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Why Corporations aren’t People

This post is a sad post to write. The Supreme Court, the ultimate arbitrating body of the land on all matters of civility is unable to tell the difference between a person and multi-national corporations. The marketing gurus must be proud of themselves. The first amendment right for free political speech that the five of the nine guilty justices so vehemently defended is now not only enjoyed by us but also our stock holdings, or at least their lobby budgets, or something…. How exactly corporations are considered citizens with full sets of political rights even protecting the funds set aside for greasing legislatures with campaign slush funds I don’t understand.

Is Justice Anthony M. Kennedy desperately looking for a little boy named Target? Does Chief Justice Roberts think he met Disney on his trip to the Magic Kingdom last fall? This is exactly what the big-wigs want too. They hope you think Nike is your friend. That he makes you cool and athletic. It’s that branding and relentless advertising that keeps you coming back to McDonald’s. Modern Man sees the ad on the subway. His stomach twinges and next thing he knows there he is, at the counter. He hands the girl on the other side a dollar. She hands him a shitty burger, and smile, he’s loving it. Sometimes he stays awake at night wondering what he was eating before they started advertising 100% pure beef. Was there dog in there?

While all of congress stood when Obama scolded the Supreme Court, there must have been more than a few happy Republicans and Democrats. If we take that gesture as a form of political speech then we can safely say that they were standing their lying asses off. Standing during a political rally to show your support is a reasonable enough right to give people. Other forms of political speech protected by your first amendment rights are flag burning, holding up god-hates-fags signs, distributing Nazi propaganda, and getting naked in public. We take this right very seriously in this country.

So seriously that activists create organizations around people engaging in, sometimes heinous, political speech. Activists create these organizations to make their voices louder and for legal protection.  A corporation, though, is formed first for profit. Its political contributions will surely spent so as to bring about a climate suiting its primary nature.

The ideal corporate climate would be a privatized Utopia where every service is a market and every resource a commodity. The water, the air all of it should all be up for sale. A RFID chipped supply chain of goods would support the Human Animal from cradle to grave in every endeavor. GE will just stick a reader in the refrigerator so they can monitor consumption from production to destruction. Provided of course the animal can pay, a consumerist fun house of gimmicks and gadgets will be showered down upon them provided by cheap labor (this private utopia of course requires the right to exploit the most amount of work from workers, otherwise it wouldn’t be a “free market”). They, the corpratocracy’s chosen daughters and sons, become advertisements themselves. Look at how happy they are with all their shit. Clearly those labels they wear make them superior creatures. Now there are no limits on how much money corporations can spend on making this dream a reality.

Corporations though are not people. They are social constructs designed, as stated before, to make profits. It could be said corporations have interests but those interest are a construed amalgamation of the aspirations of the CEO, board of directors, and shareholders. By colluding through the corporate structure each actor augments their power. They have all thrown their lots in with on another.  The company acts as the formal social structure to codify economic power. It turns financial power into real economic power by amassing machines, trucks, bulldozers, loading docks, goods and employees. Huge amounts of funds and real capital allow corporations like Wal-Mart incredible amounts of leverage not just over law makers and municipalities, but also over suppliers and employees.  Apparently the majority of the Supreme Court sees no problems with enhancing corporate power. Never mind that ownership of the capital is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Never mind growing income inequality. Never mind labors ever weaker bargaining position. We’re in a recession. That means we have to do what’s good for business even if that undermines our long-term economic stability or our personal freedoms. Whats good for GM is good for America! Right? So whens the next round of bail outs?

Seriously though, at least there is a backlash against this ruling. Perhaps people are beginning to wake up and smell the fascism.

Causes I Officially Don’t Give a Shit About!

These days there are so many causes out there that it is hard to care about each one. So in an attempt to delineate use full causes from completely pointless causes I will here expound the three causes that I just don’t give a shit about.

#3 Diabetes

I understand we have a diabetes is nearly an epidemic in this country and in many others. However, when half the world is starving I have a hard time donating money so that the other half can continue to eat all the food without getting the health problems that goes along with it.  

To be clear Type I diabetics I have sympathy for. It sucks you got the short straw when the G-man was handing out genetics. Sorry that you have to constantly check your blood sugar and inject insulin in your arm or risk death. 

On the other hand, type II or “acquired diabetes” comes from a life time of eating junk food. For Type II diabetics I have no sympathy. After thirty some odd years of a high-fuctose corn syrup and fat based diet you expect me to give you money to find a cure? I’ll give you a cure. Set down the Mt. Dew and Corn Chips and go for a jog.  Try eating some vegetables fat-ass. If my penchant for frozen pizza and fast food fair lands me in hospital someday so be it. A man is only meant to eat so many pizza rolls after a certain point edible food like substances have their revenge.  Make no mistake that fatty salty snack is getting you high and that endorphin rush comes with some negative effects. Namely increased risk of stroke, diabetes, hypertension, heart-disease, and obesity.

#2 Abortion

Political science professors love to bring up Abortion. They like this topic because it gets people hot under the collar.  Nothing stirs debate like accusations of sexism and baby-killing. Personally I find this topic boring. People have been aborting their babies for thousands of years. In fact abortion predates Christianity. So what in Hell makes people think they can stop people from getting abortions?

When abortion was illegal women still aborted pregnancies. In Chicago women started the Jane Collective. A group created so that women wouldn’t have to trust profiteering amateurs who didn’t care about the safety of the procedure.  Just like drugs, because there is a demand, abortion can be prohibited, but not eradicated. The only difference is now  Suzy Skipped-a-Pill is going to risk getting her loins torn out because she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life tending to result of one too many mojitos and a vow not to end up at home watching Carrie and Samantha’s quest to find the perfect pair of heels. The heels that will make everything better.

Yet year after year pro-lifers march on. The pious hordes descend on Washington D.C. once a year for a pro-life march. This huge demo draws tens of thousands of people deluded enough to think they can dictate to 300 million people what and what not to do with their genitals, the greater half of which are  too scared to touch their own genitals for fear of blindness. 

Hilariously enough a  pro-life stance is widely recognized as a “conservative” political belief. The conservatism that is pro-war and anti-social spending. So fetuses shouldn’t be harmed ever but once born they shall receive no Medicaid, no food stamps, and no welfare. If you are a child born in another country it is much worse. Conservatives will either exploit your labor or bomb you.  It would almost be better to be dead. unfortunately that isn’t a bad joke. Many people in war-torn countries actually feel that way. It doesn’t take watching too many documentaries about Afghanistan or the Congo to find some-one wishing they hadn’t been born.  If you need further convincing that this issue is moot, consult George Carlin.

#1 Cancer

Unless you have lost a parent, sibling, or child you really have no room to bitch at me for this. I’ve lost three Grandparents to cancer. However, you still won’t find me on any cancer walks. No issue is so safe and ego-centric as cancer.  Taking a stand against cancer is up there with not liking war, not actually taking stand for peace. Not protesting in the streets or writing your congressman. That would demand courage to disagree. I mean Just saying that war is an unfortunate and ugly thing.

No one likes cancer. However, we live in a carcinogenic society. If it isn’t the cigarettes chemically engineered to keep smokers hooked then its the genetically modified string beans. If it isn’t the genetically modified string beans well it might be all that weed-killer and pesticides.  If the weed-killer and pesticides don’t do the trick just go hang out under some power lines.

Most cancers kill old people. We are so self-centered that instead of making sure others have access to clean water so infants won’t have to die from diarrhea, we’d rather make sure we can live another twenty-five years past God intended. After we eat our genetically engineered fried chicken and choke down another pack of Camels for sixty years we still want more.  Meanwhile kids aren’t making it past their first year due to diseases that are generally considered, in this country, not life threatening.

Funny New Buissiness Tactics

While doing my work-a-day news surfing I noticed a few articles about new non-traditional  services  and tactics being used at big companies.  Burger King is opening a bar in south beach. Air France KLM is denying that they are forcing fat people to purchase extra seats , while Southwest and United already have such a policy in place. Most interestingly though a Holiday Inn in London is offering human bed warmers. For a modest fee a holiday in employees dressed in footie pajamas will warm customers beds.

These business plans shed light on the quest for profits in the overdeveloped western economy.  Burger King is exploiting its relatively successful youthful advertising campaign. In its attempt to be the edgy fast food place of choice adding booze to the menu only makes sense. The only problem is to ask whether the novelty of a fast food bar is enough to draw customers regularly to the new restaurants.  The problem the King faces is that we have too much damn fast food places in the first place. The market is saturated so the branding and delivery needs to be unique. Burger Kings attempt to differentiate itself is no surprise considering the abundance of cheap burgers and french fries.  It will be interesting to see if the Whopper Bar catches on, or if it can’t compete with other cheap food and drink fair.

The struggling air-line industry is also facing a profit squeeze apparent from all sorts of different charges for things once included with air-fare. Soon I’ll be mistaking flight attendants for some good fellas. Extra peanuts- fuck you pay me. Check your bags- fuck you pay me.  Your ass is too fat too sit in the seat?  That’s right, fuck you pay me. However, if you have ever spent more than twenty minutes sitting next to a corpulent frequent flier, you probably don’t mind this development in the aviation businessmen.

However, most revealing is this bed-warming service.  Most developed economies are in the final transitions from an industry based economy to a service based economy.  I’m surprised this scheme hasn’t been tried before.  I love it when I grab that warm seat on the subway after the harrowing wait out in the cold.  The warm seat phenomenon indeed has led to way more than the “seat-back” game. Fifty years ago who would have thought that there would be a feature in cars commonly refereed to as butt-warmers.  It will be interesting to see how this scheme plays out.  I bet other hotels will follow suit but with electric blankets, as opposed to human heaters.  Though the human-heaters are good for the unemployment rate, electric blankets are better for business.  You don’t have to pay electric blankets.

So what have we learned from all this? If you want to really help the economy go stuff yourself  at Burger King. You may have to get drunk first, the food isn’t that good.  Once you’re fat enough, buy two tickets to London and then pay some one to warm up your bed for you.

“Americanism” Torn Apart in Short Order

I’ve recently been accused of “anti-Americanism.” If you’d like to read the conversation, just click on “Whats in a War” and read the comments below the post. This accusation of “anti-Americanism” starts with an interesting premise, the nation-state.   Even though there are two contents called America, I believe the reader was referring to the United States government and segments of American culture that this blog criticizes.  Assuming he wasn’t most angry about my apparent disbelief in doctrinal Christianity and my apparent distaste for MTV and other mind-dulling facets of American culture, but that he was most angry about my criticism of actually policy, we should examine the nation-state to understand the criticism.

For all of those readers lucky enough not to have spent hours scouring political text, the nation-state is this relatively new concept that really arose in the wake of the enlightenment. After loyalty was not required to our sovereigns, the bourgeois and the remaining landed class came up with this idea of the nation-state and the idea of nationalism that comes with it. It wasn’t long before the Kaiser drummed up a great deal of Nationalism and used it to start the Franco-Prussian war, the precursor in many ways to the world wars to follow.

Still the nation-state is a tricky concept. A nation is a people. A state is a group with enough guns to gain the moral legitimacy to use them.  There can be state-less nations, like Palestine, though Hamas seems to be evolving into state.  There are also perhaps nation-less states. The Vatican could be an example, a sovereign territory with-in a city with out a real people to govern.

So a people don’t need a state to be a nation, and a state only needs enough people to man the guns to be a state.  The question to ask then is what is our state’s relations ship to the people. Then we can perhaps discern what this “anti-Americanism” means.  One of the interesting things about the modern nation state is the inevitable coalescence of the forces of business and the state. In fascism the state directs the private industry. In communism the state owns the industry. In capitalism industry subverts the state. Thanks to the privatization of our money-supply, revolving door policies, and a thriving corporate-lobbying sector much of the businesses world is for all intents and purposes part of the government.   So now matter what form of government, political force (the sticks, guns) and economic force (the carrots, money) end up on the same side in order to exploit the proles. The proles aren’t just the working class, technology has made every white collar worker a slave to their cell.  A prole is anyone who hasn’t fallen off the assembly line. Anyone who can’t see through the smoke screen. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, take a look in the mirror. You are a prole.

The latest, greatest rip-off our nation-state has orchestrated against the proles is the Wall Street bail out. The tax-payers effectively gave trillions of dollars to the banks that they have to pay back to the FED at interest! All those T.A.R.P. funds that were plucked out of the air have to be paid back by the tax-payers or else the country will go bankrupt. The bonds backing the dollar won’t be paid back with dollars already created and the value of the dollar will fall to zero as it’s value is undermined.  So we created a huge glut of funds for the banks to loan out to us at interest, that we are going to have to pay back in taxes at interest.  Several firms handed out record bonuses again this year. Meanwhile one in fifty Americans is living on food-stamps with no form of cash income!

I hope my “anti-Americanism” is offensive,  compared to the Americanism I’m up against it better be.

Now I promise not to bitch about political apathy  in middle of the game. I won’t talk about how fucked the meat industry is while you are enjoying a porter-house.  I won’t criticize foreign policy at a soldiers wake. I even try not to talk politics when drinking, even though the American revolution was spread through the pubs.  However, if you find yourself at this site, don’t bring any weak-ass O’riellian arguments.  This ain’t Fox News. I am not going to pretend that such arguments are relevant. I will happily dissect them to prove that such critics are too short sighted see past their own dicks (or tits). So unless you want to get cyber-bitch slapped, you best save any tricks you learned from Ann Coulter for the next Palin book signing. Either engage the argument at the points of the argument or shut the fuck up. That should be plenty of room for you to express your opinion with-out sullying the parking-lot fields with regurgitated talking points that don’t really mean anything.

What’s in a War?

A general escalation of rhetoric has caused many “wars” to be been declared on objects that don’t actually exist or aren’t actually capable of fighting back. The most prominent example is the War on Terror. I thought terror was an emotion. The only way I could think of fighting it was to Xanax bomb our own people. Oh how little I knew. I did some research Drugs, Christmas,  Cancer, and Poverty have all also been declared war on.  I can see the attraction of declaring war on something that you don’t actually intend to kill.  It is a powerful metaphor. Its a way to,  without nuance or any gray area, express opposition to a phenomenon. Its much simpler to declare “war” on something than to examine the problem and fix it. It gets people wrapped up in their feelings, their inclinations, their hatred. Blinded by emotion there is no need to think. There is only need to march.

Ironically some wars are declared by the proponents of the cause being warred on. The war on Christmas for instance seems to have been declared by Fox News. Though they seem to be defending Christmas, no other news services is as devout in their coverage of “militant gay radicals” or the secular ivory towers disrespect for Christmas or the Christian religion. I’ve yet to meet a militant gay radical. I don’t think I would even know they exist if it wasn’t for Fox News. But thanks to their fair and balanced coverage I’m well informed of the problem. Anytime I find myself in boys town here in Chicago I’m on the look out for dudes on roller skates sporting pink AK-47’s and lavender ski masks. I ease drop on every conversation, keenly listening for anyone talking about how  “that Marc Jacobs edition platinum plated RPG-launcher is absolutely to die for!” You can also spot militant gay radicals  using the Fox News Gay-Dar verification system. For five easy payments of fifty dollars, the G.D.V.S. will tell you if your co-worker who seems just a tad effeminate is a God-hating homosexual fascist destroying the institution of the family before its too late. Bill and the gang all swear by it. If only Fox News could tell me how to get rid of these damn baptist ministers who keep trying to get me to go to church.

The war on drugs is another straight forward sounding affair that can quickly turn complicated upon logical examination. Drugs fuck people up. So lets make drugs illegal. Not all drugs though. Certain drugs we need. For example coffee. No other drug is more central to our way of life. How traders be expected to get all jacked up in the morning and trade away our tax dollars and pension funds if it wasn’t for coffee.  That I understand. But some of the other drugs well I just don’t understand what makes some legal and others illegal.

The classic example is pot and alcohol. Both can get rather smelly. Both can have a dulling effect on the intellect. Alcohol, the legal one, makes people violent and extroverted. While Marijuana, the illegal one, makes people docile and introverted. Hmm? Now what kind of tricky piece of mental gymnastics did our politicians come up to rationalized this. We don’t mind people’s drunken debauchery, promiscuous sex, and bar-fights but them having some quiet time to think spent curled up with a bag of Doritos is a threat to our way of life? It’s almost as if they are looking for an excuse to lock people up. If I like to drink well odds are I like to get rowdy and it’s only a matter of time until I get too rowdy. Then the Police can taser me and haul me off to jail.  If I don’t want to go out and get crazy but prefer to stay home and puff the magic dragon, well I’m still a criminal. It seems if I want to dull my mind in any other way besides television I will end up a criminal.

Its strange too the legal drugs are by far the deadliest. According to drugwarfacts.org, Tobacco kills an estimated 435,000 people each year. Alcohol kills 85,000 a year.  Proscription drugs altercations claim 32,000 per year.  Illicit drug use kill only an estimated 17,000 per year. Compared to the handsome gentlemen in the suit explaining the third quarters earnings report for Phillip Morris, Anheuser-Bush, or Pfizer, crack-dealers are pwayful widdle puddy tats. Just don’t tell O.G. down on the corner that, he might feel inclined to convince you otherwise. As long as were talking about what kills Americans an estimated 365,000 Americans die each year from eating to much bacon and sitting on their asses watching TV. Have you talked to your children about the dangers TV and high-fructose corn syrup?

So as far as I can see the war on drugs tries to take most of the really fun drugs away from us so we make into work on Monday and slam some more Folgers. The Government instead lets us have all the cigarettes, alcohol, and shitty food we want, so we die young and don’t clog up the social security system for long. We have to think about our children and their future after all.

The war on terror like the war on drugs starts as a war on a concept but ends as a war on people, two wars to be precise. Our little terrorist problem originates in of our domineering and hypocritical foreign policy, dire economic straits abroad, and the absolution religious extremism offers. This is a very complicated set of issues such that a proper response to would include addressing its root causes, but fuck that. If you thought we’d actually do that, then you haven’t known America for very long. Better intelligence, more equitable foreign policy, and demanding a healthy dose of secularism in from our friends in the middle east would be a great steps towards stopping terrorist attacks. That would mean standing  up to the Saudis for being theocratic despots and demonizing us as they make money hand over fist selling us oil. That would also mean holding Israel accountable  for dropping phosphorus bombs on Palestinians. Considering the World Bank is funding the wall in Israel and the cozy relationship between Dubai and the Bush family, my hopes are about as likely as Bill O’rielly saying something insightful. No instead of a fighting terror by taking steps to repair the situation in the middle east, we’re fighting with terror with terror. That’s right, “we will put a boot in your ass it’s the American way!” just as soon as we’ve finished reaming it.

Dropping bombs on the Arab peoples will surely make them love freedom and see the U.S. isn’t a threat their way of life. Plus we deposed Saddam that despot that we only supported for a few short years when he went to war with Iran.  Also we uprooted the Taliban, who we only supported and trained for a few short years when they were at war with Russia. We replaced the Taliban with Karzai, who was a U.S. supported mujaheddin and has ties to the opium trade. So that he could replace the Taliban’s theocratic tyranny with his brand of theocratic tyranny-now with 30% less tyranny! Freedom is on the March.

Indeed these freedom-haters must pay. Since they don’t belong to a state group and don’t wear uniforms, we don’t have to worry about their human rights or dignity Any people that tries to fight a superior power and doesn’t clearly label themselves doesn’t deserve human rights.  Such group is a bunch of cowards, unlike the men and women who serve in our military. They are all heroes. Some of their courage we regularly forget to mention, like the men flying predator drones on unmanned bombing missions or the AC-130 gunner who blasts the evil-doers below through infrared cameras with 20 mm, 40mm, or 105mm rounds. Those pussies on the other side have to resort to home made road-side bombs and suicide bombers. What girlie-men they are taking on our military with their cheap tactics. Think about it. Our soldiers are clearly uniformed. In their army fatigues, armor plated hummers, and tanks, they mind as well be wearing bright red coats.  These insurgents take pot shots from behind cover in the towns they have grown up it, while our men patrol the foreign streets in formation. It’s down right unconscionable. Next thing you know those lousy freedom-haters are going to raid a ship and throw American goods into the Persian gulf.

Oh well, we’re at war. I guess there is nothing we can do when your at war. In war nothing makes sense. Fortunately all we have to do is destroy our enemies. Luckily there is no need to think in. Only a need to march. We’ll just have to put our head down  and stay the course.

Pat Robertson’s Natural World

Earlier this week I commented on Pat Robertson’s interesting insights about geological phenomena. I’m referring to his comments about the earth quake in Haiti being caused by the Haitians deal with the devil. I joked that Robertson believes that the Dark Lord controls plate tectonics, but another Robertson gaff has shed some life on his literal brand of Christianity. If you can remember back that far, Robertson said that Katrina was God’s redemptive punishment for our secular society’s permissible attitude towards homosexuals. I’ve always thought that most people who believe in Jesus, the Devil, Heaven and Hell and all that jazz believe that these places exist on a spiritual, non-material plane of existence. Not that your soul literally goes up into the sky or down into the furnaces of the inner earth but that it is transported to another spiritual realm. Clearly Robertson takes a more literal interpretation. He seems to reason that Hell is down. Down would be underground. And since Satan Rules hell he must control the interior of the earth. So he controls earthquakes. Heaven is up. Up is towards the sky. So God controls hurricanes. Following this logitc it is funny the devil seems to enjoy messing with LA. For how much hedonism there is in LA it seems like they would be getting way more typhoons or rain storms. Funny too God seems to hate Florida. There always getting hurricanes. I wonder what God has against retirees?

Eight Reasons to Ride a Bike

Bikers are a source of unending trepidation and annoyance for motorists, while motorists are a source of unending death to bikers.  The trade off seems fair enough. Living in Chicago, I ride my bike everywhere that I go. I don’t own a car and detest public transit. Many folks have a hard time understanding how cyclists have the nerve in traffic with the high level of sweat, danger, and fear involved. For the person who hasn’t cycled the thought of riding a bike through rush hour traffic down town might seem outright crazy. However, we cyclists have our reasons. Reasons I believe that should make it abundantly clear why everyone should own a bike and use it for transportation as much as possible. So presented below in simple list format are some reasons why I bike. Hopefully by giving eight reasons I make you feel secure, as if my reasoning is sound and complete. Even though eight just happened to be the number of reasons I thought of.

Greenhouse Gasses

Even if you buy the global warming thing, I bet you still believe in acid rain. You don’t see the Weekly Standard or Fox News debating that Mexico City has a smog problem. Though I don’t want to have to pay Al Gore a penny for every square decimeter of my carbon foot print, I am still mindful of the effects vehicle emissions have on my environment. Perhaps living in the south loop in Chicago for a semester has increased my awareness of exhaust pipes. I remember waking up, excited to start a new day. I was singing in the shower, whistling in the halls, smiling while I drink my morning coffee. Then I walked outside to take a deep breath of a new day’s fresh air, only to choke on the exhaust of a semi trucks and taxi cabs on State St. Though I am only one less car on the road, no one is gagging so that I can get around.

Self Reliance

Thanks to my bicycle I’m not dependent on Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney to get around. When I need to get some where neither Chevron Exxon, British Petroleum, nor the House of Saud gets involved.  I move. They don’t move me. There is no need for wind turbines or electric motors. We are the original green energy. Of course there are questions about how the global food supply chain is moving to me so I can move my bike, but let’s not get into that.  In modernity self reliance is more of a fallacy that achievable goal. It’s hard to remember when you couldn’t buy just about anything pre-cooked, frozen, and waiting for the microwave. Not to mention the mass exploitation that provides us with this junk we don’t need so that we can spend all our money on it and be unhappy with it. Keep in mind that while assembling the confusing pre manufactured dresser you bought from Ikea might make you feel like you accomplished something that doesn’t count as self reliance. While it is impossible to be completely self sufficient, riding a bike brings you a little bit closer to a near impossible goal.

Health

The U.S.A. is the fattest nation on earth. Ours is the only nation on earth to have a problem of too much food. Other nation’s should offer to send us their hungry to come over here to and snatch the last riblet off  Uncle Harold’s  plate before he has his third triple bi-pass. The dollars in healthcare savings over the long run by taking on the starving masses of the globe could total in the billions. Or we could just all exercise more and eat less crap. Riding a bike leads to both. At first you get some exercise. Then you lose a little weight. Then you notice when you eat right biking is more fun because you have more sustained energy. Then one day you wake up and you’ve ceased to be the overindulgent, lazy, stereo type of an American you once were.

Excuse for looking like a Nerd

Remember back when you thought wrapped sunglasses were cool. Deep down inside, you still kind of do. Here is your excuse to bust out the lamest pair of super sleek looking glasses you can find. No one will call you Zulu as long as you’re riding a bike. But the fun doesn’t end there. Skinny jeans, shirts you thought were too small, and flood pants are all geeky trends you can blame on your cycling habit. Not to mention how chic cycling shoes are. Nothing says trendsetter like the click-clack of carbon soled shoes with pedal cleats. When night falls the rules are really off. Neon reflective clothing and headlamps are both fine. That is right you don’t have to be camping or spelunking to where a flash light on your forehead. You can also rock that hot-pink vinyl pleasure suit with sequins you bought when you were just way, way too drunk.

To look Death in the Eye

Modern day Americans are cowards. Paranoia is practically the national pastime. Street gangs, Al Queda, the boss at work, looking fat, drug dealers, anthrax, identity theft, cancer, school shootings, the stock market, the government, the Chinese; is there anything we aren’t scared of?  The pilgrims were worried about making it through the winter. Today were get nervous about changing our phone service provider. Our forefathers revolted against the British. Today politicians are scared to revolt against Wall Street.  Alexander Hamilton died in a duel! Let’s see George W. Bush get challenged to a duel and keep a clean pair of trousers. Beside anachronisms from our own history think of all the people today around the world that are forced to confront danger. While you are getting apprehensive about whether to go skim or soy in your latte, someone else is making a life or death decision.

Human kind wasn’t meant to be so timid. Humans are brilliant animals capable of terrible things. There is no reason to get apprehensive about next year’s property tax hikes. We live such safe lives within our SUV’s and homes only looking out through the distorted porthole named television. It’s no wonder we are scarred of the harmless. We’ve forgotten what real danger is. Biking will remind you. Nothing gets your heart pumping like riding the wrong way through traffic while busses, trucks, and cabs buzz past in the opposite direction at thirty miles per hour. If you’re so lucky, hitting the pavement will remind you of how delectably soft you are. By appreciating those moments of real danger, bullshit dangers all of a sudden seem far away and irrelevant. When you hear the word terror you think of the back wheels on a semi, not some dude strapping explosives to his groin that bystanders are going to end up beating to a pulp anyway.

Traffic

Motorists love to bitch about how cyclists slow them down. I’ve rode with many drivers who moan, grown, and wince upon coming behind a cyclist. They pass them in a huff only to get stopped at the next light. Then they pout about the cyclist running the light. If you are one of these motorists, note that if person wasn’t on a bike they’d be in a car. Instead of passing and then getting passed at the light you’d be behind them. There is a reason you don’t see bikes in gridlock traffic, they have nothing to do with it. Riding a bike through the city is like a running hot knife cliché through a vat of simile butter. Driving a car through the city is like trying to smash through the butter ocean with a sludge hammer. I brought a scalpel and you brought a wood chipper. Quit complaining. Let’s operate. Oh you’re stuck in traffic burning up gas at $3 gallon. Well I only have on thing to say “Ya’ should‘a rode a bike!”

Community

Cycling offers the opportunity for plenty of socializing. If you see someone sexy and you’re in a car and they are in a car there is no way to chat them up, but if you’re biking… oh yes. I believe “Bwah chica bwo waow,” is the phrase I’m looking for. Flirty opportunities abound. In a corporate gig? Competitive cycling is a great way to get in good with a boss. The type-A personalities who end up in management are drawn to competitive cycling because it’s so expensive and an at least some what macho activity you can do pretty much up until death. Corporate types trigger you gag reflex? There are plenty of counter culture riders out there too. Events like the Naked Bike Ride, which is a global “bare as you dare” phenomenon to promote clean transport and positive body image, are great opportunities to meet people who have fallen off the assembly line. You can also get your jollies off my screaming “Happy Friday!” at befuddled motorists with folks at Critical Mass, a ride done the last Friday of each month to promote biking in most cities. This brings me to my next point.

Bikes are Fun!

“Bikes are fun!” the semi-official rationale behind Critical Mass makes perfect sense and is a great reason to ride a bike. Has planning for your retirement, working 50 hours a week at a job you hate, or losing your home to foreclosure crushed your inner-child. Well you can un-crush the innocence and cheerfulness long trodden upon by hoping on a velo.  Just ride, ride, and ride until it feels like your problems are very far away. Don’t worry. You don’t actually have to ride far away. Your inner-child can’t tell that you’re going in circles.  We all remember those training wheels coming and the joy of leaning into the turn for the first time. If you haven’t been on a bike in a while you can experience it all over again. Go for a ride and see how fast you can go. Trust me, it never gets old, but it is always familiar. Yes, riding a bike again is just like… eh, never mind. Anyways, until next time, pump the pedals not the petrol.

Tragedy Abounds

The tragedy in Haiti has blindsided the world with another natural disaster that has caused human suffering on an absolutely massive scale. I don’t read the papers. It is 2010. But all the major news outlets are today covering the latest development, President Obama sending 10,000 troops to Haiti, on this our glorious inter-web. Other side show acts have also been playing themselves out on the national stage. Glover is shooting his mouth off about things he doesn’t understand. Pat Robertson is reminding us why the Christian right is often mocked as absolutely grade-fucking-A crazy. Keep in mind he did offer a pray to save their souls of Haiti from the clutches of Beelzebub. So his intentions were in the right place. He just thinks that plate tectonics are controlled by the Dark Lord. An editorial in the LA Times is accusing Rush of providing cover for Robertson with his own suggestion not to donate money to relief as you have already donated through the U.S. income tax. Rush makes a valid point lets just go march down to the FED and make them up print off a hundred million. If Haiti were a bank the U.S. would have saved it already!

Oh Wait… I’m sorry.  Obama already did march down to the FED and get those presses-a-printing. $100 million in “immediate aid” are scheduled to arrive as soon as the check clears. This immediate response seems knee jerk. I wonder how politician settle on these numbers. $100 million seems fairly pie in the ski arbitrary, like they spun a wheel to pick how many zeros to go with. Don’t go down and just spend whatever it takes on what’s needed. That would require figuring out what’s needed! They just have to put a number on it. We allocated $100 million no need pay attention if it actually buys the stuff people need. Just incase they do spend the whole amount, lets look at some figures to try to put that huge amount into perspective.

The Haiti economy made about $6.943 billion in 2008 according the CIA. The 100 million promised by Obama is equivalent to 1.4% of Haiti’s GDP, slightly larger than its growth rate in 2008. That is .004 % of the 2.5 trillion we’ve spent so far bailing out the financial sector. It is just over a quarter of the largest Mega Millions lottery pay out in U.S. history.  These figures make the big number seem less impressive.

Nonetheless, it is great that as a nation we have the ability to send our troops down to give out food and the bank credit to back up the aid effort financially. I’m sure the rush of private aid is as impressive as the public response. Although, I can’t help but find the massive push for relief after any high-profile disaster some what revolting. It takes perhaps 100,000 people dead to alert the masses that a react to a situation necessary.

I’ve fundraised for political groups for a job before. It’s ugly work. Anyone who lives in a major metropolitan area has had to put up with the street walkers, hideously smiling at you, and always asking, “Do you have a moment for the earth?”  Well I guarantee if I was out talking to random people last week to get relief for the people of Haiti most people wouldn’t given a shit. Today people would be lining up to contribute. It is like the feed the poor on Thanksgiving routine. They are going to be hungry tomorrow. It is impossible to care about everything but the glaring inequities we experience in this world make me wish people weren’t so blithely unoriginal in their politics. It seems too confusing a topic so the temptation to give up is easily succumbed to. Or the lusty two-party spectacle distracts and co-opts people’s dissatisfaction in the favor of one party or the other.

Haiti the poorest country in the western hemisphere is located within 700 miles of the richest nation. To borrow from Mr. Bush, we’re  “in the neighborhood.” Haiti is a hell-of-a-lot closer than Bolivia the second poorest in the hemisphere. Similar gross inequities play themselves out in Chicago. If you travel from the west on Chicago Ave from the posh River North neighborhood you will pass by what’s left of Cabrini Green. Once the most infamous housing project in the nation, all that’s left is a few loan burnt up high rises and the replacement  low rise projects, that have now been build up to the north and east. It is devastating to one’s delusional ideals about the America dream to travel from some of the highest income brackets in the city to some of the lowest with in a mile. What does it say about the way American state-capitalism works that 11 blocks away from some buying a $1000 pair of shoes there is a baby who can’t get enough to eat.  What does it say about the world capitalist system when a country where children eat dirt cookies to fill their stomachs is less than a thousand miles away from a country facing an obesity epidemic. Note the hidden paradox that our sugar quotas keep Haiti from having a sugar industry while keeping us fat and diabetic from all the high-fructose corn syrup.

Though this point is redundant by now, if Haiti wasn’t so poor the death would not have been so high. Anytime an earthquake hits a country with out modern building falling rubble claims hundreds of lives.  The U.S. does dole out massive aid dollars to the poorest country in the region each year. But even though we were sending aid to Haiti, international bank-sters had put the squeeze on Haiti for sometime. World Bank just forgave Haiti of some 1.2 billion in debt in July of 2009. The interest payments were costing Haiti 1.6 million a month while the average Haitian survives less than 2 dollars a day.  If we want to really feel good about ourselves as a people we need to address problems that aren’t glaringly evident too. To only help only people that are stricken with an extraordinary plight while ignoring all the plights considered ordinary demonstrates a moral immaturity and lack of perception. The ordinary plight to find food each day is ignored by millions. Just keep that in mind as the suffering in Haiti pulls on all our heart strings.

So You Want to be a Model?

Today’s voyeuristic society has churned out plenty of would-be girl next door hotties who just refuse to settle with the attention of most their male counter parts. Thanks to social networking sites like facebook and myspace just about anyone can straddle the fence between D-list celebrity and bitchy narcissist. All one needs is the drive to “friend” every living soul they come in contact with and high resolution digital camera to start down the rocky road to becoming a fashion model.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with wanting to better one self. Nor am I saying you shouldn’t use social media to help you network and achieve your goals. All I’m saying is that ranking hotter than a 7 on most people’s scale of 10 pt and being skinny doesn’t make becoming a model a worthwhile or realistic ambition. I understand you want to feel attractive. We all do. But your dreams of becoming the first 4’6” model are about as realistic as mine of becoming the first non-catholic pope. Oh how I would love to be the first secular pontiff. What better than to God’s official spokesperson for millions of believers without being tied to the faith. My first act of infallibility would be to declare the work week be that Monday is now Funday. The sequel to Sunday, which requires you refrain from work again and instead of resting have as much fun as you can. My dreams of pontificating a shorter work week are unrealistic. I’ve come to accept this.

It’ probably for the best that the Pope is actually Catholic and that fashion models are on the whole at least 5’7”. Who wants to listen secular religious leader? And who wants to buy shit from short people? No-one! Don’t give up your hopes of becoming a model just yet all you viral exhibitionists. Just because you aren’t Victoria secret material doesn’t mean you weren’t cut out for other modeling gigs. Perhaps you should consider the JC Penny’s catalog. Or if that fails, take off your shirt. If that fails, you can still call yourself a model even though we all know you just do porn, real nasty porn.

Be warned, however, that for me nothing makes me go from wanting to get busy with a girl to wanting to run in the other direction than hearing she wants to be a model. It says to me,  “I want to be ogled for a profession” or “I thought about applying myself to something worthwhile, but I’m just too dumb” or “I’m so insecure with my body that I need the constant validation of strangers.” Of course if she is 5’ 10” and 115 lbs, I might take her more seriously. I’ll probably be too intimidated to talk to her to her in the first place of course. So assuming this blog doesn’t take off and I land a book deal worth a few million: if I’m talking to you, the odds of you becoming a model are slim to none. That’s when you know you should probably give it up. I’m not saying you aren’t pretty. I’m saying you’re just not pretty enough to be a successful model. Successful models are the in-humanly beautiful girls that never have to lift a finger for anything in life. God put them here to make us all feel a little shittier about ourselves. They are here (along with the people who airbrush their pictures) to keep us all humble.

Perhaps this isn’t discouraging to you. I am after all the academic cynical type that probably wouldn’t make too much money anyway. And if you hope to become a model odds are you hope to marry into money as well. After all what could be a better barometer of the perfect mate than a robust portfolio and a lack of interest in a pre-nup. If that’s you, a simpler minded money-driven assholes are probably more your type. I doubt they will find your desire to be a model as contemptible as I. They might like the idea of their significant other smiling like a jackass half naked to hock sweat-shopped apparel.  They might even be so vain as to appreciate the hundreds of preteen boys locked in the bathroom dutifully chaffing their pricks to your first underwear ad.

Perhaps I’m blowing this whole modeling obsession out of proportion. There have been vapid egotistical girls seeking cheap accolades from horny guys for centuries. I suppose what angers me about it now is that women don’t have to be relegated to a subordinate role in society. They are free to pursue whatever intellectual and professional goals they wish. Shit, women don’t even need a witness to charge a man with rape anymore. Of course not all men are like me, attracted both to physical beauty and intellectual prowess. Some of us wish for the old days when it was alright to treat a woman like a moving houseplant. I suppose the current generation of girls just hasn’t experienced enough sexism to make them want to do more with there lives than stand there and look pretty.

So in conclusion, I’ve developed a quiz for all the aspiring models out there to see if they have what it takes. Or if they need to step away from the pipe, dream that is.

1. Are you at least 5’6” or taller?

a. no

b. yes

2. How do you measure someone’s worth?

1. By what impact they have on the community by contributing productive labor or thinking
2. By how many people think they are hot

3. What is more important?

1. being a good person

1. being sexy; good muscle definition

4. Are you willing to purge your self to live up to the unrealistic and unhealthy standards of beauty modern society has settled on?

1. no, I like to eat and once I do eat I like to keep it down.

1. yes, calories are gross and vomiting is just another tool in the diet tool-box

If you are wondering which answers make modeling a worthwhile goal for you, you don’t have anything worthwhile to contribute to society anyways so continue to hope to be a model. Obviously if you’ve answered b. modeling might not be a bad choice for you. If you’ve answered C more than once, give up. You’re just not vapid, bitchy, or tall enough to be a model. Be thankful you still have your self respect and the admiration of men who want wives capable of cognitive responses more highly evolved than looking fierce and coyly biting their lower lip. Although in certain situations those things are certainly appropriate.