2009

It is new year’s eve! YAY. Another year closer to death on which to mark my lack of accomplishments.

Obviously I have too much free time

I recently learned that Zodiac signs are very week to week. My friend Jashin had a thorough Zodiac book and I read the description of my zodiac birth week which is on the Cancer/Gemini Cusp, known as the cusp of magic. It noted that I possess an interesting combination of logic and feeling and that I am forever 21 years old.

Here's an overview I found online (this website places the beginning of the cusp at the 20th, but Jashin's book started it at the 19th, my birthday) :
-- Possess the flighty and energetic traits inherent in Gemini --
-- Possess the deep feeling inherent in Cancer --
-- Often categorized as inspired individuals --
-- Intensely devoted to loved ones --
-- Find it difficult to keep an eye on the desired goal --
-- Prone to drift --
-- Apt to repress feelings --

AND-

Notable Gemini/Cancer Cuspians Include:
Cyndi Lauper; Errol Flynn; Meryl Streep; Kris Krisofferson; and Phylicia Rashad (absent from the list: Jean Paul Sartre, born June 21, 1905).

Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death

Nytimes:
A crazed horde of shoppers looking for post holiday bargains shattered the doors to a Walmart at 5am Friday morning and trampled an employee to death.

Butttub:

Black Friday Earns its Name

some possible good news

Obama might choose Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, to lead the EPA.

more griping

Obama's Economic Policy People:

Robert Rubin, an economic adviser to Obama, oversaw the risk management at the recently collapsed super bank Citigroup. Larry Summers, soon to be the director of Obama's National Economic Council, the Treasury Secretary under Clinton "championed the law that deregulated derivatives, the financial instruments — a k a toxic assets — that have spread the financial losses from reckless lending around the globe." Larry Summers also worked at the IMF, along with Geithner, the current president of the Federal Reserve and Obama's pick for Treasury Secretary. Each one of these picks represent an ideology of deregulation and neoliberalism that fueled our current economic crisis; And these are the people that are supposed to steer the ship of state toward its salvation with policies of 'change' and 'spreading around the wealth????'

Obama's (dis)appointments

Naomi Klein from yesterday's democracy now:

"..what we can expect from Summers and Geithner, I think it's clear that there's going to be a major departure from the idea logy that the government can't do anything...we're going to see a lot of investments in infrastructure...but the key issue and this is where I think we want to concentrate our energies because...we all want to be optimistic, but I think part of what got us into this situation where we've seen these very disappointing appointments has been that we have not been honest about the legacy of the Clinton years. So much mis-information has been spread during the election campaign because it was a nice message to present the '90s as these wonder years in contrast to the Bush years, and that is exactly the situation when you have a Summers [Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton, and recently picked by Obama to head the National Economic Council] going down as some sort of wise man instead of going down with Allen Greenspan."


Also check out Jeremey Scahill's piece on Alternet highlighting the 'liberal hawks' behind Obama's foreign policy team.

to the very small number of californians who read this

why not vote nader? obviously obama is going to sweep california.

Our Supposed Capitalist-Socialist Hybrid Economy

From James K. Galbraith's Plan in this month's Harper's series of essays: How to Save Capitalism:

"The rot comes from predators posing as conservatives and mouthing the rhetoric of “free markets.” They are not actually interested in free markets. Their goal is to use the government to build monopolies, to control resources, to block regulation, to crush unions, to divert as much as possible from taxpayers into private pockets."


The idea that America is a mix of capitalism and socialism is now the new liberal parlance. The central flaws of capitalism, its reifying logic of unfettered and self interested competing parties that gracefully ignores a sub-history of blood/slavery/exploitation, are no longer relevant now that capitalism has subsumed socialism with things like welfare, public housing, income tax, and public education. (Never mind the labor wars that ensured every one of these things, and continue to be the basis for 'change' and corporate benevolence).

Of course, 'they,' Bush and his cronies, oligarchs consisting of developers-Bechtel and Haliburton- and oil companies, represent a perversion of our harmoniously mixed hybrid capitalism. While Galbraith's criticism of corporations manipulating government to gain contracts and power rings very true, the theoretically underpinnings of his critique are quite murky.

Should the government untangle itself from big business, and in what way in particular (in campaign reform/corporate lobbying or in dismantling welfare and regulation à la Clinton) , and if it does then is it the case that the underlying principles of the 'free market' will best serve our public interests? The irony of Galbraith's critique is that it ends with a plea for meeting our climate crisis via "direct public action and the cooperation of the private sector," or in other words, government contracts with (renewable) energy corporations (which was the basis of his critique of Bush & Company).

The central questions that haunt Galbraith's critique:
a) Are public interests best met through free markets?
b) Is profit in a capitalist system of exponential growth based on immutable principles of supply and demand or is it rather based on exploitation/ constantly being overcharged for services to fill the pockets of the top 1% who control 33% of the wealth and CEOs who make about 400 times that of the average worker?
c) If we accept a hybrid of government planning/money and the private sector how can this do anything but enabling monopolies and public spending that is well beyond the cost of the actual services?

PROMPTS

PLEASE GIVE ME PROMPTS !! I NEED ASSIGNMENTS. HARD TO GET STUFF DONE W/OUT CLASSES/COLLEGE.

DUE DATES FOR PROMPTS/ASSIGNMENTS ALSO ACCEPTED.

AN or A

an goes before every vowel sound. an honor, and also some single letter or acronyms with vowel sounds like an F or an MRI.

there isn't a consensus on historical (or history, or historian) because the h is pronounced softly, so it can be said either a historical or an historical.

source:Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch.

cold war 2.0

Does anyone remember when McCain said in the Jim Lehrer debate/parallel interview: "I looked into Putin's eyes I saw three letters, a 'K' a 'G' and a 'B.'"

at least McCain admitted in the 2nd debate: "obviously energy is going to be a big big factor, and Georgia and the Ukraine are both major gateways of energy into Europe, and that's one of the reasons why it's in our interest. But, the Russians, I think we can deal with them, but they got to understand that they're facing a very firm and determined USA that will defend our interest (and that of other countries in the world)." SUCH HONESTY.

I totally predicted the Cold War 2.0

giantgasbags to me
show details Aug 11 Reply
11:18 AM me: we are at war with russia via georgia
lol
actually it's sad
giantgasbags: omg yeah what is this
i am not paying attention
11:20 AM me: like ossetia is a region supposed to have autonomy and it has some georgians and russians there and both countries want the oil there
its only about 70,000 people in the area
and georgia tried to take it over
11:21 AM and then russia squashed the shit out of georgia, bombing everywhere
giantgasbags: wow russia rules
me: airports, and
military sites
and commercial areas
giantgasbags: when did they bomb georgia
11:22 AM me: and we funded georgia to do a little coup in assetia and make us some good oil deals
i guess
like 2 days ago
giantgasbags: WWWWHAT
the USA is behind this?
SWEEET
me: cold war 2.0

COLBERT REPORT 10/2 ON THE BAILOUT

So ah, by the way, ah what's this going to cost
oh ah 700 billion dollars...
where did the government get that figure?!
well, the treasury department said, it's not based on anything in particular they just, quote, wanted to choose a very big number.
the free market can save itself mister, it can do anything, it can self regulate- it can self correct....
true, but these are not normal circumstances; big companies are going under
good, it's called survival of the fittest, the companies are like lions fighting over the carcass of the economy, weak companies die, strong companies live, then the lionesses know who to mate with,
ah but that my friend is the problem, none of these companies are safe to mate with, it's like um business syphilis
so how did that happen
well it started with a few slutty lenders who jump into bed with some really sub prime mortgages
the next thing you knew you had a credit orgy..people were swapping derivatives, aig was all up in fannie mae, wachovia took on golden west then turned around and got it on with a.g. edwards, then city group had 'em all at once, it was steaming pile of hot slapping assets. no one, no one knew who was bundling who, but it felt good, and everybody was doing it, and in the end lets just say the market blew its liquidity.

A Review of a Review of a Book

There's an interesting review by Samuel Moyn in the Nation of a book, Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention, which criticizes the author, Gary J. Bass, for bracketing the imperialistic underpinnings of humanitarian sensationalism: "Victorian humanitarianism often exported to foreign lands the savagery it purported to be banishing from them." Moyn also notes that the first recorded case of sadism "was a man who found the humanitarian depiction of tortured slaves sexually exciting." I am not very knowledgeable in British Imperial history, and have not read this book, though I found the contemporary implications of Samuel Moyn's criticisms of Bass's book very interesting.

Basically the book is an attempt at charting a legacy of liberal humanitarianism to defend the notion of just wars, e.g. Kosovo (the excessive Nato bombing campaign that helped displace the very people it was supposedly liberating, claimed hundreds of innocent lives as "markets, hospitals, refugee convoys, passenger trains, and a TV station" were among the targets [quoted from Klein], and set the stage for a capitalist investment frenzy in dismantling state run infrastructure, pipelines and mines, most famously Trepca).

I am still reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, which brilliantly outlines the current trend in military/imperialist policy of unloading billions of dollars of bombs (shock and awe) followed by a rebuilding/reconstruction frenzy/contracting Bechtel and Halliburton. It also draws an analogy between torture treatments for the mentally ill (sensory overload, deprivation, temporal disorientation, breaking down and then rebuilding the patient) and the wonderful torture methodology in Guantanamo, formerly Abu Ghraib, and secret prisons throughout Europe, and also at the macro level of military policy/treatment programs for 'rogue states.' On that note, I am skeptical over whether Obama offers a substantial alternative toward our current middle eastern crusade (I was and am still not for the Afghanistan or Iraq War, and am not for a proposed war+sanctions in Pakistan, and am very critical of Israeli policy- though, on a side note, it was encouraging to hear Olmert's comments, upon resigning over bribery allegations, that Israel must withdrawl from the West Bank and from East Jerusalem).

SEE:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081013/moyn

and for the full article, and other Nation articles, click on the bellow site and enter h11/print.

http://www.smith.edu/libraries/research/article.html

OMG SO EXCITED FOR THE DEBATE!!!

Palin interviewed by Couric, excerpted from Zakaria's article in Newsweek:
COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out [awkward/thus begins the haphazard recycling of any and all thoughts pertaining in some way to the economy]. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed [???] to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. [?]And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing [incomplete]. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity [fragment]. All those things [?] under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that [awkward].

Leisure, the Work Day, and the Etymology of Lunch

I was reading a book by F.Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, and noticed that he always uses the word Luncheon instead of Lunch. I then began looking up the term, and found that lunch is actually a contraction of luncheon and also that dinner used to be the term for a noontime meal. I came across a short essay What Time is Dinner, by Sherrie McMillan, which attempts to provide a historical background for the shifting meanings of dinner and lunch. That dinner used to refer to what we now call lunch led me to suspect the existence of something like a siesta in medieval times, and the idea that some of our leisure time was lost with the emergence of manufactories. Wouldn't a large meal at noon require a sizable break from work?

Luncheon was a snack between dinner (then held at noon) and supper mostly for farm workers during long Summer days. Dinner was actually held at noon and supper just before sunset, probably out of convenience given the complications of not having electrical lighting and having to do everything at night by candlelight. McMillan suggests that technological advances inaugurated a culture of night life and leisure that increasingly included more and more of the masses: "Due to new developments in culture and technology," and the growths of "the middle class...mercantilism, trades, and manufacturing," candles became much more available and it was no longer a luxury to feast at night. In her analysis of the etymology of lunch and dinner I began to suspect that the loss of a substantial noontime meal could actually prove the opposite of her thesis.

Was it, as McMillan claims that "the middle and lower classes in Britain were quick to adopt this new meal when they could," and that "many people in the middle and lower class began to eat dinner in the evening as the nobles and gentry did”? Or, rather could one read into the shift in mealtimes as a gutting of leisure time in the context of the manufacturing revolution?

With the advent of the manufacturing revolution workers no longer owned their own time. Time was subject to strict scrutiny, so as to enable maximum productivity. Due to the enormous increases in efficiency that manufactories provided it seemed as if this technological shift could pave the way for shorter workdays and expanded leisure time. This was precisely what was prophesized by the engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor, who articulated a technological utopianism that was embraced by capitalists and communists alike. The reality is of course that with all our technological advances and increases in efficiency, the average workweek is continually increasing, as our economy proceeds in a fitful state of exponential expansion. Thus every time workers dine in the evening they can mourn the bygone days when dinner time provided a leisurely break from work.

either/neither

"the unnatural pronunciation ither and nither is to be traced back to George I's (Reign: August 1, 1714 – June 11, 1727) ignorance of the English language...that George I handled the English language, which he learned late, clumsily (because of which he had no interest in English literature), is well known. He pronounced the words either and neither in the German fashion, which the courtiers, not to correct the King, took over and put into currency...The Oxford Dictionary, in its volume of 1907, still gives it second place, remarking that, though it is not in accordance with with the analogues of Standard English, it is in London somewhat more prevalent in educated speech than is eether."
-On the Pronunciation of "Either" and "Neither," American Speech, Louise Pound, 1932.

ancient sesame seed canister found in kitchen cabinet

today in my kitchen i found an unopened tin canister of sesame seed, safeway brand, stamped 99 cents on the top and exp. date june 17, 1984 (two days before my birthday) on the bottom. i tried taking a picture to upload, but i couldn't get a good pic with my shitty 4 mp digital camera.

so ill describe it more: the top of the label is a rich semi-dark orange with bold simple type saying SESAME SEED, the bottom is painted to look like mohogany wood and in white lettering says, Crown Colony, and has the classic circular 'S' safeway symbol.

Forbidden Lies

A REALLY AWESOME MOVIE. it is the perfect remedy for the pervasive anti-muslim sentiment that is so often the lens through which people in america are exposed to islamic cultures.


(do not read the material below if you are worried about having the plot spoiled).

Forbidden Lies is documentary about a writer, Norma Khouri, who fabricated a story about an honor killing in Jordan. the movie delves into a labyrinth of lies as the filmmakers try to uncover the identity of the supposed victim of the honor killing in khouri's novel forbidden love. in addition to numerous factual errors, such as that jordan borders kuwait, the audience discovers the majority of her claims in the novel are false including: all jordanian women must be escorted by men whenever outdoors, they must also wear the hijab, thousands die per year as a result of honor killings (i think the number is around 20) and the government condones such murders.

quote from Ralph Nader's father

"Capitalism will always survive in the United States as long as the government is willing to use socialism to bail it out."

Money as Debt

I was reading the latest on the exploded bubble in investment banking

Of course the absurdity here with the 700 billion bail outs is that the very industry that profits off the debts of others is now bankrupt and being bailed out by federal/(quasi) public funds.

and I was also reminded of a really wonderful video on how debt is deeply rooted in the creation and functioning of money under capitalism: Money as Debt

thus we see this bubble/beast of unchecked greed is nothing new and cannot be fixed through light reform, but rather must be put to sleep.

state run beer

Word of Mouth Fills German Brewer’s Steins, Rothaus-Baden Wuerttemberg

I wish we had state run breweries this good and this cheap. Maybe when California secedes its first move could be socializing the beer industry.

Viking Afterlife

When Viking warlords died they would be buried in a stone shaped ship along with their weapons and other vital possessions. In the afterlife place of warriors, Valhalla, warriors would first be escorted by female vikings to a mead hall where they would prepare for the final battle with the Gods, the battle of Ragnarök.

russian brunch

brunched at a russian bakery/restaurant called cinderella with george. it's actually closeby, on balboa street, but it was my first time going there. george spoke some russian and got constructive critiques on his accent. the waitress secretly thought his effort to speak russian was cute.

beer battered alaskan cod

beer battered fish is hard to do. plus i made slightly too much, and left over fried fish is not possible/good. kind of frustrated.

9/13

i feel like i'm 17 again, and unsure how all of a sudden I ended up at the age of 24. time is marching on against my will, yet also galvanizing a sense of youthful urgency within me.

9/12

got my mom some books for her birthday, a very small mobile latin american spanish phrase book for her trip to argentina, a book called 100 places every woman should go, and this book called divisadero that she wanted. dined at this super delicious nepalise restaurant called metro kathmandu.

toto

sad that my dog is dying. the x rays turned out to show no signs of cancer, but i still know her energy level is dwindling. she is also occasionally overtaken by these ominous gasps or choking, where I'm sometimes overcome by sadness as I think that she might be just moments away from death (or the equally terrifying thought that I'll wake up the next day to find that she has passed away). she used to be the cutest and most lively little cairn terrier in the glorious days of my youth.

Friday

i like listening to Friday I'm in Love on Friday.

Friday

not going to work today. trying to recover mental, physical, and spiritual faculties.

will start with a nice hearty brunch (though I always hate having to choose between breakfast and lunch).

rogaine

Side effects of Rogaine:
sudden, unexplained weight gain; swelling of the hands or feet; unwanted facial hair growth.

Symptoms of a Rogaine overdose are not known but may include very low blood pressure (fainting, dizziness, confusion); an irregular or fast heart rate; headache; and flushing (redness, warmth) of the skin.

I should probably switch to some sort of natural/herbal hair growth product.

9/11

my mom's birthday is today, 9/11.

eastward migration

i think i need to move eastward.

9/11

it turns out the random 2 panels of photos, depicting random corporate men in suits with celebratory faces, are of corporate mergers which would later fail.

9/10

slight pain in my eye sockets. maybe it's from staring at a screen too long. had to interview a mechanic in person today in order to write a short bio on him-super awkward.


the other day the boss commented on one of the bios, saying he enjoyed the one about the former medieval scholar mechanic, and that he always wants his mechanic to offer him lectures on chaucer while repairing the car. the boss excels at making references, it's a skill of his that i've speculated is probably the type of thing emphasized at Princeton, where he attended college. the mechanic actually had a degree in Renaissance history, but no matter.

9/9/08

my blood feels very warm today and my body aches.

general work malaise 2

spent the day taking to and writing bios on auto mechanics and auto engineers (and the compiling office chairs).
one of them was a hybrid engineer modifier dude who studied renaissance history in college.

i was previously working doing covert marketing/spamming/solicitation on yahoo answers (but was eventually banned).

i think if i was working at this place full time i would lose my mind and soul. it is all just endless streams of data, like researching an car problem and question on a particular make, model, year, yet to me it is all substanceless. streams of empty signifiers.

general work malaise 1

The office:
internet 'start up.'
the building is a retrofitted loft style factory
everyone in here is silent and immersed in some infintismal technical task. I contemplate doing a comparative study of alienation in the industrial era and our current internet era. It seems to me that the division of labor has accelerated to absurd proportions in our current era/ isn't this why much of our economy is built around abstract things like speculative hedge fund ventures and investments?

In this particular office, I've noticed an emerging computer tech proletariat, granted this proletariat makes a decent wage (not sure yet just how much). Many of them are either young nerdy people who never got a college degree or computer tech people imported from China. Meanwhile, the owners of this firm appear to know none of the technical code jargon that makes up terrifying percent of the labor force for the site, and instead handle the business and investment side from their spacious panoramic view upper floor offices.