Choosing the Wrong Side...Again

Choosing the Wrong Side...Again

“...the ownership of something thanks to the transferral of capital is not enough to make the owner a capitalist. After all, the ownership of inanimate objects, such as land or buildings or gold, existed long before capitalism. Those who increase their capital by trading in such commodities are merely speculating on the value of goods. To make money out of an increase in their value is not a capitalist act.”

The Highjacking of Capitalism from Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul

What we are seeing in this looming financial crisis is simply more of the same. We saw the same thing with the Savings and Loan bust of the early Reagan years, the stock market collapse in 1987, the tech bubble bust of 2001, and now another, larger version of something that looks a lot like all of those put together. We are being told that we must bailout this mess for our own good. Most Americans didn't see much gain in the years when everything was going through the roofs. It seems pretty obvious that a bailout will simply ensure that we will have yet another crash as soon as the geniuses on Wall Street figure out the next place to create money out of nothing. I'm guessing the next sector of the economy they will prey upon and quickly devastate will be health insurance companies. Imagine the mess our already messy health care system will find itself in when the insurance providers say they are all broke. Can you say “socialized medicine?” Well, you should have said that about 15 years ago when that rather sane option was still available.

Perhaps it's finally time to let these “capitalists” play by the rules of capitalism. True capitalism (besides actually making shit instead of just printing fake money) is practiced under the assumption of risk. I am not the least bit interested in helping some Wall Street banker make a payment on his third home in Davos or Vail and I have a feeling that is where a lot of this $700 billion is going. I say let them all fail and try to help out the losers on the bottom end of the economic spectrum for a change. This should use up about $100 billion and with the rest we can invest in some aspect of our economy that actually makes something, you know, like under real capitalism. Preferably we should be investing in industries that will make America stronger, smarter, and a better place to live for all of our citizens, you know, like under socialism.

I said back in 2002 that it was a shame that America lost so much money in the dot com bust. Investors mostly got swindled by start-up companies that had no idea what to do with the huge amounts of capital they were given. I was living in Seattle during all of this and I got a glimpse of where the money was going. Most of the money was simply pocketed by the clever few who ran the ponzi schemes masquerading as high tech firms. Could you imagine America's technological leap forward if most of this money actually had gone into research and development instead of the bank accounts of a few greedy assholes? At the very heart of the tech boom it was more about greed than innovation. What a wasted opportunity. When these same creeps realized that there wasn't enough money to be made in the stock market, they turned to these crazy banking schemes. I remember the first time I heard about variable rate mortgages and thinking that it was an insane idea.

This new financial meltdown makes the tech bust of 2001 look like pocket change. Once again it will mean that we are investing in the wrong area of our economy. It means we are favoring speculation over production. The artificial wealth created by Wall Street didn't make its way down to main street. Most Americans have seen their real incomes drop, or at least have noticed barely noticeable increases. Meanwhile, you just need to look around to see where all of this wealth is being accumulated. Just look at the excesses of America's richest 1%. They make the pre-revolution French aristocracy look like tenant farmers. The crazy thing is that middle and lower income Americans who vote Republican actually defend this wanton redistribution of wealth from poor to rich. What part of the pie don't you get? The pie is only so big and if 1% have more than 33% of total net worth and 80% of Americans have only something like 16% of net worth, then something isn't working and needs to be adjusted. The way to adjust that isn't to hand over a $700 billion check to Wall Street with no strings attached.

Porn World Shocked by Drug Scandal

Commissioner Jeremy vows a full investigation.

The porn industry was rocked by the news that one of its biggest stars has tested positive for a performance enhancing drug. Randi Huevos, last year's winner of the Golden Spike, porn's biggest award, was rushed to Hollywood's Dianetics hospital after he collapsed during the shooting of an orgy scene in his latest XXX epic, Girls Gone Really, Really, Seriously Wild. Huevos had reportedly been snorting a mixture of Viagra and Tinactin, known as “crank shafting” in drug parlance. The Viagra is for enhanced sexual performance and the athlete's foot anti-fungal remedy is to stave off gangrene in the body's other extremities that suffer acute blood loss during prolonged erections. This is the industry's biggest crisis since 1995 when it was revealed that porn legend Audrey Muff had faked several on-camera orgasms. Doctors report that Huevos must be kept under conditions absolutely free of a any sexual connotation and is therefore in a private room in the Hilary Clinton wing of the hospital where he is forced to watch Sister Act.

The commissioner of pornography, Ron Jeremy, has released a statement in which he assures the public that this is a very isolated incident and that people should not lose faith in their favorite adult movie stars. “Our actors aren't wallowing in sleaze, they aren't like athletes, politicians, or stockbrokers. They are, after all, Americas greatest heroes. Randi Huevos is a fine young man and I consider him a personal friend. A deep bond develops between actors who have 'crossed swords' on a film set. I actually poked Randi in the eye during the filming of Forest Hump and he didn't get mad or anything, even though he had to wear an eye patch for two months afterwards. Still, there is no excuse for what he did. He has brought shame on a very proud profession. People look up to porn stars, they are role models. The public deserves better. I would like to add a little in defense of Randi Huevos. He has been on a grueling work schedule for over a year. He made over 400 scenes last year alone. Plus he has a wife and a mistress on the side. Do the math, people. Any way you slice it, that's a lot of amore.”

Pornographic video rentals have dropped off precipitously since the scandal has unfolded. We interviewed a customer at a store of America's largest porn emporium, The Smut Hut. “It ain't that it has affected me real bad, but my three kids took it kinda hard. They really idolized Randi. Little Earl, my ten year old, has wanted to be a porn star ever since we took him to see Back Door Little Mermaid when he was seven. Now what do I tell him? What if he goes back to wanting to be a figure skater?”

Commissioner Jeremy has suspended Huevos for six months and a complete investigation is pending. “I plan to interrogate each of the eight actresses who were working on the set the day Huevos had his break down. I will interview each of them separately, or maybe two at a time. Hell with it, I'll do them all at once, and I won't need to cheat by using drugs,” Jeremy said from his world headquarters office where he was inexplicably not wearing pants. “This may call for me to do some undercover work where I will be disguised as a Mexican pool boy or a plumber. To the porn-mobile!” The still pants-less and very hirsute Jeremy was followed out of his stately office suite by three coke-head runaways who had been under his desk during the entire interview.

The Candidate and The Mayor of Simpleton

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So with Sarah Palin we are getting more of the same thing we had with Bush: a public servant who is anything but public. We elect these people and then they are handled half-to-death by those who are really running things behind the scenes. Bush hasn't made a truly public speaking engagement ever since the wars began. He has only appeared in extremely controlled situations where there hasn't been any sort of opposition to call him out on his policies. The only audience the Bush people have allowed to hear him speak are military groups, civilian defense contractors, or right-wing propaganda mills (otherwise known as “think tanks.” I hate that name for groups who do very little thinking). And forget about Dick Cheney; he hasn't come out from behind the curtain—if only to snarl—in so long we've almost forgotten about him completely. These are elected officials acting like despots.

And now we have Sarah Palin. She seems to be almost completely a figment of the conservative imagination: a loving mother, a maverick elected official unafraid to take on the powers that be (curious since “the powers that be” are the folks in her own party), morally steadfast, a proud defender of America, and—because we are in the TV age—hot. She is being treated by her handlers as if she were some Saudi princess who cannot have contact with anyone outside of her immediate family. In her two interviews with the twin morons of Hannity and Gibson she has yet to offer anything but the most puerile thoughts on the position she may soon fill.

I really appreciate that The Daily Show is absolutely the only news source that takes the piss out of what we are being presented as news, but Fox News is too terrifying in its scope and they don't give a shit about what the little TDS thinks of their maneuvering. Plenty of Americans seem all to willing to accept this completely mediocre woman as our next vice president. Why wouldn't they? They have already accepted far less in the case of the current White House resident.

I tried to watch the entire Fox “interview” on youtube but I guess my stomach isn't as strong as it used to be. I used to be able to drink cheap tequila right from the bottle but I couldn't get past Palin's moronic homilies on the wonders of our all volunteer army or how America cannot retreat from Iraq. Listening to her regurgitate what her handlers have shoved down her throat these past couple of weeks made me realize that I'd be afraid to have her substitute teach a seventh grade English class because of the damage she could do to their young minds. Yet McCain and company are serious about making her the vice president, and a quick glance at the actuarial tables points also to her likelihood of soon thereafter becoming president.

Who can say where this farce will end, a play that begins with Sean Hannity masquerading as a journalist and Sarah Palin pantomiming the role of vice president? Part of the reason that George W. Bush was ushered into office was the way the Right took the sworn testimony of Bill Clinton when the former president played about with the meaning of one word. They took Clinton's disingenuous self-defense and they manipulated it into an object of tremendous outrage. Bill Clinton was a liar and they had the proof. It didn't matter at all to them that what was at the heart of the Clinton perjury was completely fatuous and without the least bit of consequence to the American people. The lies of the Republicans in the Bush White House are well documented. These lies have led us into wars costing thousands of American lives and perhaps well over 100,000 civilian lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the monetary costs. Has it been hundreds or thousands of billions of dollars? Once you get that many zeros behind a number it really is too much for most human minds to fathom.

And now their lies have sprung to life in the form of Sarah Palin, their most creative untruth thus far. She is a woman who lies so comfortably that you wonder why she would bother to ever tell the truth (since the truth for them seems to be so painful). She will fit right in with her new owners. She is already paper trained and eager to learn.

Cooking at Home

Cooking at Home



This was my first paella with my new 46 centimeter paella pan. I don't know what it is about this pan but it makes my penis feel a LOT bigger. I can't believe that I used to cook with a 40 centimeter pan. I mean, what was I? Some sort of twinkie? Notice that I am wearing an Iraqi soccer jersey splattered with paella stock. It's not blood, I swear. I figure, what better way to show my support for the Iraqi people than turn into some sort of Iraqi football hooligan?



I am not any sort of a dessert guy but I couldn't pass up these great peaches I came across in the market yesterday. I'm not even a big fan of peaches but these were absolutely magnificent. I cobbled together a peach cobbler from a couple of different recipes I came across. If this doesn't kill me I think I may be immortal. It has a ton of butter, sugar, brown sugar, flour, 2 eggs, and a bunch of crushed cookies. Someone please come by and help me eat this otherwise the firemen will have to come by with chain saws to cut a path big enough for me to get out of the apartment. It is way too sweet to top with ice cream so I used Greek yogurt. Damn, this was good.

Movie Night

Movie Night

I always say that I am going to watch more films in Spanish but I never seem to follow through on this promise to myself. Watching movies on Spanish TV is a bit difficult for a couple of reasons. I prefer to listen to Spanish movies through headphones as the quality is better and the sound is more direct. My TV doesn't have a headphone jack. I also have a hard time making it over the initial hurdle of commercials that usually begin after the first five minutes or so of a lot of movies on television. They run almost ten minutes of commercials during this block and I often forget what it was that I started watching. There is only so much Spanish to be learned from Don Limpio (aka Mister Clean, whose Spanish version looks like a waiter in a gay night club a) commercials and ads for the latest McDonald's product to hit the Iberian peninsula.

I have finally got over my aversion to dubbed movies. I would never watch a movie dubbed into English, preferring to read subtitles if I can't understand the original language of the film. I understand why Spanish people rely so heavily on dubbed movies as it would be rather tiresome to have to read at least every other movie you come across. The difficult thing for me with movies dubbed into Spanish is that the sound quality suffers during the process and I often have a hard time understanding the dialogue. A dubbed movie is no longer a deal-breaker for me as any exposure to Spanish is helpful.

Going to a movie theater isn't always a wise option. There is rarely anything new that I care to see, and rarer still is a new movie for which I am willing to shell out 7-8€. I can wait for the video. Luckily for me we have a little movie theater in my neighborhood that shows non-current movies for cheap. Cinestudio D'Or (Carrer D'Almirall Caradoso 31) is about five blocks from my apartment. They show a double feature that changes every week. On weekends they charge 4€ for both and on some weekdays it's only 2.50€ (that's $129.99 American). I should go every week even if the movies are lousy just to listen to three hours of Spanish.

I just recently saw two newer Spanish films: Casual Day and Todos Estamos Invitados. Not very good movies but for 2.50€ I wasn't risking much. I really notice that I understand more and more when I watch movies. It is especially rewarding when I pick up on a bit of slang or something that only someone who has lived in Spain would understand. Watching Spanish movies also adds to the sort of cultural intelligence that helps me better understand what is being said here in Spain. Just think about how often American movies are quoted in conversation. When I make a joke about “Log Jammin,'” everyone knows that I am referring to the porn film starring Karl Hungus in the movie The Big Lebowski. As far as culture and language go, everything is interrelated and it almost always starts with The Big Lebowski (or ends there).

2.50€ times two means that the little cinema by my apartment is what you would call a cheap date. You can also bring in whatever you want including beer and wine. I remember the first time I went there—empty-handed—and boy did I feel like an idiot when I saw the couple sitting next to us drinking nice cold beers. Let's just say that I haven't made that mistake twice. It is rather comical the sort of food Spanish people bring to the movies: sandwiches, bags of chips, and Tupperware containers filled with god-knows-what. I half-expect to see someone bring in a whole ham and start carving it up, or perhaps a paella. Enjoy the movie and bon appetit (buen provecho).