Internet blackout

By way of issuing the latest "Happy New Year" on record, I'm gonna opportunistically hop on a rolling train that I will simultaneously claim to have pushed out of the station myself.

That's right-- I am the sole pioneer of the Internet Blackout of Wednesday, January 18. I'm so far ahead of everyone else on this, I've already been holding strong for 17 days!

So go ahead, all you late-coming, fair-weather bandwagoners-- I've been keeping the seats nice and warm for you*, grab whichever one you like! ...Except for that one, that one's for my feet.

Here's to registering our support for defeating all freedom-destroying laws (SOPA) and decisions (Citizens United)!

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* Don't ask how.

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 10: We're number -1, we're number -1!

I'm filing this one in the No Press is Bad Press folder:

While perusing the Web to find out if there was already a pitchfork-wielding mob I could join on the march to the Frankenstein's Castle of whoever makes those TVs at gas stations and grocery store lines, or if I'd just have to start my own, Google brought me to GSTV.com.

GSTV stands for Gas Station TeleVision, which, as far as I can tell, is a company that supplies content for the TVs in gas stations and, presumably, other totally inappropriate locations.

But the page to which I was pointed was not their splash page, designed to sell me on the idea of not cursing the waking nightmare this concept has wrought, but rather to a (authorized?) reprinting of a Wall Street Journal article in which the company is mentioned.

The article, despite the WSJ's "pro-business" bent, is distinctly hostile to the very idea of this company, starting with the title, I Don't Want My GSTV, and ending on this gem with which I couldn't agree more:

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Before allowing me to complete my transaction, the pump TV asked me whether I was hungry and exhorted me to go inside to check out the snacks in the minimart. I wasn't, but it did make me wonder -- do they sell hammers in there? There's a TV I'd like to smash.

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I'm thinking someone down at headquarters needs to call a meeting to pass a motion to consider implementing a new policy of manual review of the automatic feed to this section of the Web site.

Pretend it's still Halloween with me!

In case you're breathing a sigh of relief that, after hours of painstakingly inspecting, and possibly dissecting, your children's Halloween candy, they were not near-victims of some dastardly neighborhood psychopath, I just thought I'd like to share with you the secret fact that No one has ever found an actual razor or pin or anything similar in a piece of Halloween candy from a stranger. Ever.

This is decades-old madness, so people need to relax and be sensible. Teach your kids what skeevy-looking candy is, and that they should set it aside for you to dispose of. If need be, offer a per-piece financial incentive like my mom used to for our Halloween gum haul.* And if you're smart, make sure to identify some of your favorites as the skeeviest of all.

But Dan, you say, you just finally eased our minds by saying the candy was safe! Why not tell the kids to down those skeevy pieces? We know how you hate waste in all its forms.

Well, I didn't say the candy was safe, per se, I just said no strangers are putting razor blades in their candy. For one thing, do you know how expensive that would get? Not to mention ridiculously laborious. And what would come of that anyway, a cut lip? Other than your "husky" son who's half boa constrictor, of course.

One body who's always itching to find the answer to a juicy what-if like this is your friendly neighborhood corporation, passing off production to whatever distant land offers the sweetest deal, then rewarding them by promptly squeezing them incessantly for increased profits until they're forced to stir in some surplus metal filings and actual razor blades to thicken up those goddamn lollipops that have to cost no more than 0.000008 cents each.**

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One more thing that bugs me, since I'm already pre-wound for a tirade:

This paragraph (all errors and style choices are theirs...) is from my son's elementary school newsletter a couple weeks before Halloween, and it left my jaw hanging open. I'm not exaggerating-- as you might imagine, I often rant at inanimate objects in the privacy of my own home, but this one left me searching (still) fruitlessly for the right words to express all the feelings it stirs in me:

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As your child begins to think about what he/she wants to be for Halloween please be mindful of appropriate costumes for school. [...] Students choosing to wear a costume for the Halloween party and parade should wear costumes that portray positive images. Scary, grotesque or negative costumes are not acceptable and will not be allowed. Please make certain your child's costume does not include:

• Toy weapons or look alike weapons
• Masks
• Gadgets that show blood, etc.

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How it manages to stir that (non-scary) pot of those feelings (non-violently) without anything that could also be viewed as a weapon, I'm not sure...

Why don't we just give up and call it "October Dress-Up Day" with only slutty, cute, or funny costumes allowed, and then let's all give Halloween a proper burial, with the only pictures allowed to remember it by coming from before the past 15 years??! Sounds good to me.

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And on that note, I hope you all had a great Halloween! Since Christmas stuff has already been in stores for a month or so now, I think the next holiday must be Valentine's Day. Better get your lollipops while Dollar General still has them in stock!

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* Gum was forbidden, so this was like a "Cash for pistols, no questions asked" program.

** And those aren't pills in your Smarties, those are prizes!

Next we could hit The Place, then The Restaurant

I just had to say something when I read this:

RadioShack To Become ’The Shack’

Whatever happened to an established name being irreplaceable in the marketplace? Do they skip that section in business school nowadays?

I mean, England still has a store (a huge chain of them, actually) called Carphone Warehouse, for God's sake. They know what they're doing, silly as they may sound now, at least 15 years since anyone expressed an interest in buying "a car phone."

But then nothing says, "Come on in and browse around," quite like a place referred to as The Shack... Traditionally speaking, if your shack needs no modifiers to make people understand which shack is being referred to, it is most definitely a shack no sane person wants to get near.

You know who else felt comfortable hanging out in a shack filled with shelves of electronic odds and ends? The Unabomber.

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This falls right in line with another development I'd read about, which I'll share with you in case you hadn't heard:

Pizza Hut Soon to be The Hut?

Now, they claim that they're only using this name on some new buildings, but it's clear to me they're just trying to soften up the market before the big switch at some point. Also, of course, they want attention. Mission accomplished, idiots!

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The So-Called SyFy Channel: Honorable mention goes to whoever's in charge of the SciFi Channel. That person who decided that their channel, and indeed their job and very existence, wasn't stupid enough, so they should change the spelling of the channel to the uselessly cutesy "SyFy Channel".

All this just so you can own an otherwise generic word? All of your networks' shows are now subconsciously graded down one star in my mind before I even seen them. Just you wait a couple of decades for that to really mean something. I know I will!

Welcome to Chicago!

I just wanted to post a quick note wishing everyone traveling by train, plane, or automobile to Chicago for the 2009 BlogHer Convention a safe trip, and a warm welcome to our fair city.

Apologies in advance for the various odors in the subway. Not that there's really a good time of year for that, but the middle of summer would definitely not be in contention. Try to stick to the L tracks whenever possible.

Those of you from landlocked locations will notice that we have what appears to be some kind of magical ocean spanning as far as the eye can see, and those of you from coastal locations will notice that said magical ocean does NOT have wound- and eyeball-burning salt lurking in the water.

We're more than willing to use our magic skills to desalinate YOUR oceans, too, as long as you all can pay in advance however many billions it would take us to buy back our stupid parking meters.

If you don't see me around this weekend but want to, just leave me a comment or send me an e-mail, and we can figure something out.

To everyone else reading who couldn't care less about all this, sorry, but at least you haven't had to hear about it much until now, right? I don't get out much anymore, so this is pretty noteworthy for me. I'll try to keep any ensuing babbling to a minimum. Babble babble babble.

Don't you have some Memorializing to do?

That's right, I caught you. Or at least the Americans, anyway.

This isn't some cheap Labor-Day-type holiday, where you can sit on the patio guiltlessly drinking beer and barbecuing every meal from breakfast cereal on up. It's not a day meant for you to take a load off and reflect on how awesome you are-- this is a day to honor important people!*

So you have to guiltfully drink that beer and barbecue those corn flakes, because while it may be one of the very precious few days off you're given as a supposedly lazy American worker, you'd better make damn sure you take at least a few minutes today to remember why even blood-sucking, accountability-dissipating American corporations won't take this day from you:

A lot of people --black, white, poor, rich, straight, gay, Christian, Muslim-- over the years have answered a higher calling, but couldn't make it back here to enjoy days like this after they helped make sure we could all continue to enjoy them.

So maybe, to adapt a tradition, throw an extra piece of cake, bag of chips, or glass of milk on the grill this afternoon for your friends who couldn't make it. They'll be glad you did, and so should you.

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* Ooooooooooooooh, burn!

I'll just say I'm not home right now

Do you ever feel kinda stupid answering your phone only to hear a recording respond?* They might as well start every one of those messages with, "Ha-ha! Made you say 'hello'! Idiot."

I guess it's better, though, than having an awkward, forced interaction with a real person (courtesy of a misguided corporation) who just pretends to be a robot 8 hours a day.

But anyway, I think it's pretty logical that my next thought is, "How dare some sleazy company give my phone number to The Robots just to save $7.50 an hour from their marketing department's Wasted Money budget?!"

Haven't they ever seen The Terminator? Or Eagle Eye? They almost killed Shia LaBeouf!! And a bunch of kids and stuff. ...And Megan Fox**... or wait, was that Transformers? Either way, the point holds.

I don't think it's fair that, as a rational person, I now have to fear for my life just because I once expressed an interest in finding out whether GEICO could actually save me any money on my car insurance. (Answer: Not at all. But that's probably just because of how much money they had planned to spend mailing me things for the next 5 years.)

I think World-President Obama and his Pet Congress*** should make a new consumer-friendly corporate-transparency law that requires all companies to publicly declare whether or not they are in league with The Robots whenever they ask for, or plan to take and use, your personal data.

That way, you'll at least have a sense of the number of databases The Robots will have to work from when rampaging through Southern California looking for you and your punk friend on that badass moped. That's gotta be worth some small comfort, right? Better start doing your one-armed pull-ups now, ladies.

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* It's an even more one-sided conversation than talking to me when I'm ranting.

** What an appropriately named person.

*** Currently infested with an awful case of the Boehner fleas, characterized by swelling and itchiness, primarily around the anus.

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 8

Once again, I'm here to demonstrate the importance of saying exactly what you mean, and nothing more. Just as I am the noble hero of literalism, picking apart your statements at will to reveal the messages you didn't know you were sending, there is a dark side to this power, and those who practice it do not show mercy even to fat, lazy, spoiled, Depressed nations.

My example this time comes from our hard-working United States Congress, doing its best as always to provide a steady, paternalistic hand guiding the feisty sled dogs of capitalism, while those dogs do their best to distract that hand with giant sacks of cash.

Paper industry starts using oil to get billions in alternative-fuel credits

Before you decide this sounds boring, let me sum it up for you, to innocently feed your disbelief and rage while you're trying to decide how you're going to make it through these next few years with both the shirt on your back and an absence of Chinese capitalist Communists laughing while they repossess Mt. Rushmore:

A few years ago, Congress passed a law meant to promote decreased use of fossil fuels. The language of this bill was so poorly chosen that at this most ideal of times, we all are now on the hook for many billions of dollars in unplanned-for expenses paying crafty companies to start mixing diesel fuel in with the renewable fuel they've traditionally created from their industrial waste.

So we have a single bright spot in a generally toxic industrial process, the usage of a waste product as fuel in place of more damaging alternatives, and these giant companies, hemorrhaging money for too long, snuff it out with a shower of diesel fuel injected into the process to qualify them as "mixing a taxable fuel with an alternative fuel."

The result for us, the taxpayers? International Paper, for example, will get "probably close to a billion a year of cash" from the IRS encouraging them to "keep mixing alternative fuels with the diesel fuel", and the manageable $61 million projected by Congress for extending this right-minded credit three months could instead "cost as much as $2 billion." The likely total payout to the top ten paper companies alone for this year is $8 billion.*

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"The money to be gained from exploiting the tax credit so dwarfs the money to be made in making paper ... [that] the ultimate result of the credit will likely be to push paper prices down as mills churn at full capacity in order to grab as much money from the IRS as it can."

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So at least you can get a few reams of paper way cheaper than before, for drafting all those letters to your Congresspeople. Just call me Mr. Sunshine-- I'll always find the bright side even if I have to make it myself! Maybe they can use all the extra paper to print up some more currency-- doesn't that always fix things whenever money is tight?

Remember this heartwarming story of poor word choice** as you hunker down with your industrious neighbors to help patch this sinking ship, making daily sacrifices just to get by, gladly exchanging a pay cut for a non-binding implied desire not to fire you in the immediate future.

At least SOMEONE'S making some money, right?*** That's gotta trickle down somehow... or do I need to go buy the latest edition of this classic 1983 economics textbook?

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* $8 billion! Before all these corporate bailouts and emergency loans, that used to be an awful lot of money.

** I say "poor word choice" only assuming no Senators from paper-producing states were involved in writing this bill.

** For my readers abroad, rest assured that, as you can see, even the economic elite of America are determined to help dig a way out of the hole we've dug you all, by any means necessary.

A blessed St. Squarepants' Day be upon you

So here we are again on this holiday beloved by young children and alcoholics with equal vigor.

I just wanted to share that yesterday, my 4-year-old son D- asked my mom, "How come we all wear green on Spongebob Day?"

She had no idea where on Earth this came from, until I pointed out that even in my limited knowledge of the world of Spongebob Squarepants, I know that his best friend is named Patrick.

So in that distinct way that only a child's brain works, patching knowledge gaps with basically anything that springs to mind before moving on to the next thought, we have christened a new holiday.

I'm sure Nickelodeon will be as pleased as Hallmark about this development, but I just want to know how he even knows this fact to connect it, since he has only watched the show twice in his life, 2 years ago.

Maybe Nickelodeon had leprechauns put something insidious in those Spongebob Band-Aids of his...

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 7

You know, a lot of ill-informed people claim that word choice doesn't really matter in most everyday areas of life, but I'm here to offer just one random example of an instance that proves these people to be morons.

Recently, I couldn't help but notice the friendly banner on my wife's new package of Aquaphor cream, offering what was surely intended to be an innocuous description of the product:

What that little extra word ("your") did there was turn a sentiment of unity ("All of you people with your varying skin problems can use this one product to solve them!") into a back-handed, bitchy message worthy of a junior high cheerleading squad ("You are so lucky I'm here to help you! ...Because you are way more f***ed up than you ignorantly thought before picking up this package.").

Torpedoing the self-esteem of one's customer base is not generally thought to be a good business decision.*

There is a potential upside for the manufacturers, though, if this tack opens up potential new sales across the Eucerin family of products through the well-established phenomenon of victims latching on to their abusers against their better judgment or interests. Just look at how well this has worked for our** lovable scamps down at AIG!

In fact, scratch this whole post, and give me 2,000 shares of whatever disgustingly enormous mega-conglomerate bottles this goo!

Here's to you and your horrible excuse for human skin!

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* Unless of course you're in women's fashion.

** I say "our" because we, the American people, now own them almost in their entirety, at least until just before the stock sale by the U.S. government might bring in enough profit to cover the entire stimulus package.

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 6: Walgreens

I've been hearing the following Walgreens radio ad quite a lot here in Chicago lately:

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With Medicare Part D, you pay the same co-pay everywhere. So now that there's no hassle of comparing prices everywhere, come join the millions who fill their prescriptions at Walgreens!

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Allow me to translate this into laymen's terms for you all:

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Now that our usurious markups don't matter to you directly, come on over and go through the different hassle of changing your prescription to Walgreens for no apparent reason!

After all, as an old company ourselves, we understand how much old people love changing things, especially --as we just established-- when there's no tangible financial or other advantage, and when they're virtually guaranteed to have "millions" of people ahead of them in line whenever they choose to endure venturing out and about!*

Sorry Gen-Xers, this sweet deal isn't for you! You'll have to keep paying those clearly exorbitant Walgreens prices for at least the next several decades, until the government can foot the bill for you!**

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I wonder how big last year's bonus was for the marketing executive who approved this ad?

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* "Swollen knees and back trouble from standing too long? We've got handy racks of not-inexpensive OTC pain pills lined up along the pharmacy wall, free from the price restrictions of Medicare Part D!"

** In all fairness, someone has to cover the cashiers' overtime pay while each of those seniors counts out $10 in pennies with nearly useless arthritic fingers.

Hee, hee, I said "Siemens"

Because I'm still a little overwhelmed from Holiday Party Season (along with the continuing Hip Surgery Recovery Season), I'm just here to share my amusement with this otherwise depressing testament to the corruption of the handful of global supercorporations that exploit each of us daily.

At Siemens, Bribery Was Just a Line Item

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[Siemens'] telecommunications unit was awash in easy money. It paid $5 million in bribes to win a mobile phone contract in Bangladesh ... [and] also made $12.7 million in payments to senior officials in Nigeria for government contracts.

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The most tragic part of all this, even more than Siemens' strategic enrichment of Saddam Hussein before his fall, is that they were duped into making those payments to the Nigerian officials by sweet-talking e-mails proposing a joint effort to secure much greater sums being held in probate.

How many more innocent, hard-working folks must be lured into clearly shady transactions for nefarious purposes before The Internet Police finally clamp down on these wiseacre Nigerians?

Takin' care of business

As I reluctantly sat there in the grimy bathroom of a greasy spoon liquefying my insides (resting comfortably on my nest of toilet paper lining), I prayed for the sweet release of death to come only after the immediate banishment of Papa John* and his minions to the deepest circle of hell.

Through my confused haze of rage, agony, and relief, I somehow managed to detect a poorly tuned radio station's attempt to bludgeon me with the melodious strains of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's landmark hit, Takin' Care of Business.

As my business took care of me itself, I couldn't help but realize that this song was made to be played in 30-second snippets at the absolute longest. It has a clear message to communicate, it's catchy, and it's said pretty much all it has to say in about half that time.

To sit and actually listen to the entire song in one sitting, so to speak, is torture enough, but to have it coming in and out --crystal clear one minute, fading quietly into mild static the next-- is like forcing someone to work next to an unshowered, incontinent, alcoholic hobo at the Customer Service station of Wal-Mart the entire week after Christmas.**

Just when it seems that 35 additional iterations of the refrain is all that those many commercials and movies have been sparing you these past few decades, the radio signal comes back clear as day so they can do a quick 10 more before it fades back to lie in wait ominously.

If I tried to work as many hours of overtime as these guys claim they have, I'd have been converted to a salaried position before the single was even released. But I guess, "Takin' care of business / And continuing to work until everything is done enough for my boss, regardless of the number of hours worked vs. dollars paid, and without concern for the long-term effects on employee morale or efficiency / Work out!" doesn't make for such catchy lyrics.

Anyway, you'll be happy to know I've survived my ordeal so far, although the song is still firmly stuck in my head.

Just be glad you caught that instead of the other thing.

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* It can't be a coincidence that "Papa" John's last name is Schnatter. As in, "Oh my God, where's your Schnatter?!? I just finished lunch at Papa John's!"

** Having logged thousands of unhappy hours shopping at Wal-Mart in my lifetime***, I feel qualified to offer the following skit starring Clem, my generic hillbilly voice:

"Yeah, I got this here shotgun fer Christmas, but ever' time I try to shoot it, it won't DO nothin', no matter WHAT I's pointin' it at. I'm pretty sure Santa bought it here, wink-wink, so y'all need to take it back an' gimme one thut works when I go like this. ... Whoa, thar she is!! Nevermine, I guess. ... I s'pose you gotta go call somebody to have that looked at, huh?"

*** There are extremely few alternatives in Presque Isle, Maine, but now that we moved back out to Chicago, my personal visit count has likely stopped forever.

What are turkeys thankful for?

As my American readers know, today is Thanksgiving.* On this day, we are expected to give thanks for the plenty of food and family/friends we are lucky enough to have, and we are meant to celebrate this by ridiculously overindulging in both.

Because of this extreme ritual, we can manage as easily to last an entire year at a time without eating corn-syrup-soaked cranberries jellied into the shape of a can and as we can go that same year without again speaking to or otherwise acknowledging those most distant relatives whose branch of the family tree you can't easily trace.

This holiday is our central teaching tool for that noble tradition our ancestors set in place so long ago: When blessed with plenty, burn through your stores like the freezer's broken; when tested by famine, may you begin to understand why.**

Amen. Now pass me some of those candied corporate profits-- I'm starving!

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* Canadian readers: You may not be aware of it, but what you celebrated last month is rightly called "Canadian Thanksgiving". Please see that you correct your calendars.

** It's believed there was a followup proverb, lost to history, saying essentially that one can always guilt a bunch of Indians into sharing all their stuff whenever you need some.

Now we get down to Real Problems

You know, while I may live right next to the city where our new president ended up settling, I can't say I fully identified with him personally until I saw this picture:

"Backstage at the rally, Obama tries to calm a young supporter whose brother had taken his pretzel goldfish."*

I didn't get to see an After picture for confirmation, but I imagine him using his Dramatic Speech voice to full effect and settling this dispute within minutes.

I have to wonder if he'd be willing to lend me his services now and then in extreme emergencies, if for no other reason than as payback for all those dozens of dollars I gave him.

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* I'm sure Pepperidge Farm would not be very happy to see their trademark genericized like this. I think we need to get out there and determine whether this was actually a Goldfish cracker or merely a regular cracker that happened to be vaguely fish shaped. If the latter, they get to start handing out lawsuits.

Corporate Intelligence, Vol. 5

Though I was born and grew up out here in the Chicago suburbs, I lived in Northern Maine for over 3 years, until about a year and a half ago. Since that move, oblivious companies of all shapes and sizes who must hate the sight and smell of their own money took it upon themselves, with the assistance of the USPS and phone companies, to update their mailing and calling lists with my new information.

Now, this common practice makes sense for most nationally focused corporations, even if their message isn't always skewed appropriately for the drastically different region, time zone, accent, economic sphere, population density, worldview, pronunciation of various important words,* voting habits, or level of quaintness of my "new home".

What I'm really thrown by is the local businesses and organizations who seem to consider Reality Checks the province of "city slickers who don't have the sense to root for the Mighty Red Sox even when they live physically closer to Boston than we do."

Here are just two examples:

• Once we stopped getting the usual bits of local junk mail forwarded by the Post Office halfway across the country just to be immediately discarded, we started instead getting local junk mail formally addressed to our new house, trying to lure us back 1400 miles just to catch a mildly unbeatable deal on snow tires (This Weekend Only!) or The County's best interest rate on a snowmobile loan GUARANTEED!

• Lately, we've been getting automated calls from the Maine Democratic and Republican Parties, urging us to support their presidential candidate or vote against the opposing candidate, respectively. While you may say that a national campaign warrants a national calling list, you must agree that a long-distance call from Maine begging an Illinois voter to support his own Senator, elected with 70% of the vote just 4 years ago, is a senseless waste of money.

And lest you think that Democrats in Maine just don't have the time, money, or manpower to weed out useless numbers from their automatically updated phone lists, you should know that the strikingly low population of Maine allows it to have a single area code covering the entire state, and I'm pretty sure that even Thomas Edison's original autodialer** could be programmed in 10 seconds to ignore any numbers not beginning with 207.

But then where would AT&T and Verizon get the cash to buy both the ink for their Important Messages AND the souls of folks who'll speak out against Net Neutrality?

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* Moving back, almost exclusively, from Incorrect to Correct, including, but certainly not limited to, the words permit and aunt ("aaaaaaaant"... I say if you don't live in London or Cape Cod, just give the whole "ahnt" thing a rest, already).

** Used to plant seeds in the minds of the nation's 137 early telephone adopters that Nicola Tesla fathered a black baby out of wedlock with his secret Muslim terrorist mistress, and that Alternating Current was just typical Liberal flip-flopping.

All the Queen's bees vs. all the President's boys

On the way home from preschool yesterday, D- began chanting a somewhat disturbing song I only vaguely recalled hearing before-- The Baby Bumblebee Song.

Like any red-blooded American, my first thought was that I needed to call the ACLU to organize a protest against the teaching of this song that clearly incites violence against innocent bees, but then I thought, you know what else incites violence against suddenly-less-than-innocent bees? Those panicky little f***ers themselves stinging people without having the decency to give them a little honey first.

I guess I run hot and cold like that, so it's good to know that the kid is being sent off somewhere two afternoons a week to study at the feet of more level-headed people who understand we need to begin training our anti-bee army* as early as possible, to protect America at home and abroad in our uncertain future.

In case you haven't yet had the honey-soaked veil lifted, don't feel too bad when singing happily about slaughtering their young-- all these bees are steadily leaving for more profitable positions overseas anyway, so they can jack up their already obscene profits by avoiding taxes while exploiting our insatiable appetites and not giving a bit back voluntarily.

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* An important special unit in our overall War Against Nature.

Brother, can you spare $700 billion?

The following is an only mildly sarcastic note I sent to my Congresspeople* yesterday. If you'd like to send one, too, you can go to VoteNoBailout.org for a quick and easy method (including a prewritten letter, if you don't have time to write one of your own).

Note: Feel free to reuse my letter below for writing your own representatives, if you're so inclined.

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Hello,

I'm writing to register my feelings on the massive bailout package proposed by the Bush Administration and currently being considered by Congress.

The people controlling the giant banks that run our financial system knowingly put themselves, and the rest of us by extension, in position for this disaster for the sake of making increasingly huge profits for over a decade.

Let them use some of these riches they made to bail themselves out, and save the people's money for those of us who don't have such resources to dig ourselves out.

If these corporations didn't have a contingency plan to avoid bankruptcy, then they're no better than the homeowners so derided lately for signing on to mortgages they couldn't afford to pay.

Of course, it would seem that the banks' first-level backup may have been to get the Bush administration to use its still-impressive power to publicly bully and belittle politicians into going along with whatever they demand, in this case a free pass to tear up the piles of IOUs the bankers wrote without any ability to back up.

Why are "socialist" programs and efforts only acceptable to Republicans when the beneficiaries are huge corporations and wealthy individuals? They spend all their time when profits are up preaching about the simple beauty of capitalism-- they can use some time dealing with the less fun side of it now. I'd hate to incite what would normally be a huge outrage for them by encouraging the "government to interfere with the free market."

Whether this bailout money goes to them or not, we're all on our own to sort through the effects of their unchecked greed and irresponsibleness, barring whatever assistance to individuals the government decides to offer. That assistance is much less likely to be substantial once this incredible sum of money, pulled from who-knows-where**, is gone.

Please vote No to Bush's Bailout, and instead urge these people to use all their business school training and financial intelligence to sort things out for themselves, so the rest of us can get a helping hand as needed from our representatives in government.

I hear there's $700 billion dollars just laying around in our emergency fund-- maybe we could use that?

Thank you for your time.

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* Which includes, of course, the Distinguished Gentleman From Illinois currently running for president.

** I know where-- China!***

*** No, I didn't include any footnotes in the e-mail itself. But I should have.

The finest in casual dining

A couple of days ago, the kids and I took a jaunt down to the massive outdoor mall* near our house, which meant that we got to bite into a juicy cross section of what passes for Americana these days.

Among the stores we passed was a Chili's**, which caught D-'s eye immediately. He said, "Hey look, there's that 'rons-traunt' we went to that time." I acknowledged this and praised him as usual for his good memory, since it was quite awhile ago. He stared at the window as we (happily) passed it by, and his brain began to slowly warp itself before he continued with a second thought. I was all over it two words in-- I don't know why I'm so tuned into his brain patterns most of the time, but I just knew exactly what he was thinking.

D-: Remember we went there that time 'cause Momma's friend works there, and she...

Me: Nope, that was a different place.

D-: No! It was that place right there! We went there and Momma's friend...

Me: You're right that it's the same kind of place, but it's a different restaurant, from a different company.

D-: No it was that place! We went there that time and Momma's friend gave us cookies and they sang Happy Birthday to you!

Me: I promise you, that was a Bennigan's. This is a Chili's. They're pretty much exactly the same restaurant, with the same kind of food, but they have slightly different decorations on the walls. They're from two different companies, and they have two different names, but I can see how you could get confused.

He walked on in silence, since my Imperious Kung Fu is much stronger for the time being, but it was clear from his posture that he still believed he was right, just like I would. As I caught him gazing innocently off in the direction of the Outback Steakhouse, rather than go through this all over again, I immediately veered off the sidewalk to instead cut through the parking lot in the general direction of a big box store whose name willfully escapes me.

Who says America doesn't have any culture?

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* Not to be confused with the other massive outdoor mall also in our town but another mile farther away in a different direction.

** I had to quickly double-check that it wasn't actually an Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday, Chotchkee's, Flingers, Fuddruckers, Uncle Moe's Family Feedbag, TGI Friday's, or one of the others.

A conversation with D-: Rock the anti-'Bamas

Here's a conversation with my 4-year-old son D- from a couple weeks ago, when I had already posted several conversations. It seems he is rapidly increasing his loyalty and dedication to the Democratic candidate for president:

J-: Apparently, Wal-Mart is threatening its managers not to vote for Obama.

Me: That would be some dangerous ground, in most democracies...

D- (adopting his gravelly Action Hero voice): We can go fight those guys with swords and rocks!!

Me (taken aback): Whoa!

D- (now getting in my face, for effect): When we grow up*, we can fight all those guys who won't let Obama do... what... he wants to do!

Me: Oooookay, settle down there.

While I'm certainly angry about the questionable state of our democracy as giant corporations so boldly stride forth in their efforts to squash the rights, needs, and interests of the people (who are of course their customers as well as employees and executives), I don't think Obama is going to swing in there and fix it all himself. Plus, that kind of support is just a wee bit too militant for me.

But I can't wait to see to what level my 18-month-old daughter M- takes her support next-- these two are nothing if not competitive.


* Note that even at only four, he's picked up on the fact that I have yet to grow up.