Is it ironic that the main life skill Mitt drew from his early missionary days was the almost lost art of how to iron a white shirt?
Now that impeccably ironed shirt is running for office with Mitt as the stuffing within. Wonderfully, the shirt in all its magnificent blandness is so much more eloquent than its inhabitant.
Ironing
April 30th, 2012irony
March 26th, 2012Believe me when I said that if you live in a house designed by Marcel Beurer you can at least pull the drapes, I was not surprised that all nuance was lost on the wooden Indian in the room.
And I must confess that I was surprised many years later that I was a stand in for the wooden Indian himself. I was supposed to wilt or perhaps hang myself from the nearest chandelier for my lapse in recognizing my part in the rigamarole. But more to the point, I recognized well the animus of the wag whom critical acclaim has bypassed.
And then how to explain that somebody — a reader of this blog— said exactly what he meant instead of what he had only meant to say thereby breaking the link. As the Irishman said humor–irony’s little brother–is no laughing matter.
I will be forever dunned when I hear the phrase , Dead Man Walking, I fear, for I chaffered pleasantly, ” but he is still breathing.”
I learned my lesson though. Never damn an ironist with faint praise.
High Speed Theft
March 16th, 2012In the capitalist system that most of us endorse or have learned to live with, a thing is worth what the “free” market decides it is worth. Hence our stock, commodity and various more esoteric “exchanges” are the ultimate arbiters of what we are ‘worth’ at any particular second or split second in time. The ‘market’ is the always ticking heartbeat of capitalism in the same way that the banking system could be likened to the blood system.
Historically, this heart has beaten at the steady pace of human reaction and fluctuated to the pressures of real supply and demand leavened by sentiment, fear and hope. So, why not apply a purely computer controlled pacemaker to this ‘organ’ and make it beat at a rate of thousands of times a minute? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
This is precisely what several wall street companies have done with high speed computer algorithm trading. In fact 75% of all trades are now performed by computers running in the basements of 2% of the trading companies. Every possible piece of information available to shape a market is now absorbed, analyzed and converted into computer algorithms and traded upon within nano seconds – all without any ‘primitive’ human intervention. The average traded position on any particular stock lasts for about 20 seconds before it is resold.
I ask you, with the market beating at thousands of beats a second and basically set to “automatic” what could go wrong? Check out the market action of May 6th 2010!
It is time this crazy market over stimulation was brought under control, and nothing could be more simple to do: A very modest fee per trade that would be unnoticed by genuine traders would immediately reign in this craziness and in the process produce a fabulous fund of income to be used for some positive good, maybe even for humans.
The Romney Song Book
March 15th, 2012Created for the tone deaf and tin eared campaigner, this songbook is designed to be an emergency replacement for thoughtful speech when stuck in a room full of yokels, pensioners and/or southerners.
Win their hearts instantly with your grasp of obscure verses of “America the Beautiful”! or, particularly in Tennessee, that beloved old standard “Davy Crocket”.
The secret of this song book is that no confusing music is included and the verses can be spoken or sung to no particular melody, leaving the room slightly stunned and so impressed that all they can do is look at each other in embarrassed silence (because they obviously don’t know the words!). Works every time and can be repeated as often as required to any room full of morons/voters.
WARNING do not use this song book at cocktail parties or in a room full of “equals” or in front of the obscenely wealthy. Here a nod or a wink should suffice.
Armageddon
March 7th, 2012Is it just me, or does all the shield thumping and apocalyptic nucular(sic) prediction make you feel uneasy? As right wing Christians salivate for signs of the end of days, the The Ultra Chosen People contemplate a twenty first century Masada and the Muslim clerics preach paradise by way of martyrdom and medieval law, our American political hacks seem to bay ever more loudly for blood and war.
As we watch Arabs launch missiles with cries of “God is Great”, we see cell phone images of other Arabs blown apart by the same missiles with the same plaintiff but ultimately useless cry on their lips.
If only the uber Godly of all persuasions could find a way of battling it out and ascending or descending, once and for all while still leaving the world intact for the ungodly.
Unfortunately God seems to be on too many sides – Can He really be that Romneyesque?
Value Engineering
February 16th, 2012What a perfect cover for the modern cult of the consultant and the outsourcer. Businesses happily pay an ‘expert’ to tell them how to do what they are already doing, only much more cheaply. It stands to reason, that to pay for the cost of this expert, cuts must be made. Without flesh in the game, the Value Engineer will run his blue pencil through the considered work of people intimate with the project. Say “There, I have saved you such and such, here’s my invoice” and disappear with a brushing of palms to devalue the next project. In a way, modern life in a nutshell!
Where are the Job Creators?
December 27th, 2011“Don’t tax the job creators!” “Don’t upset the job creators!” “Don’t drive away the job creators!” If I hear one more over fed, over paid, self important, politician espouse this nonsense, I think I will probably go into complete melt down. How many times can you shout at the radio or television screen - ” The only real job creator is a new customer, you ass!” – before they lock you away.
While austerity measures and other bottom line boosting cost cuts throw more people out of work , bank foreclosures make permanent the capital losses of the disappearing middle class. The mystery of what happened to the customers/job creators is surely there for even the most obtuse to see. The rich investing class does not ‘create’ anything.
Just think about it guys! Put money back in customers’ pockets and all kinds of business(jobs!) will be created!
Presidential Apprentice!
December 6th, 2011At last the ultimate reality show coming to a TV near you! Unbelievably, it seems some GOP presidential candidates are actually signing up to be grilled by this ginger helmeted self appointed king/king maker. The very epitome of commercial coarseness and self promotion will be playing ring master to the GOP circus of ‘knacker-ready’ show ponies before a rapt audience of reality TV addicts. Talk about a Mad Hatter’s tea party! I shall be watching it with the guilty fascination of an Edwardian touring Bedlam with a silk handkerchief to his nose to gaze at the sad demented inhabitants. It is a shame that we will be denied the presence of Herman to entertain with schemes and quotes from Pokemon. My prediction for the quote of the debate? By his Trumpiness -” Your all fired! I will be taking this job myself”.
Indeed the End Times are upon us! Perhaps the Lord will take all these idiots away to paradise and leave the earth to the rest of us. Sharing eternity with Michele Bachmann and Marcus would certainly turn paradise into purgatory!
Reversible Mittens
December 2nd, 2011…Newts, Mitts, Ricks, Herms. All words which would fit after the phrase: “I am sorry to have to tell you, but you have a nasty case of the……… The symptoms? Over confidence, superciliousness, lack of empathy and an ability to deny history, science, reality and to reverse direction on a dime.
As I watched Mitt confronted on the tube by his own history of reversals in what should have been the friendly setting of GOPTV, I had to clench in sympathy to the rictus smile of the ambushed oligarch. I didn’t sign up for this! No one talks to me like this in my board room – I’m running for President gosh darn it. Why don’t people just like me, I know I do.
extrusion through the pen of graham greene
December 1st, 2011Despair is too high a price for my surprise that our man was extruding licorice instead of plastic on our extruder after hours. Intended as a sideline for Sees Candy, a mix up in delivery carried with it the seeds of damnation. Three tones of licorice (not recycled, but biodegradable) ended up in thousands of tree wells in Santa Ana.
Somehow our man got tangled, spun like a top, in strands of licorice, in a too tight cummerbund and lay immobilized on the floor. This sort thing is better done in India where it takes two servants to get the thing on. For my light entertainments I always travel with long folds of extra commerbund and moskito netting.
One of the hazards of compassion, is that one can cleave to the notion of corruption and pity without a trace of sentiment. If you were a convert, you could to. One thing is certain, after pouring myself a glass of pink gin-or is it bitters?
Tomorrow the mortician will be a a shilling or two richer.