an open letter to Santa

Dear Mr. Claus,

I am writing you to request, as a Christmas gift, funding for the California State University in the amount of six bajillion dollars. It is my contention that this gift is well-deserved and needed, that the CSU collectively and I personally have met a reasonable standard of being good, and that supplying this gift will promote and provide the resources for the CSU and myself to continue being good.

First of all, it should be plain that the CSU is in dire need of six bajillion dollars. State funding has been decreasing in relation to real financial needs of the University for many years, due in part to the political climate in the legislature. Their intransigence and partisanship, clearly rising to naughty levels, have resulted in chronic underfunding of higher education.

Despite this, the faculty and staff of the CSU have continued to educate more students each year. Our dedication to students and to the cause of education are demonstrated by our efforts to support and defend the CSU. Personally, I have spoken out on numerous occasions and rallied with my colleagues in the California Faculty Association in protest against budget cuts and student fee increases. Meanwhile, I remain passionately devoted to teaching, as you are, no doubt, aware.

I freely grant that neither I nor the University are always at our best. I have made mistakes in the past year, but I maintain that at no time have I acted with malicious intent - not even that thing about the guy and the thing, you know what I'm alluding to. The truth is, I meant well.

Likewise, the CSU always aims at providing the best education it can. Some of our higher level administrators and executives act in ways that are hard to explain; however, I do not stipulate that these actions are in fact or intent naughty. Further, the University's overall level of niceness clearly and overwhelmingly outweighs the alleged naughtiness of a few (see Harper v. Delbon, Ca.Su.Ct. 2001-0104).

Six bajillion dollars is a very large gift, but it is neither excessive nor inappropriate. The University would use these funds to assure access to high-quality education for the public, and unused portions of the gift would be held in reserve to use for later needs. Apportionment and allocation of the gift would be regularly reported through the University's accounting firm, so there should be no question of the gift going to good use.

I advise you that the details, ways and means, and weights and measures of this request are still to be negotiated. I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
Chris Nagel

an open letter to the governor

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,

I realize you have difficult choices to make during this fiscal and economic crisis. As a member of the California Faculty Association, and a member of the Alliance for the CSU, I have already let you know that I believe cutting the budget for the CSU is a shortsighted and ultimately destructive move. The CSU contributes to the state's economy. It's the best, most secure investment the public can make.

It's important that you have all the information pertinent to these decisions, and that is the reason I'm writing to you today.

I earned a PhD in philosophy at Duquesne University in 1996. I have taught philosophy at CSU Stanislaus for 10 years. Teaching philosophy may not make any direct, sizable contribution to the economy, and I can't say I'm responsible for much economic growth, but I am at least a marginally functional member of society, and a taxpayer.

Cuts to the CSU budget would threaten my job. Since what I teach is philosophy, I'm sure you'll recognize that I clearly have no marketable skills outside of higher education. Certainly corporate America has no place for me.

I would have no choice but to turn to a life of crime. I would be forced out of quasi-productive employment into anomic, desperate felony. From being somewhat-less-than-thoroughly-useless to the many students at the CSU, I would be thrust out into the world, totally unhinged, having utterly lost any sense of right and wrong, and with no prospects for any job (did I mention: philosophy), would simply have to begin burgling, thieving, and mugging.

I hasten to point out that, although I have no criminal record, I do have some relevant experience, particularly of picking locks, breaking & entering, vandalism, petty larceny, and loitering and vagrancy.

I don't mean to threaten anything, of course. I just wanted to make sure you were properly informed about the potential impact of the fiscal choices you and the legislature have to make.

Thank you for your consideration,

Chris Nagel, PhD

I mean, consider these options:



I don't want any of those. I'm not angry/crazy enough, for starters.

an item from the ongoing series

Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things

15. Collective actions. I just love 'em.

I've spent the better part of the semester, and particularly the better part of the past week, involved in one collective action or another. Most of these were efforts to resist draconian budget cuts at the university - mostly in response to the local administration's decision to cut $1.5 million from the base budgets of academic departments to balance a budget they have been anything but forthcoming about. That effort has apparently led to the restoration of (at last count) about 80% of that budget.

Today I spent several hours helping to gather signatories to faxes to be sent to the governor and party leaders in both houses of the legislature. The university still faces the prospect of around $98 million in cuts during this academic year.

The faculty also face a re-opener of the contract we finally settled after 2 years, and the administration's opening offer was to eliminate the salary raises we spent so much time and effort winning. More collective action on that front, I figure, to follow.

Last Saturday, to take a break from all this, we went to a collective action in Modesto to protest Prop. 8. Apparently, it was the biggest such rally in Modesto over the issue of sex-based marriage discrimination. It seemed like the number of people honking car horns and yelling and whooping favorably was about two to three times higher than the number flipping us off or yelling insults.

We may lose all these fights. The Board of Trustees may vote to raise student fees, blame faculty raises (that we may not even receive) for the fee increase, and turn around and raise executive pay. Prop. 8 may stand, despite what seems like obviously unconstitutional discrimination. But what else can I do? Even if I'm going to lose, I have to fight, because there just isn't any other way to try to defend myself and what I value. Grim hope, I suppose.

update on university budget cuts

Friday afternoon, November 7, I first heard about the local CSU campus administration's announcement of budget cuts, mid-year, that would cancel hundreds of classes and put dozens of part-time lecturers out of work. I assumed that this was related in part to the $31 million cut offered by CSU Chancellor Charles B. ("Chuckles") Reed, but it turns out that it really didn't have anything to do with that.

Our campus has been running a deficit, off and on, for several years, and the budget cut was to deal with about 2/3 of that deficit. Now, this seemed odd timing for dealing with a deficit that we've had for a while. Why take this moment, with the CSU system preparing to cope with, and to fight against, the Chancellor's giveaway? One answer that seemed plausible, and which I shared with several people, all of whom thought it was not only plausible but likely, is that the local administration was using Reed's action as a pretext. If that seems paranoid, then you must not be a faculty member at this university, where we have had, for a variety of reasons, an extremely antagonistic relationship with the provost.

[Side note to the provost, or to any of his agents: I acknowledge that I'm part of that antagonistic faculty. While the provost has publicly stated his resentment toward some oppositional action by faculty, and has seemed to me to take much of it personally, I do not acknowledge that anything I've said is meant as a personal attack. I don't know the provost personally. I know he plays the accordion, wrote a book about rhetoric, is good at word play, and has a predilection for suspenders. But I don't know what's in his soul, and wouldn't claim to. I represent lecturers on our campus. An adversarial relationship to administration sometimes comes with the job.]

Anyway, faculty were understandably upset by being told to cut classes from academic departments in the absence of any directly informative demonstration that this was necessary - either in general, or in the incredible urgency of the moment. Departments were given a directive to cut a certain number of dollars from their instructional budgets, given a week to do it, and that was the end of the story.

This is the same strategy employed at Humboldt State a few years ago - which I referred to on our campus as the "Blitzkrieg" model of budget management. (There's room here for using the metaphor of Poland annexation, but I'm not sure how to work it.) There was a big push by faculty, students and staff to demand the administration find another way to fix its fiscal problems, other than cut so much from instruction as to damage the institution's ability to educate, and to damage the institution's ability to make enrollment targets and thus to retain its budget allocation from the CSU system.

I spent a lot of time and energy in the faculty part of that effort on our campus this week. One thing I've done, which I always do, is inform my students what's going on and encourage them to get involved. I saw one of my students at a meeting our dean held, but otherwise I have no idea whether anyone has gotten into the push back.

One key difference between our campus and the Humboldt State situation is that our campus president announced to the meeting of the general faculty in September that the university had a $3 million reserve fund, and that a deal had been made with Clearwire to lease them our TV channels as broadband for a $4.5 million one-time payment plus around $1.5 million a year. At Humboldt, the campus president eventually "found" $500,000 to help reverse cuts. And what do you know, but since Friday our campus president has agreed to allocate an additional $500,000 from the Clearwire funds.

The committee that advises the president on budget issues met the first time in the midst of all this tumult, was given no real information about the budget, and issued a memo to the campus community arguing against the cuts and, especially, the do-it-yesterday urgency.

We still face the proposed cuts totalling $97 million, and a partisan legislature generally incapable of compromise, that must reach a 2/3 majority to pass either a budget or any tax increase (like the sales tax increase proposed by the governor). We also continue to face a university administration which seems hell-bent on acting unilaterally, and then, when faced with strong opposition from faculty, modifying or reversing itself - which strikes me as a very strange way to run a public institution.

redacted

Setting aside, for tonight, the tumult surrounding the quite foul budget slash effort by the Cow State Santa Claus administration, I shall provide, instead, a harmless goof of a meme.

If you saw ME in a police car, what would you think I got arrested for?

Answer me, then post to your own blog and see how many crimes you get accused of.

CSU budget cuts, class cuts, faculty cuts, student cutswon't somebody get that razor away from him?!

California's economy and state budget are in the toilet.

The CSU is facing midyear budget cuts, and the administration's response has been to freak the heck out. The Chancellor's office just announced last week that for the first time in its history, the CSU system will turn away eligible students. I think this means the CSU is violating the education code of the state, which specifies that the CSU's mission, as the people's university, is to teach the top 1/3 of high school graduates across the state. If CSU turns away eligible students, I think it could be legally liable. I'd be really interested to see someone sue over it.

Apparently the plan of action on our campus, presented by the administration, is to cut part-time faculty. The part-time faculty teach 315 classes this year, mainly general education classes required to graduate, rather than in majors. Furthermore, the plan is being hatched in secrecy, which is partly why I'm writing about it here. I figure there are CSU lurkers.

The administration has been holding meetings with department chairs to tell them to cut sections of classes and eliminate part-time faculty. But, and here's the tricky part, they have to keep teaching the same number of students. They'll achieve this by stuffing more students into remaining classes.

But there are freaking obvious problems with this plan. For one thing, many classes are being taught at capacity for the classroom. When everybody shows up for my morning Professional Ethics classes, there are no empty seats. I can't accommodate more students in those classes. Plus, as my colleagues Dan pointed out this afternoon, there are fire regulations at stake here too. If the room has a capacity of 45, it has a capacity of 45, period.

It also makes little sense to think that tenure-track faculty will really be able to teach more than they already do. In most departments, they teach 8 courses a year, which is really high for college teaching by tenure-track faculty (my teaching load is 10 per year, but CFA buys 1 of my classes from the university in exchange for the vastly more work than a course would require that I do for CFA).

And then the big one. Our students are not "traditional" four-year college students (almost no students in the US are, any more). They typically have work and family obligations, commute to school either 2 or 3 days a week, and need their class schedules to fit their lives' schedules as well as their academic needs. Cutting class sections will make it more difficult, and in some cases impossible, for them to continue to advance to their degrees.

Plus, plus, plus: While it's taking them longer to graduate, they may be asked to pay non-state-support fees for the same classes, taught off the state books. AND AND AND the longer they take to graduate, the more it costs them, and the longer the credit crisis goes on, the less access they have to student aid or even loans.

So there you have it. The university plans to fix their budget problem by way of an unworkable solution based on faulty assumptions about scheduling, the lives of students, the work of faculty, the ongoing state budget and financial crisis. Aside from that, of course, it's perfectly alright, provided you're completely uncaring about the people who work for you.

post-election post

So, Barack Obama.

And, so far, almost assuredly Yes on Prop 8 in California, denying the right of marriage to same-sex couples just months after the California Supreme Court ruled that such a ban was unconstitutionally prejudicial. Simple solution: legalize discrimination. I can't say very much with intelligence for very long on this issue, before the rage overtakes me, and I've spent all my intelligence on it today talking with students.

It's intellectually so damaging and painful even to think through the arguments that I've blown a gasket. In sum: no one person or group's moral or religious conviction gives that person or group moral authority to impose their will. That's the tyranny of the majority, not democracy. Further: every argument for Prop 8 was both based on a false premise, and intellectually dishonest. To wit: the claim that Prop 8 was needed to avoid having clergy being held legally liable for choosing not to marry same-sex couples. (1) Legal same sex marriage does not impose legal demands that any clergy member marry anyone against his or her will. (2) Any clergy member could be sued by anyone for anything at any time, so Prop 8 will not protect them from this. In effect, then, Prop 8 does not do what the proponents claim it would do. Since it will not do this, it only achieves one, simple, legal effect: to discriminate against same-sex couples.

That's it on this one, for now. I'm done. Ask me again, and I'll start insulting breeders.

Back to Barack Obama. Aside from my feeling like he's going to be a good president, I'm proud we elected him. I think the effect on "race" issues is being overblown, but electing a black President is clearly historically important.

On the way home from night class, I remembered two presidential political comments I'd made in the past. One is that Obama fits the pattern of the last 48 years of TV presidents: better hair wins. (Seriously, somebody should be studying this.) The other is that I randomly remembered a satire I wrote November 7, 2000, the year Bush was not elected President, but later selected by the US Supreme Court. It was a satire mainly of US narrow-minded political life, and of US newz media. It was also, in the context of that year, a satire of the result of that election, to wit, that there was no result on November 7. It's titled White Guy Wins Election. And you know what? It's not going to be funny any more.

spreading the good nooz

There is a rather polite evangelist* on campus today, urging people to come and pray with him for peace, tranquility, etc. One of his promptings was that people should come and talk to him if they wanted to "learn more about this Jesus."

I suppose it's part of the traditional patter of evangelists, the pose of being an apostle and bravely trekking out into unknown territory with an unheard-of message, that leads them to make ridiculous statements like this. You can't really be part of US culture without knowing who "this Jesus" is, or what Christians believe about Jesus. And this campus is in the Central Valley, in one of the most Christian and church-going regions in the US.

This also seems to presume that the primary reason people don't believe in Christian faith is lack of exposure. Most atheists I know were raised Christian. They didn't fail to hear about it, they failed to have faith in it.

Nor does it strike me as particularly likely that this will sell Christianity to religious non-Christians, though I can't be certain of that.

It's just odd, to me, to think of someone having the - I dunno, chutzpah? - to believe that he can just walk onto a campus and inform people about a 2000 year old religion, as though they've never heard of it, and sell it to them.

Plus, I'm always tempted to walk up to the guy and say something like, "oh, that Jesus! I thought you meant Jesus Gomez, and I was thinking, geez, I thought he was just a pharmacist!"

* As far as that goes. Some people would consider any evangelist to be rude as hell, because they believe religion is private and not something you should be yelling at people about, or even speaking calmly through a microphone at people about. I don't know from rude. I do, however, markedly prefer the obnoxious fire-and-brimstone screamer types, because it's so much more volatile and dangerous when they come around. There's a little bit of Nietzsche in me, too, that says "Yep, that's what it's all about" when they scream about everybody going to hell.

what's in a name?

Walking around town, I see a lot of signs urging people to vote no on Proposition 2 this November. Prop 2 would require farms to have enclosures large enough to permit hens, veal calves, and pregnant sows to stand up and turn around. Enclosures that tight make it easy to spread disease, and particularly salmonella in eggs is a concern.

The group opposing Prop 2 calls itself "Californians for Safe Food."

This got me wondering about other California advocacy groups, who they are, and what they stand for. Here's a short list:

Californians for Safe Streets. This group proposes to amend the constitution to eliminate and prohibit any law restricting, regulating, or licensing any form of firearm.

Californians for Yummy Ice Cream. As supporters of an assembly bill titled "California Ice Cream Quality And Distribution Act," they make the case that immigration should be completely restricted, and that ethnic or religious groups with a cultural proclivity to eat more ice cream should be ejected from the state, in order "to preserve the supply of this precious and delicious commodity for true Californians."

Californians for Public School Success. They support broad reforms of public schools. Primarily, they propose to eliminate the Department of Education, as well as funding from tax or other government-gathered sources. Instead, students or their families would directly pay costs of education, which will assure that they have more of a stake in education. In addition, all students would take a standardized test at the end of high school. Any student who does not pass the test would not be granted a diploma and would have no further opportunity to re-take the test. Also, schools where less than 75% of students pass the test would forfeit their funding to pay for a job-growth program of tax breaks on investments in corporations.

Californians for Family Values. They propose a constitutional amendment defining families as "children and their mother, under the unquestionable rule of the father as head of household." The amendment would further ban any legal restriction on the father's right to establish rules, and to punish violations, and prohibit any legal prosecution of any father whose actions in enforcement of his own rules lead to any injuries or deaths of mother or children.

momentary lack of charity verging on Schadenfreude

In brief:* I find it hard to sympathize with the stock brokers depicted in so many recent media images, head in hands, pained expressions on their faces, phone headsets on, reacting to stock prices falling. I think it's because there's something about them that looks surprised.

If you play roulette, you can lose. It's part of the game.

* Recovering from Pittsburgh. Slowly. Tired. Teaching. Tired. Reading papers. And tired.

attack on marriage

I was just now innocently checking my Yahoo email, and there at the top of the page was an ad sponsored by a group called "Protect Marriage" - a group pushing Proposition 8, which would make same-sex marriages illegal in California.

The issue is simple. Advocates for Prop 8 are bigots who want to create new legal discrimination.

I've never been an advocate for marriage, but this round of brain-dead politics on the matter has got me thinking about it again. The main problems I see with marriage are rooted in its cultural history of sexism. Built into marriage are all manner of expectations and assumptions about people's relationships and roles, life stories, aspirations and goals, that are ultimately also sexist and heterosexist. When a man and a woman marry each other, they further this retrograde institution's hegemony.

So I've come to the position that only same-sex marriage should be given legal status, since that would help break down the terrible legacy of different-sex marriage.

a grass-roots understanding of economic fundamentals

I would never be confused with an expert in finance. For one thing, on my campus, those people make waaaaaaay more money than I do. But I also have a very simple-minded conception of economic activity that has almost no relation to what goes on in The World Of FinanceTM.

Take this line from the Reuters story about the financial bailout summit held this weekend:

"The weekend produced the hoped-for result, a broad assault on the main problem, undercapitalized banks," said ING Bank economist Tim Condon.

See, I think the main problem is something different, not related to banks.

When John McCain was caught saying he thought the "fundamentals" of our economy are strong, and then later saying the economy was at risk, he had the story partly right, but as usual, didn't tell the truth about it. Mere hours after he said the economy was sound, the finance and credit universe was sucked into a black hole, and so McCain looked foolish. To cover up, his campaign started to back-pedal and say he meant that the basis of economic growth - labor, ingenuity, commitment, etc. - was sound. Obviously, that wasn't sincere. But more to the point, it was also false.

The economy is not what the Dow Industrials or the S&P 500 measure. They measure a large-scale high-stakes poker game that the vast majority of us will never, ever win.

The people with a stake in the poker game are trying to make large sums of money by tricking the system (that's what poker's all about), so they do things like buy companies, sell their assets, and hope to come out with a profit. They don't care about productivity or people eating. They sell loans to people in order to make money off of those people's productive labor. They don't care whether that labor really produces anything; they just want the profit from it. They're not responsible.

So, here in the US, this game has resulted in the systematic de-skilling of millions of people, the outsourcing of millions of jobs. Now that selling stuff to one another on credit is becoming a less sustainable form of employment, we all may have to start actually doing things, making things, growing things, and so forth. And we don't know how.

If, as no more socialist a thinker as Adam Smith theorized, human labor is the source of economic wealth, a workforce that has un-learned how to produce anything actually consumable simply can't create any wealth. If that's the "fundamentals" of an economy, then all the cash anybody wants to give to banks in the 1st world won't make any difference, because we can't make anything.

meme: omnivore's 100

In part because of the parallelism to my list of top 100 things...

How the Omnivore's 100 Works:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.

2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.

3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.


65/100 My Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison

2. Nettle tea

3. Huevos rancheros

4. Steak tartare [RAW MEAT, BUT NOT THE SPECIFIC DISH]

5. Crocodile

6. Black pudding

7. Cheese fondue

8. Carp

9. Borscht

10. Baba ghanoush

11. Calamari

12. Pho (never again!)

13. PB&J sandwich

14. Aloo gobi

15. Hot dog from a street cart

16. Epoisses

17. Black truffle

18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes

19. Steamed pork buns

20. Pistachio ice cream

21. Heirloom tomatoes (but not inheritance tomatoes)

22. Fresh wild berries (picked myself from a hillside in Pennsylvania)

23. Foie gras

24. Rice and beans (frequently)

25. Brawn or head cheese

26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (I am all that is man)

27. Dulce de leche (WITH the Scotch bonnet. No, not really.)

28. Oysters (bleccch)

29. Baklava

30. Bagna cauda

31. Wasabi peas

32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl

33. Salted lassi

34. Sauerkraut

35. Root beer float

36. Cognac with a fat cigar (just a cigar)

37. Clotted Cream Tea

38. Vodka Jelly/Jell-O

39. Gumbo

40. Oxtail

41. Curried goat

42. Whole insects

43. Phaal

44. Goat's milk

45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more (would that I could now... Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

46. Fugu

47. Chicken tikka masala

48. Eel

49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut

50. Sea urchin

51. Prickly pear

52. Umeboshi

53. Abalone

54. Paneer

55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (instant death)

56. Spaetzle

57. Dirty gin martini (from a quart-sized sport bottle, which is a PROFOUNDLY bad idea)

58. Beer above 8% ABV (I brewed it!)

59. Poutine

60. Carob chips (yick)

61. S’mores (sorry, folks, but yick)

62. Sweetbreads

63. kaolin

64. Currywurst

65. Durian

66. Frogs’ legs

67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake

68. Haggis

69. Fried plantain

70. Chitterlings or andouillette

71. Gazpacho

72. Caviar and blini

73. Louche absinthe

74. Gjetost or brunost

75. Roadkill

76. Baijiu

77. Hostess Fruit Pie (thoroughly disgusting)

78. Snail

79. Lapsang Souchong

80. Bellini

81. Tom Yum (YEEEHAH! The hotter ones especially)

82. Eggs Benedict

83. Pocky

84. 3 Michelin Star Tasting Menu

85. Kobe beef

86. Hare

87. Goulash

88. Flowers

89. Horse

90. Criollo chocolate

91. Spam

92. Soft shell crab

93. Rose harissa

94. Catfish

95. Mole poblano (the best single food dish ever conceived by man or god)

96. Bagel and lox

97. Lobster Thermidor

98. Polenta

99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee

100. Snake

the market is always right, except when it isn't

A Reuters story this morning detailed the International Monetary Fund's warning of global recession. First of all, friggin' duh! Note to powerful/moneyed elites: stop saying we may be headed toward recession or we're on the verge of recession. It makes you look stupid.

Secondly:

"The world economy is now entering a major downturn in the face of the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930s," the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook.

In hindsight, the IMF said lax economic and regulatory policies probably allowed the global economy to "exceed its speed limit." At the same time, market flaws, together with policy shortcomings, allowed stresses to build.

Now, the global economy is about to pay the price.

Turns out, the free market is self-correcting and always moves in the proper direction, and can be trusted to regulate itself, except that when you let it, it fucks up.

If a joke is in order here: Who knew the free market was built by Dodge?

But luckily, the market has determined how to fix the problem, which is the way it always fixes problems, by making all of us without any wealth pay for it. Ironically, to the extent there is any genuine wealth, we created it in the first place.

real estate

irritating

I bought an iPod shuffle last December, to carry with me on my walk to campus and home (it's 3.5 miles round-trip). I figured it would make the time pass pleasantly, would give me some needed motivational/meditative tunes, and that I could play demos of songs we're writing during the walk, to see if any ideas came up.

After a couple months of smooth usage, it was time to change out songs and recharge the iPod, so I plugged in its little USB connector, set the iPod onto the plug on the other end, and it flashed its little amber light to tell me it was being connected... and then didn't connect. I tried again, and again, and again.

I looked up troubleshooting on the Mac site, which told me quite helpfully that if there are problems connecting the iPod to the computer, you may need to reset your iPod, and to do that, just connect it to the computer... I'm not kidding. Would that I were kidding.

I gave up. A couple months later, just for kicks, I plugged it in again, and it worked. I recharged it, changed tunes on the unit, and it was fine for two more months. Then it stopped connecting again.

Then it stopped working. My loveliest told me to send it to Apple and get a new unit (which was apparently how they were handling the problem - well, that and ignoring it). But it was past its warranty date by then. And then, of course, it connected to the computer again.

Tonight it failed to connect again.

I suppose I'll just have to learn harmonica.

Main Street

Is it just me, or does the constant repetition of "Main Street" in financial bailout nooz irresistibly compel thoughts of the Sinclair Lewis novel?^*

It's just me.


^* Main Street is a satiric novel, or else a mean-hearted screed, about the incredible wellspring of hypocrisy Sinclair Lewis believed he saw in small-town America in the early 20th century. Some of these small towns have been the targets of real-estate and mortgage speculation over 20 or so years leading up to this collapse; others have been utterly emptied as people moved to greener non-pastures. The conceit of calls for helping bail out Main Street is such a painfully transparent political ploy I can barely contain myself when I hear or read it. There isn't a really good response, either. What do you yell at your TV or radio when that happens? I mean, "screw Main Street!" isn't really the sentiment I have in mind. And I don't necessarily mean to accuse "Main Street" of electing politicians on the basis of the same narrow-minded and ultimately hypocritical worldview that Lewis diagnosed. Much. Such an outburst would really intend to express my final exasperation at the perfidiously voided rhetoric. "Shove Main Street up yer ass!" strikes a satisfyingly crude and violent note, but seems still less en point. "Main Street called. They want their houses back" is so 2001. Plus, they really do what their houses back, so it's too earnest.

I think I'm gonna just go with "AAAAAAAARRRRRRIIIGHHRHRRRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHUUU-
UUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHCKKACKACKACKAFLAGGRAAPP!!!"

guess we'll see how this goes

We're now former Washington Mutual customers, since they bit the big one last night and were forcibly sold to JPMorgan (as they call the conglomeration of former banks and financial institutions). It's the largest failure in US history as of 6:48 PDT today, but there's no really good reason at this point to believe they'll hold the record all that long.

So, the question I have is, how do I pay my rent? What happens to the automatic bills paid out of that account?

It's gonna be an interesting month.

business as usual for Dow

Dow chemical got out of a lawsuit today that accused them of selling a pesticide that they knew caused sterility. They knew of the problems since the 1950s, continued to sell the pesticide in the US until it was banned in 1979, and continued selling it overseas until the mid 1980s.

The suit charged Dow with genocide and crimes against humanity, and the federal court ruling basically says the case doesn't fit the description of those crimes. It does not say what Dow did was acceptable, just that it wasn't deliberately genocidal. Dow's attorney claimed the ruling meant that Dow "is completely blameless, both factually and legally." He did not add "... of a deliberate policy of genocide."

All of which adds up to a new corporate motto:

Dow Chemical: Not As Bad As Mengele

my loveliest's birthday

This is for my love. This is the fifth of her birthdays we've spent together. It may not be high art, but it's meant.


impossible to contemplate
a thousand days without you
a century ago
the million hours
passed in the dark
uncountable dark

when I say you are a miracle
I mean you are the sun,
I mean you are
impossible to contemplate,
I mean you are the sun

impossible to contemplate
the dawn without you
or centuries, or hours
or anything,
even the dark

when I say you are the sun
I mean you are a miracle,
the centuries, the hours,
the miracle of light,
impossible to contemplate