannabes now dressed in gray and having far too much authority over the typical citizen traveler.

At worst, keep the TSA around for international flights and/or non-US Citizens. But the sight of US Citizens traveling from, say, LaGuardia to Tampa being patted down as if they are likely to be minions of Qaeda strikes me as a national disgrace.

In another post, I may complain about the tininess of airline seats but this is a consumer complaint and market driven, so there really is little in fact to complain about in writing but instead many plane tickets not to buy.

But I am a hater of the flying experience because my rights and privacy are brutally violated each time I encounter the security checkpoint. I feel it is a near certainty we are slowly being made immune to a near total lack of rights which may at some point become the norm. And like the frog that slowly boils in water, we will not notice until we are cooked enough to be nearly dead and able only to jerk spasmodically in anticipation of the total death of freedom.

Govern!

Not two weeks into the Tea Party Era in Washington and we already know the basic tenets of the TP are untenable, or at least unsellable in practice.

For instance--Jim DeMint, Tea Party's own pre-elected Senator from the South, has already said the debt ceiling shall be raised (even though the Tea Party insists it cannot be, or else they will sweat blood until we are drowned in it); and Rand Paul, that intemperate enemy of Pork, has realized that his own district might like a taste of bacon now and then, and that this in fact is what gets folks re-elected more than anything else; so he's going to get some earmarks for his hometown crowd, lo and behold. Finally, when confronted on television (by Chris Matthews) on what exactly would be cut from the budget, a lame-looking TP spokesperson said "discretionary spending" which meant nothing of course, and promptly exempted the military, social security, medicare and pretty much everything that costs all the money.

One can almost feel sorry for these electees, now they are stuck with the promises they made. The trouble is not that "across the board cuts" are a bad idea.

The trouble is that Americans won't tolerate cutting any real spending. And they also won't tolerate taxation.

It is the American people who have made themselves ungovernable. Mainly this is through an almost exquisite flavor of economic hipocrisy comprised of the belief that we are a nation of self-reliant pioneers in need of unfettered "freedom"; while in fact we are a nation of slack, subsidized, overprotected, aggressively militant, pie-hole-stuffing crybabies who want what we want when we want it and who collectively stop our ears with our fingers when anyone talks about the real sacrifice needed to achieve this so-called "independent spirit" none of us really want (except to bray about it in town halls).

The states that get the most subsidy from the Feds crow loudest about taxes. This is because, since they are small in population and relatively uneducated in general, they have become cheap, easy pickings for spindoctors employed by the cynical megawealthy who court these simple voters with utterly false notions that there is solidarity between the no-tax desires of the billionaire and the food-on-the-table needs of the slogger and his wife and kids and pickup truck and dog and ATV and rifle(s).

We are in this mess, at least partly, because since the days of the Reagan Administration, intelligence itself has been attacked as somehow a betrayal of American values; therefore it is more American to be dumb. And how well this has worked for the wealthy elite! They have created a polity so easily manipulated they can actually win time after time in elections against candidates who might benefit someone besides the no-tax megawealthy.

Tea Party--go ahead and try to govern. You will soon find that we are where we are because the wealthiest manipulators want us here: jobs being performed overseas at a tenth of the pay (boosting profit quite magnificently); giant military to protect the interests of the wealthy everywhere; no costly safety net for the wretched and the screwed in this country; and enough existing subsidy for homeowners and corporations so that not one small thing gets changed in a land too big to fail. Oh and the other thing--the government just keeps borrowing from China to make it all go-round. And when it collapses, the megawealthy will have their gates and their military and their foreign accounts and la-de-da.

Let me finish, however, with optimism. In the end, we always seem to pull a trick out of the hat. We come up with something nobody's ever heard of before and that everybody wants. It's happened many times in our nation's history. The good, smart and driven people here, despite all, will probably make it happen again.

But it won't be thanks to the Tea Party.

Can't We Just Admit We're Not One Country?

In the 1860s, many thousands of our fellow countrymen died to defend the institution of slavery. Today, we gloss over that grotesque fact by calling the conflict in which they died "The Civil War" or "The War Between the States". It was a war against slavery by the North and a war in favor of slavery by the South.

Thank all that is just in the world for the victory of the North and the end of slavery. However, one should long have wondered why the unrepentant Southern states, in which African Americans would continue to be disgracefully abused for another hundred years, were allowed back into the Union.

Probably they should have been cut loose then. The United States would be a much stronger place now if they had been. And this is not to disparage the good people, and there are many, in the South. I am only making a political point, but one I believe in.

At the obvious risk of sounding insufferably elitist, can we just stop pretending that the Northeast and the Pacific Coast, as polities, have anything much in common with, say, Missouri or Kansas? Can we make a case for saying we've had enough of being held back by this increasingly uncomfortable union?

Where is it written that the United States must not have fewer states in it tomorrow than it does today? Who would be sorry if the Northeast joined the Pacific Coast to form another nation that adhered much more closely to the progressive ideals of these areas than the one we live in today? And this would also leave the so-called "flyover" states to create their own, much more conservative government (though one has no idea where they would find the tax revenue to run any government at all).

I am certain this post, if read by some, will be found offensive. Mind you, I do not disparage any individuals of merit in any state north, south or in the middle. I simply believe we have, as a nation, crossed (perhaps) a Rubicon of political discord.

I would like to know how much longer the engines of wealth in this country (the Northeast and the Pacific Coast) are going to continue supporting laggard, subsidized places like Mississippi and Wyoming while granting them enormous Senatorial and electoral power over our standards and requirements. How much longer are the regions where education is respected and concentrated going to carry economic water for the regions where many seem to believe education is contemptible and elitist? And while I am not against responsible gun ownership, I have to wonder how much longer Virginia guns need to be permitted into the state of New York only to wind up putting bullets into the heads of shopkeepers?

Personally I would prefer if we might find a civil manner in which to part ways. I am pretty sure the constituency for separation in the non-elitist states could be found without great difficulty. It may also be found in the elitists states of the Northeast and the Pacific.

It's the world's least likely political eventuality, I know. But we don't seem to like each other that much in this country anymore. Therefore, to me, some kind of separation beetwen the States sounds like an idea whose time may be upon us.

Banks Have no Fiduciary Responsibility

Did you know:

When you put money into your bank, they may have no responsibility to make sure it stays there. The account-holder agreement you signed may absolve them of any fiduciary responsibility whatsoever as it relates to the safety or security of your money even in a supposedly no-risk checking account.

This means they can, without bothering to check with you, either knowingly or unknowingly aid and abet fraud that removes money from your account; and allow business partners to open secret bank accounts in contravention of any prior agreement you may have had with the partner or the bank; and refuse to cooperate in making things right once money has been taken except under a judge's order--all with impunity!

I discovered this in the outcome of a court case against JPMorgan Chase that went against me. I attempted to retrieve damages from them that I claimed were caused when they allowed an ex-business partner of mine to fraudulently remove me from an account,then remove all the money from said account and move it to a secret account at their bank, all without my consent even though they had insisted on my consent to open the original account.

The judge agreed with Chase's assertion they had no fiduciary responsibility due to a "no fiduciary responsibility" clause in the account-holder agreement--and therefore no culpability at all as certain quite obvious banking shenanigans were perpetrated right under their noses.

It is interesting to note that other institutions, including other large banks, when they learned of these matters, offered full cooperation and saw the trouble immediately. Not Chase.

Caution: your bank may have, as far as the ruling goes, absolutely no responsibility, nor any need of looking out for, the safety of your money.

Naturally a followup letter to the bank's management won a self-serving response noting that no one at the Company had done even a single thing wrong legally or as regards the Company's own policies. Based on their senior branch management's abusive, adversarial stance towards me during a time when their integrity was called upon, this can hardly be credited.

From a marketing standpoint it is essential for banks to encourage a sense of security in the depositor; but at least in my case, this sense of security did not stand the test.

Go ahead and read the fine print in your account-holder agreement--see if your bank will protect you. I was surprised to find out mine would not, and did not.

Dear UFOs: Put Up or Shut Up

An open letter to Whomsoever or whatsoever is in control (or not) of the million-plus sightings of disks, domes, cigars, chevrons, v-shapes, balloon-like objects, flashing and/or stationary lights, hovering superstructures, "ball lightning" and other queer objects in the sky; "aliens" or Whomever is appearing to us as large-eyed, gray-skinned, scrawny lurkers in the dark; or Whomever is surgically removing all those animal organs; or Whomever is abducting "thousands" of us; or Whomever has a message for us about global warming, nuclear catastrophe or our own plain stupidity (including all of you "Men in Black" and "Nordics"):

Dear Abovementioned:

It's been about sixty-five years since Kenneth Arnold saw those skipping saucers up in the northern Cascades and no one knows what he saw or if he actually saw anything. There are those who believe the advent of sightings coincides with the use of curved glass in cockpits and automobiles, but that probably accounts for only half of the possible sightings we've had over the decades.

There have probably been over a million baffling UFO sightings/encounters/abductions to date.

Frankly I am getting a little tired of it.

If you have a message for us, let's get on with it. If you are going to attack, what in heck are you waiting for. Our weapons just keep getting better. If you are hoping to acclimatize us to you, fear not. Many of us would welcome your appearance and the rest will continue to go to work and to shop (just don't make them stop shopping).

If you plan to play peek-a-boo with us for much longer, I would expect your little game to begin losing its appeal after a while. Heaven knows why the fascination has lasted this long and with so little to show.

If you're afraid of us, I do understand. I am afraid of us. But I can't move vertically at a thousand miles an hour to get away, so I'm stuck. Go for it--hover and then split. Seems to work for you.

Overall, it's just starting to get a little annoying. Lights in the sky over China, balloons over NYC, Jimmy Carter saw one, we've got specimens at Wright-Patterson in Ohio. . .come on. Play ball with us a bit. Or maybe just go away.

In sum: if you've got something to say, say it. If you are planning to hang around for a while, come and knock on the door--don't skulk around in the bushes, because that just makes us think you're weird. If you've got some amazing technology for us, hurry up, because pretty soon we'll have it anyway, and then you're going to seem like yesterday's lunch meat.

Just quit monkeying around. After a while, even the best mystery needs a conclusion. Otherwise it can turn into a real snooze.

Sincerely,


Fed-Up Earthling

Tea Party Member Portrait (Post-Apocalypse)

"I can't believe I supported the interests of the wealthy while they were robbing me blind!"

Why Cities Die

Cities die when people no longer want to live in them.

I live in an enormous city that has not died but increased and prospered and which remains a magnet for smart, enterprising people all over the planet. But this, at least in this country, is almost unique and certainly the exception. It helps for a city to be mega-sized--the megalopolis creates its own social weather and is more impervious to the push and pull of real estate tropes.

Very few cities in the U.S. can claim this mantle. And almost none exist that aren't in some way blighted by core-abandonment, wretched highway planning, and profound ugliness in the form of parking lots where once stood thriving business districts. Certainly the advent and popularity of the automobile has gutted perhaps a majority of American cities, and it is easy to blame the automobile industry. But as with so many things, I have found the silly throwaway line from the old Pogo comic strip to be the case: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

People bought cars and drove out to the country and liked what they saw and moved there and built better schools for their kids and that is how the suburbs were born. I personally cannot stand living in the suburbs--find it stultifying and disgracefully overcrowded with traffic (at least in this megalopolis). But the suburbs are where the American has made his/her stand. It may not work out--there are signs it will not. But that's another story.

Again: cities die because people don't want to live there. You don't. I don't. Nobody does. Think about St. Louis, where they steal the very bricks of abandoned houses to ship off to New Orleans for renovations. Or Detroit, where they knock down abandoned houses routinely. Or Cleveland, where entire neighborhoods are jobless and suffering rapid abandonment. Or Philadelphia, easily the most underperforming major city in the U.S., where dowdiness is practically part of the city charter and which has an altogether mindless devotion to accommodation of the automobile and only the most pathetic mass transit "system" (the subway has one lonesome line).

It is somehow chic to decry the loss of our great American cities. But here's my gripe: if they were so great, how come nobody wanted to live there? My guess is, because they were lousy places to live--even back in that lamented and perhaps fanciful "golden era". Odds-on, if you're not an urban-pioneering, loft-dwelling, latte-sipping, wirelessly-empowered dandy, they still are today. And they continue to lose population because of this.

What were the great failures of many of these cities? Primarily two things, I believe. First, physical ugliness. Row after row of wretchedly unaccommodating houses served by block after block of wretchedly unfriendly-looking storefronts. Perhaps there was a sense of optimism in those who once lived there: "I can make this work for me". But they could not. It takes much more imagination than average to create an interesting storefront (rather than, say, a collection of orthopedic devices or a few dusty water pumps); and the same goes for the row of industrial-friendly hovels. Certainly if you are an artist, writer, antique-buyer, entrepreneur not needing to commute and no children to educate, you can make this work for you. But you are in a tiny minority.

Second, sheer brutality. The typical major American city, or at least those portions built during the industrial age, were designed and (over)built to feed the great maw that ate cheap labor all day and half the night: the cheapest possible housing and rapid access to the factory. Libraries, parks, schools, museums, civic monuments: except for a few showpieces to assuage the ostensible guilt of a few wealthy locals looking back upon what might have been, these are either entirely absent the landscape or when present, clearly an afterthought and not to be taken seriously. This type of carelessness about the spiritual and educational needs of people remains brutal and creates brutality of its own: desperation, corruption, crime, police intervention, resentment, hatred, ruin.

These cities are still being abandoned because they were never very good places to live even in their so-called "heyday". No, they were crowded, desperate, awful places to live. And the moment folks could get the hell out, they did. Possibly this is because the populace--unereducated, overworked, media-manipulated--lacked the collective imagination to make much of the place in concert. The suburb is nothing if not a sprawling monument to the sheer self-interest of the ex-urbanite and represents the apotheosis of un-neighborliness: high fences and rolling isolation booths are its chief characteristics.

In a singular kink of high irony, many of these cities, having spent a hundred years spitting on and squatting upon the hopes and dreams of the creative minds trapped inside them, now try to lure humans back into a re-inhabited, adorable "urban core" by touting, emptily for the most part, "the arts". There is no city too mundane for a brave new loft building. None too quotidian for an "arts center". None ashamed enough to avoid quirky, pointless, unloved and entirely misapprehended street sculpture often in irksome abundance. And even the barest crossroads trying to "reinvent" itself must have a "downtown mall" where suburbanites can, for reasons unfathomable, drive a long way only to end up where parking is harder and the mall has escalators and where, once "outside", beggars wait to be noticed via some handlettered placard announcing their failures as well as immediate need for coin (the "failure placard" is another unique feature of the American cityscape--I have not seen it elsewhere).

Most "failing" cities never in fact "worked"--not for the people who lived there. The failure can be traced to a lack of any sense of pride, a near vacuum of romance (or of any emotional support whatsoever), and no practical sense of prospect except where it intersected with the needs of a stultifying corporate culture. Big American cities were built for the Company and when the Company decamped, so, with barely contained glee, did the people who worked for the Company. What remains is a rotting shell, like some old coconut shard from which all the meat has been clawed.

In our next installment we shall discuss the role in which race hatred has played in the death of American cities--a phenomenon lamented mostly by, and caused mostly by white people.

Until such time, let the bricks fall where they may. Greater cities than St. Louis have been abandoned over the course of history--and what to make of it really, except to find a crumbled foundation buried long in the sand?

Mindfreak Magic

Nobody likes a killjoy. So if you're a big fan of guys like Criss Angel the Mindfreak, bail out now before your bubble gets burst.

I watched a show "about" him last night--an expertly orchestrated sham-fest that managed to trick the very gullible into thinking he knew how to dematerialize and rematerialize; and that this was a physically demanding process.

Once you know how magicians operate, it becomes entirely obvious and even kind of funny to see audiences so surprised at what transpires.

Have they never heard of the term "body double"? Clearly this is a big part of his act. He and his troupe of born liars (all seemingly right off the set of "Jersey Shore") make obvious statements about how "Chriss knows he could die if he falls from that height"; and pose silly possible explanations while of course never saying: "or, he could have a body double".

This is fairly standard stuff. That, plus massive amounts of preparation, audience plants, mirrors, trap doors and well-known mechanical ruses, accomplish all of his admittedly imaginative stunts.

What I find disturbing about him is that he seems to revel in lying--his eyes are the shiny orbs of a cynic. At least he is not doing anyone harm; and folks sure seem to love his act.

He is very good with cards of course; and some of his small-bore trickery is quite fascinating in its ingenuity.

One supposes there are plenty of folks who really have no clue how magicians operate, and these comprise his acolytes. In the end, it is they who are annoying for their obstinate gullibility.

Note to Chriss Angel fans: of course he cannot rematerialize; or make elephants move away from their posts in a flash. Why do you suppose he is always using a curtain? and why is he always standing on a platform? Heavens to Betsy.

Do You Have Anything to Share?

In a word, "no".

At least that is what I think to myself when I log into Yahoo and the first thing they want to know from me is if I have anything to share.

Why would I necessarily have something to share with who knows whom? One supposes one should occasionally cooperate with their transparent attempts to collect data on oneself, since they do provide a free email service that one uses much.

But I just can't bring myself to do it.

Claims that social media will not only increase exponentially in popularity, but will "take over the internet" and become "the marketing venue of choice for everyone" are, in my opinion, vastly overstated. I think social media is a fad. A big one, but a fad nonetheless. I predict that in five years people will be wondering what all the fuss was about, and will be using an enhanced web to do everything they want, but without all the needless information sharing. Facebook will be considered lame. Sharing inanities with nonentities will be considered lame. Only the lame will be using social media. There will be no new paradigm. People will want to keep their information to themselves. Yes, even young folks. Note: my kids are already tired of Facebook (hint: SELL!!).

This blog obviously is a form of sharing. But the blogging paradigm has much more long-term potential than Facebook. This is because blogging, while a form of self-publishing (and a kissing-cousin with the rest of social media), offers an attraction found neither at Facebook nor Twitter: in a blog, you can actually complete a thought. Inanity is in general not viewed favorably in a blog. The potential for interesting content (and the fact it is not--present company excepted--controlled by one company) is what gives the blogging paradigm a chance at longevity.

Did you say "Twitter"? Ask not--the bell tolls for it. Twitter (and anything Twitter-like) is going to be about as popular in five years as leg warmers are now. There will be no re-tweet of Twitter, only a long day's journey into night.

Marketers of course will claim to lament this. I believe they will be secretly very glad to see social media diminished, as I predict they will soon come to see they cannot utilize it for long-term effective marketing anyway.

The main reason for this is: as soon as people get the sense that a marketer is "watching", they run screaming in the other direction (unless they have given specific permission to hear from that marketer).

I do believe marketers have the right to try and reach their customers any way they can. I do not believe they will ultimately succeed in doing so via Twitter and Facebook. Ultimately, marketing in the social media world will have a creep-out factor that will outweigh the potential for reach.

Finally, email marketing will remain. Many who now use social media will let their social media involvement lapse but retain their email addresses. This is because email is the most useful boon to humankind since humans discovered they could get in out of the rain. Folks will not be able to survive without it.

Now, if I have managed to share enough. . .good evening.

Too Many Books

A few days ago I commented there was too much media in the world to begin with.

Though one could argue there are NEVER too many books, I have to state my belief: there have long been far too many new books coming out (none of mine, however). Most bookstores, even the independents, are crammed with titles no one is ever going to buy. I believe most of it is shelf-dressing, and a peek at the publishing trades will likely confirm this suspicion.

Is that bad?

Not unless you're a tree, I guess, or an aesthete of economic purity.

This is where two completely different entrants in the book retailing game come in from opposite sides of the stage: e-books and used book stores.

For my taste, there is little reason for a new bookstore to earn my visit except to peruse the bargain bin. Very occasionally a new book seems a must-have, but almost never unless steeply discounted. I own a lot of books, so I know whereof I speak.

For nearly all of my reading pleasure, I supply myself from the stunningly various arrays of wonderful volumes available at low cost from used books stores and charities. Can there be any doubt the world has so many wonderful used books that, were a moratorium on publishing be declared for ten years, the reader's market would not remain well-supplied? I think it would.

Sometimes I buy a "first edition"--for real money. This is because the book, and especially its dust-cover, have intrinsic value. Again, these books are nearly always "used", though they are in nearly every case quite a bit more expensive than a typical brand new book. There is a reason for this--they're collector's items.

With the advent of e-books, there is little reason for me to ever buy an actual new book at anything like list price. About a trillion (it seems) great books are available either for free or low cost as e-books. All of the classics are available as e-books and I have found them quite enjoyable to read in their new electronic get-up. Unless you're literally collecting the volume for posterity (sometimes I do), and if you believe the content is what you are after and not the paper and cardboard of a volume, e-books can provide the reader with about ninety-five percent of his or her reading pleasure.

So I think publishing (and more specifically the "new book" store), like the music industry, is headed for a fall. The fact is, we really don't need that many new books. And those we need, we can--again, except for special editions or signed first editions--purchase as e-books and enjoy quite utterly as such. For the rest, I think we shall see a rise in the status of the used book store for those who want "books". The volumes are as richly varied and as relevant as ninety percent of new books in print, and radically cheaper; and of course have all of the best qualities of print as well (look, feel, smell, weight, cover art). Moreover, you can buy these on-line as easily as you can buy e-books or new books at Amazon.

One model that may prove to work is that exemplified by that exemplar of great book stores, the Powell's mini-chain out of Portland, Oregon. Perhaps the world's best bookstore, Powell's hardly distinguishes between new books, old books, and rare books. They are all on the shelves together. And if you want a really rare book, they have those in a glass case. There is something quite wonderful about finding several editions of certain books, from a much-read paperback to a new hardcover edition, all on the shelf together like dissimilar siblings at a family gathering. Hats off to the Powell's model, may it long endure.

The new world of books will probably be crowded with small, specialty book stores and less so with megastores per se. The B&N model is already morphing into less a bookstore than a brick and mortar entertainment store--and good luck to them with that (and their cappuccino stands). A heavy percentage of buying will be weighted towards either cheap e-books (hooray for the iPad) and used books.

There will always be new books at book stores. But not nearly as many. And not nearly as big a market for new books in general, as it becomes obvious that, no longer needed quite literally as window dressing, most in-print book projects become totally irrelevant.

Next up is electronic self-publishing (see: blogging), which will end up putting further dents in the mighty ships of traditional publishing. We shall see much junk published this way. But we see much junk published "traditionally". I fail to see the problem, except that underpaid editors and entirely unpaid and unqualified interns ("readers") will no longer hold arbitrary sway over the fate of any particular author's chance at publication of a manuscript. Bye-bye!

As a final note, let me say that I have read Moby Dick on a tiny screen and found it quite as absorbing as holding that enormous tome in my hand and maybe more so. In the book world, content perhaps at last will in fact be king.

News Flash: I Have Nothing to Say

I have nothing to say that would not be of an overly personal nature for my taste, even though it seems social media requires a confessional frame of mind.

Perhaps the fact I have nothing to say is a statement in itself?

First, I am involved in enough actual things in the real world that they in fact consume too much of my time for me to spend any more of it online than I really have to.

Second, I am increasingly disenchanted with the notion of social media as it relates to the creation of content.

Let me explain.

Yes, you get free publishing. Isn't that what you always wanted? Of course it is. But did you know you don't own what you create? Even these words are technically owned by a giant corporation called Google. And when Google gets bought by a far more evil branch of the empire, it will be owned by them. And they will probably try to sue you if you want to use your own creations in your own way, later on in life (just kidding!).

Finally, I believe--and have long believed--there is too much content in the world anyway. Social media is really the last thing we need. Is there any hope that a great work of art will be created out of the social media milieux? Somehow I doubt it. And if works of art are not at least compelling, they are in the end deeply annoying. This is because, as objects, they compete with non-art objects, which almost always have a much more richly detailed past and present--even a small piece of stone has been bonking around for millions of years before you happen to have picked it up; and therefore is imbued with a certain natural energy that none but the most compelling works of man or woman can hope to attain.

Perhaps this sounds awfully precious.

But this is mostly because I have nothing to say. And because my cat is pushing a baseball towards my keyboard.

Ann Walling

Who is Ann Walling, buried in Trinity Churchyard in 1716?

The Enduring Mystery of Cat

Introducing "Indie", a photogenic member of the feline race of fellow travelers. We rescued him from an animal shelter on 110th Street about a year ago. Here Indie places himself amongst some familiar items on my desk, as is his wont. Recently he ruined an inkjet printer by attacking the paper (as it printed) so often that the paper advance gears became misaligned. The printer is gone--Indie stays.

Indie has an alert, owlish look about him and we like to believe he is quite intelligent. He enjoys splashing in water, is quite affectionate, has been known to be aggressive at times, and has a meek, squeaky voice that does not sound like it belongs to such a well-formed, agile animal. I find it very easy to believe that the Egyptians of yore, a culture clearly steeped in the occult and the mysterious, would have revered cats above other creatures.

I have nothing against dogs of course (or fish or gerbils for that matter). But dogs are, companionable and true as they may be, entirely lacking in the qualities exhibited by what you might call a "muse". They are slobbering, needy and really awfully predictable as a group (I have loved certain dogs, so I'll not debate their "value" in the scheme of things).

Cats seem to care only peripherally that humans are present, and I believe they view us somewhat as serviceable companions. They respect those who feed them. They allow themselves to be handled--until they don't. They are unsentimental and if you have ever seen a cat toy with its prey, you will know they can be coldly cruel and entirely without remorse. They suit the postmodern sensibility in that they are essentially amoral.

That is about all I can glean about cats from watching them. They seem to hold much in reserve, and this is exhibited when suddenly they make fantastic leaps across open space to reach a desired spot whence they simply curl up to sleep. They can hide in impossibly small spaces as if their bodies are made of something less solid than bone and gristle.

Unlike the warm, loving gaze of a dog, the gaze of the cat is flat and apparently an act of surmise, as if at any moment they may decide you are friend, provider or prey. It is quite obvious why domestic cats are never grown larger than a human can throw them. A cat the size of a golden retriever would be a bone-chillingly dangerous beast.

Cats and humans have come to an understanding that we are mutually pleasing but for entirely different reasons (it seems). We do not (or I do not) "understand" cats any more than I understand the moon. They are not like us, nor like any other creature sharing terra firma. They are an ancient race, highly evolved, cunning, sufficiently endowed for their own purposes, and offer little but warm fur, a steady gaze and for me at any rate, constant fascination.

If you have the chance, offer kindness to one of these special creatures, as they are favored in the pantheon of sentient beings.

None Escape Blame

"What do the oil catastrophe and the Wall Street collapse have in common? In both cases, a powerful, politically protected industry invented something that could not easily be repaired when it broke."-- Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect

I agree.

But why'd they do it?

In a market, sellers do things because of what buyers want them to do.

In the case of the Wall Street meltdown, every TomDickandSally wanted their stock to go up and they might even sue if it didn't. Greed wasn't imposed from on-high, but it was exploited and then suddenly John McCain had to rush to Washington by way of Katie Couric's make-up room.

In the case of the BP gusher, every HarryAbdulandLaQuonna wanted cheap driving, cheap plastic, cheap heat, and every what-all petroleum is used for, and wanted it now and threatened to vote you out of office if you told them it might cost more and feel a colder and smaller world if you didn't deliver now now now. Environmental disaster wasn't the goal of BP nor anyone else, but it was a perhaps unavoidable consequence of the modern thirst for all things oil-based (and that includes everything you know in this world except maybe that antique wooden coffee-grinder you bought at the flea market, and that's only if you pretend it got to the flea market in a horse-drawn carriage).

So we have by common consent contracted with these major, politically connected interests to systematize what they do and not tell us the details but just satisfy our hunger for universal comfort in a world where every day is necessarily a roll of the dice and where we each, personally, need to try and load the dice as heavily as we dare in our favor.

Much as the fate of every system, the complex interlocked units that drive such enterprise work well for a time; until they don't.

And now they just don't any more.

We have two signal disasters to let us know we have loaded one too many blocks onto the Jenga tower--first on Wall Street and then 50 miles out in the water south of the Big Easy--and in each case, with a single block pulled out, the tower comes down and the game is all but over.

Of course its not really over. There will be shouts and murmurs for a long time about both derivative finance and easy oil, but for all intents and purposes the era that grew these and enabled a certain fat and stupid attitude on the part of pretty much every non-impoverished person in the West, is now drawing to an ignominious close.

"Greed is good"? "Drill Baby Drill?"

What's that you say?

Have not heard those in a while.

So This Clown from the Suburbs Comes to Times Square and Tries to Blow it Up. . .

Enough with the aggrandizement of pathetic losers once they whisper the word "jihad" in response (ineffectively) to their career and marriage frustrations. Enough with "he trained in Pakistan"--to do what? Rumble a smoking car into a busy intersection with a back seat full of propane that a braver man would have ignited himself and died for his convictions?

And I've had it with "getting even for American aggression abroad" when the perpetrator has been buckling down with data for an American purveyor of fine fragrances to pay for his house in Connecticut.

Has anyone noticed that what we have here is less a political response to American aggression than a confused excuse for bad behavior by a guy that had soured on the paltry comforts of the American dream? Apparently he just didn't want to work in a cubicle, commute two hours from the suburbs, support his wife and kids--and decided to blow up a bunch of innocent strangers because he was too much of a chickenshit to take his own life like he really wanted to.

It's not hard to picture his frustration: upper-middle class upbringing, indifference at Universtiy, a creative, braggadocio streak, frustration at work, confused identity (Islamic sexism combined with American libertinism), more than a touch of wounded, sanctimonious self-righteousness--some half-witted suggestions from a so-called Shiek looking for willing fools to lay trouble at the feet of the Great Satan--and poof! Suddenly he's the vanguard of Islamic resistance. Except, not.

No, he's just a bigoted, deluded, self-important loser who decided to misbehave in the big-town one night and got nailed by the pros a few hours later.

What I Bought at the Cranky Guy's Yard Sale

He turns out to be not so cranky once you're buying trifles from his back yard mess-a-thon, and he does manage to have some queer, little-to-be-encountered items amongst his collections now on offer.

He lives a few doors down from our town house in the Yammer-glorified tiny city full of antique shops in which we have summered and sometimes wintered for several years now. Our town house is in a less respectable corner of the city and that is one of the things I like about it. The little girls living with their single moms in rented rooms on the corner run back and forth screeching and playing in the dirt. No one really cares if I get around to mowing the weeds on the sidewalk median in front (my plan is to eradicate them entirely and replace them with yet more stone or gravel). And there is Cranky Guy.

Cranky Guy is always working on a beaten-down car, shouting at someone to "turn it over" while he checks the timing; or his sunburned, gangly form will emerge from beneath one of these hapless conveyances cursing and besmirched with stains of dark oozing fluid. An almost permanent feature of his front "yard" (so tiny as to be nearly nonexistent) is a battered cardboard sign that says "FREE" and beneath it there is usually a much-clawed and battered child's car-seat or a hooked rod or a diminutive bald tire perhaps from a dirt bike or lawn tractor.

What caught my eye was that this spring his yard sales (which are frequent) began to feature a small army of Christmas-Claus figurines decked in red and white and sprinkled all over with sparkly "snow". I'm not interested in those but I figured there must be something of interest behind the crazily sagging gates, now thrown open to the public.

I was not disappointed. His yard was a treasure trove of oddities. And had he not suffered from the improvident supposition that book jackets are to be discarded, I might have bought some first editions. On the most recent visit I ended up coming away with a JFK tribute album (50 cents), two beautifully blue old unlabeled Milk of Magnesia bottles (@ 50 cents) and wicker baskets that appeared quite unmolested (2 dollars). I found all these to be reasonably priced.

His merchandising skills are not infallible, however, as suggested above regarding the book jackets. Also on offer was what may have been an ancient tricycle or other tyke's conveyance but its rampant rust and decrepitude had rendered it less an antique than a twisted filthy wreck quite unrecoverable from the slag heap and he wanted seventy five bucks for it. And out front he had a smudged lawn tractor marked down from five hundred to four hundred dollars. A brand new one of the same type at Tractor Supply will cost not more than nine hundred and possibly less.

One supposes a key element separating the professional dealer from the amateur is some sense of merchantability and pricing. But I find myself rarely buying from the professionals--they have calculated market value and I am only interested in laughably low prices and enormous values. These kinds of bargains are only to be found by picking amongst the dew-moistened bins of amateurs like Cranky Guy.

Iceland Sends Another Message

In 2008, Iceland let Europe know it had helped fleece cash from, and was now defaulting on investments made by such doughty institutions as the Leeds Union of Teaching Professionals and individuals like, say, a hypothetical Frau Heirlein who probably thought she was getting in on a good thing in Icelandic derivatives almost as if it were a solid as Bernie Madoff's twelve percent per annum. Iceland went under and all the defrauded/deluded legion demanded recompense--not sure if they got it.

In 2010 Iceland sends Europe a message about self-reliance and the value of exhaustive examination of possibilities before investment of (in this case) time spent at an airport. I am referring to the Great Icelandic Plume that has plunged Europe into a seeming Dark Age at least for travelers now stranded for many days at airports in a populous arc reaching from Shannon to Bratislava.

Forgive me for going all "American" on these folks (and there are no doubt plenty of Americans among them), but how about a little ingenuity? In a week I am pretty sure most of them could have figured out a land route to an airport not affected by the plume and somehow gotten home; or, if both ends of their route were under restriction, figured out a combination of train, boat and omnibus that would have accomplished the same.

I cite a couple of personal examples (not expecting laurels):

1) Several years ago my family and I were on our way back from Morocco to Spain and Madrid for a flight back to the States. The flight from Seville to Madrid was canceled and, so it would seem, our plans to take our scheduled flight home from the capital. Instead of sitting on a suitcase and looking like puppies had crapped in my breakfast, I decided we would somehow get to Madrid on time. Our transportation took the form of the fast train AVE, Spain's underappreciated answer to France's mighty TGV. A couple of phone calls and a taxi ride later, we boarded at Seville, were whisked through the Spanish countryside at great speed, and deposited within distance of another taxi ride to the big airport in Madrid. We got there earlier than the connecting flight would have arrived.

2) Several years before that I was setting foot on a ferry from Bari, Italy to Greece when the workers called a wildcat "Sciopero" (strike) and thus stranded a hundred or so hapless travelers late at night on a dock in southern Italy. One silly American student got upon a wooden crate and harangued the crowd about "our rights as Americans" and soon was bundled off in a car full of Italian policemen. I decided to sit in a cafe until early morning and then walk to the car rental shop. There, I rented a car, drove away from Bari, forgot my plans for Greece, and ended up in a wonderful ancient town called Taranto the driving in which terrified me until I gladly handed over the keys to the local Avis man down an impossibly small byway which barely was able to accommodate the tiny car I had rented.

There are other examples (for instance, if the Lexington Avenue line is crowded, just take the Seventh Avenue and walk). I don't want to pile on.

My point is: get a grip travelers! The plane is not coming! Unless you have no access to credit (the only excuse I know of), get in gear and get home somehow. A volcano typically makes an unsatisfactory travel companion, and, this being generally known and understood, travelers can claim little excuse for the current impasse.

My City within a City

Few locations in the world offer the opportunity to communicate between major edifices several blocks apart without going outside, and fewer still between buildings of grandeur and great moment. I have long used an office in one of these places, in a landmark building sitting atop the dozens of railroad tracks forming the terminus at New York's Grand Central Station at 42nd Street.

Without question, this is one of the world's great urban cores and arguably is the commercial heart of New York City. Connected via a multitude of warren-like tunnels, passageways and certain very grand interior spaces are the astonishingly urbane and majestic Grand Central Station with its barrel-vaulted ceiling of stars and granite balconies; the stainless steel art-deco masterwork of the Chrysler Building nearly a thousand feet high at its needle (braced at its corners by stainless steel gargoyles unseen by most); the Met Life building (formerly Pan Am), a monolithic flattened octagonal imposition some sixty stories in height around which flows the fabled Park Avenue two or three stories above street level--its multi-tiered marbled lobby leading from 45th Street down to Grand Central's elegant confines; the jazz-age New York Central Building (now named after a later, uninteresting owner) across from and via tunnel connected to the Met Life tower and Grand Central and sitting atop the tracks of its builder's New York Central railroad and through which Park Avenue travels by a pair of granite, vaulted tunnels, the lobby of which building is a baroque masterwork of marble and brass, the elevators of which are red and gold and their ceilings painted with sky and clouds unlike any elevators perhaps anywhere in New York (the building's facade is of palatial elegance with massive caryatids and its peaked,copper roof is crowned with a great lantern); the Lincoln Building, a sixty-or-so story oddity of brick and hopeful Gothic fenestration; the Graybar Building, an art deco massif with huge floors but no great height; the Hyatt which used to be the Biltmore; to the south a busy nondescript building that houses what remains of an old Airline Ticketing lobby and connects to a marvelous interior that used to be the lobby of the Bowery Savings Banks (and now hosts "events"); to the north deep passageways lead to glass and steel Park Avenue corporate behemoths as they begin their march up that seemingly endless boulevard of wealth and prosperity.

Inside this interconnected urban world I have spent many days especially in winter enjoying temperature-controlled access to hundreds of shops, restaurants, transportation (several subway lines converge), a small transit museum and of course numerous banks and newsstands. On a cold day I can walk from 46th and Madison to 41st and Park (or 42nd and Lexington) without going outside. A brief strategic walk above ground also takes me to the nearby great city-within-a-city, Rockefeller Center (but that is another item altogether).

Among my favorite underground spots are:

-the food court at Grand Central where several very good food stands/sit-down restaurants are always overcrowded

-the underutilized entrance to the Lincoln Building at 41st and Madison

-the lobby of 230 Park Avenue, all marble and brass and designed to resemble a baroque palace in Italy

-a well-regarded watchmaker in an otherwise nondescript passageway far under Vanderbilt Avenue

-a deeply obscure Blimpie sandwich shop at the bottom of the steps near 45th and Madison

-an inelegant passageway that leads to the basement shops of the Chrysler Building where I find my pharmacy just steps inside the black marble hallway

-the cascade of escalators that lead from a high point at 45th street to a low point far below grade at the platform of the 7 train as it connects Times Square with far-flung Flushing and a new-fangled stadium where the Mets baseball team labors ineffectively

-the Grand Central Food Market which is overpriced but often enough provides a good baguette or last-minute dessert item on the way home

-the Baclay-Rex tobacconist in the Lincoln Building

-the former "waiting room" of Grand Central Station that now supports regular expositions and seasonal gift markets

Nearby but unconnected by tunnel is one of my favorite places in all New York, the Mercantile Library where for a pittance I have access to thousands of fiction and reference books and a club-like reading room that makes me feel like I have found a haven of clear-minded sanity in a world half-mad with greed and delusion.

Perhaps the best compliment I can pay to my City within a City is that it has never left me bored.

Meat-Eater's Dilemma

I am not now and have never been a vegetarian. I eat meat often enough with relish (the attitudinal kind) such that I might justifiably be called a "meat-lover", especially of well-prepared pig and duck. Of steak I can only say "if well marbled and excellently prepared" it may represent a gustatory slice of that locus of eternal reward Christians call "heaven". Chicken rates pretty low for me, and lamb belongs grilled and sliced on pita with hummus and hot sauce.

That said, and since I am already deploying Christian metaphor, it is a near certainty that if there is a place in hell reserved for those who partake in the suffering of other creatures, then all of us who, at the very least, eat meat that comes from factory farms (and probably all meat no matter its provenance)will be at best getting stung continually by bees and buffeted by harsh wind in Dante's outer circle.

I say this because I have, courtesy of an unremembered string of internet search references, watched videos of what happens in a factory farm for pigs and also what happens in a factory dairy farm (get ready for hellfire, milk-drinkers!).

Not desiring to tout the lurid, let me say that if the Universe is aware of suffering, then the Universe is very, very aware of, and its wave motions deeply disturbed by, the sheer dumb suffering that takes place in these awful factory farms.

Pigs, as we know, are rather intelligent. Much worse their fate that they are also fat and worse still, tasty to those more intelligent raptors called human beings that are so like unto gods that they can produce the occasional Shakespeare and Jimi Hendrix. For these humans hold pigs captive in crowded, filthy, diseased, cruel, violent, bloody, absolutely hellacious conditions the only merciful escape from which is their inevitable murder to suit the godlike palates of the raptor captors. One can safely assert that there in that living hell, but for an opposable thumb and a few extra cells of gray matter, go you or I.

Cows fare no better of course, and I have only watched a video about cows that give milk. Safe to say, based on my narrow observation, that the notion of the dairy cow in a field of green with a bell around its neck ruminating sweet grass and daisies, is entirely a marketer's concoction for the milk-drinker's fancy. These cows too are held captive in crowded, filthy, diseased, cruel, violent, bloody, absolutely hellacious conditions from which they have no escape as they are forced to provide milk on a regular basis, even if they have to be cruelly prodded to stand from weakness and gross physical malfunctions in order to do so.

Does this mean I have the moral strength to stop eating meat? It does not. Do I find justification in the notion that I did not make myself, and that my body seems to require meat? I do. Would I much rather find, at least, non-factory meat and dairy not to assuage my guilt but to actually promote some reduction of pain among the creatures who find their way, cut into pieces or as sucked from their teats, on our plates and in our cereal bowls? Yes.

I have no links to offer, as this is not a screed nor call to action. It is simply a record of the operation of my personal conscience which finds itself torn between a love of roasted flesh and compassion for sentient beings. That it is a dilemma at all--and it is a genuine one, no matter what beliefs vegetarians seem to hold dear--may prove simply that all is vanity.

Fifty Nights of Science Fiction Thrills

Recently I purchased fifty grade B 1950s-era science fiction movies for fifteen dollars. I also recently bought forty 50s era Time magazines for a hundred dollars. But let's talk about the DVDs--in a package called "Sci-Fi Classics" by Mill Creek Entertainment.

Having watched just four of the fifty, I can already recommend this collection to anyone who wants to laugh, become baffled at trying to figure out how anyone could conspire to make anything so bad, wonder at how these trifles ever got shown in a theater, marvel at the unrepentant and continuing fatuousness, try to decipher a connection between the chilling titles (like "The Incredible Petrified World") to the dull doings on screen, and watch, in a historiographic, postmodern manner, the effects of sexism, racism and lousy cinematography at work in a culture struggling with such newfangled phenomena as radiation and the possibility of outer-space travel.

I have laughed out loud at certain moments in these movies: as when a random, large lizard that has nothing to do with the movie puts in a brief, pointless appearance; or when scantily-clad women wrangle in a prurient cat-fight. My wife, a vocal critic of anything that emits even a whiff of sexism, has vowed the films are a disgrace and beneath one's intelligence. Of course she is correct.

But I cannot forego the pleasure of marveling at the wide gap between what is promised (chills, thrills and earthshaking revelations) and what is actually in the movie, usually a tawdry mash-up of tepid acting, embarrassingly poor special effects (no Ray Harryhausen here), nonsensical plot-twists and what appears to be a general heedlessness to the notion that one might actually ask another human to pay money to view the resulting dreck.

Perhaps the most strking example of this canyon-wide gap (at least so far) has been "The Monster that Challenged the World". The monster turned out to be a species of mollusk that grew (because of radiation, as appears to be the rule) to the size of an old gumdrop-shaped Fiat in an inland lake and then tried to escape through an irrigation system. Sure, there were a couple dozen of them. And they could walk on land! And they actually killed some folks. But they were slow, and not that big, and for heaven's sake they were mollusks after all. Besides scaring people to death and strangling a poor doddering old man at a guardpost, the monsters' worst offense was to leave behind a white slime that looked like toothpaste in outsized volume (and was not harmful except to one's sense of aesthetics). This, I submit, is hardly a challenge to the world as much as to the State Agricultural Commission.

But that is all part of the fun.

After a hard day trying to get other people to do what you want them to do (at work or business), or being made to do what other people want you to do (at work or business), why not mix yourself a toddy and sit back to enjoy fifty of these wonderfully idiotic movies guaranteed not to inspire or frighten or connect one to "what's really going on out there" but that may, after the effects of the toddy sets in, cause you to chuckle and smile and knit your brows in wonderment at the cinematic genuine silliness of which our so-called advanced race of creatures is capable.

The Value of Value

While trying not to knock the ashtray filled with stubbed out Gauloises off the pile of terrifically thick books by Foucault, Sartre and Derrida that is stacked (perhaps metaphorically) on my desk, I shall now attempt to state a value for the concept of Value in a commercial society.

And here it is:

Value is a desired quality that cannot be separated from an object and which therefore gives rise to an intrinsic commercial gravity the weight of which can only be expressed as "cost". Commercial gravity behaves exactly as does natural gravity, expressing itself as a specific ability to attract objects towards its mass.

The Purveyor of Value is always hoping to expand the mass of the valued object, either by manipulating perception of it towards a higher indication of commercial gravity or claiming its value to exist only in aggregate rather than as an array of individual objects.

The Seeker of Value is always hoping to diminish the mass of the valued object, either by denying or downwardly manipulating perception of it towards a lower indication of commercial gravity or by insisting it has no additional value in aggregate.

It is important to note that the essence of "Branding" as a commercial discipline consists entirely of the effort of the Purveyor of Value as described above.

It is equally important to note that the essence of "Employment" or "Purchasing" as a commercial discipline consists entirely of the effort of the Seeker of Value as described above.

It should also be of some interest to individuals that the more they partake of themselves as a "commercial value proposition", and the more they see themselves as the purveyor of such, their value in the commercial equation will rise in an amount equal to their apprehension of this fact.

It should also be noted that everything and every one (e.g every viable entity) in a commercial society possesses a "brand" suitable for purveyance.

The "Branding" proposition goes something like this:

"We the Purveyors (the "Brand") have pooled vast resources in order to develop desirable objects that cannot be had from any other source. These objects are not mere assemblages of individual units of value but a conglomeration of interlocking value items that create an overall value many times in excess of the value that each related item might have on its own. Moreover, this brand is equal to a promise made to the desiring party that the quest for value shall be satisfied upon payment of the price extracted for use and/or possession of the branded object."

To which the answer goes something like:

"We the Seekers (the Consumer or Purchaser) are unconvinced we require the object on which you have spent your resources in a manner unknown and unimportant to us. You have presented us with an object devoid of value except as it suits our perceived requirement; moreover, you have failed to account for all the similarly presented objects available to us, which may or may not fulfill the need we have in a manner more suited to us than the object you have offered. Finally, you offer no basis on which to trust your brand-promise that we'd be satisfied with the exchange should we transmit value to you in the form of payment."

Between these two opposite forces lies the vast, all-consuming universe of activities called The Market, in which the push and pull of the multitudinous Value Objects are exerted upon one another, and in which the value of each is either aggregated or broken down, and in which, finally, after the above two opposing arguments are exhausted to a point of diminishing return of value upon effort, a price for Value is agreed upon.

I personally believe these forces are deeply embedded in all human endeavor and can be proven to exist at every conceivable level of human interaction.

I believe that successful individuals--and successful companies--are those that have apprehended and internalized these tendencies as if they were natural law, and who have exploited the abovementioned principles to best advantage.

Unsuccessful individuals--and unsuccessful companies--are those that have not been sufficiently aware of the primacy of the abovementioned principles, or, having become aware, remain unable to convince enough Seekers of the value of their Value.

From the Seeker or Purchaser side, lack of success stems from an inability to pierce the Brand's "resource allocation" statement and its "value in aggregate" facade; to be gulled overmuch by its Value claims; and by an overwillingness to buy (literally) into the promise offered by the Brand.

Lack of success in this endeavor is commonly referred to as "overpaying" and often exerts a ruinous effect on the Seeker. In fact, failure on the Seeker's part leaves the Seeker more often prone to immediate catastrophe than failure on the Purveyor's part, which often enough plays out over a longer period of diminishing Value.

If the forces so described above (eg. the value of Value) were in some manner to cease acting, the world of humans would rapidly be rid of such contrivances as nations, corporations, religions, families and any other associations that rely on organizational principles any much more complex than those present in, say, an association of baboons on the veldt.

And it remains to be seen whether the veldt baboons do not partake of the inherent value of Value in some way as well.

Saints, Snowmaggedon and Climate Change

The New Orleans Saints won the Superbowl in order to prove that serious climate change is challenging humanity.

Or what I really meant to say was that, by bringing attention to the City of New Orleans just as the Nation's Capital was getting buried in an epic snow, the Who Dat Saints also brought attention to the fact that the Big Easy has still not recovered from the Big Flood engineered by the Army Corp of same after their ill-constructed levees broke during a visit from a nasty tourist named Katrina.

Or what I really meant to say was that, despite the shallow (or on-purpose cynical) misunderstanding of the nature and implications of climate change by those who are quite certain it has nothing to do with billions of tons of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere to support our air-conditioned style of Modern Living, the confluence of both overheated tropical storming and overcooled, overmoistened northern storming simply suggests that yes: much as the scientific models have predicted, we are now subject to a pattern of weather extremes that rather strongly suggest a period of climate flux.

Or what I am really getting at is, I am not quite convinced myself that the matter of weather patterns parting from their historical norms is due more to pollution than to over-attention (or new attention, anyway) much as, say "autism" is a diagnosis based on perception and new attention rather than a sudden huge increase in sickly children. Does anybody recall there were always those kids in class who were somehow just "different" or unfortunately "weird" or oddly "quiet"? Now they're victims of "autism spectrum syndrome". Fine. But they're still the same kinds of kids, and probably showing up in the same amounts.

Or what I am really saying is, even though I am not convinced that humans are the cause of global climate change, I think it more or less stands to reason we may have a role in it. And in a way, the whole "global warming" debate obscures the real action item for the industrialized carbon-based beings swarming the planet these days (eg. us), and that is: we really should be taking better care of the place.

For instance, does the threat of global warning make it any less shameful that we chop down forests to make BK Broilers, destroy delicate habitats to line our floors with "beautiful, durable hardwood" slats, dump plastic in the ocean in such quantities that we have created poison-leeching mini-continents drifting in the mid-Pacific, belch enough smoke into the air such that Beijing is a massive cancer-ward while East L.A. reeks half the year in filthy smog, reduce the habitats of brave and beautiful animals like the Siberian Tiger to the point where as a species they are hanging on by a claw?

It does not.

For the sake of the Tiger and the Vu Quong Ox and for those who must breathe filthy air and for the sake of the cruelly torn jungles and forests, can we please take a step back and ask how we might stop the wantonness of our destruction? Does it really matter if we are responsible for Katrina, or Snowmaggedon, or the shrinking of the ice-caps?

It does not.

We just have to stop killing and burning and smoking it up on the massive scale we have become accustomed to, not because we know it's going to cause a climate problem, but because it's ugly and stupid and in the end, immoral.

Climate change? Maybe. Throw a little love to the tigers? Yes.

And by the way: Who Dat?

A Waste of Precious Resources

The following actors must stop making movies immediately or face heavy fines levied by the MovieGoing Authorities:

Harrison Ford
Robert DeNiro
John Travolta
Mel Gibson
Jim Carey
Anthony Hopkins

They are, as a rule, talented. But long ago they became caricatures and hacks, and now must be stopped before they waste any further precious movie-making resources.

Is there any reason in the world why we should have to look at Ford's face again as he plays very tiresomely the Serious Adult in the room--avenging a threat to his or someone else's family?

Is there any reason why we should have to endure DeNiro mugging emptily in a movie he neither cares about nor adds anything to but the presence of his Name?

Can we just pretend Travolta's career consists of the several good movies he made (Saturday Night Fever; Pulp Fiction; Urban Cowboy) and "Welcome Back, Cotter"--and leave it at that?

Mel Gibson is a force that must be stopped--he has rarely played anything but a dark avenger adding nothing at all to the world but anger and violence and unhealthy vengeance. Did I mention vengeance?

Jim Carey was good on a half-hour TV comedy-variety show years ago that featured the Wayans brothers. After that, he had Dumb and Dumber. And then an undifferentiated string of movies, some animated, some not, in which he was grossly scatological and eminently not funny (and the overrated Truman Show). Pull the plug. Kill the Mask.

Anthony Hopkins: you died as an actor after playing Hannibal Lecter. You ate your career with Fava beans. Please retire to your English manor.

Once these abovementioned usurpers have been banished from the movie set, perhaps some younger, more-deserving, interesting actors can take their place in front of the camera; and our precious moviemaking resources can be utilized in the creation of valuable entertainment product instead of more rounds of depressing dreck destined rapidly for the bottom rack in the DVD section of BestBuy.

Avatar in Massachusettes

Yes, the name of the state is misspelled.

And here is a quote from science fiction editor Annalee Newitz (io9dotcom) via an article in the NYT:

"In movies like “Avatar,” Ms. Newitz wrote, “humans are the cause of alien oppression and distress,” until a white man “switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior.”

Whatever else viewers might say about Avatar--that it is anti-imperialist, pro-animist, anti-monotheism and all the rest--the fact is as Newitz implies: it's a white-guilt/redemption classic. Personally I found this theme rather obvious and that the obviousness of it detracted from the overall awe one could not help feeling for its complex visual beauty.

And now a perhaps tenuous but not, I think, altogether inappropriate segue to the Great Democractic Debacle in the Bay State where the now-forever-ignominious Ms. Coakley could not withstand the former nude male model's White Manly Pickup Truck onslaught in an election that could spindle National Health by allowing a Teabagger to take the place of the Great Healthcare Lion who recently and most ironically passed on just before he might vote on the Great Cause of his long tenure in that August Body.

In short, is it really possible that there is now a Palinesque male Junior Senator in the senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy? Wake up, ye thoughtful losers, for it has come to this. And many now say major health care reform, long and idiotically allowed to be held hostage by the GOP while an ineffectual near-supermajority of Democrats could not seem to do what any Republican Majority would have done (smash through whatever they wanted with 51 senate votes), may be in serious peril. Speaker Pelosi, facing us with an ever-less-believable rictus, says not to worry. However, if I am a fan of major health care reform, I am worried. And of course worried about the newly minted good fortune of the Grand Old Teabaggers--in "Massachusettes", where once a band of outraged taxpayers threw tea in the water dressed as "Indians" to protest levies of the Crown.

Let us now examine the manner in which the magnificently inept Coakley campaign misspelled the name of its own state in an ad during the campaign. And then let us think about the white-male-savior fantasy at the heart of What's-His-Name's unexpected victory.

The Hellenistic world, and especially the U.S.A. which is populated by all the peoples of the planet but governed by laws descendant from the Greek, has often been a theater of battle between pantheism and monotheism (to wit: Salem; slaughter of animist Native Americans; forced-Christianization of chained and shackled Africans). Monotheism has in this country been not only ascendant but unforgiving until quite recently (the 1960s), when all manner of thought not including a White Male Leader fairly exploded upon the general consciousness and wrecked the cut-grass and steak-for-dinner oppressiveness of the White Male Power Paradise.

It has gone poorly for the Traditional White Male ever since. Gone missing is his assumed throne at the pinnacle of creation as the landscape is re-shaped by powerful women, gay men and educated, powerful men of color . And now with an Articulate (please make careful note of the quote marks) "Negro" in the White House, the fortunes of the White Male may have come to seem almost permanently eclipsed.

But this White Male Monotheist is a fighting man if nothing else. His Templars took Jerusalem from the Saracens once, and today in America his Teabaggers are determined to take Washington from the Freaks and Geeks if it means the very destruction of the nation itself.

And here, in the cross-hairs, is poor Martha Coakley, unassuming Generic Female Candidate in what Democrats foolishly thought was a race they owned. This was the bluest of blue states after all--and this election was for the rightful Kennedy Seat! The trusty blue Commonwealth, it seemed to Dems, would elect a ham sandwich to that seat if the Dems told them to, would they not?

Not.

What has happened was this:

Martha early established her credentials as a nitwit and worse (by Teabagger lights), a female nitwit, by incorrectly feminizing the name of the state: Massachusettes (with that effete little extra "e" as if spelling "crepe suzettes"). Then she proceeded to assume, oddly like Hillary did not long ago, that the race was hers, and that there was no real need to compete.

Now here came the White Male Savior. And the guilt-ridden voters of Massachusetts, having allowed their state to help stain the purity of White Male Domination by helping elect a "different type" of man to the Presidency, saw their chance to "switch sides" and "save" themselves from a fate unendurable--that being a world ruled by laws signed by that fateful "Other": that guy with the near-unendurable name, Barack Hussein Obama.

And in his pickup truck he rode, Mr. Male Nude Model, and he was their Avatar, and they lived through him as he crunched and punched his way through the cobwebs of misspelling and ineptitude characterized by the inept and vague and miserable Coakley, and he won a Great Victory for the White Male and probably Monotheism by somehow convincing the N'avi of Massachusetts that he was one of them.

And that is how the Avatar came to Massachusettes.

http://www.clintonfoundation.org/haitiearthquake/

In the past few days, Bubba Clinton has been reported to to have said some rather unsavory things about the Hawaiian Who Would Be President to the late Lion of the Senate, but except for those who have eyes only for their own belly-buttons, none of that matters now.

The title of this post tells it all. Or you can text HAITI to 20222 for a quick $10 donation.

Go there and donate, unless you want to tell your grandchildren you did absolutely nothing for the victims of probably the worst disaster in this hemisphere in the past fifty years.

This one blows away the tsunami. It may not be as photo-tragic or epochal politically as the attacks on Lower Manhattan, and it may not be as evil as Rwandan genocide, Darfur or any number of atrocious acts committed by people against other people.

But this one has devastation on a scale almost unimaginable, in a land of poverty almost beyond belief. It is the near-wholesale destruction of a national capital populated by upwards of 2 million. It is the collapse of the National Palace. It is the falling-in of the roof of the National Cathedral. It is street after street, mile after mile, of flattened houses and buildings that had poorly been constructed and that crumbled each to dust during the mad shaking and aftershocks of a huge 7.0 temblor--the worst in that nation in 200 years (more or less since its liberation from the great and wonderful France)--and trapping within untold thousands of hapless innocents. It is the instant homelessness and heartbreak of a multitude.

A writer at the Daily Beast says that France was actually collecting REPARATIONS from Haiti until 1947, and that it ought to pay back every cent of that 22 billion in "reparations" right now, cash on the barrelhead.

Indeed.

For now, please go to Bubba's place and loosen up your wallet for Haiti. I know I am.

Units under Stress--and Sun

Over a lengthy Holiday Season holiday, I found myself relaxing under a pleasant warm sun, in sight of the very pool where John, Paul, George and Ringo splashed for the cameras back when Kennedy had just been shot but the world was going to be all right anyway mostly because of those very moptops.

The hotel is a large, old ratpack haunt where the likes of Ed Sullivan and Jackie Gleason gave shows in the vast ballroom; where The Voice and The Drinker stayed; and that now has been rediscovered by Europeans (and me) as a somewhat offbeat, fairly-well restored three-star that drips Moderne on a relatively unfashionable stretch of Collins Avenue well to the north of the iniquity and madness of Ocean Drive. At the entrance, shiny new cars are lined up for valet parking; across the street are some rather humble but satisfying Brazilian-themed restaurants and markets. Within blocks are a bagel place with a straight-outta-Flatbush owner, an American bar and grille, a Chinese place that seems to have been ported in from somewhere along Queens Boulevard and a full-blown Sikh-owned headshop/newsstand/notary public that rivals anything in the East Village. Add winter warmth and you can see why I flat loved this neighborhood.

However, as is generally known, South Florida is also one of the two epicenters of egregious overbuilding of condos and houses (the other being Las Vegas). Noticeable even at the vaunted Beach are towers that stand seemingly rather empty and swanky-looking developments that seem in no hurry to be completed. The prices have been keenly pared on all of them and I have it on good authority that the bottom has not yet been reached.

According to my knowledgeable source, whose interaction with HUD and the effort to keep wayward homes from completely going to pot makes him privy to a wealth of information about the market, there are over a hundred thousand units in Dade County alone that are under stress and heading for foreclosure within the next eighteen months. Word is, there is no way that amount of property can be absorbed into the market--meaning that continuing price slippage is inevitable.

The tourist areas are still crowded--and in much better shape now than, say ten or fifteen years ago when Miami Beach was only a ghost of its past and a dream of its future--but there is no shortage of soaped-over storefront windows and bare patches here and there along the beachy highways.

Eventually a home in the oceanside land of perpetual warmth may be in order--but apparently more bargains are on the way. And let's all offer our kind considerations to those who irrationally believed that water plus yearlong sun plus four walls and a roof equaled ever-escalating home-value; then, after we kindly consider their real-estate foolishness, wait until their properties drop to the lowest point we can believe in and then buy them.