You’re walking down the street. A man is walking toward you with a dead rabbit. It’s mid-afternoon. You begin to stop smiling. The man proceeds to beat you with the rabbit. In your pockets you have an overripe banana and a Chinese phrase book. You want to be offended by the smell of dead rabbit. But you find yourself distracted. You’re not eating the banana.
Why aren’t you eating the banana?
Is it dulling the pain of the lousy economy and your growing disenchantment and bitterness? Like any good narcotic should. No worries. Even if you could wake up today, it would be too late. Enjoy the ride.
Several items of corporate/government/fascist/authoritarian free enterprise management of perspective/propaganda/media have stuck in my craw this week. I suppose primarily because they are so thoroughly hypocritical, so entirely self-interested (self being the U.S.), and so glibly passed off as truth but in actuality are steaming hot piles of bullshit.
Item 1:
The ridiculous notion (of course, the intent is to divert attention and manage perspective, nothing new) that the EU is somehow in a uniquely problematic financial situation with the faltering economies of the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain). I assure you the U.S. is in a far worse position with innumerable states, including but not limited to California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and New Jersey on the precipice of insolvency. So, the dollar rallies. And will go somewhat higher. Total false premise. Sell it. It’s a race to the bottom and all fiat is trash.
Item 2:
The notion that China is somehow to be demonized for currency manipulation. Please. Have I woken up in a fantasy world? Are you telling me the U.S. has clean hands here? We preach a strong dollar when we want the exact opposite and have for years. You people disgust me.
Item 3:
The idea that Toyota’s present recalls over defects are of great consequence. They aren’t. The exaggeration of and alarmism over the situation is a none too obvious gift to Detroit, which now largely is an arm of the government. A veiled protectionism. But idiotic and misguided like most anything government attempts as Toyota employs tens of thousands of Americans. Toyota stock is a long-term buy after some further correction.
Item 4:
Back to China. The ridiculous notion that the Chinese are somehow stuck with our debt or backed into a corner. Total crap. How boxed in are they every time they buy another mining company or energy company or agree to do business in a currency other than dollars? China is going to cut off our johnson. And as it’s happening, like Baghdad Bob, you can expect our media to be denying it is even possible.
Item 5:
The mistaken notion, incessantly promoted by the media, that this is an “ongoing economic recovery.” There is no recovery. This is bottom bouncing. A stone skipping across a pond. And then. Hello, gravity.
Geithner Says U.S. Will ‘Never’ Lose Its Aaa Debt Rating
Of course, Mr. Geithner is wrong. And stupid. Or just playing a part. Granted, he may inadvertently and technically, and also meaninglessly, be correct in that the negligent and bought-and-paid-for rating agencies themselves may never touch the U.S. rating.
But the bond market. Which may not be that sharp but, in time, eventually does get it. Will. And that popping of the “elephant in the room that shall not speak its name” bubble will be so very ugly.
And of course, on that day, we’ll be here to remember Mr. Geithner’s sage words.
Congratulations, sir, you are in the esteemed company of Senator Dodd as the sole candidates thus far for year’s most assinine, idiotic bloviation. Keep it up. You know you make us very proud.
What is what? And who is who. Until tonight I did not know. What is a Lady Gaga? I mean. I get out a little bit. I go to the gym anyway. And see. They play this music there. Sometimes. And I heard a quite danceable number that I sort of liked. But did not know. And now. I do. That was a Lady Gaga. Yes. The song they call the Poker Face.
“Bluffin’ with my muffin?” WTF.
Anyway. Like I said. It is. Danceable. If not necessarily profound. I’m not exactly sure how one can go two years without knowing what a Lady Gaga is. But somehow. I did.
Dance music. I like that in the gym. Maybe when you’re so behind on popular culture. You can be too ahead on other things. Yes.
I’d rather fully self-enucleate my eyeballs with a rusty fork in the rest urination/defecation room of an abandoned truckstop than ever be subject to the rules of a homeowners’ wankers’ association.
And most people like to be happy-smiley and empty-headed. But what is it with people that they’re in such denial that they have to lie to themselves and call this depression a “great recession?” It’s like the myopic, happy talk real estate barkers who, in every town, everywhere, were proclaiming that it was different there, in their town, in their very special and atypically unique, very special town, that prices would not go down.
No. It wasn’t. Not different. At all. And this is no recession.
The paradigm shift has taken a giant, stinking crap on your living room floor and you still can’t smell it. Do you? Mr. Jones.
Get over it. Get out of denial. Get real.
Yet we now have our first candidate for year’s most assinine, idiotic bloviation, courtesy of outgoing Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd:
Travesty my ass. He couldn’t possibly be more wrong.
We should be very proud. Such a pity he’s leaving the Senate.
For those of you who failed to adopt the new calendar system I promulgated on October 29, 2009, and I recognize there are still a few of you stragglers out there, I offer New Year’s greetings. Not the empty, sanitized, happy-face type you’re used to receiving, but the truthful kind. The kind that say, the only real question for 2010 is just how much further up your ass the boot will go.
2010 will suck. And if you don’t see today on the last day of 2009 that 2010 will suck. That’s okay. The eye doctor will reopen at 9 a.m. on January 4 and will be happy to see you. In any case, by mid-2010, that we are still in this depression, or, Great Revulsion, and that it is not over, will be plain to even the most myopic corporate media devotee, provided they get out and about just long enough to see, smell, and hear their townsfolk huddled around rusting 55-gallon steel drums, roasting rats on street corners.
Eh. What the hell. I’ll wish everyone a Happy New Year. But you won’t have one. That is. If your life is tied to the economy and you think inside the box.
Um. Don’t. If you’re even half serious about losing weight, you’ll be removing “bread” from your vocabulary. Which, to say differently, I now will liken this notion of “deft and nuanced bread selection by lardass” to rearranging Titanic deck chairs. If you need to lose weight, the number of things you should be doing before selecting between breads is so great that this may well be the most absurd article ever written.
