supply and demand

Here’s something interesting I read in the papers. It seems that according to various studies that corporate profits are up, corporate productivity (i.e., how hard you work) is WAY up, and Wall Street Firms are doing so well that last Christmas’ bonuses for individual traders were in the multi-million dollar range.

BUT, salaries . . . i.e., what you, as opposed to Wall Street brokers, get paid . . . are actually down. You are almost certainly working longer hours for less pay, fewer benefits, and no job security.

Hmmm.

So, let us restate the law of supply and demand. It now reads:

“I, the Wall Street Bigwig, whose ability to forecast the market has been statistically proven to be slightly less good than that of your average chimpanzee, DEMAND that you, who produce everything, SUPPLY me with everything I want, regardless of the fact that I, in turn, produce nothing, and intend to give you just exactly that — nothing! — in return.”

and I'm still mad about Borat

So I saw in the paper that one of the guys responsible for the “Girls Gone Whoopee” series of video tapes may be going to jail for a while. Seems he didn’t exactly have consent for some of his stars . . . i.e., the under-aged women who got drunk and appeared in his pictures.

Which is fine I suppose. Keeps us on our toes. And Morality is everything. Etc. Etc.

But, still . . .

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. Get somebody plastered and put them into humiliating situations on film, and call it “Girls Gone Whacko,” then you’re a nasty quasi-pornographer and they take you to court.

But, if you get somebody drunk and put them into humiliating situations on film, and you call it “Borat,” they give you Oscars.

Okay. Just making sure I knew how it worked around here.

New Year's Blessing . . . sorta

I’m back from New Mexico, and I’d like to start this year with something of a new tradition. I want to say something. To wit:

To anyone whom I have ever in my life offended or hurt by word or deed or lack of action, I here-by humbly apologize and I hope you will try to forgive me.

To anyone who has ever hurt or offended me by word or deed or lack of action, I will try to forgive you.

And, finally . . .

To the terrorists who have slaughtered thousands in the name of religion, to the men in Washington who lied and slandered their way into office and then launched meaningless and horrible wars, to the party hacks who sent the tanks into Tiananmen . . . I hope you b*stards get brain aneurisms and die.

Sorry. But this Christian forgiveness stuff only goes so far. You know?

Happy New Year . . . and Outta Town

Just fyi.

I’ll be out of town for a week or so. Look for a return of Xcargo around 10 January.

Happy New Year.

President Ford

President Ford is dead. Let us be saddened. Let us praise a good man.

Let us weep that his like is not to be found in the GOP, much less the White House, today.

Merry Xmas #2

And in rather similar terms . . . but on the other side of the fence . . .

I see in the paper that the Christian Right, which has made “keep Christ in Christmas” a major part of its crusade against Liberals, is actually turning a tidy profit from the whole business. It’s selling pins and bumper stickers, as well as raising funds from gullible Church-goers, to defend “Merry Christmas” from “Happy Holidays.” The article I read said that American Family Association alone has taken in $550,000 in “sales of buttons and magnets stamped with the slogan ‘Merry Christmas: It’s Worth Saying.’”

Gosh. Cash and mean-spirited politics.

That’s certainly what I want under my Christmas tree.

Don’t you?





(Source: LA Times, reprinted in Boston Globe, December 24, 2006. P. A13)

Merry Xmas #1

Last time I wished everyone a “Happy Holiday.” That’s PC-speak for “Merry Christmas.”

Actually, I do have mixed feelings about saying “Merry Christmas” this time of year. On the one hand, I do genuinely understand that it is both unpleasant and intolerant to assume that everyone belongs to the same faith tradition as I.

Yet . . .

And yet . . .

Have you noticed that the people who make the biggest fuss about it are really and truly, deep down, at base, secretly saying something along the lines of “Diversity means that if I celebrate it, it’s good. If you celebrate it, then scr*w you, you vicious Nazi b*stard" ?

Happy Holidays

Whatever you celebrate this season . . . HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Separated At Birth?

The scary thing? You know I don’t much care for that Sacha Baron Cohen movie, which I believe is anti-American and bullying to boot.

But, well . . . you know . . . I saw on the web a photo of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressing that conference of Holocaust Deniers . . .

Is it just me, or does he look more like Borat with every passing day?

Seward Collins

Here's my newest adventure in video weirdness. It's a short piece on the chap who is the subject of my most recent book and can be found at Youtube, here:

Youtube Seward Collins

or at the Internet Archive, here:

Internet Archive Collins


cheers

mjt

Alas!

You know the tragic thing? After all the sh*t the neconnies have pulled . . . the slander, the lies, the bullying, the fraudulent impeachment, 9/11, Homeland “Defense,” Iraq, Katrina . . .

The first thing I thought when I heard about poor Senator Tim Johnson’s illness was:

Check his throat for finger prints, ‘cause sure as h*ll they’re gonna be Ch*ney's.

MBAs

Did you see in the news the other day that some study has shown that MBA students cheat more than another kind?

Gee.

So, let me get this straight. We’ve got a culture which says that winning is the only thing that matters, which teaches that “business ethics” are a contradiction in terms, which points with pride to Enron and sweetheart deals for crony capitalists in Iraq, and which chants “increase shareholder value” like a mantra while at the same time encouraging every CEO to act like a blood-sucking, flesh shredding, sewer shark.

And MBAs cheat in school.

Gosh. Who wudda thunk it?

watch for

WATCH FOR GRAND RE-OPENING.

Coming soon . . .

Mo’ Borat

Still, kinda interesting when you think about it.

Borat, a.k.a. Sacha Baron Cohen, makes a film in which he says that all . . . ALL . . . Americans are racist, blood-thirsty, warmongering, anti-Semitic, materialistic, bigoted, brain-dead, Neo-Nazis with big bombs and small wing-wangs . . .

And America . . .

Responds by making his movie number one at the box office.

Whoa.

What’s the line by Yakov Smirnoff? “What a country.”

Borat the Bully

So, am I the only person on the planet who thinks that the movie Borat is a wretched excuse for entertainment and that Sacha Baron Cohen, the alleged comedian who plays the title role, is a bully and a moralizing, anti-American prig who should suffer extreme civil penalties for invasion of privacy?

Uh . . . anyone . . . out there?

Maybe it’s just me.

Sigh.

Election

So we woke up this a.m. to discover that the Democrats had swept the House, made big gains in the Senate, and dominated many local elections. In fact, the word “landslide” comes to mind.

That’s a LOT of votes. And most of ‘em, at least, even got recorded. Hanging chads, “lost” ballots, intimidation of voters by neocon bully-boys, fraudulent recounts . . . all (mostly) missing from the scene.

Gosh. Has anybody checked? I mean, Karl Rove is all right, isn’t he? Not sick or anything?

Mutant Pomeranians

Have you noticed that I have stopped referring to “Republicans” when I talk about the current administration? There is a good reason for that. Near as I can tell, the Bushies aren’t Republicans. They spend where the Republicans would save, interfere when Republicans would leave damn well enough alone, and rush in where Republicans would dash the other way.

In fact, come right down to it, a Republican is to a Bushie what Hello Kitty is a to a three eyed mutant giant Pomeranian with rabies and a side order of halitosis.

And that’s on a good day.

A little history

So, a little history: as the Roman Empire entered its final days, the leadership elite managed to largely exempt itself from any form of taxation while at the same time shifting the ever increasing costs of civil administration and defense to a peasantry (in effect, the middle class) that was already stretched to the breaking point. Then, too, to damper down social unrest, the same elite turned to religion as a means of social control, which is how Christianity eventually emerged as the Roman State religion, though only after the Empire had experimented with several other options, including a cult of the Invincible Sun. And, finally, to deal more with internal threats than external, the elite moved to increasingly militarize that state, so that in the end Emperors paraded about in military attire even when they, themselves, had never gotten closer to a battle than watching gladiators making each other into chopped liver on Sundays.

So, let’s sum up, shall we? A decaying social order in which the poor pay the expenses of the rich, the state is propped up by increasingly intolerant cults, and the commander-in-chief staggers about in helmet and gear that do not fit him.

Hmmm.

Why does that sound familiar?

Lesser of Two . . .

You know, much as I detest the Bushies, I gotta confess. I don’t see anybody else out there that’s has much to offer.

I mean, come on, the Democrats haven’t had a good idea since Truman dropkicked MacArthur’s Pyongyang outta Korea.

Oh me of little faith

Another cheery religious news day today . . . with the papers full of stories of people blowing themselves and other people up in the name of God . . . abusing alter boys in the name of God . . . running TV scams that bilk little old ladies out of Social Security checks in the name of God . . . voting for Right Wing psychopaths in the name of God . . . and so on.

You know, after much thought, here’s my take on faith.

Given a choice between it and good douse of doubt, I’ll take the doubt.

You’re more likely to survive it.