Monday, December 29, 2008

feliĉan Novjaron

Both Arthur C. Clarke and Forrest J Ackerman died in 2008. I thought they'd live forever. They imagined a 21st century I'm nostalgic for to this day. The one were we all get jet-packs, subsist on nutrient tablets, and spend sparkling Solar Credits instead of moist crumpled dollars. But dreaming of the future is like wishing for all the ice cream you can eat: Eventually you get it, and it makes you sick. It's almost 2009, the future has been and gone, and it seems I will never address the Supreme Council of the United Earth in fluent Esperanto.

Monday, December 22, 2008

When in doubt, tell the truth.

Remember the movie “All the President's Men?” It had Robert Redford in it because he vaguely resembled Bob Woodward, a big wooden goy. Dustin Hoffman was cast as Carl Bernstein, a short hyper yid. They interacted a little like Abbot and Costello. The story of the Watergate uncoverup included a mystery man, “Deep Throat,” whose true identity remained a secret for decades. Turned out to be number two FBI guy W. Mark Felt, who just keeled over dead at 95. Here's what's weird: This guy Felt vaguely resembled Hal Holbrook, certainly at least as closely as Holbrook favors Mark Twain.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Yule, y'all

Dang. Here it is again. It's time to shift from our customary mindless aquisitiveness to fullbore turbocharged blind drooling greed frenzy mode. The New Orleans Times Picayune, on most Sundays a puny thing about the size of the Family Trader, has bloated to the bulk of the NY Times with color sales inserts. Based on my reading, I've decided I need a television the size of the Wailing Wall, a Hanna Montana over-under 12 gauge shotgun, and literally hundreds of those little USB memory sticks. It's all a blur. Jesus may be just all right, but his birthday is disgusting.

Monday, December 8, 2008

The Big Triage

Supposing I had a job at Janesville or Lordstown. They'd give me some straightforward task to accomplish, like, “Tighten this one bolt here for 30 years, then go die.” If I couldn't do that, I'd be out on my ass for my proven lack of competence. But if I got paid as much as a thousand ordinary guys put together, and my only job was to not run the company into the ground, and I couldn't do that, I like to think I'd have the common decency to resign in disgrace. But these giants of industry are uncommon men.

Monday, December 1, 2008

...or spending American dollars

I might be wrong here, but it seems in general top predators don't eat one another. Lions don't chow down on leopard. Could be professional courtesy, but I think it's more that carnivores don't taste as good as herbivores. (Although the omnivorous pig is both tasty and intelligent.) I have vegetarian friends, and I can respect their choice as an ag-resource issue. But I think too often they confuse squeamishness with morality. “Don't you know where that comes from?” they ask. By their logic, one could no longer enjoy eating blood sausage, reading V.S. Naipaul, or listening to Miles.