Marmot Monday

We're All Gonna Die!

I feel a need to call a flag on the play. I came across this steaming pile of an article the other day and laughed out loud. “Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition, and healthcare border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage….” Yadda yadda yadda. They forgot killer bees and a new global ice age. The authors go to great lengths to beclown themselves. I have so many literal problems with this piece and conceptual problems with what they’re pushing that I don’t know where to begin.

We’ll just skip the literal issues with the piece and slap the conceptual a bit. Why don’t they just get it over with and plaster WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! in 68 size font. This is the angle behind just about everything that gets shoved in front of us these days. I’ve been harboring the hypothesis for some time that we’re going to look back a generation from now on the ’00 decade and cringe. No context, no insight, just a big pack of people bouncing from panic to panic. There is no mistaking that we’ve got some large issues in front of us. But this has always been the case and will always be the case. I think a short trip down memory lane is in order to provide some scope. Let’s journey all the way back to the mid 1970’s.

Athena was a precocious pre-teen. I was a paste-eating elementary school nose picker. The price of gas was irrelevant because it was hard to come by. What gas there was had lead in it so it was only a matter of time before it killed you. The president had been self-deposed over criminal doings to get re-elected. The vice president had done a perp walk in ’73. America had just finished laying 58,000 servicemen in the ground over the previous decade. The Khmer Rouge slaughtered upwards of 2 million people (out of 7 million in the country) and nobody lifted a finger. An earthquake in Tangshan, China, killed over 200,000 people in July of 1976. Earlier that year another quake killed 23,000 in Guatemala. Somewhere around 200,000 people died when Typhoon Nina hit China in 1975. Over a 24 hour period in April of 1974 148 tornadoes struck 13 states, killing over 300 people & doing a few billion dollars in damage. Millions of troops were still squared off in Eastern Europe, backed by nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, 30 years after the end of a war that nobody called a quagmire. Speaking of nuclear weapons, tens of thousands of them were poised to launch on warning. (“Guaranteed to end civilization in 30 minutes or less or your money back.”) Over 30,000 troops remained in Korea on war footing over 20 years after the shooting stopped in war that is still officially under way. Curiously, nobody’s called that one a quagmire either. Food shortages were very real, and the world’s three largest countries couldn’t feed themselves through domestic production. Paul Ehrlich was trying to convince us we’d all die via the population bomb. While we were waiting to starve to death we’d freeze to death because the new ice age was galloping towards us. Oh, and the Fed had interest rates in the teens.

Do I need to go on? We look like ass clowns when we quail about the price of airline tickets, professional sports, polar bear peril. Memo to all media: STFU and get back to work. We’ve got things to fix and stuff to build and you’re not helping.

Ares

Vermonted

Mrs. Ares and I went to the Green Mountain State last weekend. Let me start by giving a big-brained shout out to whoever decided Vermont should be known as the Green Mountain State. This is a branding genius on par with calling Georgia the Red Dirt State. All marketing labels aside, it really is a beautiful state.

As I told Athena, it's as though western Washington and Ohio had a kid named Vermont. Mountains, open spaces and water akin to the Pacific Northwest. Old houses and streets like you'd find in the mid-west.

Burlington, where we encamped for the duration, seemed rather overrun with hippies. I'm sure some of that had to do with the proximity of UVM. Still, there was an organic, if I may use the term in this context, sense of hippieness. The kids were a bit funny to my approaching-middle-age outlook. Lots of recreational facial hair, metal in various parts of the face, and lots of tattoos. Mrs. Ares referred to them as 'trust fund hippies'.

We also spent some time at the most-excellent Shelburne Farms. Shelburne is beautiful and probably what I'd like my farm to look like if money was no object.

Mind you, this is just the barn/animal area. We never even made it to the main house or any of the other features of the farm. Anyway, at the farm Mrs. Ares met Arthur, where it was love at first sight.

We may have to find a house with a bigger yard. I think there are cows in our future. Arthur was very good-natured considering he gets poked and pulled at all day by ankle biters that don't know any better. Aside from the hippies and bovines we ate a lot of great cheese, drank a lot of great local brew, and generally soaked in the place. (And for reasons to lengthly to expound upon in this space we didn't go near Ben & Jerry's.) As weekend getaways go we recommend the joint.

Ares

Cave Days

It's been too hot to leave the cave lately.

Sorry, working my way through a bunch of marmot pictures.

Ares

Marmot Monday

I got nothing, just been wanting to throw up this picture for a while.

Ares

Save Ferris?

U.S. Marine 1st Lt. Kathryne B. Schilling coaches a woman as she prepares to shoot a pistol during her training to become a Sister of Ferris, June 4, 2008, Ferris, Iraq. The Sisters of Ferris will inspect women for weapons, suicide vests, large amounts of cash and contraband at entry control points. Schilling is assigned to Combat Logistics Battalion 1, 1st Marine Logistics Group. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Cindy G. Alejandrez

Who knew Bueller had sisters in Iraq? I gotta dig into Wikipedia more often. I need find out who this Ferris character was and how they made it okay for women to have guns in an Arab society. Today its Sisters of Ferris, tomorrow its Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Wonder how long that burqa's gonna be around once Fatima there gets to take her gun home? Also gotta wonder how many women are gonna say no mas to a male-dominated culture after spending some time around American female warriors? All benchmarks on the road to creating a functional society. By the way, Sister, you're holding that Glock wrong.

Ares

Hell is Other People

Far and away my favorite existentialist quote. Sartre was a pissy, moody whining bitch (who boxed several intellectual weight classes below Simone de Beauvoir), but that single nugget of wisdom redeems him in my eyes.

Nothing like a day of wading neck-deep in your coworkers' neurosis to make you wanna take a mallet to the soft spot on the side of your skill. As I wrote previously in this space, even the a******* in your life have something to teach you. Today I was using my inside voice to yell at the heavens "WHAT IS THIS A****** TEACHING ME!" I felt a bit like George Costanza yelling "SERENITY NOW!", but with my inside voice. Old Siggy Fraud said "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". I think that translate across into "sometimes an a****** is just an a******".

The detached, internal intellectual that usually won't roll around in the stink posed a question in the midst of bashing my head against ramparts of stupidity. In your late teens and early 20s you crave sex and respect. By your late 20's you crave credibility in your chosen profession. In your 30's you crave competence and recognition of such. Anymore, I crave a Dick Proenneke life, spent in a self-crafted seclusion. A great number of people in my profession spend a large portion of their professional life constructing the Dick Proenneke exit of some fashion. While I acknowledge this very idea is occupying a larger portion of my psyche with the passage of time, I wonder what comes after this. Or will this be the defining obsession henceforth? I don't see an exit or an alternative. As you can tell, it was a long, hot day and the beer isn't doing anything for me.

Ares

Athena Caveat

Slight difference of opinion here at A&A: I happen to like Christa, and especially snarky Jordan.

Sorry to be MIA for so long, but between walking four miles a day (stress management, anyone?) and then catching the world's nastiest summer cold (I felt like an extra from Stephen King's The Stand) I just haven't been feeling the blogging spirit.

Meanwhile, here's one I've been enjoying lately...

Love ya, miss ya, mean it...

Athena

Andromeda Strained

Michael you whore. Mrs. Ares and I just donated three hours of our lives we’ll never get back to a ‘reimagination’ of Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain. This thing left no short cut uncut and no cliché undisturbed. And before I forget, here’s a little tip to the producers from Jake Jackass in Snotbubble, Georgia: If you want me to take your scientists seriously then don’t cast the girl that played Kate on Drew Carey as a surgeon. I can’t unthink her decade’s worth of penis jokes and toilet humor.

This thing is poorly designed to play on all your fears. It’s got a little something for everyone. There’s the terrorism angle, the black helicopters tease, the pandemic monster under the bed, the monolithic-omnipotent government and its associated goons, the mother-earth-is-our-god-and-technology-is-evil meme, and finally that soaring X-Files tent that has taught two generations of Americans to distrust government in all its forms. Evil, dark, ubiquitous cabals are the recurrent theme and the parting visual.

The original (book) was a brilliantly conceived story. Crichton had a gift for taking complex, scientifically-laden ideas and presenting them in an accessible and entertaining format. Remember this is the guy that brought us Jurassic Park and was the original father of E.R. Not a single DNA strand of his storytelling craft was evident on this festering piece of crap. Please, to all that have seen the latest incarnation of this production, please check yourselves into detox by at least renting the original movie. Or, if you prefer cold turkey, read the book.

The new version of Andromeda Strain reminded me of the difference between original Star Trek and The Next Generation. The original, for all its cheese, was fairly tightly written. TNG ‘ran home to momma’ in the form of computer generated graphics and special effects. The original story stood perfectly well on its own. Not content to let a classic stand, this new version became a message movie. Next they’re going to remake Congo where the apes that aren’t killed by global warming are going to become mutants that kill all humans.

Ares

Atlanta's Math Problem

Short aside here. Came across a little stubbed toe of an article in the Urinal-Constipation about Fulton County reassessing value of some commercial properties downtown. The biggest chunk out of corporate ass is the new Ernst & Young building near the Aquarium. The property tax bill goes from $96 grand to $1.2 million. (Holy millage rate Batman!) Here's a tip to the deep thinkers at Fulton County government: You might not wanna raise the taxes 1200% on an accounting firm. They'll turn their army of Poindexters loose on you to the point that you'll owe them money when they're through. Not that I'm disparaging the folks at Fulton County. Any group that can make Dekalb County look cosmopolitan has my admiration. There's a nifty little chart at the bottom of the article that shows in numbers exactly how much Fulton County is trying to kill business in downtown Atlanta. Poor city of Atlanta, they almost had the pee smell problem solved and now this.

Ares

Thank You Just Doesn't Cover It

As the boys at BlackFive would say, here's someone you should know.

Ares

Matrix

Lest things start to look too serious in this space we've added some content to lighten it up a bit. Bravo Zulu to the folks that came up with this one.




Ares

Speaking of Known Unknowns

Athena and I have been having the discussion about government accounting playing hide-the-salami when it comes to liabilities. Specifically, the coming deluge of pension system obligations. Again, we're no experts, but it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see the craters in the road ahead. In an odd showing of competence the New York Times laid this out pretty well last Wednesday. As if to piggyback on the theme the city of Vallejo filed for bankruptcy yesterday. Why? "....the cost of ballooning public safety employee contracts"

This is not mystery math. A high school freshman with a calculator can look at X number of employees with X number of years of service retiring a X percentage of annual salary and compute accordingly. San Diego actually had a bit of a dust up about this a few years before their pension system led them into bankruptcy. A city councilwoman had the audacity to suggest the system was out of balance. Her reward was fellow councilmen recommending her for psychological evaluation. I think her new last name is Vindication. This type of flapping incompetence is one of the reasons I'm not a "lifer" at my current employer. We're just starting to climb this hill. More to follow.

Ares

Known Unknowns

From the "No Shit, Sherlock" files comes this deft little booger of insight. The Washington Post has discovered that there's no real logical or economic basis for the explosion of oil prices. "The market is once again searching for a new equilibrium" said a report from Goldman Sachs. The equilibrium referenced is not the usual market forces of supply and demand, but rather the break point where people are moved to violence or outright theft. Around the Ares and Athena campfire we call this a "because we can" application of pricing.

I'm certainly no economist or expert on commodities valuation, but something has definitely changed in the last decade. There appears to be a heard of investment capital that has moved from commodity to commodity. The unifying thread in the movement is that the commodities are staples that consumers have little choice about consuming. It started with an intensive push for deregulation of portions of the power industry in the 90's. This resulted in criminal-level graft in California. (A sitting governor was deposed and the state was economically knee-capped at a cost a few indictments and hand slap fines.) This was followed closely by the absurd run-up in housing prices. Housing will have to retreat quite a bit further before it will be affordable to the average American again. Now we're a few years into a speculative frenzy concerning oil. The hedge fund alarmists have constructed a theater of imagination where any uttered disturbance is cause for increase in price. Favorite examples of the past few years have been rockets fired at oil tankers, forecasts of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, a rebel attack on a refinery in Nigeria, and any statement by anyone in Iran. None of these actually result in a supply reduction, but the the downrange facts have no place among current shakes of the Magic 8 Ball. Overlaid onto this decade has been the price of health care. Because, really, your only option besides paying is dying.

This is capitalism at its absolute worst. This carnivorous heard of revenue harvesters is consuming its own flesh. A cursory examination of the first 40 years of the 20th century bears out an excellent example of what predatory capitalism will reap. Aside from stretching society at the seams it brought down government intervention on an epic scale. The longer the current incarnation of that period persists the greater the chorus will be for intervention, regardless of reasonableness. Bear in mind that I'm an avowed capitalist when I say I don't have a problem proposing that the government nationalize the oil industry. The waste and abuse of applying civil service and congressional oversight to the energy industry would be a welcome change from compulsory contributions to epic racketeering. (I defy anyone to ethically justify hundred million dollar bonuses.) The longer this persists the more people are going to pushed into the arms of those that offer radical solutions. (Including mine. Thankfully I'm just Jake Jackass with a blog instead of a policy maker.) This has the real possibility of contorting the entire system to even worse ends. I don't know what will fix it, but like everyone else I can see that its fundamentally broken.

Ares

Changes

Been a while since we've changed the linen over here. I'm trying to see what this pig of a blog host site can do. More subtle changes to follow, including the subliminal advertising for donuts and beer. If you hear cursing from northeast Atlanta it's just me trying to get the code to do what I want. I believe the correct acronym is PEBKAC: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Ares

Battle of the Hot Dogs

It's hard for me not to love Drew Carey. Not only is he a pop culture anti-hero, with his less-than-slim waistline and coke bottle glasses, but he's also a pretty smart guy. Of late he's taken up the cause of combating stupidity via video spots on reason.tv. He tends to ask some pretty basic questions that are difficult to answer without retreating to sound-bite banalities. One of the best thus far is his latest, which is about a street cart hot dog vendor in Los Angeles that got busted for selling bacon wrapped hot dogs. (And got 45 days in jail. Holy nitrates, Batman!) Drew seems like a natural spokesman for bacon wrapped hot dogs.

Ya know, I'm just spitballin here, but if the Libertarians were serious about fronting a candidate with some distance they'd draft Drew. My friend R is constantly lamenting the perpetual flaccidness of the Libertarian Party. He's got strong recognition and comes across as a regular guy. Best of all, he's got nothing to lose. For those who laugh at the idea I would direct you to the Reagan Presidential Library to review the works of Governor Schwarzenegger.

Ares

Take My Wives, Please

With apologies to Henny Youngman. How could I not tickle the comedy gold that is the Texas Polygamist Sect? So much to hit here, so few metaphors. Let's just start with the ladies.

They've got a whole Anne of Amish Green Gables thing going there. Its like some strange gaggle of bible-thumping Squeaky Frommes. What part of Leviticus contains the passage "Thou shalt have a bouffant hairdoo, lest ye be transmitted to the gates of hell"?

Moving right along, I love the church that looks like it belongs on a Pitch-n-Putt course between the windmill and the dinosaur.

I think that ramp you see on the right is actually where the ball comes out when you hit it in the back door of the building.

Why is it you never hear of a polygamist group where women have more than one husband? This entire state of affairs is begging to be made into a reality television show. If we can have reality shows about wife swapping and crab fishing why not this? Because if there is one kind of reality show Americans love, it's the kind where we're yelling "What the f*** is wrong with you people!" by the end of the first episode. On a more serious note, you have to give some credit to both sides on this issue. Thus far everyone is going about this methodically and peacefully, unlike another Texas polygamist that burned his people to ash 15 years ago today.

Ares

Really?

Hate to be a self-appointed hall monitor on this whole "climate change" thing, but I've got a bulletin fresh from the What The F*** Files. I'd expect this type of thing from Creative Loafing or The Sunday Paper, but this resides on AB-frickin-C's website. This particular piece is about the torch relay. Quote:

"If people are looking for another reason to be pissed at China, how about this: By the time this pyro parade is over, it will have produced about 11 million pounds of carbon emissions."

I'm a little bit at a loss over this one. The stupid is so very large and protracted it's difficult to get my arms around it. I could build an analytical rebuttal to the piece, beginning with the idea that it's not China's fault there's going to be Olympics. I could then follow on with......oh what the hell. I give up. I keep waiting form someone with some authority and authenticity to throw an absurdity flag on the play, which is my mistake. Dick Proenneke sounds smarter all the time.

Ares

Cheese

Mrs. Ares asked me today when we should receive our forthcoming check from Uncle Sugar. The question got me to thinking. The last time the economy was this grab-your-ankles bad was early in Regan's first term. For reasons that seem a bit fuzzy now, it was decided then that the world would somehow be better if everyone got a big block of cheese. I was much too young to lock in on the details, so someone older than myself please explain the thought behind the mass distribution of a dairy product. I do remember it was pretty harsh stuff, having the consistency of bathroom tile caulk that had set. This ignited an entire generation of 'government cheese' jokes. By the way, I figured out what they did with all the leftover cheese that didn't get handed out. Like some dietary Nick at Night episode, you can still encounter it if you tear open the right MREs. Millions of starving people world wide are reliving the 80's with their GI systems as we speak.

Say what you want, something has gotten better if we went from cheese to cash in a generation. Mind you, it's our cash and they're just giving it to us in IOU form, but at least we'll have more to show for it than constipation. I intend to confound the government and place it into savings. I'll call it a down payment on the Social Security I'll never get.

Ares

Elsewhere

Have you ever realized with a start that the previous 30 (or 60, or 90) days have passed you by and the details have dissolved? Just sort of an indistinct blur of work, couch, showers, and driving. This is happening with greater regularity with the progression of age.

The biggest marker I can dredge up to highlight the past month is running the now annual ING (Half) Marathon. Over all it was much, much better than last year. Cooler temperatures, more water, better course, and at 2 hours 18 minutes a much better time on my part. I finished strong, sprinting the last 300 or so yards. Aside from this it's been a slog of work and whatnot. On a brighter note, I've discovered a few good local blogs that are worth checking out.

The DeKalb Officers Blog is a little slice of Schadenfreude, courtesy of the imploding DeKalb County Police Department. Its a narrow view of the overall slow-motion self-destruction of DeKalb County.

Live Apartment Fire is a much needed critique of local media in this clown college of a media market.

And finally, Georgia On My Mind is a bit of a catchall. There's a section with Lawyers and whatnot for Athena.

That is all, go forth and think great thoughts.

Ares