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Friday, January 17, 2003
For somebody who hasn't abused his or her self to the point of being a weight on society, buying fucking big televisions and electric tin openers is as legitamate a way to avoid facing the horrifying banality of life as sticking a needle full of black tar heroine in your arm is to a junky.
You should come and visit me in my apartment in houston, devin, i'll prove it to you.
Or you could face down the banality of life, take the tools of the establishment and create something. For christmas my sister commissioned her boyfriend, a half-portugese ceramics major(why don't we have ethnic slurs for the portugese?), to make this for me.
.: posted by Jeremy 1/17/2003
The Man can't hold you down if you have nothing. The tools of The Establishment are our 'rewards' in society. A job, a career, a family, a big fucking television, washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electric tin openers; these are the things that He uses to control us, keep us in line. Gotta kiss up to your asshole boss, or he'll fire you. Do a real good job, and you just might get promoted. Gotta keep buying things you don't need and can't afford, for status, to keep up with the Joneses, to fill up your massive house. Gotta have the biggest, best toys, a new car every two years, coz the old one doesn't have that new car smell. Gotta have $20,000 in credit card debt, a second mortgage on your house. When you're unemployed, no job, no family, no possessions, then you're truly free, coz what's He gonna take away from you? But He's got the cure for that, too. You get an unemployment check every two weeks. Not enough to live on, just enough to survive on. Bread and circuses, man, bread and circuses...
This is about the point in the tirade where your unemployed friend asks for a few dollars for bus fare to the unemployment commission.
Speaking of keeping up with Joneses, Bread and Circuses is way cooler than we are. I say we hunt down this taylor wagen guy and beat him up.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 1/17/2003
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Two things:
Check out this website. You use it to trade books, movies, and CDs. They don't make any money, they just provide the medium. Free, just like the internet was supposed to be. (that's a joke)
The other thing is that Devin's analogy falls flat on its face because I already established that the four poorest restaurant guys are unemployed. They are not farmers. They have no jobs because the Man is holding them down. You don't understand class struggle at all.
.: posted by andy 1/16/2003
I wrote this last night, and blogger choked, so it is getting published today:
I personally am fine with tax cuts, since all economies are closed loops, and lowering government revenue by lowering taxation rates means that persons have additional excess money to spend, by an amount equal to the amount the government doesn't. Since all government revenue eventually ends up as government spending, it reenters the closed loop of the economy. I have a problem with calling this an economic stimulus, since this could be equated to the government floating a loan to various assorted persons, or more accurately covering the interest on a loan to said persons.
I also have a problem with long term debt. Short term debt is necessary, rough times, etc.. Long term debt is borrowing against unknown future generations. It adds more money to the loop, which is supposed to be removed at some point in the future, but slowly, if ever, gets removed from the system. Most politicians, more interested in votes and popoularity than logic, find it easier to cause devaluation of currency than to actually pay debt off at full value. Devaluation and the corrollary inflation are bad, as any person over 50 will tell you.
To go back to the restaurant analogy, we should also touch on the closed loop aspect of it. Those $100 eventually filter back to the customers, since those same customers raised the pork, grew the corn, drove the truck to deliver the products, ran the power plant, etc, etc, etc, necessary for said restaurant to thrive. The poorest 4 were tenant farmers, ate cornpone and beans, and lived without running water and the benefit of demon electricity. The fifth raised hogs. The sixth worked in the power plant of the richest man in town, and fed his family fairly well; he could send his children to school if he scrimped. The seventh was lucky and smart in ways of business, he owned a truck, and knew how to buy and sell his product to insure a profit. The eighth was a lawyer by learning and elected official(restauranteer) by trade. The ninth owned the farmland, and reaped the rewards of the sharecroppers. The richest man ran the powerplant, sold the seed to the farmers, ran the salebarn the livestock was sold through, and rented out the property the restaurant sat on. He paid out by far the most, and got by far the most from the restaurant(and everyone else) come the first of the month.
When the nine attack the tenth in a closed system, he has nowhere to go. They might take away all of his possessions though, and put him at the bottom of the list, and this is called a revolution.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 1/16/2003
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
The Israelis may start whacking "terrorists" on American and allied soil. But maybe not. But it seems like probably so, according to this article. So I guess we better tone it down a little bit, eh? If our government is ok with this, then we need to get a better government. This is not how the United States is supposed to work. You don't just tell some bloodthirsty foreign government they're welcome to come onto your turf and kill whomever they feel threatened by. Am I right?
.: posted by andy 1/15/2003
That restaurant analogy needs a little context. Let's say that the restaurant sells Lexington-style pork barbecue. The restaurant owner, in his infinite wisdom, has decided to set up a franchise in Afghanistan, and is planning another one in Iraq. Both of these franchises will hemorrhage money, considering that Muslims don't dig on no swine. At the same time, the economic slump has reduced the number of customers already visiting the restaurant. This has already strained many of the restaurant's domestic franchises. In order to avoid shutting down those franchises, he plans to bail them out using revenue from his flagship restaurant. Unfortunately, this also means that none of his employees will get raises, and some will lose their jobs. He has so many, and such grandiose plans, yet he decides to reduce his prices? Does he also print money in the back room? How will this work?
And then there's the social justice context. Let's say that these ten men all work at the same company, which is owned by the richest man. Demand for this company's widgets has gone down, forcing the the richest man to lay off the poorest four, and put everyone else's raises on hold. These cost-cutting measures delight the company's board of directors, who give the company's owner a quarterly bonus equal to the annual salaries of the poorest six men in the group (before the first four were laid off), a tidy little addition to his annual salary, which is equal to the annual salaries of the other nine men combined (before the first four were laid off). The four men who were laid off put in 40 hours a week. The next three men work an average of 50 hours a week. The two men nearest the top work 60, while the CEO works 80 hours a week. The company is his life, and he's well-equipped to run it. Nevertheless, he makes a grotesque amount of money compared the folks who eat for free.
I guess according to this analogy, the people who eat for free should be glad for whatever handouts they get, right? Those greedy, stupid, indolent little bastards are lucky the restaurant owner and his rich buddy don't let them starve, eh? Maybe. But I would point out that I worked for that rich man and he laid me off twice at two different companies, and eventually bankrupted each of those companies. He came out smelling like a rose both times, starting and bankrupting several other companies along the way, and in each case further lining his pockets, while breaking his employees. Meanwhile, I got a job changing lightbulbs for less than I made when I was on unemployment. Pardon me if I don't get all choked up when I hear that the rich man got kicked to the curb for once in his life. Kick him once for me, fellas.
.: posted by andy 1/15/2003
This is a very simple way to understand the tax laws. It was prepared by Tom L. Davies at the University of South Dakota. Read on -- it will make you think.
Taxes and Tax Cuts --
Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men -- the poorest -- would pay nothing; the fifth would pay $1, the sixth would pay $3, the seventh $7, the eighth $12, the ninth $18 and the tenth man -- the richest -- would pay $59.
That's what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement -- until one day, the owner threw them a curve (in tax language, a tax cut).
"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." So now dinner for the ten only cost $80.00.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six -- the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?
The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being PAID to eat their meal. So the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead of his earlier $59. Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free.
But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man, "but he," pointing to the tenth, "got $7!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man, "I only saved a dollar, too...it's unfair that he got seven times more than me!"
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man, "why should he get $7 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!" "Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night he didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered, a little late, what was very important. They were FIFTY-TWO DOLLARS short of paying the bill.
Imagine that!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college instructors, is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore.
Where would that leave the rest? Unfortunately, most taxing authorities cannot seem to grasp this rather straightforward logic.
Tom L. Davies
Division of Accounting and Business Law
The University of South Dakota
.: posted by George 1/15/2003
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
I was just adding a close window link to a page I was working on, and I browsed the page in Homesite to see if it looked right. Without thinking, I clicked the close window link (in Homesite's little browser module). Homesite was immediately hosed, and I wound up doing a hard restart when all was said and done. This is a result of several things: Homesite is sometimes a little squirrely, especially when cracked; Windows ME is the worst iteration of Windows ever, especially when cracked; I am an idiot for using these two things in conjunction and then clicking a link that is not supposed to be clicked in the context it was clicked in.
.: posted by andy 1/14/2003
Monday, January 13, 2003
"The other day I was talking to my friend Avril Olsen. He tells me that his brother (they're twins), was arrested for public lewdness at Mardi Gras. Apparently he got drunk and pissed in an alley off Rue de Levigne. The cops confiscated his camera, but he had a hidden cam in a briefcase, so he still got plenty of nude pics."
There, that entirely fictional anecdote should really boost traffic to our site. Hooray for the internet! (Not based on the Zeitgeist)
.: posted by andy 1/13/2003
Sunday, January 12, 2003
Interesting.
5 is freakish. Would anyone ever actually want to see a building anywhere that looked like this?
3 and 7 are just ugly.
1 and 2 aren't too bad, just a little too modern looking. What happens when angular isn't cool any more?
4 and 6 are my favorites, 4 is a little plain, and 6 is a little short. What they should do is combine the ground plan and height of 2, and the style of 4 and 6.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 1/12/2003
Pax Americana does not require a land base in South Korea. That's why we have aircraft carriers. Also, our money has a much stronger stabilizing effect than our soldiers, or embassies.
No one will do anything on the Korean Peninsula. China has a direct interest in what goes on there. They do not want a US friendly united Korea. They do not want a nuclear North Korea, because Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea will most likely respond to that threat by developing their own. Divisions and animosity run deep and long in East Asia. In the 7th century AD, the northern province of Korea used Chinese help to conquer the peninsula, then turned on China. A series of wars lasting until the 1300's defined the current border. Japan invaded Korea and China repeatedly, starting in the thirteenth century and finally being expelled in WWII. So, even though Japan and China aren't at each other's throats now, China doesn't want a nuclear-capable Japan. North Korea's long range ballistic missle test actually flew over Japan, so that's a pretty blatant threat. Of course China doesn't want a nuclear Taiwan, because when they eventually invade and conquer it, they don't want to lose millions of civilians in their coastal cities.
We don't want to anger China, a country with which we could not win a war. North Korea isn't a real strategic threat, more of just a thorn in our side. It doesn't look like they have any long term international goal. Right now America isn't very popular in South Korea, but every time North Korea starts being bellicose, we become very popular down south. They have an army, and that's it. They couldn't take South Korea, and if they invaded, they'd just give us an excuse to 'initiate regime change'.
Bush's style of international relations is a lot like Reagan's. I think I prefer a president who is at least polite to foreign leaders. Kennedy waited until he had photos of missiles in Cuba before telling the world. Some diplomat says, "sure, we got nukes" in a private meeting and we yell about it to the world when we have no other evidence. Not a good way to promote trust or confidential information sharing.
http://www.kedo.org/
Shazam!
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 1/12/2003
Kaddafi seems pretty straightforward and honest for a world leader. He still has a major misunderstanding about the value that average americans put on average americans' lives. I think this statement explains a lot about Kaddafi:
"If a normal American needs $10 million, then a daughter of Kaddafi who was killed should be worth billions".
It probably explains a lot about dictators in general, too. They have such little regard for their own people's lives, and are rewarded with power for having that disregard, and are surprised how much trouble they get into when they kill or threaten just a few americans.
Another quote I like is from the movie Patriot Games: "Americans hold their breath every time a little girl falls down a well in the backyard, and you shot at one with a submachine gun."
I guess this is also why we spend billions of extra dollars on bombing-only campaigns, and why it took something as severe as 9/11 for us to send ground troops into a place like afganistan. This might also be why any terrorism campaign against america is doomed to fail, because I think most americans have such a high value on their own lives that they are willing to sacrifice thousands of non-americans to save just a few americans.
.: posted by Jeremy 1/12/2003
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