Sunday, March 30, 2008
Spring is in the air
Spring is always a tough time for me. It is the time of sunshine, birdsong, and bikinis. This is Florida, this is the best time to live here, so what could possibly be wrong? The answer is one word: hormones. Hormones know no moral or ideological speed bumps. Hormones feel no need to consider ideals or discipline or hopeful aspirations for a life less ordinary.
During Spring, drives that are ordinarily smoldering start to flair and rise from their usual bed of ashes. Thoughts start drifting away from "thank Jebus I'm single" toward "Jebus, I'm lonely as Hell and horny like the Devil". A more functional person would probably go on the hunt, get laid, fall into some short-term "thing", and get "it" out of their system, but anyone who knows me knows that the odds of such a situation arising in my life are about even with those of Amy Winehouse growing a new bicuspid to replace the one conspicuously missing from what is left of her smile.
Spring, a time of "I'd like to, but I won't...fucking hell..."
On one side, a reasonably healthy body that fully understands its temporary and transient nature pounding on a door that has only been opened on the rarest of occasions. Manning the door's deadbolt from the other side is a mind that has, for all intents and purposes, given up hope for most (but not quite all) of Humanity, resigning itself to hoping for miracles even as it denies the probability of their existence. So you have a situation where the physical self, with all its chemicals, organic wiring, and hardwired reproductive programming, pleads endlessly with a nearly unyielding gatekeeper. So far, the gatekeeper has won most, if not all battles. Of course, he is helped by the fact that his only overseer is the spirit who can't be bothered with such things and tends to side with him in most matters.
So the gatekeeper holds fast, insisting that he is content to wait for a chance run-in with what amounts to a flying unicorn, while the physical is completely baffled by the concept of "now". Physical only understands here, now, and immediately. His mantra goes something like, "Take what you can get when you can get it, or risk never having it all." On the surface, such logic makes sense, but the mind believes that following through and giving in to such fearful insecurities is simultaneously pathetic and pointless. He tries to calm the physical with assurances that the Fates and Time will provide other options, but quietly, he has begun to have doubts.
When trying to come up with a solution to the stand-off, my internal dialog goes something like this:
Only a couple of months left in Spring, then it's on to Summer, when it gets too hot to care what the physical or mind have to say. Unfortunately, at my age, you never want to hurry time. It's going to be a long Spring, apparently.
Labels: life
Saturday, March 29, 2008
It's late and I should be in bed...
but the late night and early morning keeps me creaking along. It was an interesting day...I worked 8 hours, spent a couple of hours at a VIP party rife with amazing cars and gorgeous women, then went for a ride. Ended up at a bar and had the pleasure of watching a stranger empty her stomach onto the floor next to her bar stool, then finished the night at Village Inn with some French toast that hit the proverbial spot. Like I said, it was an interesting day.
The VIP party was connected to this weekend's Festival of Speed, which is being held at the St. Pete/Clearwater Airport. Highlights included 2 Bugatti Veyrons, one in black and blue, the other in red and silver, both $1.2M each. Next to them was a Ferrari Enzo, an Audi TDI LPM1 American Le Mans Series racecar, and a Mercedes SLR 722. The least expensive car in that mix was well over half a million dollars. Horsepower probably averaged around 700bhp amongst them. Needless to say, that was quite a cluster of machines. Strolling throughout the event was a multitude of beautiful women to compliment the raw sexiness of such machinery. Suffice to say, I had a good time.
But the decision was made to leave early, so I raced home and saddled up Audrey for a ride. The winds took us to a couple of bars on Clearwater Beach, the last one being Kelly's Beach Bar, one of Clearwater's oldest watering holes. Apparently, a young Spring breaker had miscalculated her ability to consume and contain alcohol, with predictable results. Interestingly, this particular young lady thought it was best to simply lean over and vomit onto the floor, rather than scramble toward the bathroom. Of course, this was a much less appealing option for those who were unfortunate enough to be standing within spatter distance of this particular girl.
Somehow she managed to stop vomiting long enough to make a dash for the restroom. I literally laughed and pointed when I saw her sitting at a different section of the bar about an half hour later. People never fail to put a smile on my face. :)
I must say, seeing all that automotive hardware in one place was easily today's highlight. The Veyron is a monster, both in its physical absurdity (1000bhp???) and its financial footprint ($1.2M, if you can find one). Given my long (everlasting?) stint of celibate singledom, seeing such cars in the same 3-dimensional space as a steady stream of models made life simultaneously torturous and revelatory. Bottom line: I think all of the parties involved are out or my price range, but they were certainly fun to look at while imagining what it would be like to take them for a drive. :)
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Leaning on air
Lately, I feel as if my momentum has been flagging. With work steadily digging toward a bedrock of misery and the job market looking more and more like a desert, my working life feels as if it is grinding toward a total sense of futility. School is school, and I am still glad to be doing it, but things look bleak economically, so I am putting my graduate school plans on hold. And the graphics/design market is looking particularly weak right now, given that new design and graphics work typically start disappearing when the economy begins to slide.
I find myself struggling for motivation. All the time and effort has begun to feel like a mass of granite I am dragging uphill. I am thoroughly tired, both mentally and physically. Of course, once that sort of fatigue begins to set in, it becomes easier to be distracted and lose focus. More than once I have found myself staring at an image I am working on, holding a pencil or brush, and not doing anything. Eventually, I get up and do something else, knowing that these images are waiting to be dealt with. The pace of things seems to be accelerating beyond manageable levels and burnout has been setting in.
In times like these, you start to realize how nice it would be to have someone to lean on. The value of human relationships becomes readily apparent, and I start to really wonder what effect all this time alone has had on me. I cannot say the experience has been positive or negative. All I am sure of is that it would be nice to have an external source of inspiration and reassurance. That is not to say I plan to fold up shop and pack it in, just that it would be nice.
Labels: miscellaneous
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Fame is a whore's vagina
So people are throwing million dollar offers at Eliot Spitzer's favorite vagina-for-hire. Apparently, America's favorite scumbag Joe Francis, founder of Girls Gone Wild, was one of the people lining up to toss a million dollars this Dupre chick's way, but quickly found himself sitting in the cat bird's seat, when members of his staff discovered that they already had footage of the young prostitute, back when she was tricking for free. What luck! Apparently, she was featured in 7 tapes worth of footage while celebrating her 18th birthday over the span of a week on the GGW party bus. Allegedly, she was even kind enough to film a few lesbian encounters for Joe and his entourage. What a classy lady! Surely, THIS is the kind of person we want to give millions of dollars to in a failing economy! Radar Online has a teaser for the vid here.
All you have to do to make a million dollars in America is fornicate with politicians for money. People like to pretend that making money is difficult, but the only real obstacle is what one is or is not willing to do for green paper and the stuff it buys. The only real difficulty is living with yourself and the things you have done in the pursuit of money. I have to give this girl credit for one thing, at least she was smart enough to start charging, rather than continually giving it away like so many other girls do. What I don't understand is why anyone is willing to pay for anything involving girls like this. She's a whore, literally and figuratively a whore, but there are people willing to pay thousands to sleep with her. Some are willing to ante up a million dollars or more for the right to pictures of a naked prostitute. Joe Francis believes he can find an audience of degenerates willing to pay $29.99/month to see this whore make out with other whores, so he rescinded his original offer and has now made the videos of Dupre available to his website's subscribers. Am I the only one alarmed by the fact that all of this is happening under the watchful eye of mainstream America? Is this what America is about in the 21st century? Celebrity whores, celebrity drug habits, and degenerative social trends seem to be the defining characteristics of modern society.
Maybe I am just a kook or an alarmist, making mountains out of mole hills. Maybe there isn't any larger significance to a high-dollar call girl, nothing more than a glorified street walker really, making millions for lying on her back and letting famous men penetrate her orifices. In fact, it is probably highly probable that I am some sort of screwball, but that doesn't stop me from believing that an alarm should be raised when there is such a demand for this kind of "entertainment" that Joe Francis and Larry Flynt are willing to pay this girl a million dollars to take her clothes off. Physically, she really is not very remarkable at all, so who the hell would pay to see this girl naked? These businessmen would not be willing to shell out that sort of cash if they did not anticipate a massive return on their investment. The fact that there are enough people willing to pay for the so-called privilege of seeing this girl make out with some other drunk teenager, when plenty of free filth is just a mouse click away, tells me that I a) somehow manage to overestimate human intelligence, and b) am in the wrong line of work.
This girl's vajayjay has seen more traffic than I-4, but people are still willing to pay to gawk at, and spank their monkeys to, images of her bare ass and boobs bouncing around. We live in a world I am not equipped to understand and maybe that is for the best. Regardless of what I think, this girl is almost certainly going to end up wealthy, and really, isn't that all that matters?
Labels: fame
Sunday, March 16, 2008
You know you're getting old and feeling run down when...
you start looking in the mirror and realize that the face looking back out at you will not ever be as young as you remember it being. The years start eroding what you see, so that the more you see, the less you want to remember. Joints ache in ways you could ignore 10 years ago and you start wondering about moles and freckles. Love starts to seem more and more like a marketing ploy for Hallmark and birthdays start to seem utterly meaningless.
It becomes easier to feel lonely, and harder to fight it off. It gets harder to relate to the mainstream, and more difficult to care about their monotony. The older I get, the more I focus on things that make me truly satisfied, and the less I find myself caring about things like promotions. As I creak and groan my through year 31, I find myself still hoping for the best, but becoming ever more prepared for the worst.
I suppose I'm just tired lately, but not all is lost! As I type, Scooby is getting some love in the form of new tires, a new color for her wheels, and brakes, as well as longer wheel studs and lighter lug nuts. And Laura sent new pics of the Twins that I can't help but smile at the sight of, so I have included a few below.
Labels: blah blah blah
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
There is hope for us yet
A recent study reports that 1 in 4 female teens has, or has had, a STD, according to this AP article hosted at CNN.com. Clearly, such a miniscule number is an extremely disappointing result! Am I to believe that our country's teens cannot do better than a 25% success rate? What has happened to the American work ethic when only 3 million of an estimated 12 million female teenagers currently are, or have been, infected with a sexually transmitted disease? Where is our national pride, our American 'can do' spirit? Certainly, no American should feel content with a meager 25% infection rate! Were we being graded on performance, our great country would be so deeply mired in F-ville, we would qualify for a G or even an H! As Americans, we have to make it our mission to raise our collectively abysmal performance to a C standard, at the very least, and we must do so as soon as possible! Failure to do so puts us at risk of losing another generation of young women to the scourge of underachievement ravaging this country today. We cannot let this stand!
To ensure we rise from these ignominious ashes to be reborn as a glorious, American phoenix, fully ablaze with righteous, herpetic fire, I propose that we undertake an infestation agenda in this country immediately and without debate or forethought! Our goal should be nothing less than an infection rate of 90% or more by 2020. With a concerted effort, we can make our national dream of near total infection a reality, but we have to work together. It is our right, nay, our duty as Americans to act on these unacceptably low rates of success in a manner that properly exemplifies America's standing as the most sexually confused, quietly promiscuous country in the world!
I dream of a country where every teenaged American knows the joy of HPV infection. In my mind's eye, I see long lines of American boys and girls waiting their turn at STD clinics and walk-in doctor's offices, eagerly seeking confirmation that their rash or discharge is in fact the result of a viral or bacterial infection. What a proud day for any family when young Suzie or Billy bursts through their front door, test results in hand, crying out with almost psychotic glee that yes, finally, they are prideful hosts to Chlamydia, gonorrhea, or syphilis! Imagine the tales of glory to be shared as the young boy or girl's tale of struggle and strife, random hook-ups and unprotected penetration unfurl before the eager ears of mesmerized parents, siblings, and friends. Oh lovely day! In an age when America's influence is slipping and we find ourselves searching for national identity, it is important that we grab hold of such opportunity with both hands!
With enough diligence and directed effort, a 90% infection rate is not only possible, but highly likely! The stigma of our current mediocrity could be erased forever, and our rightful place at the forefront of human enlightenment could be secured for ages to come, all within a generation! I hereby call on every teenage American to gather into random, indiscriminate groups for the express purpose of engaging in monumental amounts of unprotected intercourse. Let there be no discrimination based on race, color, creed, religion, or level of physical attractiveness. Bring drugs, bring alcohol, bring whatever it takes to loosen morals and ignite libido! Let's make this the decade of infectious disease; let's put America back on top, once and for all! We can do this together, in fact, we must do this together!
Labels: America (f*#k yeah)
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Woman, stand by your man
Why do women forgive their cheating husbands? This video on CNN is an excerpt from an interview with the former first lady of New Jersey, Dina Matos McGreevey, who was married to former governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey. For those that don't know, McGreevey was caught up in a gay sex scandal during his term as New Jersey's governor. At one point in time, he was pegged to be a rising star in the Democratic party, but his star came crashing down when this scandal broke. CNN talked to Matos as a means of gaining insight into what is going through Silda Spitzer's mind as her husband Eliot, who just so happens to be the governor of New York, becomes entangled in a prostitution scandal. So far, Silda is standing by her man.
My question is why? Why would a woman stand by a man the FBI has apparently caught soliciting a prostitute on more than one occasion. From what I've read, these prostitutes were of the high dollar variety, as ol' Spitzy ran up a $15k+ tab...tax money well spent, for sure! For now, she's staying and it is beyond my powers of imagination to understand why. Obviously, there is the shock and distress of effectively having one's marriage ruined while simultaneously being shamed in public by the circumstances of its undoing, but that seems all the more reason to get out immediately, and without hesitation. That seems like the rational, sane thing to do, but she's staying put, for now.
What makes people stay with cheaters? A person who cheats once will almost certainly cheat again. At the very least, knowing that they are capable of cheating would be enough for me, but it seems like much of the world is populated by people for which this is not enough. Somehow, people find ways to convince themselves that the cheater is worth tolerating, that they are somehow worthy of trust. But that sort of violation is not the kind of thing that happens in a vacuum, it is the byproduct of a more general disrespect or at the very least, disregard.
It's not that adultery is rare. Hell, it's as much a part of the human condition as war, competition, or materialism. Cheaters are everywhere, I know more than one, and know of several more. People seem to cheat the way they run to the grocery store for milk or stop at he ATM for a few bucks on the way home. And maybe that is the why behind women (or men), who hang around and continue to expend time and energy on cheaters. If everyone is doing it, is the Devil you know better than the Devil you don't? Are people really this cowardly?
I just can't make sense of holding on, regardless of the time invested or what may have been, because the only time that really matters is now and what may have been was very likely not what the cheated imagined it to be. And to cheat with a prostitute...isn't that the most insulting slight a woman could experience? We're talking about chicks who have become so soulless and so materialistic that they are hardly human beings anymore, and your husband is running off to pay thousands of dollars to fuck them. He is paying thousands of dollars to be the 1,885th penis said prostitute has allowed entrance into her well worn vagina. That has to be a nightmarish thing to do deal with. I suppose it could be worse, she could be living with the fact that her husband was so bent that he left her to partake in unknown quantities of man ass. At least Bill Clinton had the good sense to let his whores come to him, for free, but one of my biggest issues with Hillary Clinton is that she did NOT leave.
Staying seems weak and pathetic to me. Getting out and getting rid of them, while taking them to the proverbial cleaners, seems a much more respectable course. Staying says, "You fucked up huge, but I can live with what you did and what you are". Why would anyone put themselves in that position? I just don't get it.
Super-fantasmous update: The ex-wife of former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy allegedly had threesomes with her then fiance and the man who would eventually be identified as his gay lover, according to this article at CNN.com. People are awesome! lol
Labels: politics
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Ignorance is Bliss
How do you shift peoples' understanding of our economic and ecological realities without being marginalized by the elements that have the greatest interest in maintaining the status quo? How can we move away from a material obsessed culture of destruction and consumption to one more focused on sustainability and a more existential relationship with the existence idea? My short answer is that we can't. The industrialized world is so far gone down this road of acquire-consume-repeat that it would take an absolute catastrophe, and then probably an economic rather than environmental one, to make any real impact on the average, first world citizen.
People prefer ignorance. The evidence is everywhere through history. When a species can undertake a systematic genocide agenda on the level of what was attempted by the National Socialists in Germany with much of the country's citizenry feigning ignorance, the writing is on the wall. People prefer ignorance, because awareness generates a moral obligation to do something, and most people would prefer not to take on such responsibility. Their reasoning could be as simple as apathy, or laziness, or as destructive as collusion and self-interest. How many people do you know that refuse to vote? How many people do you know that complain about the descent of American culture, yet do nothing? Who benefits when citizens abandon their responsibilities and defer that power to others? The government and those who control it, obviously.
And who controls government? Most Americans would probably answer corporations, or special interest groups, or something similar and history seems to indicate that we would be correct in this perception. One of the most interesting segments in The Corporation details a plot by several of America's most powerful industrial figures, including officials at JP Morgan, DuPont, and Goodyear, to oust Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It came to be known as Wall Street's fascist conspiracy. The conspirators enlisted the help of retired Marine General Smedley D. Butler, one of the most decorated military men of his day. Unfortunately for them, Butler didn't like the idea of installing corporate-sponsored fascism in America, so he divulged the plot they had shared with him to the authorities, ultimately ending up in front of Congress. This isn't conspiracy theorist bullshit, this really happened. Of course, Roosevelt was not ousted, the plot was swept quietly into the annals of history, and a monumental moment in the American journey was put into the official record. Amazingly, the first lengthy discussion I ever heard of it came via a movie published over 70 years after the fact. I hadn't ever read about it in a history book or seen it detailed in a television special, though The History Channel did air a program about it in 2000, apparently. The BBC also broadcast a radio program detailing the results of an investigation they conducted in July 2007. The mp3 can be found here. They give a fair representation of what they found, including a tidbit about George W Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his involvement in the plot. Interesting stuff...
And I am sure it is a total coincidence that the corporate and governmental ancestors which spawned this conspiracy are still influential power players today. Total coincidence, nothing to be concerned about. Better to buy a latte, plug into your iPod and catch up on what Britney Spears has been up to. Ignorance is bliss, after all. In his fight against ignorance, General Smedley published a pamphlet titled "War is a Racket!", in which he asserts that war is conducted for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy. It is as difficult to argue against that rationale now as it was impossible to deny it then. The pamphlet can be read, or a pdf downloaded from, here. The controlling interests in government and business believe that the average American is too stupid, ignorant, or lazy to properly govern the nation's affairs, so they take it upon themselves to set a course they decree to be best for the country, regardless of the ramifications to society at large. They posit that there is no arguing with their pitiless, profit-obsessed logic and often times people do not even try.
Labels: governance, the corporation
The Corporation
If you have not watched The Corporation, a documentary describing the madness that has been wrought on the Earth by corporate beings, you need to.
Info here: http://www.thecorporation.com/
Bit Torrent here: Official DIVX Shareware Version
This film is nearly 5 years old, but I somehow never got around to watching it. Something tells me that I am not alone.
Labels: the corporation
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
India's calling
Our parent company's vaunted CEO could potentially make $25,000,000.00/year before options, taxes, etc, should the company meet certain predefined benchmarks for performance over the next several years. If the average NMR employee makes $30,000/year, and I do not know the actual figure, but $30k seems plausible, then they are earning approximately 1/833 of the CEO's annual salary. Such a ratio seems absolutely absurd, but it is entirely reasonable, given the realities of salary structure in this country. So it only seems logical that the chief executive should be expected to do the work of 833 employees, right? We can infer from this salary discrepancy that the man is 833 times as important to the business as the average employee, so the impact of laying off 4,000 employees should have been reduced a bit. Surprisingly, he and his staff do not seem capable of meeting those performance expectations, despite earning nearly enough to cover most of the lost employees' salaries between them. Their answer? Indian outsourcing.
Indians do American jobs better than Americans. They have better skillsets, better work ethics, and are better equipped to function as the backbones of American commerce. That is what we are being told here and it is interesting, given the failures other companies like Dell and Conseco have experienced in outsourcing. Still, the attitude that Indians are better suited for work in American companies than Americans persists. So we have what amounts to a resident pimp putting a large number of cheap hoes on the proverbial street. Supposedly, they will do the work of Americans better than the Americans already doing said work for less money. Needless to say, the natives have been hard to convince. To understand the mentality that makes such a situation reasonable, I think one needs to divorce one's self from any sense of brotherhood or connection with one's countrymen. You must not look at the people being laid off as Americans, or even as humans. They must become nothing more than dollar values making up a portion of the final payroll figures. Taking such a view dehumanizes them. These are not people with hopes, aspirations, families, bills, and careers, they are obstacles to profit and shareholder gratification. Which is to say, they are obstacles to bonuses, stock options, and another home or that next Bentley.
Americans have become second class citizens in their own country, being replaced by greedy MBA's who have more in common with Genghis Khan than they do George Washington. The worst part, or the best part, depending on how you look at things, is that we allowed this to happen. In fact, we brought it on ourselves. We are willing slaves to a materialistic cult called Consumerism. We have become a country of consumers, rather than producers, and we have allowed major corporations, ideologues, and corrupt politicians to convince us that consumerism is the answer. We have chosen to believe that happiness and fulfillment can be bought, and that profits are more important than decency or morality. We have come to believe that Indians can in fact do our jobs better than we can. We have become the antithesis of the American dream and we have done so willingly. As we careen toward what will very likely be a very deep recession, American politicians tell people who can no longer afford their homes that spending a $300 or $600, government payoff, financed by money borrowed from China, will somehow right the ship. No matter what the problem, if every American does their civic duty and buys more useless shit that will eventually end up piled in their closet or a landfill, the economy will right itself, balance will be restored, and all will be well.
We stand on the verge of the biggest housing foreclosure crisis in decades, with the possibility that other financial institutions playing Russian roulette with the sub-prime market might collapse, and Uncle Sam is telling us to go out and buy a new iPod. Layoffs are as much a part of the American dream as apple pie, which wasn't American to begin with, and Uncle Sam's solution is for each of us to go buy something, anything. That'll fix this little burp that's coming, don't you worry. Don't you feel better now? I know I do.
Labels: business
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Stopping for those roses
Every once in a while, things pop up to put a pause in our step, so that we allow ourselves a moment to appreciate how pleasant life's simplicity can be. My BBBS Little recently rolled off three consecutive report periods on the honor roll at his middle school, a first for him, as far as I know. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I am not in any way taking credit for this achievement. He and I rarely discuss school, and we haven't ever gone over his assignments together. Most of our time has been spent goofing off, talking about girls (he should be advising me on this one!), and general "what's up with you" conversations. Any talk of academics is limited and largely general "how's it going" stuff, so all the credit for his consistency belongs with his mother, his teachers, and himself.
He was recognized with the Dr. Mac Williams, Jr. Award for Academic Excellence along with 100 or so of his peers, for being amongst the top performing African-American students in Pinellas' middle and high schools (I can almost hear Laura sighing :) ). This award comes with award ceremonies at three different locations throughout the county, a certificate, and is only awarded once per school year. The ceremony went off smoothly and only took an hour or so, from start to finish. During that time, D's little cousin J, who is only 4 years old, couldn't sit still, or resist the urge to use me as a make shift jungle gym. It must be my lanky build and long arms that call out to kids' primal desires to climb and kick, because every child I cross paths with seems to eventually end up climbing on my back and administering a choke hold.
In some very real ways, I have become a part of this extended family. This past weekend D's mom, a BBBS rep, and myself sat down to go over the first year of our match. Overall, I would have to say that things have gone better than I expected. D seems pretty comfortable with the whole situation, and I feel like the simple act of hanging out has had a positive impact. We were all joking about how I have effectively become something like an adopted son over the past 12 months. It's been fun and I look forward to the next year.