swill bucket

"advertising is the sound of a stick in a swill bucket."-george orwell_____________________i have always admired orwell's take on many things...this being one of them...advertizing is rank manipulation and i know it when i see it...today's new york times is a disappointing two pounds nine and three-quarters ounces in weight...one presumes this will pick up a bit as the "false and commercial festival" gathers inertia...we will be delving into that...forewarned is forearmed...i was curious to see what the cost of all this manipulation was so i went to the n y times advertizing web site and did ab it of research...i looked at full page ads only...mostly because i didn't want to sped the time screwing around counting half and quarter page ads...so the totals for advertizing revenues herein are woefully incomplete...forewarned is forearmed...full page ads in the newspaper itself range in price by section and color/black and white...$214,723 buys you a four color full-page ad in the front section or the business section $178,633 for a black and white..the fine arts section brings up the tail end $107,970 for color and $71,870 for black and white...perhaps out of deference for starving artists...so the three full page beauties pictured fetched the nyt $644,199...but it is the magazines that drive the business and no mistake...full page color in either of the magazines ( the standard weekly or the periodical style ) runs $107,075 and black and white $73,420...today's magazines contain seventy-four full page color ads and six black and white for a total full page income of $8,364,243...and combined with the three full page ads pictured we're up to $9,008,442...add in half page, quarter page column, half column and subscriptions and you can see that there is cash flow here and, despite the whining from the print media about digital, profit as well i'm thinking...clearly news is a secondary part of this and i don't doubt that it is slanted to placate the advertiser's world views...the truth is a flexible thing...we all find different versions..but this alone is valid reason to trust no media. 7:52 p.m. 11-2-2014 just a note to say that my original figures were off...blame age...they have been adjusted downward...that's still no excuse for gross manipulation or gross amounts of cash...it's just an adjustment.

the n y times raises the bar for consumerist propaganda

the palpitations on wall street are a marker of capital's inevitable contraction in the face of resource depletion and a mass of debt that far outweighs the world gross product ( irregardless of joe bidens earnest assurances to the new mandarins) and by extension is impossible to repay...reliable economic sources place the outside date for hyperinflation of the u s dollar at 2014...the political landscape is a cesspit of manipulative degenerates, disbarred lawyers, defrocked clerics, and used car salesmen from pomona...and there is a miasma of political suicide hovering over the swamps of whoretown as the kendo sticks and nail guns are being cleaned and oiled in anticipation of the debt reduction battles and the foregone conclusion that the automatic cuts written into the debt deal will go into effect because there can be no ideological rapproachement in congress thus dooming all those shits to town council pergatory...despite all this the fall style magazine of the n y times has either raised the bar on propaganda or lowered the standards of acceptable journalism ( if indeed such a thing is possible) by running a howler of an article entitled "youth quake: what do you wear when protest and mayhem rock your world? reports form three epicenters of street style: london, cairo, and tokyo." ( top photo is one accompanying this goebbelistic nonsense) christ on a bike people..one would have to consider that those struggling for their political future on the streets of egypt or overcoming an unacceptable political reaction to disaster in japan might be more concerned with events than what the n y times thinks of what they are wearing ( i never thought the n y times assumed that i was anything but an automaton programmed to shut up, consume, and be fucking grateful for the opportunity...but what can you expect from a yellow rag that gives the incomparably smug and arrogant dimwit thomas l friedman column space?)...what looters and arsonists in london are wearing ( and let me distinguish them from the crowds of the underclasses that have legitimate grievances with the excessive use of police power in their communities...violence begets violence...some thugs just took advantage of the situation because they thought someone else would take the heat) is of little interest except to the stylistas at the times who are always up to hawk some dreadful crap labeled "style" to the unwary and impressionable among us...not since capital turned earth day into a marketing bonanza has there been such a transparent, low-life piece of subhuman manipulation...the census of denizens of the longed for lake of fire has just expanded.