Watch For . . . !

Grand reopening soon.

mjt

The Grandfather

You know, it was Easter the other day, and as I reflected over eggs, something dawned on me.

To wit:

Think of how many men, women, and children would be alive and well today if only Prescott Bush (look him up) had run headlong into an oncoming blimp in 1917.

Things that won’t make it into my Ph.D. Dissertation

As part of the larger re-examination of the American experience begun by professional historians in the 1970s and 1980s, scholars attempted to re-conceptionalize the “winning of the west” as a not particularly romantic period of resource extraction and industrialization. Such potent scholars have successfully (or at least to the satisfaction of the intellectual establishment) debunked the idea that there was anything romantic, heroic, or even very interesting about the Old West of the cowboy and the range war.

The question, though, particularly for the individual who has an emotional connection with the West, is whether the New Western Historians have brought such energy to the destruction of the myth of the wild free man of the frontier because the myth is flawed, or because they have a deep and personal distaste for the wild free man unconstrained by the dictates of peer-reviewed journals and departmental policies.

under theorized

Theorization: the process by which the intangible is made indefensible by the insufferable.

ladylike

So I see in the paper that there’s a company that is offering women classes on how to seem “approachable.” It seems that some of them are having trouble finding relationships at least partly because they respond to even the most polite, civil, and courteous men with cutting remarks and chill distain. They are then mystified as to why they don’t get asked out.

I love America.

In what other civilization do you have to teach people that maybe— just maybe— the proper response to the honorable attentions of a gentleman might not be a swift kick in the nuts?

Sorry, sorry, sorry!!!!

...for being gone so long.

Complex state affairs. I'll spare you the grim details. Suffice to say that it involved taxes, my continuing struggles with the Ph.D. program, turning 50, my very first colonscopy (such fun), and driving back from the Bronx to Boston in the middle of an ice storm.

More than fun than bobbing for leeches.

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.”