Rabbit is rich

I was clicking around through the NY corner of Blogland this morning, following links to NY blogs, marveling anew at how boring and fucked up so many twenty-something blogger types are and the painfully boring lives of people who blog in general when I finally came across a great site. As with so many cultural insights, I owe thanks to Roy. I noticed a link to Alicublog in this person’s blogroll which made me think it might be worth checking out some of the other listed sites.

So I found Rabbit Blog. Rabbit Blog is the site of Heather Havrilesky, an oft-published magazine writer, where she runs an advice column along the lines of Dear Abbey only much, much better. Her correspondents are interesting, her advice very well-written and sound.

This advice to a guy who was unsure about his position in the corporate world is priceless.

I want you to clear you head and focus on one very basic truth about the workplace, any workplace in the world: It's no fucking fair.

It's very, very important to remember this, no matter what industry you work in, no matter what kind of a job you have. Offices are poorly managed. Almost across the board. In fact, let's make a list of ten things to keep in mind, every single day, before you arrive at your job, whatever job it is.

Rabbit's Eternal Truths of the Workplace

1. Most offices are horribly managed.

2. Most managers can't, technically, "manage" worth a shit.

3. Most coworkers are out for themselves and no one else.

4. Most people -- bosses, colleagues, underlings, whatever -- don't know how to communicate clearly with each other.

5. Most people do work that ranges from mediocre to absolutely shoddy.

6. When you do good work, most people won't notice or if they do notice, they won't reward you for it.

7. Most bosses don't know how to clearly communicate their expectations to you, and are likely to sprinkle in personal insults, inappropriate comparisons to your coworkers, condescending asides, and other disturbingly unprofessional digressions when they speak with you.

8. When you communicate your goals and objectives clearly, most people will misunderstand you or assume that you're being overly aggressive or nitpicky or trying to steal their jobs.

9. The culture of most work settings is ineffectual, passive aggressive, wildly dysfunctional, dorky, and almost willfully chumpy, and often rewards mediocrity, troublemaking, pouting, and juvenile behavior.

10. If you attempt to be yourself or express your true feelings in most office settings, you will inevitably offend someone, step on someone's toes, piss someone off, or get slapped with a sexual harassment suit.

Yep.

Jouvert 2006

This is the second draft of the 2006 Jouvert parade. Enjoy.

And if you want to check out how my work compares with other photographers, try here.

Hot Dick on Hil Sex Pic

That, and intelligent observations as well! In this article in the almost incomparable (okay, we can compare it to the eXile) Buffalo Beast, Matt Taiibi takes Hilary to task for being, well, Hillary, the Republican front runner for President in 2008.

We live in a two-party system where both parties are pro-war; when the wars go badly, the system scrambles to find a way to prevent antiwar sentiment from taking the drastic step of mounting a meaningful opposition.

Therefore from time to time we have to suffer through the spectacle of some status quo dingbat letting his hair down and performing a tortured impersonation of a peace activist during an election season...

Her semantically-tortured apostrophic attack against Rumsfelds incompetence, in which she railed against the administrations strategic blunders but carefully avoided any discussion of the decision to invade that she and most other Democrats so enthusiastically supported, identified her as the status quo dingbat in this generations version of the same old story.

Yep.

All things to everyone

This is classic.

Stay tuned, more to come

Sorry I haven't posted much lately. I've been very busy with prepping photos for upcoming shows, grant applications and working on the long delayed web site. With all that crap, I've pretty much quit generating new work, but yesterday was the annual Jouvert parade, so I got my sorry ass out of bed at 4 am and made my way down to Flatbush avenue to join a few thousand heavy drinking west Indians parading through large clouds of dope smoke down the mean streets of Brooklyn. Nothing like chugging rum at dawn with a bunch of lunatics and getting painted, oiled and talced.

This year's photos were not great, not even as good as last year's. I don't know if the problem was more me or the event itself. The vibe just wasn't the same this year. Nevertheless, in a few days I'll have some kind of website up and will link to it here.

In the meantime, the above picture gives you a bit of a taste, vibe and all.

Sports Report

The American Basketball team lost again at the World Championships. This time they were soundly beaten by Greece, a team with no current NBA players.

Continuously using pick-and-roll plays to beat the Americans’ defense, the Greeks shot 63 percent (35 of 56) from the field and made 31 of 44 shots over the final three periods.

The United States has not played for a world championship since winning the last of its three titles in Toronto in 1994.

Michael Wilbon in the Washington Post explains it like this:

Our arrogance has no boundaries when it comes to international basketball, though it ought to by now, after yet another loss in a major competition. Even Americans who pay fairly close attention to world basketball, people who should know better, took one look at the Greek roster and dismissively figured, "No NBA players on the roster? Then no chance for Greece."

And it's a racial condition as well. We -- and by "we" I mean Americans of all colors -- have conditioned ourselves to look at European teams specifically and dismiss them out of hand because they're white. Or we think they're white. And of course, Americans have led the world in telling folks that white men can't jump, though amazingly some of those Greek kids apparently didn't accept our premise.

Well, yes, but the racial aspect isn’t just that white guys can’t jump, it’s that black guys are selfish losers who can’t play team basketball.

That, of course, is the worst kind of racism. Any cursory glance at the history of basketball definitively proves that skin color or African ancestry does not preclude one from playing smart basketball at the highest levels of the sport.

We can, however, assign a lot of the blame to “ghetto culture.” It’s all about individual status. There are those who dominate and those who submit. It’s not just a racial thing. The same could be said for the Masters of the Universe Wall Street bullshit, but unlike stock speculation, basketball is a team game and a good team always has a chance to beat a collection of better individuals.

But the NBA, NCAA and the television networks share the biggest part of the blame. They are the ones who allow the “me first” and “humiliate the opponent” attitudes that come straight outta the ghetto to dominate the game.

These powers that be in big time sports and television are irresponsible and they may be fools, but they are not idiots. They no doubt have polls and ratings to show that more people will watch ghetto basketball than the more traditional team oriented sport.

This is unfortunate because ghetto basketball reinforces the very worst elements of ghetto society. Being poorly educated, pathologically selfish and abusive works for basketball stars, but doesn’t usually get a person very far in the real world. So very, very few kids will escape their lives of poverty by becoming professional basketball players, yet so much of our culture encourages them to act in the worst possible way for advancing their interests.

On the other hand, the colleges and the NBA could have a positive influence by punishing the ghetto style of play. This is not as radical as it sounds. The rules have been changed over the years to encourage it. They can be changed again to discourage it. That’s a big reason why the U.S. can no longer dominate the international game. Because the international rules favor team basketball. If those who played ghetto ball couldn’t make the team in college, much less the NBA, better values would be pushed back down to the ghetto and people would change.

Krzyzewski and a few players congratulated the Greeks, but most of the U.S. team quickly headed to the locker room.

Yep.

Illusionists

I saw The Illusionist a couple days ago and just finished watching Spike Lee’s Inside Man. It didn’t occur to me going into it, but at some point I realized that the films are very much alike.

Oh, I know, every single plot detail is different, but in the end they are both about illusions and almost every scene is in some way illusionary.

They have other things in common as well. The production values and camera work are excellent. The acting and direction are top-notch. Both movies are able to pull off both the little illusions and the grand finale on first viewing.

The big difference is that all of the illusions in Inside Man stand up to further scrutiny. Once the illusions are revealed, all the plot elements and characters’ actions make sense.

Whereas with the The Illusionist, when the movie is over and you think about it, you quickly realize that it was a bunch of bunk. The characters’ actions moved the story along and provided drama, but ultimately made no sense whatsoever.

They are both enjoyable movies while you’re watching them, but Inside Man has substance and will stay around. The Illusionist, on the other hand, is no more substantial than a CGI generated ghost walking around 19th century Vienna.

Sorry if I seem too harsh. There’s a lot to be said for a very well-produced movie that is enjoyable to watch. I recommend seeing it, by all means. I’m just disappointed because one of its illusions was that it might be high art, but it turned out to be nothing more than good entertainment.

And I’m not saying that Inside Man was high art. It too was good entertainment, ultimately better entertainment, and perhaps it did manage a few moments that transcended the genre.

Straight from the netherworld

I started noticing this writer’s work during the last election. I’m privy to a couple mailing lists run by people who aren’t what you’d call intellectual sophisticates. Most of the emails contain stupid sex jokes or pictures of hillbillies in the outhouse or the like, but occasionally there’s right wing propaganda.

The example below is typical of this writer. I don’t mean this as an example of a stupid argument. It is a very intelligent argument for a very stupid proposition aimed at people who if they are not genetically stupid are willfully so. It is the worst kind of propaganda pure and simple. I do not believe that the author believes a word that she is writing. And I do not believe that she is unaware that she is using logical fallacies. She is more than happy to use them in her rhetoric. She is, I believe, a rhetorician.

These kind of emails are passed around constantly among people who belong to the Elks, the Moose or the Kiwanis club. A lot of them are college educated, but failed to learn anything that didn’t apply directly to their career.

During the presidential election these emails were constantly being passed around among the reddest people in the red states and a lot of regular people of their acquaintance. I'll bet they’re gearing up now for the mid-terms. I’ve tried to trace a couple of them with no success. Given their sophistication, I suspect that it is part of some Republican operation and that the person who writes them gets paid. She’s probably some ivy leaguer living in New York laughing it up while she suckers the yokels with such crap. But that’s just speculation.

What is a Billion ?

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a
casual manner, think about whether you want the "politicians"
spending your tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising
agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in
one of its releases.
a. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
b. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
c. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
d. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
e. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate
our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at
New Orleans. It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the
Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans.  Interesting
number, what does it mean?

a. Well, if you are one of 48,674 residents of New Orleans (every
man, woman, child), you each get $516,528.

b. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home
gets $1,329,787.

c. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.
Washington, D.C .. HELLO !!! ... Are all your calculators broken ??

This is too true to be very funny:

Tax his land,
Tax his wage,
Tax his bed in which he lays.
Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes is the rule.
Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.
Tax his ties,
Tax his shirts,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he tries to think.
Tax his booze,
Tax his beers,
If he cries,
Tax his tears.
Tax his bills,
Tax his gas,
Tax his notes,
Tax his cash.
Tax him good and let him know
That after taxes, he has no dough.
If he hollers,
Tax him more,
Tax him until he's god and sore.
Tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in which he lays.
Put these words upon his tomb,
"Taxes drove me to my doom!"
And when he's gone,
We won't relax,
We'll still be after the inheritance TAX !!


Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax),
IRS Penalties (tax on topof tax),
Liquor Tax,
Luxury Tax,
Marriage License Tax,
Medicare Tax,
Property Tax,
Real Estate Tax,
Service charge taxes,
Social Security Tax,
Road Usage Tax (Truckers),
Sales Taxes,
Recreational Vehicle Tax,
School Tax,
State Income Tax,
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA),
Telephone Federal Excise Tax,
TelephoneFederal Universal Service Fee Tax,
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax,
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax,
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax,
Telephone State and Local Tax,
Telephone Usage Charge Tax,
Utility Tax,
Vehicle License Registration Tax,
Vehicle Sales Tax,
Watercraft Registration Tax,
Well Permit Tax,
Workers Compensation Tax.

COMMENTS: Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago and there was
prosperity, absolutely no national debt, the largest middle class in
the world and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What the heck happened ?????

Let’s review the argument.

A billion dollars is a lot of money.
Some liberal bitch with a French name wants to give 250 of them to a bunch of low life blacks, 2 million per family.
Good decent salt-of-the-earth (working class whites) pay lots of taxes.
If good decent people didn’t have to pay taxes, we’d be living in heaven on earth.

Of course it’s easy to rebut this nonsense point by point. Obviously nobody’s advocating $2 million per family to flood victims in Louisiana, it’s not like a bunch of islamo-fascists hijacked some airplanes and flew them into the levees. Major infrastructure is expensive. Just ask those throwing those hundreds of billions at Iraq.

And why do the good working class folk pay so many ridiculous taxes? Well, because the very wealthy and the corporations don’t, unlike the good old days of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Beave, and white picket fences.

And there are plenty of countries where working people don’t pay a lot of taxes. Collectively its known as the third world.

But by the time you finish explaining all of that to your imaginary yokel, he or she is already reading the next piece of propaganda. Your story is not so pleasing as the free lunch in paradise for all good people narrative.

Sure, they are suckers, but who wants to hear that about themselves?. Yea, they’ll get what they pay for, considerably less, but nobody’s going to stay tuned for the end of that narrative either.

Unfortunately, there is no opposition party in this country, no one to tell an equally pleasing story that would have such a better ending. We get what we pay for.

Locked Rooms in a City of Glass full of Ghosts

I just finished my first reading of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. I had never read Paul Auster for a couple of reasons.

First because I had the impression that his prose was dry, pretentious and literary. I don’t know why I thought that. Maybe from watching Smoke.

Second, he was highly recommended to me by a couple of people I reflexively didn’t respect much. That’s shallow and wrong of me I know. They are both well-read younger guys with that superior young guy attitude. Intellectually I know better than to let that bother me since I had the same attitude in spades. Ultimately I was able to overcome it and picked up the book.

Much to my surprise Auster wasn’t dry and pretentious at all. The New York Trilogy is deep literature that is very enjoyable and easy to read.

But I’m afraid that’s all I’m going to be able to tell you about it. Although I’m willing to play the critic on a few movies, there is no way I’m going to take away any of the pleasure you may get if you read those books. To discover what is going on in the many layers of the narrative provides much of the enjoyment of reading them. I still haven’t read anything about them, or Auster.

I want to read a lot more before I let others influence my opinion, but I do look forward to that day. Although Auster is fun and easy to read, he is tricky and I can easily see that there are a lot of hidden things and multiple ways of interpreting them.

So I recommend New York Trilogy. Go for it. And go for it in virginal ignorance of Paul Auster if you still can. That’s my advice.

Shape of things

Barbara Ehrenreich whomps on Wal-Mart’s ass, as is her wont.

When Wal-Mart workers can't afford health insurance or new school clothes, the whole working class begins to flail. Furthermore, the Wal-Mart business model increasingly betrays what was once the operating principle of American capitalism, as explained by Henry Ford the First: You've got to pay your workers enough so that they can buy your product; that's what keeps the system going. When the American majority can't buy the very goods they manufacture or sell, that system is cruising for a bruising.

I’ve seen a lot of this myself. By the nature of my work, I’ve spent a little bit of time at a lot of companies over the past few years and, although the people I work with are not quite as low on the economic ladder as Wal-Mart employees, it’s easy to discern the same trends.

Companies are under constantly increasing pressure to cut expenditures and from what I’ve seen they do not go about it intelligently. All too often the decisions on who or what to cut are based on petty office politics rather than competence. And as the more competent people are laid off or bail out, the product suffers and profit declines. Meanwhile, those remaining are required to work ever more hours for which they are rarely paid. Either they are salaried workers or hourly types being offered comp time in lieu of overtime. Of course that comp time is in no way officially tracked and rarely collected. And raises are limited to 3 or so percent annually and promotions are generally out of the question.

Meanwhile only speculators or trust fund babies can afford to buy a house. I made the mistake of calling a realtor about a house I saw the other day. It is an old house, early twentieth century, fairly large but not particularly well built. It needs repairs, has a very small yard, sits near a noisy freeway in a generally ugly neighborhood in a not trendy part of the city. 1.6 million. What’s that in monthly payments? $11,000 dollars. My sister bought a house just like it in a small town in Indiana for $29,000 total a few years ago. People making $80,000 with a couple kids in New York can’t begin to afford a house and have to live paycheck to paycheck just to make the rent and very basic living expenses. And I’m not even talking about Manhattan, or even trendy Brooklyn.

And most of these companies that aren’t paying squat are very profitable. All of the squeeze is to make ever higher returns for the shareholders and top management, most of whom are arrogant sociopaths, many of whom are incompetent at everything besides gaining power.

Ah well, what can you do? Live well and prosper, emotionally at least, while we can. How will the inevitable crash play out? I guess we’ll just have to see.

Shit for brains

Via Atrios:

According to CNN just now a Time poll for a hypothetical McCain-Clinton race has it at 49% McCain 47% Clinton.

First the standard disclaimer: I know, I know, anyone is better than Bush and any Democrat is better than any Republican. Still, if our leaders are the brain cells of our nation, we sure got shit for brains.

It’s all to easy to imagine McCain vs. Hillary. McCain will advocate putting a force of 400,000 in Iraq and gearing up the draft in order to invade Iran and Syria. Hillary will boldly compromise, arguing for a force of 200,000 and a partial draft in order to invade either Iran or Syria.

Yep, that’s the future. Republicans show real leadership with insanely stupid ideas and the Doormatocrats boldly compromise. It sucks to see the future.

I shit bullshit, who shit bear shit?

I was roped into hitting a happy hour with several of my colleagues today and had one of the strangest social experiences I can recall. One of the other project managers, let’s call him Bob, told me about how his father died. I’d chatted with him a few times since starting the job, but we had never had anything remotely resembling a heart-to-heart talk and all of a sudden he guzzles three healthy Manhattans and lays this shit on me.

This is what he told me. When he was 10 years old he was camping with his dad in western Montana when they were confronted by a big black bear. His father pushed the boy behind him and started jumping up and down and barking like a dog to try to scare the bear. The bear rushed them. The father shoved the boy away and yelled for him to run, then tried to duke it out with the bear and was gutted. Bob escaped but was tortured for years because he ran away and left his father to die. For what remained of his childhood he fantasized about killing bears. When he was in his late teens he began to hunt them. Then he learned that he could make a lot of money selling their gallbladders, getting up to $500 a gram, he says. He kept poaching bears into his mid-twenties when one day he realized that he had forgotten his purpose in killing bears and was doing it for the money rather than for his father. Then he started a dot.com but was unable to raise any serious VC money in Montana so he moved to New York and blew his savings. Next thing he knows, he’s data mining. He’s had a fourth Manhattan as he tells this story and is starting on his fifth, says I remind him of his father.

Okay, I say, that’s really tragic man, gotta be going. The job was weird enough before that. Anyone out there want to hire me?

Bringing it all back home

From the Guardian:

The victim's name was Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. Abeer means "fragrance of flowers". She was 14 years old. According to a statement by one of the accused, the soldiers first noticed her at a checkpoint. On March 12, after playing cards while slugging whisky, they changed into civvies and burst into Abeer's home. They killed her mother, father and five-year-old sister and "took turns" raping Abeer. Finally, according to the statement, they murdered her, drenched the bodies with kerosene, and set them on fire. Then the GIs grilled chicken wings.

The defence already pleads post-traumatic stress disorder

Yea, post-traumatic stress disorder, gotta be a lot of that going around. And you know what they say about what goes around...

Yea, peace would be great, but what about the Benjamins

The Congressional Research Service, Congress’s nonpartisan public policy research arm, estimates that our invasions and on-going wars against Iraq and Afghanistan are costing roughly $8 billion dollars a month. That’s close to $100 billion a year.

Just ask yourself, better yet ask your elected representatives, candidates in the next election and media outlets if we wouldn’t be infinitely better off with Osama bin Laden in an orange jumpsuit in The Hague, Sadaam Hussein impotent and surrounded in his castle in Baghdad and $100 billion a year being spent on education, health care, and other pressing needs?

One of the first research problems we could fund would be to find out why so many people who have dug themselves a deep hole and want to get out of it are pathologically unable to grasp the simple fact that the first step to getting out of the hole is to stop digging. Develop a pill to cure that particular pathology would be a great start to a better world.

Murder's what you want...

Well, then murder’s what you’ll get, duh. And probably a whole lot more of it than you bargained for.

But our “leadership” has lost sight of that oh-so-basic fact of life. Today’s example is an article in the NY Times that reports Israel’s goal of killing Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. The Israelis do not even argue that killing this man will solve any problems. It is for revenge, nothing else.

“There’s only one solution for him,” said an Israeli representative, “This man must die.”

Well, no, there is another solution. If there is reason to believe he has committed crimes, he could be arrested and tried in a court of law. That’s how civilized societies handle these things.

And there is a reason for that. The act of murder as a tool of revenge is worse than ineffective, it is counter-productive.

I know it’s difficult for the idiots running our country and their lapdogs in the so-called opposition party or the media to understand, much more so for their followers, but if it’s okay to murder other people’s leaders who are involved in military operations then it is okay for them to kill yours. The same principle holds for torture. If it’s okay for our country to use torture on another’s soldiers, then it’s okay for another country to torture our soldiers.

But murder and torture are not okay. Not for us, not for anybody. Fortunately, there is a very easy way to stop this insane cycle of violence. Just stop. That’s all we need to do. At any moment, we can simply stop it. Nobody is making us create these crimes. Many people say that it would be impossible to stop, but that’s not true. It would be just as easy as it was starting it, possibly easier since historically we have been more about the rule-of-law than wantonly violent and counter-productive retribution.

But alas, we have no opposition party or independent media willing to make such an obvious argument. Instead, we are told that revenge and murder are a good thing, a means to a good end. Many people who write on the internets are already advocating a “final solution” for those who oppose us (and their families, neighbors, countrymen, et.al). And some of these people even make it onto television or get quoted in what were formally respectable publications.

When a society’s discourse begins to plumb these moral depths, the bad things they so ardently wish for are likely to happen. Historically, when societies go insane with bloodlust they only see the errors of their ways when they end up on the receiving end. And if we don’t change our ways, the receiving end is where we’ll be. Whether it’s in two hundred years or 10, that kind of blow back is inevitable.

1973 Redux

I saw the New York Dolls last night at the South Street Seaport. When it comes to great shows, I'm a fan not a critic, so about all I can say is that they were fucking great.

This was no lame-ass reunion bullshit. This was a killer fucking rock & roll band. The crowd was huge and into it, even singing loudly along with the chorus of "Pills," a Janis Joplin cover, and "Human Being." The band looked great from a distance. In retrospect I was surprised at Syl Sylvain's talent on guitar. I guess it wasn't Johnny Thunders playing all of those solos. Steve Conte was good on the other guitar and the new bass player and drummer rocked like the days of yore. Johansen was energetic and clearly enjoying himself. His vocals and harmonica playing were strong.

The stuff off the new album fit right in with the old stuff, which was incedible cause that almost never happens. There was no let down in the energy of the crowd or the quality of the show. Someone unfamiliar with the Doll's catalogue wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. "Punishing World" was particularly great. A rousing "Dance Like a Monkey" ended the main part of the show. My only disappointment was that they didn't play "Running Around."

And some of the old stuff was transcendental. I wasn't around to see any live shows in 1973, but I've seen Johansen perform a lot of these songs in solo shows and they're all on the DVD from the London reunion show, but none of that was remotely as good as last night's show. They did the aforementioned "Pills," which had the crowd screaming, the show started out with "Looking for a Kiss," then there were such standards as "Jet Boy" and "Puss N' Boots." The first encore was an ecstatic version of "Personality Crisis" and the second was a killer "Human Being." The crowd would have happily stayed for the rest of the catalogue, but unfortunately the show was over.

To repeat what I said in the post below, I haven't heard Rock & Roll like that for ages. Even back then shows like that were few and far between.

2006

I’ve been meaning to write more about work. It’s not that I think the horrid details of my pathetic career would interest anyone, but it is interesting how my jobs serve to illustrate much that is wrong with our culture and economy. I’ve experienced most of those headlines you see – dot com death spirals, mass layoffs, takeovers by international investor groups, et. al. – in my wanderings from company to company over the last few years and now I’m on the cutting edge of data mining and consumer profiling.

Yes, I’d like to tell you more about it, but not now. I’ve been going through another round of training this week and just thought I’d share this one small observation. The trainer constantly uses words like “brilliant” or “awesome” to describe the most mundane occurrences. If everyone manages to turn on their computer without spilling coffee on it he gushes that we are all “brilliant” and our skills “awesome.” On and on.

And I know this trend is widespread and has been going on for awhile. “Awesome,” for instance, has been overused for years.

I suspect this is all related to the culture of self-esteem we read so much about. Apparently many kids are brought up receiving sycophantic praise for any little thing they do so I imagine that’s the only way they know to communicate. I guess there’s little harm in it other than further debasement in the way we are able to describe our world. What more is there to say when being able to chew gum and walk at the same time inspires awe and is practiced by the brilliant?

1973

I’m just on my third listen of the new New York Doll’s cd, One day it will please us to remember even this. It’s a great Rock & Roll record. It would be a great Rock & Roll record in any era. In this one it’s the only Rock & Roll record as far as I can tell. Rock ain’t dead yet, but looking at Johansen, I think it’s fair to say it’s getting pretty old.

One day it will please... is fresh, unlike most reunion records. I suspect that is because David Johansen has never stopped working. He played the Bottom line every couple of months for I don’t know how many years as either Buster Poindexter or as himself with the Harry Smiths. I even saw him a couple times at a defunct blues bar playing his solo material and some Dolls tunes with his long time collaborator Brian Koonan and a bar band. So he is not coming back. He never went away.

Sylvain Sylvain is the only other surviving member of the original band and Johnny Thunders wild guitar is missed, but the record is a legitimate Dolls record, not another Johansen solo project. So far Running Around and Punishing World are obvious classics, but I feel quite a few others can grow on me.

But enough of this crap from me. If you want to read a real review, go here.

In the meantime I’m having fun. Best Rock & Roll I’ve heard in ages.

Those were the days...

The Quebec trip went well for the most part. I didn’t have the time or opportunity to do any serious photography, but you can see some tourist pictures here.

This was the first time I had traveled with my wife, we’ll call her “Lola”, for over 15 years. Back then she had sworn “never again” but all of that time apparently softened her brain. It didn’t take long for her to fear she would regret it.

Typically, I only do the most minimal planning when I travel. In this case, my “plan” was to get a car in Montreal, drive about halfway to Quebec and find a hotel. Unfortunately, there was a Grand Prix race that weekend about half way between Montreal and Quebec and there was not a hotel room to be found. We ended up sleeping in the car and it was very, very cold.

But things got better quickly. We had ended our quest for a hotel in a small town called Shawinigan which turned out to be a very nice place. After having a nice breakfast of Paté and Brie on fresh baguettes, all of that from IGA no less, and exploring Shawinigan, we drove the rest of the way to Quebec on a very scenic two-lane highway. The aesthetic differences between the French Canadian countryside and here are wide and deep. Almost every house is treated as an art object. Most are painted in bright colors with many small artistic touches. Every little town has a beautiful old church.

We camped for most of the week in the Le Parc Nacional de la Jacque Cartier in a primitive little campground at the end of a rocky dirt road far from the nearest plumbing or electricity. It was paradise. We also took a couple day trips to Quebec and walked around the old city. As tourist places go, it is one of the best I have ever visited. It’s very beautiful in an old-world way. There are great looking French restaurants and sidewalk cafés, lots of art in the streets, museums, interesting shops, and a few street performers.

The only other excitement was a little white-water canoe trip we took. It was the first time Lola had ever canoed. She can’t swim and five minutes after putting the canoe in the water we were going through class III rapids. Unsurprisingly, we tipped over. All our stuff got soaked, we lost an oar and her purse, she was terrified and we were facing four more hours on the river. While she was holding onto the tipped over canoe for dear life and watching her new hat float away, I could see her thinking “never again.” But we found the oar and the purse, it turned out to be a beautiful day and we got through the rest of the rapids.

And then we spent the last night at the Ritz Charlton in Montreal. I had a lot of Marriott points from my previous job so we got it for free. It was a nice hotel, but for the most part people pay for the name. And Montreal was a let-down. It’s a nice city, but it was so much nicer to be out of the city for a week. Everything was so much better in the countryside.

We went the whole week without radio, television or newspapers and a great deal of it with no city or industrial noise. The lack of news was very refreshing. When we turned on the TV in Montreal and heard about the latest terror plots, war news, and administration idiocies it was very depressing. And since I was mostly speaking and thinking in my limited French, I wasn’t able to bother myself much with complex thought. And then hearing nothing but rapids for long stretches left my head blessedly empty of mundane thoughts of the daily grind. Thoughts of the job, the bills, the wars, the idiots floated down those rapids and away. I didn’t catch up with them till Montreal.

Scouting trip

Our son starts second grade this year, but it's never too soon to start planning for his future. Since odds are fair that by the time he graduates high school, we'll have a 2 million man army occupying the entire middle east and select environs, we want to get a jump start on finding a good place for him to dodge the draft. And hopefully we'll get some small pleasures out of the trip as well. "Mountains of Quebec" in August has a nice ring to it. I've been repeating it like a mantra all week.

So It'll be at least 10 days before I post anything again. In the meantime, I've created this little slideshow for you. My advice is to get a nice bottle of wine or two, find some appropriate music and watch it over and over again, at least 10 times. To get started, just click here.