Girls Don’t Cry: Club Midway, Tonight Sunday March 25 2007 @ 9PM

Get out and see the fantastic rock band Girls Don’t Cry at a new venue tonight: Club Midway. Hear them perform their latest song, Cobain, live!

First Cracks, Then Crumble, Then Crash

A two-fer:

America, Maxed Out
Hard times, easy credit and the era of predatory lenders.

And:

From the Mirage of a Middle-Class Life to the Slavery of Debt
Maxed Out director James Scurlock explains how without credit cards, millions of apparently middle-class Americans would live at the poverty level.

America is very wealthy country, but one has to wonder how much of our wealth is in fact a chimera, spun of a consumerist ideal and given the appearance of solidity by a flood of easy credit? How much poverty and real economic pain is covered up by an endless succession of pay-day loans and EZ-finance rip-offs that eventually just bury people under mountains of debt from which they have little chance of digging themselves out.

Today’s bankruptcy rate is ten times what it was during the Great Depression, foreclosures are at a 37-year high and the United States has a negative savings rate, yet we’re told every day that the economy is going gangbusters.

Previously in the blog:
The Answer Is Yes
When An Economy Crashes, Baby, There Are No Airbags!
And Then Google’s Stock Finally Thank You Jesus Crashes And Takes The Entire Global Economy Down The Toilet, Thank You Science!
The Road to Great Depression 2.0

The Answer Is Yes

Is the American Empire on the Brink of Collapse?
U.S. military expert Chalmers Johnson argues the catastrophe in Iraq and the staggering cost of running a military that stretches across 130 countries on 737 bases may finally cost America its empire.

Karlin: When Bush says we have to accomplish the mission, or Cheney says we have to achieve victory, the question hangs out there as to what our mission is now? And what could possibly be victory in these circumstances? To them, mission or victory mainly means that we are perceived as winning and Iraq remains under our control.

Johnson: I believe that’s absolutely true. It’s one of the reasons why we didn’t have a withdrawal strategy from Iraq — we didn’t intend to leave. […]

Also:

Karlin: In Nemesis you draw comparisons to the Roman empire. As you point out, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we became the most powerful nation, at least in our self-perception. But in terms of our economy, we are at the mercy of all the countries that are keeping our economy afloat through loans. Militarily, we have the most powerful weapons, but this seems to have done nothing for us in Iraq.

Johnson: Nothing at all. In fact, sticking to Iraq just for a moment, one of the most absurd things is the fact that we have a defense budget that’s larger than all other defense budgets on earth. This army of 150,000 troops that we’ve sent to Iraq — a country with the GDP of Louisiana, I’d say — they’ve been stopped by 20,000 insurgents. This is a scandal and a discrediting of the military, the Pentagon, and the strategies we’ve pursued.

And:

Karlin: What will collapse first in America, according to your scenario, in the last days of the American republic?

Johnson: […] If you had asked me what I think actually will happen — and again, I cannot foresee the future — the economic news encourages me in this thought. I believe we will stagger along under the façade of constitutional government until we’re overtaken by bankruptcy. Bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the United States, any more than it did for Germany in 1923, or China in 1948, or Argentina just a few years ago, for 2001 and 2002.

But it would mean a catastrophic shake up of the society, which could conceivably usher in revolution, given the interests that would be damaged in this. It would mean virtually the disappearance of all American influence in international affairs. The rest of the world would be greatly affected, but it would begin to overcome it. We probably would not.

That’s what I think is the most likely development, given the profligacy of our government in spending money that it doesn’t have, in borrowing it from the Chinese and the Japanese, and the defense budgets that are simply serving the interest of the military-industrial complex.

Previously in this blog:
When An Economy Crashes, Baby, There Are No Airbags!
And Then Google’s Stock Finally Thank You Jesus Crashes And Takes The Entire Global Economy Down The Toilet, Thank You Science!
The Road to Great Depression 2.0

Beemageddon

Are GM Crops Killing Bees?

As far back as 2005, Haefeker ended an article he contributed to the journal Der Kritischer Agrarbericht (Critical Agricultural Report) with an Albert Einstein quote: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Mysterious events in recent months have suddenly made Einstein’s apocalyptic vision seem all the more topical. […]

Let’s just take this genetic subroutine we don’t really fully understand and splice it in here where it has never, ever before been. After all, that eejit God and his bitch Nature didn’t really do a good job.

It’s A Scary Maze Too!

Myspace is Completely Retarded

Example 1:WHAT YOU SEE:

Oh my, what a nice looking girl. She wants
you to think she is artistic with the
black and white photography, odd angle,
and a little bit of skin. Yet, for some
reason it looks like she has a uni-boob.

Go see the What You Get picture.

I’ve got a page (blank) there. Don’t know how to find my way anywhere… good thing.

Castration

Extroverted Like Me
How a month and a half on Paxil taught me to love being shy.

Another scary part: Before Paxil, while working on stories, turns of phrase would pop into my head, fully formed. Lying awake at night, or riding on the subway, poof—a neat arrangement of words would appear from nowhere. And would often show up in the article. It’s part of what makes writing fun and surprising. On Paxil, it’s gone. The words just aren’t coming.

Also, the last few days I’ve considered cutting down on free-lancing and getting a regular job—consulting or something. Previously, I couldn’t imagine a job like this. Regular hours and no creative outlet sounded like a nightmare. All wrong for me. But now, stability, routine, and boredom sounds A-OK. Pleasant, even. An easy way to make a buck and just live my life.

And:

In retrospect, it was a bad idea to screw with my brain chemistry and possibly inflict lifelong damage just for the sake of experiment. I would not do something like this again. At the height of my withdrawal I was seriously terrified, thought it might never end, and repeatedly cursed my own stupidity. The fact that I considered a wholesale career change under the drug’s effects, and couldn’t complete any work, is alarming. Also, the zaps are for real. Fear them.

Thrice!

Samstag x Marz 1o, 2oo7

Have you noticed that clocks have faces and hands… but they never cry..?

I must stop reading her now. She is too much all at once.

But she gets an instant add to the Blogroll.

And Yet She Does It Twice!

On most blogs, I am hard-pressed to find one memorable or quote-worthy sentence.

This woman manages two!

Dienstag x Marz 2o, 2oo7

No one flinches, we all float face-down.

Christ. You floor me, woman!

Ooh.

Donnerstag x Marz o1, 2oo7

My dreams are encrypted lessons that I’m begging to unlock.

NY Post Columnist Cindy Adams Writes About Having A Palm Treo

HIGH-TECH PAIN IN MY PALM

Hello, you technoid freakazoids. Here’s the real world chiming in on your transistorized wet dreams:

“Let me educate you. It’s what’s called a PDA.”

“What exactly is a PDA?”

“I don’t know. I only know that’s what it is.”

Googling PDA, Lisa determined it stands for Personal Digital Assistant – whateverthehell that is.

And that’s after ten years of Palm being in existence!

A phone call. Can I just make a phone call?

“Absolutely. You can talk to China, India, South America.”

Connecticut. Can I talk to my friend in Connecticut? She just called and I didn’t know how to answer the phone.

And:

Everything was now fine except I, personally, couldn’t even figure how to turn the thing on let alone actually make a call.

She was with me four hours. Very sweet. Very smart. Very patient. I enjoyed talking with her. When she left she asked if there anything else she could do for me.

I said, “Yes. Loan me a quarter for a payphone.”

Palm. Simply pWned!