buyer's remorse? hindsight= 20/20?

one supposes they might have pondered this before they hooked up with the narcissistic dweeb..then again, the republicans never thought much about the possibility of political insight amongst the rabble simply because they are, like all politicians, arrogant narcissists themselves...they do not believe in democracy but are burdened with democratic forms that might cost shits like mcconnell their influence if not their jobs...still looking for the reichstag fire...a reason to postpone, indefinitely, the november third election...i have my doubts about their ability to pull that off ( given the recent turn of events my doubts about their being able to do much of anything in a rational fashion in this administration )...that doesn't mean they don't have the desire to try...it goes without saying they all have things to hide..a lost election may bring the skeletons rattling out of the closets dancing to the tune played by some twenty first century james thompson callender...how many sealed indictments are waiting for trumpy in new york when his term augers in? new york hates donny every bit as much as he hates it...he may drag the party of lincoln to its final resting place...along with the whigs, the mugwumps, the bull moose, the copperheads, and the know nothings...hope springs eternal...even in interesting times.

get your $$$ super fast

the puking buddah stopped by to have a look at what came in the mail yesterday...

this is a prime example of the entrepreneurial spirit in its purest form...glib...deceitful... an obfuscation of its extractive character...need cash? adrien will buy your home or rental property with minimal fuss...it could even be an "occupied rental"...it is unclear if the tenants would have to vacate or if they could stay...betting at some point the rent goes up..."why not list with agent?"...well...good question...my thinking is that adrien is appealing tot he desperate here...times are covid-19 tough and people have rising debt and diminishing income...mortgages may be going under and people need to get out...and in their desperation they need speed and agents are not the quickest way to sell...adrien is more than willing to take advantage of that...even if an agent may net the seller more they take time...adrien will be far quicker despite the fact that her offer isn't probably be anything near current market value...she's counting on the desperation to ease the pain of the loss..or, perhaps, working on a "coals to newcastle" basis...one more loss among so many won't be as much in the foreground and at least it is some income...same thing behind the "as-is" purchase "with no inspections"...a clear "hey, i'm doing you a favor" approach..."quick and easy transaction"..."quick" so the seller doesn't overthink the process and "easy" for exactly the same reason...she does all the work...you sit back and rake in the filthy lucre...that it isn't as much as you might get if you worked the traditional real estate system is a function of the desperation she is trying to utilize to maximize her profit...she has time...she has money...she can wait...and by waiting profit from your loss...that's capitalism...that's an entrepreneur...there's nothing illegal about it...it just business...there's nothing ethical about it either...i won't be selling to adrien...i won't be talking to her...and should she show up i will happily run her off the property....there has been a flurry of these missives of late and a growing number of spam calls working the same angle...they can smell desperation and it has dragged them out from under the rocks.

irreconcilable differences

there must have been a point in time at which i believed what they told me in school...or read in the local paper...or saw on television...when that might have been or when it changed i cannot begin to remember...one supposes that a political awakening wrought by the intrusion of the war in viet nam into the living room every night may have had a transformative impact...the narrative was schizophrenic...the government and military had "official statistics" on the every present "body count" and how "the enemy" were being worn down...and then came the televised tet offensive and the "official" story became a straw man...paper tiger...flat out lie...whichever you choose...i can actually be naive and trusting...i also have an "on the bus/off the bus" mentality and once trust is broken getting back on the bus in pretty much impossible...and so it is with the media...there is no trust and has not been any in decades...and the miserable corporate bastards just keep proving they are selling products to make a profit while reinforcing a given world view which is mostly determined by their advertisers and/or political underwriters and have no actual interest in disseminating factual information...it has been so for a long time...predating electronic media..i would recommend si sheppard's book "the partisan press:a history of media bias in the united states" as a primer and you can move on from there to have a close look at the bias in msnbc or fox news or the new york times...not an objective viewpoint ( if such a thing is even possible in anyone ) among them...you can read or watch anything that reinforces your viewpoint or you can raise your hackles and indulge in high dudgeon by tuning in or reading "the other"...and it doesn't have to be politics...you can find conflicting authorities any damn palce...

i have been paying reasonably close attention to energy issues for some time and oil prices have been part of that..in the wake of a startling negative price for a barrel of oil earlier this week i was wandering around looking for a site with a wider scope of energy news than the relatively limited on i had been hanging out in and i came across this one which seemed fairly broad in its approach...and what did i find today?

this optimistic outlook ( for energy producers anyway...uncertain about the impact on users...although producers are users as well and keen to understand eroei because that is the whole enterprise boiled down to basics ) brimming with upbeat news...and sown the page...

this notion of economic doom and devastation in the energy world...and i have to conclude that there is no corner of the media that isn't pursuing a policy of "give what they want to hear" to keep reader/viewership up and enhance their concern as a viable platform for selling advertising space and that anything coming even close to what is actually going on is a matter of unimportance and might even compromise their ability to turn a profit because reality is a difficult thing to look straight in the face and maintain the optimism that all this consumerist bullshit demands...how do you make informed decisions in the midst of all this distortion...i am left assuming you do not...the ministry of truth is in control...history is mutable and the future uncertain.

mabe we should listen to the doors

in my day i have purchased gasoline for 29.9 cents a gallon and seen it as cheap as 19.9 cents a gallon in a gas war ...this was fifty odd years ago...that's true...however my memories are clear...a couple of bucks and you could drive all night...and we did...but that is beside the point...while i have seen gasoline that cheap i have never seen a barrel of oil have a negative price...seriously? they are going to pay me thirty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents to take a barrel off their hands? one assumes the world's oil storage capacity is just about full right now...in 2008 i remember oil at one hundred and forty-seven dollars a barrel...i also remember a spike in grain prices, food riots, and its indirect but substantial impact on "the arab spring"...one is forced to wonder what impact this will have on "normal"...

the president and "business leaders" are screaming that the country needs to "re-open" no matter how many of the rabble die because big greed needs a fix...oil at a negative price cannot bode well for what we were conditioned to perceive as "normal"...the diminution in the use of petroleum products may be good for the environment...economically it seems the inverse...everything we do is tied to electricity and petroleum products from transport to agriculture and you have to wonder what the depression in oil prices is going to do to all the industries involved since, in a capitalist framework, the only sensible thing for oil producers to do is stop producing...at least until the price rises to positive figures ...so does that help a very ill global economy or drive in the last nails? energy is the key to almost all current human activity and i don't think anyone has seen this sort of price drop ever...it is currently fashionable ( and so entirely trite ) to speak of "uncharted territory" ( or, even worse, "uncharted waters" )...and yet, here we are..what are we "going back to" and is "back" even attainable...the economic impact on people i know and care about has been dire so far and that worries me...the powers that be are clueless...they do not know any more than you or i...and they are convinced that "business as usual" can carry on because if it does not they are no longer an elite...that would not be a bad consequence in my eyes...they are pretty much the responsible parties in this ( not that i did not play along and do the whole suburban homeowner business...i am not blameless )...it was their lust for wealth and power that drove the system and it paid them well as they blew out propgandist bullshit about "equal opportunity" and the whole "bootstrap" crapola...times are weird...republican legislators are giving away free money ( at least until they can figure out how to take it back with interest ), much against their calvinist proclivities, to keep the greed machine going, and republican governors are defying the bozo in chief by keeping their states closed...sorta...dogs are running in packs and blood is weeping from the walls...we are living in "interesting times"...they are not over...hang on..we could end up miles from here

cabal exposed

"the groups of people who make culture what it is."

in an unparalleled expose the new york times style magazine has named names and provided photographic identification of the secret cabal of ideological commissars that rule style and elegance and are the final arbiters of what we should think, wear, eat, drink, find and decorate a domicile, and , in general be what they find to be acceptable...this is a valuable document...unprecedented investigative journalism...

there are definite ideas about how i should dress to fit into the "culture" they so assiduously work to create...

and remaining true to habit there are multiple suggestions on how women should dress themselves at any cost ( and there are $53535 worth of clothes in this photo and the obligatory number of "price on request" [if you have to ask you cannot afford it ] articles from the top flight of haute couture designers ) to fit into the elite perception of itself...

i will be declining their suggestions of what to imbibe...and they can cram the idea of leaving the subject of politics out of the conversation with walnuts...

they have claimed home decor as part of their purview as well...who am i if i don't have a $10000 bed or leather couch?

and if i can afford the clothes, the jewelry, the drink, and the bed i can certainly afford to "live happier" in a $1.1 million condo...that would be having it all...at least as far as the cultural cadres are concerned...

if the cadres would like to talk about it they can find me in the back yard, cleansing the palate by hanging out with the trees, wheat, rye, asparagus, ramps, onions, daffodils, and the russian olives...we have radically different definitions of culture.

comsumerist rock meets calvinist hard spot

the federal government alleges it is sending me $1200 that i can utilize as i see fit...some, like usa today ( the volkisher beobachter of the day ) want me to invest it in the stock market...this is howlingly bad advice geared toward buttressing big greed...no thank you...i have an investment ira that has tanked...not going there with more money...my bank wants me to shove it straight into a savings account ( a likelier occurrence...at least until the property taxes come due ) to buttress their solvency...my state is paying me not to work and they allege there is more if they can figure out the federal guidelines for disbursing it...we will see...all this free money runs counter to the deeply held puritan/calvinist belief in the work ethic...god smiles on those who work their asses off for big greed and charity makes the proles lazy and inclined to vice ( as if big greed were not awash in vice...but they are wealth and have a different ethos, no? )...god loves a capitalist...well...god and i are on the outs...whatever it is it has a lot to answer for, intricate plan or not...so the government is in a dilemma...they hate charity...but not especially for the above theological reasons..if you are paying people not to work they are not producing anything concrete to the "benefit of society"...so why pay them...because the whole system is dependent on consumption/exchange to function as a vector for the upward redistribution of wealth...if the proles don't have money they cannot consume...so no exchange...i am under a "stay at home " order and its guidelines are fairly stringent..unless i need a pizza or some coca-cola...then i am free to roam and suppliers are free to supply...some things are sacred...

like bring able to buy pepsi in guatemala city...she needed that...and all the while the advertising machinery grinds on to enhance and engineer that consumption...why? because the underlying reason for goading consumption is not to just instigate exchange, but, ideally, to create exchange on credit...because debt is what makes new money and big greed loves new money...debt = upward redistribution of wealth and this miserable virus has fucked up the elaborate theological/philosophical underpinnings of the whole exchange nexus...dear god, straight up retailers are closed! no good can come of this! and so the " the americans who struggled in good times" ( and why would americans "struggle in good times"?...because we exported most of the unionized jobs that paid a living wage and replaced them with the "gig economy" that does not pay a living wage in an exerted effort to bring about more of that debt stuff because big greed loves new money and debt penury will keep the rabble in line ) soldier on consuming what they can in bad ones...because the system has needs...and it needs the proles to go back to work no matter how many of them the virus kills as a result..."we have a system here and we don't need you to fuck it up" is big greed's virus management mantra...i could go on...naming names...but you know who the malefactors in the political world are...the state is due ( unless there is another gubernatorial waffle ) to "re-open" ( this is nothing if not a trumpist haven ) on tuesday...don't forget your masks and hand sanitizer...if you can find them...the exchange process has stressed the supply chain in specific directions.

every luxury included

of late one of these brochures has come with the sunday new york times and it almost seems they are relics of the past...i cannot really think of an industry that will suffer more from the pandemic than cruise lines ( with the possible exceptions of restaurants and air lines )...after the stories of shipboard quarantines...governments refusing to allow the liners to dock...people paying exorbitant fare fro flights home to avoid being stranded...one supposes most right thinking people would avoid a cruise ship like the plague..and rightly so...i would also assume that a cruise line is an expensive business to run...maintenance, staff, logistics from food to fuel...complex organizational issues and costs everywhere...still...the cheapest fare in this brochure is $7199.00 for one person and the most expensive is $82499 a pop...really? almost a hundred grand for a couple of weeks on a boat? luxury or not that seems more like expropriation than a fare...the presumption seems to be that arrogant wealth would pony up to engage in veblenesque consumption...something to tell the folks back home about and to show their elite superiority to the hoi polloi...after YOU couldn't afford it...like wearing a watch that costs more than my house...designed to assert some sort of social superiority...more like hubris...and we all know where that leads...and the ones who will suffer most from this collapse..the crews...the service providers...the lower castes...the elite may take a shot to their portfolios...it's the crews that will starve or be reduced to penury...the elite will, unfortunately, survive...needn't waste empathy...or even sympathy for that matter...on them...save your energy.