the bad shipping news

The whining and hang-wringing about the "credit crunch" is getting on my nerves. It was this supposed crisis that led to the $700 billion bailout and we're told every day that it must be solved quickly, no matter the cost, or we're toast. But why? How many of us are actively seeking credit right now? Surely the developers and retailers want us to have lots and lots of it so we can keep hyper-consuming their goods; the bankers want us to have it so they can collect their interest and fees but, seriously, is free-flowing credit what the American public needs right now? Living beyond our means is what caused the credit meltdown in the first place!

Here's a meaty statistic: the Baltic Dry Index, which measures the demand for global shipping capacity, dropped from 11,793 last May to, get this, an inconceivable zero. The complexity of the BDI is beyond the scope of this post but, suffice it to say, there are lots of cargo ships sitting at anchor today. The collapse of the BDI augurs a rapidly evaporating demand for foreign goods. Combine this with the massive deterioration in domestic consumption during the fourth quarter of 2008, and wager a guess as to the meaning of it all. We're not buying anything and the world is following suit! So tell me, Wall Street wizards, why the continued hyperbole about a credit crunch?

How could our purchasing habits change so dramatically overnight? Currently, Americans own an estimated 250 million personal computers and 175 million iPods. There are 9 million mobile homes within our borders, approximately 102-130 million single-family homes, and countless million apartments. One could safely assert that there's a home, an mp3 player and a personal computer for every man, woman and child in the United States. I'll go on. Everyone has a television, a cell phone. Nearly everyone owns a car. Most have closets full of clothes they never wear, and we all have too many shoes. So when Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke or anyone else talks about freeing up the flow of credit, we should ask ourselves why.

Recently, through the dense economic fog came a thin ray of revelation: I may actually have enough stuff. Perhaps, just maybe, I can stop buying new stuff for awhile. I can keep my slightly dented iPod for yet another year. My Toyota with 90,000 miles is probably good for another road trip or two. I won't move to a bigger house just yet, or buy the 52" flatscreen Santa forgot to leave under the tree. I may have to forego the spring sales and make do with last summer's tank tops, wrong color though they may be.

I don't mean to minimize the hardship of doing without, but we are a nation of excess inventory. Somewhere in our stuffed dressers and overfull garages, there is room to accommodate a changed perspective.

Wall Street is telling us that all will soon be well. If we just give them hundreds of billions, they'll take their cut and loan the rest to us so we can get back to "business as usual". But what if we don't cooperate with their economic "recovery" plan? What if we collectively turn our backs on Wall Street and Madison Avenue and live simply, buying what we need and paying as we go, stopping to share with others along the way?

Remember, our banks and investment companies built themselves toward inevitable failure during the economic boom. Don't expect them to act nobly in the coming recession because they won't -- you can bank on that. So stop worrying about their silly market indices and their credit machinations. Let the Federal government give them another trillion pieces of worthless paper. Help them plaster their walls with negotiable instruments. Make them eat derivatives for breakfast, sell them short against the box and leverage them to outerspace. Leave them with their excess shipping capacity and their phantom dollar bills.

It's time for the rest of us to disembark this sinking stinking ship for good.

Revolutionaries in the wilderness

Edward Abbey presaged America’s current path to tyranny forty years ago and predicted that the end of American democracy would be coincident with the destruction of the wilderness.

What’s the connection between democracy and wilderness? Personal liberty is a fleeting commodity, according to Abbey, and history has shown that governments invariably move toward totalitarianism. When faced with authoritarian governance, wilderness is crucial because it serves as both a refuge from political oppression and a base for guerrilla warfare. Uprisings in urban settings are too quickly quelled by those with better weaponry, but hidden in mountain, desert or jungle settings, revolutionaries can gain an edge on establishment forces and engage in protracted — sometimes successful — battle. Consider Che in the mountains, the Vietcong in the jungle, Osama bin Laden in a desert cave.

From Desert Solitaire:
Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people — the following preparations would be essential:

1. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so they can be kept under close surveillance and where, in the case of trouble, they can be bombed, burned, gassed or machine-gunned with a minimum of expense and waste.

2. Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching population into the cities. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment.

3. Restrict the possession of firearms to the police and the regular military organizations.

4. Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth. Large masses of people are more easily manipulated and dominated than scattered individuals.

5. Continue military conscription. Nothing excels military training for creating in young men an attitude of prompt, cheeful obedience to officially constituted authority.

6. Divert attention from deep conflicts within the society by engaging in foreign wars; make support of these wars a test of loyalty, thereby exposing and isolating potential opposition to the new order.

7. Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns.

8. Raze the wilderness. Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, strip-mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate the deserts and improve the national parks into national parking lots.

In a final round of environmental fuck-yous, the Bush administration has offered up significant portions of pristine Utah wilderness to oil exploration. Aside from one notable monkeywrenching incident, the trashing of the American wilderness continues unabated.

the comforting solidity of Mother Earth

"We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men."
~Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Strengthening my resolve

It's already twelve days into the new year and I'm just getting around to making some resolutions. Actually, I made some resolutions awhile ago but I'm only now getting to the Resolution Implementation phase which doesn't bode well for my poor dear resolutions.

One big resolution for 2009? Write more. And I will later today, or maybe tomorrow. Hopefully before 2010.

Dang.

Freeze a jolly good fellow

A highlight of the Christmas season every year is gathering my big family together under one roof -- my children, my parents, five siblings and their spouses, and twelve (thirteen by year's end!) nieces and nephews. Everyone is married now, save me and the kids, but I can recall many a holiday when new boy- or girlfriends were part of the celebration.

Tales of our past houseguests poke edgewise into at least one family conversation every year. Each of these dear departed-from-us souls has left behind fond memories, and I imagine that we've provided them with a few stories as well. Like how my sisters and I share a secret language of syllables and partial thoughts that no one can follow, not even our mother. Or how all three of my brothers-in-law swill too much grog every year and end up running naked through whatever neighborhood we're in, losing wallets and shoes and sustaining minor injuries in the imponderable annual ritual.

It's no wonder that the poor dears rarely returned the following year. It isn't that we didn't want to bring them into the fold; we did, and we tried. "Once when Joey was in first grade and I was in fifth, she went to a different school than the rest of us because we'd just moved back here from Topeka and there wasn't room at DR so I walked her to school and one of our friends, whose parents were Irish. . ." But with stories flying and a lifetime of shared experiences providing the framework, the new loves found themselves smack in the middle of what must've seemed to be a verbal maelstrom.

Occasionally my younger brother Andy would attempt interaction through the use of punnery. I know this was a friendly overture to our visitors because the entire family, so far as I can tell, despises puns, mostly because of him. When I was in high school, 11-year-old Andy -- redheaded, bespectacled, buck-toothed Andy -- would hang about ten feet away from my friends and interject punny witticisms whenever he could. My friends laughed (laughed!) at his horrid intrusions which would incense me. "Mom! Andy is bugging us! He's telling stupid jokes again!" My mom would admonish him, much too kindly to satisfy me, "Andy, sweetie, leave the big girls alone, and stop making puns. People hate puns."

Punnitry, for those who've been spared the exposure, is largely the trick of compacting two or more ideas within a single word or expression. It's wordplay at its most punitive. To wit: Punnery is a rewording experience, especially around Christmas time. That's when people exchange hellos and good buys with each other, the time of year when every girl wants her past forgotten and her presents remembered, the time of year when mothers have to separate the men from the toys.

Yes, that kind of punnishment.

Studies have shown a correlation between punderstanding and sound intellect, so the dumb jokes aren't really so dumb. Puns are found in many of Shakespeare's plays and in the Bible, more proof that they appeal to the lofty among us. Still, I loathe puns, which must be evidence that I'm not particularly clever, or so the punnits would have me believe.

This year will be only family and there will surely be a shortage of dumb jokes around the table. To take the heat off poor punmeister Andy, I'm going to surprise my family with a few holiday puns of my own. I won't trouble you with the three pages I've amassed so far but, trust me, much pun will be had this year. Enough to satisfy everyone for years and years to come, I can only hope.

So, Meretricious to all! And don't forget that There's No Plate Like Chrome for the Hollandaise!

Running on empty

Red BULL contains: caffeine, ginseng and guarana (all legal stimulants) sugars, artificial sweeteners, taurine (an amino acid said to lower blood pressure).
Red BULL promises: increased energy, better concentration, sharper cognitive performance, greater endurance, higher metabolism, faster reaction time.
Red BULL delivers: increased heart rate, heightened blood pressure, anxiety, jitters, hyperactivity, insomnia, hypoglycemia, dehydration.

A single can of Red Bull or any other "energy drink" increases your risk of heart attack or stroke. The caffeine-jacked soda pop causes blood to become sticky which is a pre-cursor to cardiovascular problems. One hour after drinking Red Bull, the blood system becomes abnormal, functioning as it would in a patient with heart disease. This effect is seen even in young people.

Take a look at Red Bull's website. The company has aligned itself -- through high-dollar sponsorships, which are nothing more than manipulative ad campaigns -- with the sporting crowd. It started with rodeo; the Red Bull logo is tailor-made for a swaggering cowboy. The company's tentacles have reached into the racing circuit, BMX cycling, extreme skiing, even soapbox derby. You'll find athlete superstars wearing the Red Bull logo in arenas and venues across the globe.

It would be one thing if Red Bull was marketing its product to coke heads and junkies, providing them with a legal daytime buzz. But to suggest that athletes will benefit from the "energy" Red Bull offers is wildly irresponsible and evil. Unlike the electrolyte-balanced rehydration found in Gatorade, Red Bull is chock full of stimulants which cause rapid DE-hydration, making energy drinks exceptionally dangerous when used in rigorous physical activity. Fainting, loss of consciousness, kidney failure, and death are a few of the more troubling outcomes of serious dehydration.

Threatening the health and well-being of rednecks and jocks the world over wasn't quite enough for these bastards. Red Bull expanded its reach into the late night crowd. Barfare like "Vodka Bulls" and "Jaeger Bombs" combine Red Bull's powerful stimulants with a heavy depressant which can lead to heart failure and other health crises. Norway, France, Denmark, and even Uruguay have banned sales of Red Bull completely.

History has shown us that we can't expect responsible behavior from corporations. They have an apparent duty to shareholders to make money, unfettered by ethical considerations. That's why the Food and Drug Administration has been appointed our trusty watchdog. As soon as they've finished banning every natural supplement found in any organic health food store, I know they'll muster the energy to take on Red Bull.

That day can't come soon enough. Many of us are tired of running on empty promises.

the Advent Conspiracy

Consumerism allows people to create the illusion of giving without having to sacrifice anything personal. Buying loads of useless or unneeded crap, wrapping it up in mountains of toxic paper and ribbon, presenting it, often by mail, to recipients we rarely see seems a requirement for anyone who isn’t Scrooge.

Let's try something new. Give presence this holiday season. Give time and attention, spend creative energy, become less fractured and manic, more unified and peaceful. Refuse to spend your useless gift quota ($450,000,000,000 spent each year in the U.S. divided by the American gift-buying population -- that's your required outlay). Donate some of the money you didn't spend to Living Water International, an organization working to provide fresh water to undeveloped countries.

A lack of clean water is the leading cause of death in under-resourced countries. 1.8 million people die annually from water-born illnesses, nearly 4,000 children every DAY. It's estimated that $10 billion would solve the world's fresh-water crisis. $10 billion. Our national priorities are beyond fucked up.

the Edsel's missing poetry

In the mid-fifties the newly-public Ford Motor Company sought a name for its soon-to- be-released experimental car, known in its design stage as the E-car. After in-house marketers came up with 300-odd names which were felt to be embarrassing in their pedestrianism, the company approached Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Marianne Moore, an icon of the popular culture, known as much for her wild passion for baseball and boxing as for her poetry. What Ford wanted was a car name that “flashes a dramatically desirable picture in people’s minds,” from a woman who seemed to know mainstream America. What they got was “Anticipator,” “Thunder Crester,” “Pastelogram,” “Intelligent Whale,” “The Resilient Bullet,” “Mongoose Civique,” “Andante con Moto,” “Varsity Stroke” and then, as her very last try for the name magic, “Utopian Turtletop.”

Understandably disappointed by Moore’s ideas, the company hired a marketing firm. When the agency forwarded a list of 18,000 possible names, it fell upon corporate executives to choose the best among them for final consideration. Every day an appointed panel of executives would assemble in an appointed projection room to watch as thousands of names were flashed across a screen in six-inch high letters, to oblivion unless someone shouted, “Stop!” and gave reasons for his enthusiasm.

None of the final contenders, neither “Corsair” nor “Citation” nor “Ranger” nor “Pacer,” made the grade in the end, and Ford returned to its earlier idea — one that had been rejected for years by the Ford family — and named the car after company scion, Edsel Ford.

Of course, the Edsel was a spectacular failure on many levels, marketing most notably. Later consumer surveys revealed that the public strongly disliked the name, associating it with Edson tractors, dead cells (batteries) and weasels.

Ode to a floater

Oh, squiggly line in my eye fluid, I see you there, lurking on the periphery of my vision. But when I try to look at you, you scurry away. Are you shy, squiggly line? Why only when I ignore you do you return to the center of my eye? Oh, squiggly line, it's all right. You are forgiven.
-Stewie from Family Guy

twiLight the horror

I'm compelled by admiration to link to Eric's post on our shared blog Not My Tribe. As a mother of girls in the thick of an Edward-the-dreamy-vampire lovefest, I felt particular pain upon reading his take on the Twilight phenomenon. I'm going to read the book this weekend, desperately seeking leeway to temper his indictment of those of us who've allowed our daughters to enter the seedy genre of 'tween romance.