we must be nearing the holidays...

...clues pointing to that abound...christmas decorations out at lowes and walgreen's...yahoo jabbering on about "black friday" steals i should make myself aware of...and the n y times has been including "style" magazines for "fall and winter fashion" for the well dressed social climber or just social scum...no doubt an electronics issue is forthcoming, but today we are burdened with the watch supplement...tissot, longines, jager-le coultre, gucci,audemars piguet, omega, chopard, and the half naked model wearing the dior men's watch, presumably to call my attention to what i am missing out on by not wearing ( or buying her) one of their fine time pieces ( i have been married for thirty-four years and blondes have never been especially attractive to me...i am a demographic wasteland for advertizers...mutual hatred everywhere...fuck these people...)what i did notice about this expensive bit of glossy advertizing is there's not a single price listed anywhere...zilch...unlike the ads for condos with a view of the manhattan skyline that are keen to advertize their value as a status symbol by boldly proclaiming the price per square foot of this valuable real estate, the watchmakers seem to be subscribing tot he "if you have to ask the price you can't afford it" philosophy of excluding ( or, perhaps enticing ) the proles from taking up the limited counter space at their boutiques...i have had an analog casio that i paid thirty bucks for five years ago and it keeps good time...i have a times "ironman"digital that i beat the crap out of at work...it's about the same age and if you discount some interesting gouges out of the crystal it's fine too...so much for tissot, dior , and hot blondes...i will become increasingly cranky ( come on people that's why you read this ) as the season progresses and my neighbor drags out the million candlepower industrial candy cane decorations that fade the curtains in my front window and disturb the bird with a false sunrise for a month...i am aging and it is enhancing my already formidable reputation as an eccentric weirdo and curmudgeon...i wouldn't be this way if they didn't deserve it...their insistence on extremist holiday behavior obligates me to demand concessions by creating a black hole of non-observance...almost time to watch a clockwork orange.

it's a sunny day for the end

i hesitate to make so bold a statement as "harold camping and his evangelical peers are manipulative shits making a living ( and a fairly comfortable one i'll wager) by playing on the fears and demons of those who, for whatever reason, are not in a psychological position to tell them to go fuck themselves"...but i'll do it anyway...cheapjack scumbags to a soul... another set of likely candidates for a special lake of fire...another failure harold...and you've put your fellow revivalists on the tent circuit in the difficult position of denouncing one of their own because you're about to screw up the prophecy business with your goddamned specifics...keep it general harold...so open-ended and non-committal that the rubes will never notice that it's all bronze age nonsense repackaged with all the slick pr that dr. goebbels pioneered back in the greatest generation and the consumerist utopia refined to a hard, sharp alloy of desire and wishful thinking that "the market" thrives on because it makes the proles such chumps...addictive as fine china white and legal to boot...life goes on harold...whip out the texas instruments calculator and rethink your math..we're waiting for answers.

rapturefail

jesus! it's october already? seems like just last may that harold camping was backtracking and explaining a "miscalculation" in the date for the rapture as "bad math"...it's sort of cruel to pick on just another refugee from the acid generation who found god in a sheet of windowpane blotter...but the sectarian warfare in the name of the son o' god goes on apace as the folks at rapturefail.org have sent me an email inviting me to join them in jeering at old harold and celebrating their wisdom and jesus' love in not letting them fall prey to crackbrained prophecy...i am asked to download a copy of their flier and then have a photograph of me holding it taken next friday which i should then upload to their flicker account to add to all the other photos of "true"believers they will then post...this is,of course, nonsense on stilts and i'll be goddamned if i'll participate...the rapturefail folks have a really neat sideline in t-shirts going at cafe press if you're interested in what the fashionably moderate fundamentalist yahoo is wearing this season ( it's really no worse than what the n y times style magazines have been flogging to the fashion challenged over the last month...this week's was a corker...but that's another blog) and their blog is unbiased and informative in a snarky, sectarian kind of way that would resonate with some people i know...but that's a journal entry, not a blog...some things are too vitriolic to print on the interweb...even for me...with the holiday season just around the corner it's good to see the god fearing folks dragging out the heavy artillery of hellfire and damnation to cure a wicked and weary world...too fucking bad they'll be out gunned and outspent by the desperate retailers of the consumerist utopia who are far more concerned with black friday than their immortal souls...business is business despite "the reason for the season"...damnation you say? tish tosh...the entrepreneurs will just license the ice water concession...religion at work...in the words of an anthropologist i know, "that stuff is all made up anyway"...humans are entirely too easily taken in by loony ideas...see you in hell...all the cool people will be there anyway.

union matters

my mailbox has been stuffed with all sorts of weird mailings from both the local and international union...it's election time again and they are sending out lists of local whores that are our "friends" and for whom i should cast my ballot when i do my civic duty...there's a "meet the whores" called meeting later this month...and they've sent me voter registration applications as well as ones for absentee ballots...all fine and good, but pointless since i vote on my own terms not theirs and we seem to agree on so little anymore...like a marriage gone bad...but without the first blush of romance...just the baggage and burdensome recriminations...i'd get an attorney but i think it's too late for even that...anyway...today i got my dues receipt and a nice letter from the international telling me they're concerned about my health...what a great bunch of guys! today's missive concerns the perils of high blood pressure which, apparently, "...more than one-third of people who work in non-office environments are not aware that they have high blood pressure, and many do not get treatment. please bring this letter along with you to your next doctor visit. it can help you discuss your heart health with your doctor." ( great bunch! always on the lookout for ways they can help me overcome my deficiencies)..it goes on to gently inform me that high blood pressure can be caused by smoking or secondhand smoke, lack of exercise, poor diet, obesity and overweight, drinking too much alcohol, and stress...chiding me mildly to set aside these vices and lead a healthier lifestyle...but ( and this is the real kicker here ) what if that just isn't enough? then my good friend joe j. nigro ( general president of the smwia...honest)tells me that i should ask my doctor about the blood pressure medication EDARBI ( sounds like a demented baseball stat ) which is a trademark of the takeda pharmaceutical company ltd....who, incidentally prepared and paid for the distribution of this letter ( with a kick back to the international? just asking) i bet they're the ones who included the nifty spec sheet with all the chemical composition and possible side-effects too like dizziness, muscle spasms, diarrhea, and, in some "rare" cases, "increased hypertension"...neat trick for a drug that's supposed to palliate it...so...things are so god-awful bad in the sheetmetal industry that my union has taken to shilling for pharmaceutical companies as a sideline...dues must be down ( not that you'd know it from the looks of my receipt)...those poor bastards are making do in these tough times...an inspiration to us all.

every late empire needs a senate

"the u s needs to elevate its response"
lindsey graham..clapped out imperial whore.

christ on a bike people...we need another war...yep...this broke ramshackle wheezing fribulating ( thanks for the image dick!) empire can't afford muffins and coffee for bureaucrats' meetings and this clown wants to consider "all option"...put the poor sod out to pasture and inject some people who can think rationally into the senate...oops...asking a bit too much aren't i...forgive me...i forgot, momentarily, about al hamilton and the fact that we're in somewhere around the fifth republic...the latest variant of what the empire has called itself since the get go...realistically, 1) pakistan is a sovereign state, 2) isi will not let go of islamic extremists...they are an asset against india and the ongoing struggle over kashmir...there's a quid pro quo there someplace...3)pakistan does have thermonuclear weapons and delivery systems...i know the arrogant imperial legions will scoff but all it take is one lucky shot and those guys have their weaknesses...all you hear about is elite troops...talk to someone who's been in the military recently...the bulk of it is a s fucked up as it always was...american exceptionalism isn't going to do anything but mislead a lot of people ( this is , of course, the point of politics, the media, and the very existence of the senate...to sell you a bill of goods that enhances the wealth of a few, coating it in some bullshit about patriotism, duty, and fucking honor...there is no honor in wars for imperial ends only comeuppance...linsey graham can kiss my ass...fuck these people.

tiny doctor tim and the new economy

"mr. geithner should listen rather than talk."
didier reynder. belgian finance minister

well..the jury is still out on the whole euro-zone thing..the chinese have been bitten once already and are in no rush to help the italians or pull the krauts' chestnuts out of the fire...obviously they have no patience for american exceptionalism and the brits are broke...europe on its own...and who can blame them? it's where they belong...they have made a fairly astute assessment of what dr. tim would have to offer in the way of advice...he has his own problems and that's probably why he took off for europe anyway...getting aw ay to reflect on problems that don't kick him in the nuts on a daily basis and enjoy the specter of an out of control swiss trader...who says economics is boring? closer to home ( in my home town actually...about a mile and a half away) a much more telling commentary on the state of the economy here at home has cropped up out on central avenue...when the fifth third bank began to experience the impact of the financial wizzardry emanating from the investment bankers on wall street feverishly working to create wealth out of nothing more than bad debt they started shuttering branches including the one here...it's been empty for better than a year but recently there have been contractor's trucks outside and noticeable activity...last week i drove by and the neon signs were glowing, banners fluttered in the late summer breeze, and a new liquor store was born...some of the safest coolers anywhere and a realistic reflection of the newly enhanced need for escapism in the american population...with the utter freak show that the next presidential election is shaping up to be i predict the re will be a significant spike in the sale of alcohol...illicit drug sales will be peaking in about a year but there is no data available besides the untrustworthy propaganda supplied by the dea...still i have no doubt we will all hanker after a bit of numbness before we finish slogging through the shit, whatever the source.

augustulus is not a mis-spelling

"in populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle rank of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labor of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful , and in that sense, the most respectable part of the community."

edward gibbons. the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire. chapter 31

ed was a contemporary of adam smith and they hailed from a day when working people were paid more than political lip service by imperial senators and bureaucratic spokespersons....an early version of the labor theory of value so sneered at by the thieving thugs on wall street and their marionette minions in the halls of congress...whores are whores and irredeemable in any sense...deep in denial and following the trajectory that that denial has set for the late empire...they squirm as plan after plan to jump-start growth prove effective at only redistributing public wealth into private hands...quantitative easing my ass..the rich gorging themselves at the public trough and unscrupulous politicians manipulating people's fears of the end of days with an evangelical subtext ( rick perry belongs on the 700 club)...the romans tried to make their debts go away by inflating their currency...introducing more and more base metal into the alloy that made up the coins until they were almost worthless and could pay off the burgeoning public debt for next to nothing..all under the leadership of desperately inept latter emperors trying to keep the barbarians ( read non-roman former clients who had some serious grudges to settle after a long period of imperial exploitation...they sensed their moment had arrived)...avitus , maximus, majoram, severus, clybrius, glycerus, nepos, authenius, and the fore-mentioned augustulus...nixon, ford, carter, reagan,bush, clinton, bush, obabma, and whomever is next on the list...something of an unknown as we slide deeper into the foul freakshow of the 2012 presidential campaign...it doesn't matter much ho wins really, but the temptation to resolve the sovereign debt crisis by hyper-inflating the dollar will be hanging over the next administration...they will preside over imperial decay and blame the people, not the system...it's always decadence, not the fundamentally flawed ponzi scheme design of empire that gets the blame...if we'd only worked harder and been more true to the virtues of the founding fathers we would still be on top of the world...fuck these people...i refuse to accept the blame for what their unbridled avarice has done.

on september 11, 1973 the chilean military with the covert assistance of the cia overthrew the legally elected government of salvador allende and instituted a military dictatorship that killed thousands of its own people...everyone has their memories