Stay Human, What's In A Name

Dr Desert Flower and I are big fans of Stephen Colbert.  We DVR his show each night, and enjoy watching it the next evening after dinner.  National ratings have shown that DDF and I are not alone, and Late Night with Stephen Colbert is now the highest rated late night show. Not all of Stephen's guests are interesting to us, but the monologue is always great.

Stephen was smart enough to ally himself with the musical genius and genuinely nice person Jon Batiste as his band leader, at the head of Stay Human.  From the very first time I saw the band name Stay Human, I started thinking about its origins, etymology and implications.  The First thing that came to mind, is the obvious concept "remain a human, a nice person, don't become a mean jerk".  And that Might have been what Jon Batiste had meant to imply.

But a single interpretation is kinda boring... so I thought of several other meanings:

Stay, human!  - as spoken by an alien, who has a human as a pet, who is trying to train the human to behave when the alien goes to work.  Stay, sit, fetch, shake... all commands that an obedient human pet could obey, as long as they are smarter than the average alt-right voter.  The Porno For Pyros song Pets made me think of this concept.  (imperative)

Stay, human... Stay, human.... - the heart-felt wish of a werewolf during a full moon who may be visiting his fiancee's parent's home, and who doesn't want to change into a werewolf and kill his new family. (futile)

Stay human - a strategy move, proposed by a D&D player, to move one of his other pieces and leave his human character alone; the human stays still while the halfling or the elf moves forward.  (strategic)

Stay human - when Han Solo and Chewbacca show up at a cantina where they are not welcome, and the owner discriminates against Wookies whom he refuses to serve.  (discriminatory)

Stay Human - an intergalactic B&B where various species from different worlds who are traveling through want to rest.  At Stay Human, they cater to the needs of homo sapiens, and they've earned a 3 nebula rating.  = )  (recreational rental)

Stay, Human - a decision by a Federation of Planets Appellate Court Judge to prevent the Humans from doing something really stupid (again)... similar to how the 9th Federal Circuit Court here on Earth keeps stopping Drumpf's bigoted, misguided, xenophobic and illegal executive orders, declaring a stay on implementation of such idiotic and mean-spirited policies. (legal)

Stay, human? - an incredulous and disappointed trans-species cyborg response who was trying to become more machine like, when his friends and relatives implore him to stop the transformation and remain as a human... even though he was very determined to go through the full transformation to 100% machine.  (incredulous)

Stay human - as nations and political parties become increasingly tribal, isolationist, and hateful towards one another, unable to communicate or find common ground... perhaps through music, Jon Batiste believes he can bring such opposite polarized parties together, keeping everyone as "human" as possible  (aspirational)

Stay Human - the decision of the galactic leader of the sea otters from South Park, to prevent the humans from expanding and propagating throughout the galaxy, and containing them to a smaller sphere of influence.   (societal)

In A Dragon Based Economy, Geography Doesn't Matter

In a Dragon Based Economy, apparently geography doesn't really matter.  Or "everything you wanted to know about the Game of Thrones season premier, but we're too afraid to ask".

Dragonstone is near Jamie's feet, Kings Landing is 1/2 way to his sister & lover Cersei

I call it a "Dragon Based Economy" because that what John Oliver called it on Colbert's Late Night show twice last week.  "We're talking some serious dragon money" - when Last Week Tonight bought 5 wax presidents from a closing Ohio Presidential museum.  Game of Thrones is one of the Main anchors that brings in subscribers (and pirates) to HBO, along with Real Time (which I watch, every time it's on), The Leftovers (which I couldn't care less about), and Ballers (which I can't give even 1/2 a sh*t about no matter how hard I try).  Westworld was a good series, and in my mind, Needed to STOP when it stopped.  There's Zero Need to continue with Samurai Westworld, Outer Space Westworld, or Ancient Roman Westworld...  but the bean counters and non-creatives at HBO apparently disagree with my perspective and want to keep raking in the cash from zombified viewers.

Another Danish actor steal jobs from good Americans & Brits

Now, why do I state that "geography doesn't matter"?  Well, the newly usurping & murderous Lord of the Iron Born Euron Greyjoy (putting the "Ew!" in "Euron") shows up with an armada of "1000 ships" at Kings Landing, in an attempt to gain favor with Queen Cersei (and ask for her hand in marriage... ew!!! I think I just tasted some of my own vomit), but his massive fleet somehow doesn't run into the even more massive fleets of Greyjoy deserters, Unsullied warriors, 2nd Sons (I'm actually a 2nd son myself, heh heh), and the Dothraki Horde - not to mention 3 massive and very hungry dragons that have been flying air cover for the invading fleet - that Daenerys Targaryen is leading to the island of Dragonstone.  Dragonstone, per the maps of Westeros, is near the eastern mouth of the long bay that eventually leads to Kings Landing.  The Iron Islands, Pyke, are on the Western side of Westeros, north of Casterly Rock.  THERE IS NO Northern Passage, as global warming has not yet melted the ice caps north of the Seven Kingdoms as it already has in Canada and Russia on this world in this age, where Polar Bear mothers now have to swim for more than a 100 miles with their newly born cubs to reach the pack ice, where upwards of 90% of the cubs are drowning, exhausted, as they used to only have to swim a mile or 2 at most.  At least I got to see a Polar Bear in the zoo when I was a kid, before they all become extinct.

But human driven climate change aside, Ewwww-Euron's 1000 ships would have had to sail Down around the Southern end of Westeros, past Dorne, and then northward UP the Narrow Sea, side-by-side or just ahead / just behind Daenerys's even bigger fleet was sailing through, with 3 circling and hungry dragons who would have obliterated the 1000 Greyjoy ships just as they torched the slavers ships in Slaver's Bay several seasons ago, until the slavers finally surrendered and Daenerys took their ships for her crossing of the Narrow Sea.  I've included a handy screen shot from the episode where Cersei is standing in the middle of a courtyard painted as the map of Westeros, for your reference, above.  Both fleets could no co-exist in the same Narrow Sea at the same timer even within a few days of each other, due to their MASSIVE sizes and the remarkably slow pace that sail driven sea travel has when flying just one or 2 sails, and not a massive array of studding sails, spanker sails, royal, sky, moonraker, and top sails as Only Euron's flag ship tried to set (with aerodynamic inaccuracies, sorry special effects folks who were concerned more with style than substance).  "That which is dead can never die" ... no..  how about "that which is dumb cannot get dumber", or "that which is repulsive cannot get even more repulsive".  So Euron's travel to and appear in Kings Landing was not logistically possible, unless he somehow teleported or owned a T.A.R.D.I.S. with enough capacity to move his entire fleet instantaneously without running into Daenerys's fleet.

Sure, "The Twins" where they Freys slaughtered and then got slaughtered themselves ("poison is a woman's weapon") apparently divides the northern part of the Seven Kingdoms from the southern part, perhaps for lack of any small boats that could traverse the water way southeast of "The Twins", I can understand that.  But the waterway that "The Twins" crosses Does Not extend all the way to the west coast of Westeros, so there's no way Euron and his massive fleet could have sailed down it.

Geography aside, the Season 7 premier was pretty good.  Several other poignant observations I made in retrospect are as follows:

1) what's scarier than a whole horde of decomposing white walkers who can't be killed with steel weapons?  A horde of decomposing white walkers who have in their ranks ancient Giants whom they've killed and then resurrected as blue eyed white walkers before the giant corpses could be burnt.  Undead zombie giants are Far More Lethal than undead foot soldiers or undead calvary.  An undead giant could lob a spear the size of a telephone pole with a big nasty pointy end, far into the air (like the height of "The Wall" as happened several seasons ago when the Wildling Free Folk attacked "The Wall" with Giants at their side)... and such a spear could impale one of the precious 3 dragons, perhaps killing it.  Then... the Night King resurrects the dead dragon as a undead dragon...  and it kills the other two remaining dragons.  That would be Game Over, for Game of Thrones.  

What's worse than one white walker Giant? Three white walker Giants!

2) if you were not watching with closed captioning on (as we do in our house, with hearing impaired viewers  and for clarity), you would not know that the massively gray scaled hand that tried to reach out to Samwell Tarly was indeed the hand of Jorah Mormont (former Lord of Bear Island, then reluctant slave trader to keep his wife comfortable and provide "the lifestyle to which she was accustomed", then kidnapper of Tyrion and rebuked suitor of Daenerys).  Seems that Jorah made his way to Old Town to seek a cure for grayscale from the Maesters, but Westerosian medicine still didn't have a cure for that ailment.

3) if you've stolen the keys to the forbidden & locked up Maester reference library, and you have only a few seconds to lift an ancient book from the bizarrely chained shelves (was Old Town seismically active?), make sure you pick The Exact Tome that has the history of the Last Winter in it, that shows Precisely where a whole mountain of Dragon Glass is on the island of Dragonstone (at the mouth of the bay that leads right to Kings Landing)... it just seems rather far fetched to me, as I am old enough to remember going to the library Before there was a searchable internet, and you had to use the card catalogue, or the headache inducing microfiche, and you spent hours and hours searching to find just one or two gems that you could include in a bibliography.  There was no Google, Yahoo, Bing, Lycos,  Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, Infoseek, or Webcrawler back when I was in school.  If you wanted to find a book in a library, you had to search for it, long and hard, and hope you got lucky and it wasn't checked out when you finally located it.  Samwell Tarly grabs it The First Pick, while under pressure of being discovered a few seconds later by the next Maester who walks in.  Sure... let's keep suspending disbelief.

Voted most likely to be killed by White Walkers by his Free Folk High School

This should be a good season.  Let the white walkers come... depose the angry Cersei who has no allies (let Arya do it, gleefully)... make a bunch of weapons out of Dragonstone's Dragon Glass cache... wipe out the Greyjoys from the surface of the sea and have their octopus god devour their rotting remains... let the alternative lifestyle Dorne and Greyjoy girls enjoy themselves together... sacrifice the Free Folk & their leader Tormund Giantsbane to the white walker hordes just as corporate America does to the middle class without blinking an eye... have Brienne take out The Mountain as she took out his little brother and then she and Jaime can get together... let Samwell Tarly save the day with his book-learnin... and let Jon Snow get it on with his 1/2 sister Daenerys once the Starks and Daenerys armies band together to fight the White Walker horde.  I can't care about Baelish, Bran, Sansa, Qyburn, Podrick, man-bun Thoros or one eyed Beric very much at all.  Sure, Martin can kill off most of the main characters and elevate any of these lesser roles if he wants to... but... that would hurt the franchise at this point, and HBO wants to keep making money.  Please just let it be one or two more seasons... and not 4 or 5 more, or it'll go on far too long as the books have.

Louie Gohmert is Ferengi

Stephen Colbert (I am going to miss him after December 18th) revealed this week, that anachronism Louie Gohmert (Texas's First District congressman) is actually Ferengi.  So insightful!  Why had I not seen it earlier?

Superb Owl XLVIII

If you have not watched Colbert's coverage of Superb Owl XLVIII this week, you've missed a hilarious series of shows (links Here, here, and here).   Dancing around copy write and trademark infringement, Stephen and his writers have done a masterful job of making me laugh heartily.

Stephen, you are a genius.  =)

Best Spoken Word Grammy, Colbert 2014!

Colbert won "best spoken word" Grammy for 2014.
link here: http://www.imdb.com/news/ni56718617/
... there will be no stopping the Colbert juggernaut now... Monday night is bound to be hilarious on Comedy Central.  (at least he still does not yet have a Nobel Prize!)

Stephen Colbert Thanksgiving Dinner

This is a new classic.  (link here)

This hits all the high points of a dysfunctional family gathering.  Too funny.  "No girl friend, you ride a bike, and you brought quinoa."  

The Inexperience Of Youth

I was going to title this "The guy's nuts! Grab'em!" ... but you know, I betcha this squirrel fellow was somewhat inexperienced, and thought to himself: "I can reach that feeder, np!"  ...where more experienced / wily / savvy older squirrels would be like "no way man, you might get your sack caught holding on by just your back legs to reach out to the feeder...  too risky... and then what, you'll be hanging there upside down, suspended by the boys, waiting for a hawk to come eat all of you except for your trapped sack? No thanks. You go for it, and show me how it's done, young feller."

Besides, "The guy's nuts! Grab'em" might be trade marked by my friend Matt in Reno...   =)

It is sort of ironic that in an effort to get to the nuts (seeds), he's caught by the nuts.

Other appropriate titles:
- What a total nut job!
- Slippery When Wet
- Instead of trying to do it all by yourself, next time, ask your wife to help
- Colbert would be impressed
- "I got 1/2  of the metal hanger free, and almost knocked it to the ground, when I suddenly felt this terrible pain in my taint..."
- "Hello, is this James Franco? I'm sorta stuck here James, what do I do now?"
- The next time someone says "you don't have the balls to do that", they're going to be right.
- "das kleine Eichhörnchen" ... who said 'squirrel' was neuter gender?!? (das, as opposed to der [m] or die [f])
- the boys back in the will never stop chiding me about storing my nuts for Winter now
- "It only happens when it rains"

Colbert Tyson interview

It's a little old, pre-Higgs Boson discovery, but it still has some good points.   While I know some of my close friends deride Neil, I think his passion for science is a force of good in the world.

Thirsty Marco

Regardless of content, "rising star" Marco Rubio's (Marco Blonde, in translation) State of the Union Republican rebuttal speech last Tuesday night will be immortalized by his unquenchable thirst.   The Daily Show on Wednesday spoofed him.   Colbert lampooned Rubio's 'stare into the camera regardless of circumstances' And SNL did a great bit as well, with Marco REEEACHHHHING far out of frame to quench his thirst.

Bill Maher pointed out succinctly that Rubio's speech was full of old ideas from 5 years ago, as if President Obama's first term had never happened.  It sounded like the party of whiners, claiming how the Democrats are destroying their great nation, instead of a speech from a up-and-coming-new-party-star who is supposed to be visionary and forward thinking.   Rather sad, but not at all surprising.  

Menaced by Denis

I've been Menaced by Denis.  Lemme explain.  I needed to get my first Californian haircut.  It's been almost 3 months now, and I was getting a bit shaggy.  So I go to the place Dr Desert Flower gets her hairs cut, but it was Monday, and they had some kind of hair demonstration, CEU, training session going on, so everyone (about 20 women) ignored me as I stood by the front door and receptionist podium.

No problem, I had a Target run to do - Rainex for the cars' windshields, bike gloves to replace the ratty ones my son left, new socks to replace the holey-ed ones.  Went to Target, cruised a couple of strip malls looking for another possible hair salon - found 2 closed salons, one Vietnamese nail salon/hair combo place whose acetone vapors hit me before I got out of my Mazda, and one "one chair" salon that had just one stylist doing a color job, and 9 or 10 empty chairs.  No thanks.

So I head back to DDF's preferred salon, and the training class is STILL going on.  I stand at the door, ignored.  So I leave, and walk across the vast parking lot to Supercuts.  I don't normally go for the corporate express hair cut...  but I was getting frustrated.   I walk in, there's 5 or 6 people waiting.  "How long will it be?"  (there's 2 stylists working) "About 30 or 40 minutes" was the polite receptionist's reply.
"Can I make an appointment for later?"
"We don't take appointments more than 30 minutes in advance"
Ugh!
"That's okay, I'll come back another day".
In my car, I realize, it is 3 days before Valentine's Day, and likely everyone who wants a hair cut to impress their beau or belle is getting one...  so I drive home, and google "stylists" in my zip code.   A 20 stylist salon pops up, just a mile south.  I've biked past this place...  I know where it is.. and they'll take walk in's at 4:15.   Kewl.  I'm there.

I walk in... and I am introduced "This is Denis, he'll be your stylist".  Ok.   That's fine.   I haven't had a guy cut my hair since the Barber in Highland cut it when I was a teenager, 2 blocks from my parents' home.  But that's fine.   I show Denis print outs of options 1, 2, and 3, and ask if he can do "Option 1" (the Affleck).  "No problem" he reassures me.  And starts shampooing me.   Why do hair stylists try to talk to you when your head is in a bowl, and they are squirting water into your hair?

Dried off, I get in the chair.  Denis then precedes to tell me (non stop, without me able to get a word in edge-wise) all about
- his world travels
- his hatred of Chicago and fans of Chicago sports teams
- his love of the German language
- his hatred of the French, and how America is "the opposite of France"
- his love of curry and Indian food
- how much he loved visiting China
(I mentioned how Sheldon Addleson, Gingrich and Romney's financial backer, gets more than 1/2 his income from Macao casinos, as Denis waxed on and on about taking his mother to Macao and how much he loved it)
- how this has become a nation of takers who expect to be given everything "I've WORKED for my living!", Denis exclaimed "for anyone to expect their employer to Give Them Anything, ughhh!!!"

As Denis trimmed my side burns, he remarked how most people's ears are not the same height or shape.   I commented on how Colbert's ears are disproportionate, and he said 'I watched him for the first time last week, but I CAN'T STAND that Jon Stewart!"

I remarked how The Daily Show is an equal opportunity satirist show, lampooning BOTH Republican and Democrats, as they each warrant it... and he dismissed my comment summarily.  "if you're not a liberal when you're young, you don't have a heart, and if you're not conservative when you're older, you don't have a brain"  ... ok Denis, your tip is shrinking, exponentially now.

I asked him not to put product in my hair, and he slathered "bed Head" through my short blond and gray.   He then put The Rest of the bed head In His Own Hair...  ew!   I don't want his hair stuff in mine!   (or mine in his, cross pollinated!)

All the while, as Denis was cutting my hair, he would (about every 15 seconds) GRIP my head in his fingers, and RE-TILT it to the position of his choosing, forcefully.  He'd grip my hair, yank it tight, before shearing it.   Not really painfully...  but not pleasantly, and at the strangest angles.   Had I come in with any cervical vertebrae issues, he would have severely injured me.   I've never had any hair stylist ever do that to me before, ever.

When we were all done, he talcum powdered my neck with a horse hair brush, making me EXTREMELY itchy.  I waited until DDF came home to show her my Affleck cut, before I ran upstairs to go shower to get the talc and product out of my hair.  "So you don't want to go to Monday trivia tonight?" - No.   I just want to wash Denis's menacing out of my hair.

DDF does like the hair cut, as my buddy Ron recommended in the comments section...  so that's good.  But I won't be back to have Denis harangue me about the evils of liberals, his love of curry, or have his unlicensed chiropractic services applied to my upper spine.

Now...  off to dinner!  =)

DirectTV Stops Carrying Viacom

Last Tuesday night, The Daily Show and Colbert Report started back up after the 4th of July break.  Dr Desert Flower and I thought that TDS and CR were on a two week hiatus, since there was no reruns or anything being DVR'ed from Comedy Central.

Well, DirectTV is blaming Viacom.  Viacom is blaming DirectTV. They're both being corporate money grubbing douche bags.   Viiacom also blocked ALL streaming of it's content on ColbertNation or The Daily Show website, so I really think that Viacom is being the greedier, more obstinate, evil corporation.  But, COX Cable still carries Comedy Central, so Monday morning, I will be giving DirectTV notice (putting them "On Notice", Colbert style) that they have until Friday to restore my Comedy Central, or, I will be dropping their service and moving COX.   I've heard lousy things about COX, but, they carry the shows I want to watch.

Dish Network carries Comedy Central, but no AMC, so Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men would be inaccessible (I don't care about Breaking Bad and Madmen, but DDF does).  And, Dish is still saddled with a damn Dish, that freaks out and stalls even during mild windy nights, like we had last Friday night, when my HD picture "pixelated".  grrrrr

I don't watch alot of TV, but dammit, when I do, I want it to be there, on a DVR, ready for me.  Daily Show. Colbert. Bill Maher. Game of Thrones. Walking Dead.  Dr.Who. PBS.  Sometimes Modern Family, Tosh.O, Office, or Parks & Rec.  That's really it.  When can I buy JUST THOSE and not all the other garbage the cable provider insists on bundling to me?

Questions Are Better Asked With A British Accent

Last Sunday I had a nice long face to face chat with my Godfather, Uncle Joe, as he baby sat my cousin's kids up in the NW Phoenix suburbs.  We discussed books, politics, taxes, guns, travel, designing, engineering, tooling, and pattern making, to name a few subjects.  We both watch The Daily Show and Colbert, devotedly.  He asked why people continue to vote against their own self interests, and I posed Steinbeck's temporarily embarrassed millionaires theory to him.. which he pondered for a while, rolling it over in his head.

My Uncle and I agree on our progressive media personalities & journalists, though as a retired pattern maker he has more time to listen to progressive radio & watch MSNBC than I do.  We concurred on the following:

Rachel Maddow - very smart, excellent journalist, but sometimes takes Forever to get to the point, and from time to time, tries to turn molehills into mountains.

Ed Schultz - an angry bear.  The left's answer to Sean Hannity.  Too angry and indignant to listen to for any extended period of time.

Al Sharpton - much better as a Progressive TV show host than he was as a politician or activist.  His show can be humourous. 

Lawrence O'Donnell - snarky, snide, biased, great as a "fill in" host for Olbermann and others, but now that he has his own show, too snide & acerbic to stomach.

Keith Olbermann - stuck on Current TV, in a under-funded, hardly-watched, low production value environment that he has trouble not showing how annoyed he is by the dimming lights, lack of satellite feeds, and very unrehearsed / inexperienced support staff.  He was good when he was on MSNBC, but now on Current, he's an "also ran" second or third tier show.

Dylan Ratigan - sometimes spot on, other time rambling or ranting... Ratigan provides a mixed bag that can lack consistency.

Meet The Press's David Gregory - a weak willed, easily bypassed, mostly soft-ball lobbing Sunday interviewer who lets his guests wiggle away and talk fluffy talking point circles around him without trying too hard to get a meaningful answer from them.  (We both miss Tim Russert, tremendously).

and then... Uncle Joe mentioned:

Martin Bashir - I'd not heard of Martin (he's on at noon here in Phoenix) but Uncle Joe said that Bashir doggedly pursues the answer to his questions, in the mode of Tim Russert, drilling down, and latching on, until the guest answers or refuses to answer, but without a dodge or deflection.  So I started DVR-ing Bashir's show.   He's very good, and very determined.  He had a fundamentalism tool, the smug "Rev" Jeffers on his show this week.  Jeffers who wanted to cherry pick and reinterpret New Testament Bible quotes, and Martin corrected the narrow minded Baptist with quotes from the Apostle Paul that shredded Jeffer's arguments.  I thoroughly enjoyed Bashir's interview with a pious religious leader who I normally can't stand. 

I think I have concluded that questions sound best, when asked with an educated, intelligent, British accent. 

I told my uncle how I sometimes record O'Faladel, Hannity, and used to get a kick out of crazy Glen Beck, but I only set the DVT to tape them when Faux News gets all whipped up over nothing.  He shuddered at the thought. 

I'm glad I've got a very cool Godfather, with whom I can discuss a wide range of topics.

Colbert Super PAC Transferred To Jon Stewart

Last night, Colbert's show (link here) VERY SIMPLY explained how evil, ludicrous, despicable, wealth-concentrating, and wrong the Citizen's United SCOTUS decision was that opened the flood gates of the richest 0.1% of the richest 1% of Americans funding political campaigns, and how those completely non-transparent Super PACs can be run by ex-staffers, business partners, or relatives of candidates, as long as they don't "coordinate".  Ridiculous!

Colbert's lampooning of the entire Super PAC process has been spot-on, precise, poignant in peeling back the onion and explaining it, so that "even a 5th grader could understand."

 

I alternated between laughing hysterically, being disgusted by how simple the transfer of unlimited wealth was with a wink-wink, and back again to  uproarious laughter (it's good we don't rent, so I didn't scare the neighbors).

Obama duped young people

"Yes, Obama duped young people by not doing every single thing they want. So now, they’ll all vote Republican. It’s like when I want some bread, I won’t settle for half a loaf. Instead, I will have a muffin made of broken glass."

 

- Stephen Colbert

C to Silent T

Colbert's opening montage "Jump Phrase" this season is quite clever.  "C to Silent T" - ahhhh that silly Stephen!  On Colbert Nation there is a cummulative list, but I can't link to it as this Eee PC netbook is on its last legs.   An i-Pad is probably in my future.

What Percent Are You?

As I'm surrounded by millions of temporarily embarrassed millionaires, I ask you:  "What percentage of the US wealth landscape are you?"  Well, that liberal bastion, the Wall Street Journal, has a calculator where you can find out (link here).

And if you are indignant that you "pay your fair share while so many others don't pay anything in taxes", I recommend the following Kiplinger's sites, that show you how much you make, and what percentage of Americans make as much as you do, and what percentage of the total tax revenue you represent.

Links here: "How do you stack up?"
and here: "Where do you rank?"

Surprised are you?   Millions or Americans are, since they have a "fact allergy".

As Jon Stewart and Colbert have both pointed out, we can take a few more percent from the richest Americans who can most afford it to close the budget gap, OR, take 100% of everything that the poorest 25% of Americans make, every penny they earn, and it won't even match up to 1/2 as much as a 3% tax hike on the richest Americans would bring in.  But like EVERY numb-skull running for the Republican nomination, they wall want to "broaden the tax base".  Yes, geniuses, tax the poorest Americans more who can barely feed themselves, and leave the richest "job creators" alone so that the poorest have to work harder at staying alive while the richest can think harder about perhaps someday, maybe, creating a job perhaps, if it fancies them and they haven't found a better off-shore tax haven into which to put their money.

Affluent Effluent

I almost titled this post "Greek Debt? Euro Crisis? What, Me Worry?"   But then the ironic alliteration of "Affluent Effluent" struck me as much more appropriate as I composed it.

Alfred E Neuman is famously quoted for the phrase "What, me worry?"  And I hear this alot from Americans regarding the current European financial crisis.  Greek debt, Italian bonds, Spanish debt, Irish debt, Portuguese debt... the entire inflated bubble of imaginary worth is getting close to popping.  The inherent evil of CDS (credit default swaps - where the rich take out insurance bets on losers), CDOs (collateral debt obligations, where the rich have packaged high risk debt into beautiful, delicious bundles of AAA rated debt [using credit agencies which they have paid off]) and plutocratic international banking is getting close to imploding, me thinks.

But again, why should I, a somewhat average American member of the 99% care if a bunch of bankers lose their shirts / take a hair cut / feel some pain from their really crappy investments in "financial instruments" created by MIT engineers who've bought into Larry Summers (and his despicable like) version of reality?  After all, they're getting what they deserve, right?  Nope.  Completely wrong.

I do not really understand how international finance schemes work in much detail.  I leave that to my friends who trade in crucibles and who are traditional pineapple practitioners - and the little I know about banking and finance I've picked up from my very smart and very patient friends.  But, I do have a Colbert-like "gut feel" for how Systems work.  As a practicing engineer for 2 dozen years, I've gotten a pretty good feeling of how well functioning systems work, and how to fix most things when they start to malfunction. 

Systems that are designed soundly with solid fundamentals and that are built using high quality products and materials and are documented thoroughly are much easier to fix, to tweak, to manipulate, to improve, to repair, to build upon and to salvage.  One very simple, very ubiquitous example of such a design, is a modern waster water sewage treatment system.  1000s of such systems are functioning well across North America, Europe, Australia, and a few in parts of Asia, parts of South America, and very few parts of Africa.  The pipes carry away the feces, urine, bath water, dish water, and wash water by gravity down to large settling ponds and treatment tanks where chemicals and microbes do very efficient work to convert nastiness into much less nasty effluent - and in some communities (like Flagstaff & San Antonio), into a non-potable irrigation & recreational water source.  In its component parts, its a very simple system, and has worked for more than a 100 years in many communities. 

The affluent rich, the shrinking middle class, and the poor all create the inputs into the system that result in effluent out of the system, and it all flows down-hill - gravity, though just a "theory" like evolution works in the real world, just like evolution works in the real world, regardless of anyone's belief system.  The affluent live far from the smells of the effluent, buffered by the middle class who live adjacent to the smells of the effluent adjacent poor neighborhoods (like my paternal grand mother's 2 bed room home [where she raised 5 children in the 50s] in East Chicago down the street from the EC Water Treatment plant was located before she died).  It's a basic fact, a very stark reality how the affluent have very effectively isolated themselves from the effluent they created.  Isolated geographically, economically, and in a olfactory sense as well.



So understanding how systems work, and understanding how resourceful and enterprising and the affluent 1% are, and knowing how it was the richest of the rich 1% who invented and propagated and facilitated these fictional financial schemes where credit was extended to entire nations the same way that credit was extended to the majority of my Phoenix neighbors whose homes were foreclosed in the last 3 years by the same banks run by the same geniuses who cling so dearly to derivatives...  seeing all this, it is not a quantum leap to see the European Financial crisis and say "yep, that's gonna hurt the regular citizen the hardest".  Goldman Sachs has massive amounts of funds invested in hedging their bets that Greece and Italy will default.  And Jamie Dimond still has Tim Geithner on speed dial, so those two peas-in-a-pod will make sure any European effluent not only doesn't touch Goldman, but that it won't get anywhere close enough to down wind for Goldman to smell it. 

The same goes for Shitty Bank, Well-Too-Far-To-Go, Chase-Yourself, and Skank of America.  Like Goldball Sacks, they will still give their "talented executives" mind boggling bonuses in the Q4 2011 Hanukkah / Christmas season.  They will still slowwwwwwwwwwwwwly process HARP refinancing at a glacial pace, denying consideration of short sales and refusing to write down any principal on any residential mortgage loan anywhere.  They will not only raise ATM usage charges, but they'll nickle and dime their poorest customers, who have the lowest deposits in their accounts, with Romney-esque fees, penalties, and other regressive but profit-stream strategies.  They'll claim they need to do this because of the global economic crisis (which they created), and it will be the average citizen who will pay the price.

There are no effective regulators anymore.  There's no prosecutions, there's no penalties, there's no teeth in the financial laws and regulations on the books currently.  Republicans want fewer regulations and weaker rules than what we have now.  Perhaps sometime during President / Emperor / Great Leader Rick Perry's 2nd or 3rd term, in a post apocalyptic American land scape governed by martial law, average citizens will look back at the "good old times" prior to 2001, when you could own your own home, use credit universally, not have to wear a bullet proof vest, not have to barter for food, gasoline, or ammunition, and could speak in English rather than broken Mandarin or Marklar.  The affluent will make sure their gated communities, guarded and walled compounds, and island resorts are well isolated from any and all of the effluent they're generating and the system they've engineered to keep them separate and very unequal from the steaming masses. 

I hope this serves as a "Clarifier" to all (and look where the output of the "Clarifier" goes!)

TDS Amazing Writing this Summer

If you have not had a chance to watch The Daily Show this summer, June and July have been amazing.  Yes, TDS did take the week of July 4th off, but I was in Amsterdam at that time, and I DVR it anyways.  They've not missed a chance to skewer everyone, Democrats, Republicans, Hypocrites & Idiots alike. Some of the highlights are:

June 13th - Wangover Part II, Unwarranted Hype over a part term Alaskan Governor who quit her job
June 14th - 2nd Republican Debate, Hypocrites tripping over themselves
June 15th - Peurto Rico mini-visit coverage

June 20th - Fox News Fair and (un)Balanced contrived indignation begins, NYC's outdoor smoking ban
June 21st - More of Fox News False Statements (Fox can't understand when they are out-matched)
June 22nd - Grecian Burn debt crisis (yogurt & Molotovs) & how wonderful Goldman Sachs CDS still are, John McCain vs Illegal Aliens,
June 23rd - Obama's impotent Afghanistan draw down announcement


June 27th - Happy Gays, For Fox Sake (again!!)
June 28th - Stewart Eviscerates Stewart (showing Fox again, how they just need to STFU as they dig their own grave deeper)
June 29th - Broke Bank Mounting - I can'[t quit you Boehner! Hilarious!!!
June 30th - Unenthusiastic Republicans, Guano Bachmann, and the advent of the Willie Geist "you should be ashamed" glare

July 4th - The 1st Amendment, 25th Amendment, 2nd Amendment, 21st Amendment, and 14th Amendment

July 11th - Murdoch's troubles
July 12th - Republican allergies to raising ANY revenue to pay for government services
July 13th - Marcus Bachmann's fabulousness
July 14th -Armadebtdon Republican outrage

July 18th - Job Creators, NOT "rich people"
July 19th - More Fox Hypocrisy
July 20th - More Murdoch coverage you won't see on Fox
July 21st - Survival of the Funded, Statements of Clarity That Probably Won't Do You Any Good

July 25th - Armadebtdon 2011 coverage continues
July 26th - The Rightans
July 27th - Right Wing Christian Hypocrisy, GOP SVU
July 28th - Republicans misunderstand & misapply The Town, Dodd-Frank Law F*cking, Cancer is not covered for 9-11 First Responders

Really excellent stuff.  And Colbert's been on target as well. An excellent way to end an evening.

TDS and Colbert, Emmy Material

I was kinda tired Tuesday night, and considered just DVRing The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but I decided to try and watch and see if I conk out on the couch.  Both shows were HILARIOUS!
- Calling out Palin on her hypocrisy and stupidity
- Demonstrating Awesome writing, once again
- Having intelligent, informed, dynamic guests with awesome interviews (Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cornel West)
This is the kind of stuff that Emmies for "Best Writing" and "Best Comedic Series" are made out of.  Truly fantastic shows January 18th 2011.
Daily Show link here.
Colbert Report link here.
Even if you are part of the 20% of America who loves the former part term governor of the great state of Alaska, you have to admire the way the Daily Show writers dissect her talking points - NOT out of context, FULL WITHIN context - and how Colbert voices precisely what Mika Brzezinski is thinking / feeling by her comments and disgusted expression on her pretty face (mmmm Mika.... 6 months younger than I am, and looking as lovely as my 32 year old wife!).  Definitely worth the time to download and watch.

Colbert's Recent Spor(t) Repor(t)

Colbert's recent Sport Report (DVR'ed October 13th) had hilarious references to steroids, the British Empire's Commonwealth Games, and my least favorite quarterback and absentee grandfather Brett Farve.  It's worth a watch. (link here).  Bridge collapses, Dengue fever, hotel room snakes, diarrhea... oh man.