Observations from the Urban Prairie

It is finished

2010-01-22T18:44:00.003-06:00

I can't do this anymore. Between my continued economic decline and overall marginalization, it is apparent that the forces of corporatism have defeated me and consigned me to the narrow tenuous niche which I barely occupy.

I have not the desire anymore to continue with this venture. Too many other problems contend for my time and energy.

In any case, what I write here is of little consequence in this world and probably garbage anyway, so the point of all this is fairly ridiculous.

I will leave this page here if only for archival purposes - it costs me nothing to leave it as it is. But don't come to expect any additional updates to this space. It is finished.

This blog is closed - good night.

If god is dead, was he ever alive?

2009-11-30T17:36:00.003-06:00

For millennia the mystics of faith have kept the morass in thrall to the obedience of the ghosts on high who are presumed to dictate the whims and ways of the world.

The destruction to rationality and human productivity these prophets of moronia have unleashed is probably incalcuable over the depths of human history.

But we can break their millennial misrule with three simple but earth-shattering words:

GOD IS IMAGINARY.

Indeed, there is no supreme being watching over you. The elites and their clerics have conspired to rob you of your birthright in this world for the promise of eternal sunshine and happiness in the "next." They create a ghost, an illusion, a delusional farce, so that they may have their way with you through the unquestionable guise of religious authority.

Nay, the church tacitly supports the agenda of imperialism, centralization in the FedGod, and worship of the Leader through the promotion of the cult of imperialism. So the State and the Church are joined at the hip despite whatever the increasingly irrelevant constitution says.

Think about it. Jesus said with prayer all things are possible. But when has that ever been true for you?

Billions across the planet practice faiths which Christians regard as fantasies. What makes the way of the Nazarene any more valid than any other world religion?

Think of the dead gods of history. To their adherents, they were just as real as the reincarnated Savior. Real as mermaids and unicorns. Do we pray to Zeus, or Ra, or Mithras to-day?

The centre of the Christ faith is the torture and death of a delusional carpenter who died "for our sins." After having watched the Passion of the Christ, I wonder if it is not truly about the torture for torture's sake, and nothing else.

It is quite apparent even from his own words in the gospels that Jesus, a delusional madman, is quite dead and absolved no sins with his gruesome death.

In the mass we eat his body and drink his blood - as the ancient tom-toms of cannibalism are suppressed behind the dark curtain of silence.

In the end, we sustain ourselves by reason in our daily lives. We know rationally that we cannot move mountains with prayer, levitate at will, or conjure up angels.

Because deep down, we all know in our heart of hearts that god is indeed quite imaginary.

Parade of fools

2009-11-18T18:18:00.003-06:00

The media circus rolls on with the continued and unwanted presence of the former governor of Alaska in our lives.

No failed vice presidential candidate in the history of time has ever found anything save obscurity in the wake of a national defeat. Who here recalls Lloyd Bentsen, Jack Kemp, Sargent Shriver, etc. etc. For that matter, who remembers Garrett Hobart? He was vice president - during the first William McKinley administration.

So why hither the anomaly that is Sarah Palin?

She is now famous for being famous, just as unqualified to be Dictator as anyone else, a character in the center of an ongoing soap opera being played out in front of the cameras.

As with everything in the media, it all comes down to celebrity. When the media figures themselves frequent the circles of the powerful, it stands to reason.

Dickheads of the highest order.

Not to mention that other celebration of dickheads, the Business Report's "Top 40 Under 40", filled as always with the ranks of lawyers, public relations "directors", bureaucrats, "principals" of an uncountable number of firms, etc.

In short, no one who truly enriches the world by producing something tangible of value. Really, what do lawyers do that adds value to the economy?

The goods producing folks roll on anonymously. But for the likes of the power elites that publish the organs of influence in this city, they could be all but non-existent to them. Because when you are one of the "little people", a different set of standards apply, for the powerful truly do not care whether you live or die.

The taser wielding Praetorians which terrorize us daily are proof enough of that.

The death of marriage

2009-11-05T19:04:00.005-06:00

With my longstanding and likely permanent inability to attract a mate weighing down on me more pressing than usual, I have come to realize that socioeconomic and cultural changes have conspired to render a potential happy ending to this situation increasingly untenable.

Think - what is marriage?

Marriage is a sacred institution, the apothesis of human bonding - a mutual commitment by two people (of opposite sexes, thank you very much) to form a socially sanctioned pair bond that in effect pledges exclusivity to each other in economic, interpersonal, and sexual affairs. Like everything moral, it is fundamentally an economic arrangement - the husband contributes his material efforts as a household provider, in exchange for the civilizing influence of the wife's attentions.

The man has much to gain, but of course at the expense of his ability to flit at a moment's notice. Yet it is greatly beneficial. Married men live longer and experience the contentment of a permanent companion with which to share his joys, his pains, his victories - not to mention an assurance that he will sire progeny that will survive him. In short, the proverbial "sex contract."

The arrangement is predicated on the inability of the woman to obtain her own sustenance (or more importantly, that of her children) without the assistance of her partner.

But what happens when this all breaks down?

What happens when women enter the workforce (or better yet, cling to the teat of State subsidy) in large numbers and are then able to support themselves and their children? Especially when such workforce, increasingly in demand of traditionally 'feminine' traits such as concentration and attention to detail, is largely tailored to their strengths?

What happens when illegitimacy is no longer viewed as shameful, so that unwed mothers are accepted as a normal facet of life?

What happens is that men suddenly become superfluous in the entire scheme.

What happens is that where once women selected mates that demonstrated traits of stability and discipline, traits that well suit committed married men, they increasingly came to ignore such traits as irrelevant - even that of "losers."

What happens is that women are then drawn to "exciting" and "romantic" bad boys - in short, real losers.

What happens is that pair bonds become fleeting or nonexistent - which poses no issue to the economically liberated women, or the promiscuous "bad boys" involved, who are always certain to find another hapless mark with their suave olive oil charms.

What happens is that men without exceptional advantages in life or the comportment of a psychopathic, parasitical "bad boy" start to drop out of society, slowly but surely - increasingly falling toward the margins where the pavement cracks and the weeds grow tall.

In the ghetto, the real world results of all this are your standard evening news fare or sociological screed. But this is not what I speak of here. I speak of those whose lives do not turn at the point of a 'gat.'

For the rest of us, marriage becomes a lifestyle choice largely confined to the upper classes, of which only the lucky few - the Type A dickhead class so favoured by the privileged country club set who dictate all cultural norms - succeed at achieving.

And it then follows that all those men who do not fit the mold of privilege - who are merely normal, not earning six figure salaries in their twenties - are thus forever branded as unmarriageable "losers."

And it of course follows that these men, the regular Joe, non exceptional but hard working, honest, workaday fellas, who desire the happiness and commitment of married life are denied this privilege.

And so we sit alone, increasingly rejected and marginalized by greater society, confined to the margins, barred from communion with potential mates and pretty much everyone else.

So it was that Western civilization created an instant underclass of losers amongst its most productive, dependable citizens.

Thanks a lot, folks.

California love

2009-10-27T19:28:00.005-05:00

Wondering where I was earlier this month?

Probably not.

But for those who care, I'll give you two guesses.

A lifetime dream fulfilled - cruisin' the Southern California freeway system --

The legendary Four Level interchange.

Freeways 'r pretty wide in these parts.

San Diego, America's finest city.

Like our Latino friends, I made a run for the border also.

Since I suck at taking pictures, this trip ends with the sands of lovely Newport Beach to grace our exit.

Counties collected: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego

Freeways traveled: 5, 101, 405, 60, 91, 110 (interstate and state), 805, 15, 8, 52, 125, 55, 57, 22, 710, and last but not least 10 from the west terminus to Palm Springs

"So that's where I-10 winds up!" - My cousin Zeke who has never left Louisiana in his life

Vayan con dios

2009-10-19T18:18:00.005-05:00

A relic of transport infrastructure in the Baton Rouge area will disappear from the earth come Wednesday.

The original US 190 crossing of the Amite River, completed 1927, converted to WB only traffic ca. 1955 or whereabouts:

(Image courtesy B(l)ing maps - north is at top, the bridge in question is the metal structure)

The bridge crossing here, a vital commuter link between EBR and Livingston Parishes, is being replaced with a modern concrete span, of which its blandness and absence of old wooden railings per the current bridge will be mitigated by its safer design.

1927-2009 - rest in pieces, old friend.

Speaking of exits...

In related news, Slick Eddie Price, mayor of Mandeville, has acknowledged the inevitable. Darkangel should be very happy about this ;-)

One down, one to go.

War is peace

2009-10-09T19:04:00.002-05:00

So likely you have heard the news that Our Leader has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. If that doesn't blow your mind, know that I am a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Just kidding. But just as likely in a rational world. Regrettably, this is not the case. In a world where black skin and corporatist socialism of a Euro-trash variety bear greater repute than actual accomplishment, the great war criminal in chief can rack up accolades and successes on the thinnest of resumes and achievements.

It is understandable only in the context that the greatest war criminals are often recipients of this very award. So it is apparent that the international corporatist elites are grooming The One for bloodletting of a monumental nature.

BO is to the presidency what the losers on skid row are to the executive suite of a large corporation. When affirmative action is practiced in low places, it destroys lives but the larger effect is mitigated. When affirmative action is applied to the most responsible offices in the land, we all lose.

But then, with any project of the elites, we the people are bound to lose.

Light out

2009-09-19T20:05:00.004-05:00

It's game over for Guiding Light as the 15,762nd and final episode is transmitted over the daytime airwaves. And with that, 72 years of drama, pathos, and tragedy come to an end.

Now that the death of daytime drama is official, perhaps the network will come to recognize that soap operas need to operate under a new paradigm. No more "Will X tell Y the truth about Z?" and all that jazz. That crap has been long played out, and indeed is replicated daily on many an anonymous reality series craptacular.

But most of all, the trailer court values need to go. That above all is what has turned people off to daytime. There is no moral value center. The creative process has turned to plot points and the theatre of the absurd where moral values are tossed out the window regularly.

A story grounded in the moral right will always triumph. Audiences will only invest in characters which they care about.

A lesson learned too little, too late for GL, and other potential departures from the canvas in the future.

You lie!

2009-09-15T19:19:00.002-05:00

But then they all do.

Even those who call out lying liars who wear the purple, heroically and in the face of what the power elite terms "executive deference", are themselves liars so far as they belong to one of the most dishonest institutions on earth - the United States Congress.

It is the supreme example of the pot calling the kettle black.

What does Senator "Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them" Stuart Smalley think of all this? Where be his voice (among others) rising in opposition to the dishonest proclamations of our charlatan, sociopathic God-Leader?

But it is a God-Leader in which they can approve, and for that Team Blue is content. Never mind that despite the supreme ignorance of the previous Leader, this Leader seems hell bent to outdo each and every one of his predecessors in the nation destroying business.

It is also apparent, in all this frenzy, that even a Congressman cannot state the obvious and call out the emperor for having no clothes without bringing upon himself the full fury of the power elite.

Guess free speech is dead after all. Imagine if a mere mortal such as you or I were to fall into the same predicament. The park bench would be serving as our night time repose.

In the end, despite whatever effect this incident has for free speech (incivility my ass - we need more foul mouthed protestations and them some in Parasite City), it is apparent that lost in the shuffle is that burning issue which our overlords would rather have us conveniently forget.

The truth. And that it matters.

And the truth is this: The State, its corporate benefactors, and all its actors, is death. And the only solution is to string them all up onto a burning stake, and then we will have our country back.

Thuggin' it and lovin' it

2009-09-07T19:29:00.004-05:00

Did you work this Labor Day?

Because the original purpose of the holiday was to celebrate and encourage the great American work ethic, that powerful force which built this country into greatness.

Instead, most of us use this day to slouch and otherwise avoid labor, in the nature of the parasite nation which this country has become.

Those in the know make a point of doing nothing but productive things on this date, in homage to the intent of the holiday.

For all others, there is at least the sore temptation of the culture of death to comfort them.

Enjoy your rest day, for the corporatists may demand your blood to-morrow by declaring you surplus and placing you on permanent holiday.

Work is life. Indolence is death.

---

To-morrow, yet more bodies will drop in Port Charles. Pray that no Quartermaines breathe their last. They are endangered enough.

Thanx, Guza.

Teddy's dead

2009-08-26T17:49:00.003-05:00

The spent Messiah of the corporatist Left has breathed his last.

And so let the hosannas roll (and indeed, they will) for this lifetime parasite, this master of the power game, this architect of depredations minor and massive which has rightly earned the ire of all decent Americans for which the name "Edward Kennedy" is little more than an epithet. His "bipartisanship" and "success" in legislative deeds testifies to the fact that in the end, the Establishment is indeed monolithic despite their surface cleavage into warring camps of Teams Red and Blue.

Let us not forget, if the Great One had not been benighted by accident of birth and privilege with the electric surname of political power, that he would have faded fast long ago into the criminal justice system, to bear his responsibility for a young woman's death caused by his hand.

For the normal person, Chapaquiddick would have been the end of his life. For this fatted scion of privilege, it was but a minor speedbump to an ultimate fate of honor and reverence among the power elite.

This murderer, substance abuser, chronic adulterer, and moral midget died with all the esteem and glory accorded him by the Establishment. Indeed, in the complexion of the character of those we worship, it is evident that we as a nation are morally bankrupt and decadent through and through.

Though he claimed responsibility for his many personal failings, a real statesman would have removed himself from the public service which demands a rigor of character greater than the usual standard. And to his dying breath, he held dear the tenets of socialism and collectivism, beholden to the corporate elites that made him, and took no responsibility for the destruction he caused to the notion of a free republic, laying waste to all hopes and dreams of personal freedom for all so that the corporatist nirvana of total socialism could be realized.

And indeed, the Great One's corpse may be just the bump needed to bring the spectre of StatistCare to life, as indeed his brother's shattered cadaver was used as the bludgeon to enact the odious Grate Society which has done so much to eviscerate the moral fabric of this land.

Edward Kennedy is dead. And not a moment too soon.

Rage against the machine

2009-08-17T17:40:00.003-05:00

Even an omnipotent monarch such as BO cannot retain power without the implicit will of the masses. The secret of the power elite is that the entire structure of power which supports them rests on a foundation of clay feet, of which revolution from below would vaporize it to smithereens in an historical instant. The gods of power would be exposed for the charlatans they are in short time. The elites go to great lengths to help you forget this inconvenient (for them) fact.

But as the end times approach, the facade of power is crumbling and the ruptures in the tower of power are, finally and fatally, steadily growing.

The perfect socialiste clamor of StatistCare, also known as the government's method to finally assert control over who lives and who dies, has finally awakened the bovine masses from their stupor. The monarchs of power return to the provinces which they nominally represent, to engage the dumb masses in the "consultive" process of democracy (sure...), but lo! they are faced with the seething rage of a populace which is growing to understand the great game that the elites play and are wise to the ways of the State power.

Even fools can see that State run health care is to provide the power of life and death over every individual to the State. Regardless of socialized health care's constitutionality (I'll give you two guesses) or its costs (instant bankruptcy for the USSA), the moral quandary of BO and his cohorts dictating who is worthy of life and who is not is pressing even for the feeble of mind.

It is the naked attempt of the sociopathic fascist to exterminate all those who do not profit himself.

First they come for the Jews...then the elderly....then the merely "eccentric"...and soon eccentric will be identified as any personal behavior which does not work to favor the Corporate State and the permanent financial profit of the Corporatocratic cartel.

Soon, even a subtle facial glance will expose you as a traitor. Be sure you're healthy when that happens, or the bovine healthcareocrats (who will undoubtedly derive from the same ranks as the corn fed cows of the welfare Bureaucracy) will suddenly deem you "economically unviable" and thus unworthy of care...life unworthy of life.

It is a general rule that as corrupt empires reach their last stages of collapse, their fundamental fascist tendencies grow increasingly open and undisguised, as do the corresponding attitude of their sociopathic power elites. Indeed.

The empire is in the hands of sociopaths and has been for the last 150 years. When regular people do nothing, freedom dies and the sociopaths win.

But people are beginning to witness. And lo, may the sociopaths only hope that their deaths be quick and short when the time of the long knives commences.

End of days - a user's manual

2009-08-10T19:02:00.007-05:00

As the fogs of destruction begin to descend upon us, here is the likely manner in which the future of the human species will play out. Don't say you weren't warned.

- Economic collapse: Already in the process of occuring, the "green shoots" of media lore will be revealed as a gigantic sham, conjured up by a ruling class which wants to wish its way out of economic desolation. In this they have reached the point where reality has evaporated from their grasp and delusion becomes the operative 'reality'. The value of the dollar will evaporate as the worldwide pyramid of debt crashes and burns and the FEDGOD will turn to monetization of the deficits to escape the vortex and continue to subsidize the bovine classes dependent on stolen revenues to survive. Hope you stored your precious metals and stocked your pantries while you had time.

Starvation and near 100% unemployment is the end result, and civil order will come perilously close to breakdown. The Federal government will assume increasingly open autocratic powers to protect itself.

- WAR!: In every era of civilizational collapse, the road to death always ends in war as the various national elites scramble for control over dwindling and increasingly scarce revenue sources. It is irrelevant as to how the State powers are arrayed in terms of "sides". (With any State, the only thing that is clear is that it is never on your side.) It is certain that any upcoming conflict will make use of nuclear weapons.

Cities and nations will evaporate in mere moments under the white pillars of radioactive fire. Untold billions will be snuffed out in a historical instant, the greatest and final act of State mass murder in history. Vast regions will become uninhabitable, these massive tracts poisoned by radiation for tens of thousands of years to come. Depending on how much arable land is contaminated, this affects whether humanity will achieve extinction or not. We will be generous and assume some survivors...

- End of civilization: With war, the order of the economy will dissolve as the division of labor breaks down. States will disappear as their elites are exterminated from within or without. All aspects of civilization will evaporate overnight as the specialized knowledge that makes civilizations work is either physically lost to the fires of the atom or is otherwise destroyed in the attendant mass slaughter of those with the knowledge. Try sustaining a mechanized society if no one knows anything about how machines operate. The human knowledge lost will be incalcuable and will likely not be regained for millenia, if at all ever again.

The needs of humanity will shift to bare survival - no public relation executives need apply (though many former PR executives will be trying and failing to attempt to grow food for themselves and their families). Cities will be abandoned to ruin and advancing nature as the starving survivors flee to the countryside to make a last chance scramble for survival. Most will not succeed as virtually everyone alive has little to no knowledge of the rudiments of agriculture, due to former specialization of labor which has now broken down, utterly useless as an organizing means of a society which now exists at barely a subsistence level. Those who do not perish of radiation sickness will die a slow painful death by starvation or be killed in battle with their fellow men over scarce resources. Those who survive will be those who know how to live off the land (survivalists, Stone Age societies) or those who feel the least compunction to butcher with impunity. In all the human population is reduced to somewhere around 350 million (a generous estimate) with many regions entirely depopulated. (Some groups, like the natives of the Brazilian rainforest or the New Guinea highlands, will not be so affected since their relationship with Western civilization is indeed tenuous at best. In retrospect, good for them.)

- Warlordism: The pathological sociopaths have not all died, just the ones in positions of formal power. A new crop of leaders arises as if by parthegenesis from the decimated human population - those who feel no shame in wielding a gun and murdering their fellows with impunity. Nearly the rest of the human population is consumed as these criminals battle each other for ultimate power in the post-civilized age. This stage of the end days will be fairly lengthy and will last for about 50 to 100 years depending on the extent of the damage done beforehand.

- It is finished: The handful of human survivors, if any, will by now have learned to forage and hunt for food, so populations are sustained at low levels, roughly a few hundred thousand at most. The warlords have devolved into chieftains of their clans, as people find it advantageous to band together against threats. Natural law will begin to prevail again as State organizations can not be sustained at the hunter-gatherer level, and traditional concepts of right and wrong will shape most systems of justice. Agriculture may exist but on a limited basis, as most edible crops have been leached of their nutritional content through years of corporatized agricultural practices.

For those who have managed to reach this level, life is actually quite reasonable (notwithstanding the shorter human lifespan of approximately 30-35 years, dependent on how much medical knowhow survived the atomic flames), though certainly far less sophisticated than the gleaming civilzations of yore. A few enfeebled elderly may manage to recall the days when cities gleamed bright and people traveled not by foot or horse, but by fuel powered contraptions, some of which even took flight in the air. In all some history might survive, passed down orally through the generations as in ancient times.

And perhaps in another ten thousand years (or not), humanity will achieve the lights of Western civilization yet again. Let us pray that our descendants are not as depraved as we are and will make a better run of it.

Happy birthday, Mein Furher

2009-08-04T19:11:00.003-05:00

To-day is the Big One's birth day. The usual pleasantries about "hope for many more" and "wishing you well" shall be dispensed with, because Our Leader only desires our worship...

HEIL!!

Glory to the One who giveth much - stimulus, cash for clunkers, etc.

Hail to the master warlord, the Conqueror of Central and Southwest Asia!

Praise to He who straddles the continent effortlessly as he bestows his bountifullness upon the people!

Marvel at the Great One's miracles of levitation, of turning stones into bread!

And know far and wide that we praise Him for all this!

No matter how high the bodies pile, know that His will is law and thine majesty is eternal.

Hall of lame

2009-07-29T18:30:00.002-05:00

As all things pass, so they become lame. And so here therewith we present the Wide World of Lameness:

Thomas Spinoza - for creating a downtown for dickheads, kicking our real downtown while it lays dying, and not bothering to deal honestly with his associates, so that the spectre of foreclosure now graces this monstrous blight on the south suburbs

Conan O'Brian - for pretending to be a comedian

Ben Silverman - for playing a lot of high winded dickhead games, yet doing nothing to save the network of which he was president from being drowned in the bathtub (seems that the name "Silverman" has a poor track record at the Crap Network)

Sarah Palin - no comment necessary, her entire life is a cacaphony of lameness

Drew Carey - for plumbing the depths of lameness, by lowering the greatest game show in history to the bottom rung of depravity and despair

General Hospital - because only the most brilliant of minds could turn a time honored medically oriented series into a low rent version of the Sopranos

Jack Wagner - because who knew that to be "Wagner'd" could be such a life changing experience

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal - for high crimes and dickheadery, namely promising flashy "change" and then proceeding to mulch tax dollars with abandon, satisfying his innate bureaucrat urge

Our Leader (aka BO) - for raping the Amerikan people every which way and that, and condemning us to the certain death of economic dessication and medical fascism.

Way to go, people. You folks have done wonders to make our society the thriving cesspool it is to-day. Believe it!

Hello, my dear

2009-07-22T18:36:00.004-05:00

At the risk of turning this blog into a self-indulgent art show....

Regrettably the fact that I am older than dirt (or so it seems) is hardly protection from what seems like juvenile, childlike, and silly activities on my part. However, what spare time exists in life acts as a vacuum and demands to be filled. So it was that I entered the craven world of avatar creation.

The original intent was to create a virtual female similar to the artistic beauties (or something approaching this) which I pencil away in my spare time, where no soul can share. Thus the intent was not so much realism as what struck me as attractive. Granted I am male, so if you are unduly offended, tough potatos.

But I believe I have not done too badly in crafting my ideal female(s).

Consider thus:

This young woman is adventurous, loves the outdoors, has few hangups or inhibitions about the world around her. She loves life, lives each day for all it is worth. She is sensible, intelligent, perceptive, and above all kind and caring. Behind her appearance of devil may care, she holds a deep and abiding sense of moral responsibility toward herself and others. It is for these reasons that she is admired and treasured by friends and family alike.

This lovely woman is sophisticated, demure, somewhat shy but attractive all the same. She holds a passionate intensity toward her work and demands excellence in all her endeavors. She dresses professionally and properly as suits her sense of moral and social propriety, though it fails to prevent men from turning their heads as she radiates a quality of sensibility and goodness which permeates her entire being. She would certainly make a good friend or spouse for someone - her patience, quiet love, passion for living, intelligence, and sensitivity recommend her highly.

This young lady is free-sprited, with nothing to hide, starting her adult life with all the excitement and trepidation that this brings. She is friendly and a joy to be around; not the kind of girl that gets obsessed with style and fashion and all the other empty vagarities of the university female set. She has simple tastes and simple desires - to get an education, to be a credit to her family, to come home and prepare a nice home cooked meal for herself, perhaps shared with a few friends.

This lovely is of course an adventurer. She holds no fear in exploring strange environments, even entire new worlds. Fit and limber, she takes care of herself so that she may engage life to its fullest. She is as tough as any man and craves new challenges and obstacles to overcome. Though she works hard and plays hard, she desires as much as anyone that someone special to come home to, to embrace her and soothe her aching body when she is done adventuring for the day.

Death spiral

2009-07-21T17:45:00.003-05:00

These are indeed fortituous times for those who wish to study the mechanics of a wholesale civilizational collapse.

As the empire elicits its last wheezing gasps, laid low by the twin blows of debt orgy and parasitism, the madmen in power look to compound the blow as the last vestiges of the free economy are consumed by the State machine, with the next sector to fall under the bureaucratic mow looking to be health care. At this rate, it will be fortunate indeed if we even have roots and weeds to sustain us when the day of judgment arrives.

That day is approaching rapidly as we continue to max out our credit cards throughout the world, as the rapacious demands of a wicked Imperial machine look to outstrip the total extent of all wealth on planet Earth. The demands of the subsidy class know no bounds; the endless pit of need knows no end to its insatiable craving for something for nothing.

The fact that IT IS FINISHED is plainly evident to any sane thinking person, which sadly amounts to only a handful Remnant among the social ruins of the comatose mobs of T-shirt wearing, foul mouthed, overweight, ignorant, dirty, State worshiping grimy human refuse which comprises an overwhelming majority of those who are alive to-day.

Where once there was a sliver of escape, there can be no longer. The door is sealed, the jig is up, and we are all locked into a lethal footrace which is ensured to terminate in oceans of blood and mountains of corpses. Mere human extinction would be but a merciful outcome for the living Hell which is to be unleashed upon the wicked who walk this day on Earth.

In all ages Socialism = Death. In the former CCCP the blood of lost millions cries out from the earth as silent human sacrifice to the machine gods of State engineering and subsidy privilege. The mounds of corpses only grow in the face of the demands of the socializers of civilization to bend mankind to their will, while profiting handsomely in the process (which is the whole point of the blood fiesta, indeed).

Only a small taste of this gory fate has been unleashed upon the Amerikan sheeple so far. But the time of calm is evaporating fast and the long knives have been unleashed. In the face of resource deprivation, economic collapse, and mass starvation, the current Social Engineer in power intends to fulfull the lethal creed made bare in the infamous fascist paen of his ancestor in moral corruption, Rexford Guy Tugwell:

I am strong.
I am big and well made.
I am sick of a nation’s stenches.
I am sick of propertied czars.
I have dreamed my great dream of their passing.
I have gathered my tools and my charts.
My plans are finished and practical.
I shall roll up my sleeves — and make America over.

A New Deal indeed. The crematoria will fill up rapidly.

Why vacation sucks

2009-07-14T19:35:00.006-05:00

At least for those who lack the privileges of the golden class for which vacation is an alleged birthright:

You don't work, you don't get paid, per the Rule of Corporatist Society #1. (Technically this doesn't apply to me, but I like to live and act as if it does. No point attempting to live any better than your loser brethern, or the Tree of Dishonesty will start sprouting from my ears.)
Nothing more pleasant than staring at the blank wall of your apartment all week, since spending $$$$ money on some insipid excursion to "paradise" is out of the question in my semi-impoverished situation.
My car is not too old, but it is gradually aging and I have a morbid terror of being stranded somewhere with an inoperable vehicle. This does much to keep me homebound.
How then would I be able to get to work if this happened?
The costs of alternatively renting a car approaches extortion. More profits for less effort in any other industry, I cannot contemplate.
The thrills of virtual travel via online means, with its vastly reduced cost, is greatly underrated.
While you're out vacating, the work doesn't stop; it continues to accumulate and there is just twice as much to do upon return.
Absence at work merely exposes the shit shod quality of my "training" of subordinates who could not even begin to approach the usual quality of work.
Work = social life, at least for losers like myself. No work = total isolation from other people.
Work = interests; vacation = boredom. Or watching a week's worth of All My Children. Not a whole lot of difference there.
Daytime television sucks, what between Dapper Drew, ABC Daytime, and P&G's open disinvestment from daytime (the effects of which are visible daily). I used to enjoy it but no longer.
I dislike disruption of routine, even if that routine is boring and uninspired.
Additionally, if I'm not at work when I know everyone else is, I become extremely nervous, because shit always happens when I'm away which ends up making me look bad without me there to hide or spin it to reduce my complete humiliation.
If my family knew I had a week free to myself, they would immediately put me to work painting their house. Not my idea on how to spend a week of rest.
I'm still going to be tired when I return to work. It's not the need for a few days' rest; it's the job itself. I need a job which fits my feeble skill sets better.
We already get regular vacations. They're called "weekends."
Though anticipating time off can be fun (at times), when vacation ends I feel tremendously depressed. Better to avoid the whole thing in the first place.
My boss, who must approve the leave requests, would probably not permit me to take vacation in the first place, since I am such an "essential" employee.
As a public servant, I have the ability to accumulate leave and sick time over the course of my employment. (Gotta love the unearned privileges they give us bureaucRATS.) Given the high probability that I will be fired in the next few years and the low probability of finding another job that isn't janitorial or food service work, this leave time is insurance against being faced with debts I can no longer pay upon cessation of regular income. That accumulated leave is like deferred income; I could pay down all my outstanding debts with it were I to come into it to-day. So it behooves me to use as little of the time as possible.
I might enjoy vacation so much, I might decide to never return to work again or make other disruptive and ultimately stupid and futile life changes. Better to eliminate the temptation while it stands.

Celebrate fascism!

2009-07-09T18:41:00.002-05:00

What passes for the mainstream media these days is a joke. The microscopic intelligences of the so called "journalists" that pass for media professionals is in such evidence daily as their trends of thought only follow those insipid, well trod ends that in all inevitability support the State as lord and master. The media is to a man (save the brave John Stossel) in favor of the police state, of government control, of our Leaders imposing random terror upon the populace, of manipulation of the economy to favor the few at the expense of the many (though it is sold otherwise).

Witness the average evening "breaking" newscast. Virtually every item involves some State depredation or another. The news is filled with stories of the destruction of lives, careers, livelihoods by State mercenaries. The foolish, braindead "reporters" all along simply cheer for the State, favoring the edict and the pronouncement of the bureaucrat over the real hardship of the powerless.

A certain top rated network affiliate in this city is an especially egregious offender in this regard. It is an open secret that the popularity of its newscast is due to its intense focus on the community's "war" against the criminal element. The news staff seems to obtain a sort of orgiastic wish fulfillment through the participation in the destruction of other peoples' lives. They offer generous amounts of airtime to chronicling and otherwise extolling the "good works" of the police, the bureaucratic authorities, and other thugs with badges who predate on those who harm no one, but have run afoul of one of the State's numerous traps and dragnets. All along, the entire business only produces positive benefits for the careers of the talentless half wits - almost to a person, all young, barely educated, and ready at a moment's notice to catch the next train to the next biggest market when it departs - who comprise what the station laughingly considers journalists. Imagine what can be said for the guiding minds, unseen behind the cameras for the most part, who operate this sordid show.

To-night, this station's evening newscast had a lengthy special feature entirely devoted to the work of the police in rounding up perpetrators of victimless "crimes." The reporter, always at the ready with "story ideas" made a big show of humiliating these hapless dregs of the underclass before the television cameras. It is the bread and circuses of our age, the celebration of a clawing fascism, the kind which is smug and self satisfied in passing a crude and unrelenting judgment upon those powerless nonentities at the bottom for which degradation and despair is simply a byproduct of their "natural" tendencies.

Oh how the elites would tremble if the thugs with shields would break their skulls about as the ghetto refuse experience daily. But the State power is aware that it must not become too rapacious lest those who matter become offended.

The journalistic inclination toward the State always manifests itself naked and perverse; we do not see because many, too, are wont to wax insipid at the sight of a badge and State power. It is a mutually beneficial relationship, of course; the State receives good press while eager sources in government bureaucracies make life easy for lazy journalists who would rather not bother with such details as investigation or checking one's facts.

But such an outcome is written. Indeed, when most journalism students claim that their reasons for entering the profession is to "make the world a better place", then you know they are fresh duds for the hook line and sinker of fatal fascism.

And indeed, it is always fatal, as we are soon to discover once again.

The truest shit there is

2009-07-01T12:17:00.002-05:00

Simply because this cuts so deeply to the heart of the present predicament of the undertrodden masses, it must be reiterated here:

The competition for jobs at the top is becoming intense. This is not going to change. It is a permanent condition. The era of sustained long-term economic growth relied on private capital. The governments of the world are now competing for this money. There is no way that the private sector will be able to compete with governments. They promise safety. They pay whatever interest rate they must to roll over their debts. Then their central banks intervene and buy.

Capital formation is the source of private-sector jobs. With percentage decreases in private capital formation, good jobs will become increasingly scarce.

This creates a career roadblock to anyone wanting to move up. It creates an even bigger roadblock to anyone who has lost his job and who wants to keep both his career and his salary.

When you are fired, you are stigmatized. You are regarded as a loser. This should not be the case, but it is. The person who is seeking a job after being fired is considered to be defective goods. To get a similar job, unless you have personal contacts in the hiring firm, you will have to take a pay cut. Employers are trying to save money. They will not pay a newly hired person what his predecessor was paid. They know they don't have to. The firm will use that money elsewhere in the system.

It is a matter of the division of labor. He who has money has the most marketable commodity. A firm has money. A laid off worker doesn't. The worker wants to exchange a less marketable asset -- specialized labor -- for the most marketable commodity: money. In this competition, money talks. The person offering money can offer less than before because of the intensity of competition for money by workers.

Your #1 safety net is your job. That net is being tattered by the rise in unemployment.

Mass impoverishment, here we come. I will list the various problems related to the rise of tombuckery and other gangsta lifestyles which follow from this in a future post.

The reve-noo-ing regime

2009-06-30T19:29:00.004-05:00

It is evident that the great apparatus of "traffic safety" which the State imposes through its statuatorial series of fines, penalties, and other depredations on productive folks are but a gigantic farce, a game played by law enforcement officials and their unwitting victims alike both in full knowledge of the futility of it all, a game which the police know has nothing to do with making the roads safer and all about generating revenues for the gleaming State monster through the backdoor taxation of selective enforcement.

Case in point:

EBR Parish has instituted red light cameras at major intersections, ostensibly for the purpose of increasing traffic safety and reducing accidents. This arrangement is conducted through one of those wonderful "public private partnerships" which are supposed to make the State more palatable for us.

The firm is based in Cincinnati, and receives a cut of every fine incurred through this program. They allow easy payment through mail or the web so it makes it that much more convenient for you to happily sign away your extraction to the State.

Cheery does it, eh?

In a few months the traffic engineering folks at the EBR public works department are supposed to "evaluate" the program to measure its "effectiveness" at curbing traffic accidents, or whether it is simply working as a revenue raising tool. Take one guess at what they will find, and take another guess as to whether this will make any impact towards the continued existence of the Orwellian eyes of the State.

Real life scenario:

It's 8:30 am on a Saturday morning and the freeways are bare and bereft of traffic. The newly modernized Interstates have been widened and made more efficient for your driving convenience. The speed limit is set at the 85th percentile of average speed, so it is inevitable that it will be exceeded. There is no danger posed as traffic on this limited access facility is minimal, and otherwise engaged in proceeding at the same speed you are for the most part (unless you happen to find a welfare cow in a used Cadillac cruising the concourse after a long night of binge consumption of various harmful substances).

The state troopers make their nests in hidden crevasses along the freeway. Every now and then they select a passing motorist for their undue exaction via the magic of the radar gun. How the process of selection is undertaken is unknown given the similarity of speeds amongst all motorists that day. The state trooper is disarmingly polite, to the point that one wonders if one has stepped inside a restaurant or other service business. The entire business proceeds in a surreal state, as both parties recognize the pomposity of it all.

The hapless motorist knows damn well that the time and money spent defending oneself from all these matters exceeds the level of exaction at hand. So he inevitably gives in, pays the fine, and accepts the massive increase in his auto insurance rate that follows.

Is traffic safety the end product? Tens of thousands continue to die in automobile accidents. The problems revolve around the inadequacy of government maintained and constructed roadways and the arrogance of a tiny proportion of reckless drivers who for one reason or another are inexplicably ignored by the State to process endlessly through the cycle of inebriation, drunken driving, accident, and tragic "accidental" death caused by negligence.

Private roads in private hands which held a reputation for danger would quickly lose patronage. Entrepeneurs would thus have a vested interest in removing the potential for accidents and the attentions of the reckless moronic set.

But such a easy option is of course verboten amongst the priests of subsidy for which every life problem can be solved by increasing costs and paperwork, so that all are impoverished and no one is benefited, save the fat civil service protected sows whose comatose carcasses warm the seats of the vast Bureaucracy.

The king is dead

2009-06-25T22:11:00.003-05:00

On this very morbid day, many celebrity bodies dropped, notably that of the King of Pop and Perversion who now lies dead in his perfidy. Like his predecessor in that office, Elvis, his passing created a great hullabaloo. In due time we will likely see conspiracy theorists, claims that "he's alive" and cheap Las Vegas impersonations, no doubt.

Almost makes me feel sorry for poor Farrah Fawcett, whose legitimate suffering and bravery in the face of terminal cancer (which I know something about, my dear departed grandparents succumbing to the same disease) has been regrettably overshadowed by this bloated, gleaming, shiny celebrity death by the dark hands of drugs, gluttony, and perversion.

It is always sad to see real talent squandered for the glory of the present. With MJ's debts to the tune of hundreds of millions, it remains to be seen whether there is even one red cent left for his children to inherit, the entire fortune frittered on luxury and trysts with little boys.

I am guessing his cause of death was either cardiac arrest caused by excessive drug ingestion, or his face finally fell off. The coroner's inquest shall enlighten us presently.

Another Rethuglikan has fallen as Mark Sanford, SC governor, has regrettably dashed my slight hopes for him and turned out to be a turncoat perverted adulterer like all the other occupants of the executive suite. Like his predecessor in fornication, our 42nd Dictator, he has disgraced his office and his family, all to satisfy some evident mid-life emotional obsession with some Argentinian dickheadess.

While the man appears to possess a conscience, the fact makes it worse, as he was totally aware and understanding of what he was doing, and chose to proceed anyway.

Another resignation should be forthcoming, as the moral law demands. If a man should lie to his family, he shall lie to those in his trust.

The seven habits of highly ineffective people

2009-06-22T19:16:00.003-05:00

For this the 400th poast, I will step into Doctor Phil mode for a while and ruminate on the habits which render even decent individuals ineffective and lead to futility and life failure. Even the most good minded souls may develop habits which are effectively self defeating and destructive to the well being of the self. These habits are greatly amplified when picked up by the cretinous mobs of the petulant and subsidized for which failure is a way of life.

In no particular order:

Live in constant fear - If you want to be ineffective, let fear rule your mind. Let it affect your life decisions and your social comportment. Always consider that something gleaming and terrible might happen to you at any time. Therefore don't think outside the box, don't innovate, live in the conventional manner, and above all...

Don't take risks - Because risk exposes oneself to the potential for failure, and thus they should be avoided at all costs. Of course, risks also open up the potential for reward. No pain, no gain.

Sell yourself short - To be ineffective, you must constantly belittle yourself and hold a great deal of self-loathing. Feeling like a failure goes a long way toward actual production of failure.

Procrastinate - Procrastination is the ultimate hallmark of ineffectuality and failure. Putting it all off until the last minute ensures that the end product will be slapdash, subpar, and above all a steaming pile of failure.

Disregard the rights of others - The successful live by the maxim of the Golden Rule. But if you care to eschew that route, it is supremely important to antagonize, discredit, and otherwise rub the wrong way as many folks as possible. In doing so, you make no friends and gain many enemies. And with few friends and enemies galore, it is certain that your life efforts will terminate in failure.

Fail to make and attain goals in life - Because bouncing from situation to situation in life is important to establish your failure cred. Without a concrete outcome in mind for your future, the trends of life ultimately turn toward sloth, squalor, and moral decreptitude.

Demand a subsidy - In the end, your quest for failure will lead to this end. It is not a pleasant end, since it equates descent into bovine sickness and assured moral and emotional destitution. But fear not! The teat of the welfare State will be your succor for a time. Just don't become too inconvenient in your animal bleats of starvation when your Imperial Leaders decide to cut off your "long bread" when the collapse comes.

Hiatus

2009-06-15T21:19:00.006-05:00

Nothing catches my ire lately to write about now, save the same old assaults against decency which I have beat to death a hundred times by now.

So it is with this blog. For the near future at least, do not expect the updates to be as fast or as furious as they have been in the past. It is hard to sustain a continuous stream of thoughts week after week without becoming repetitive and crassly narcissistic in appearance and fact.

To be honest, this is a course which I have been contemplating for a while. Blogging has ceased to be a release for me, having mutated over time through declining interest into an evening chore. I expected that this would happen at some point. You may have noticed a decreasing commitment to these pages in recent months by my declining posting frequency and quality of my writing - that is, if you even care at all, which is unlikely. But that is your right, of course.

If something exceptional catches my interest, it shall likely find its way here. But there is little in this world anymore that does not simply make me shake my head in "been there, seen that, bought that tee shirt."

This light will be dimmed for now. But one day the old fire will burn hot and bright again, and the elites will once again tremble at the sight of truth.

Ta ta for now.

Weekends suck

2009-06-13T22:15:00.002-05:00

Especially if you are an obese loser existing on the fringes of even marginal society, who is regarded universally as a nuisance and threat by familiar and stranger alike.

The ghetto exists to contain such souls, to preserve them separate from the larger society which loathes and mistrusts them for good reason. For the social deviants are an unproductive force on the larger commonweal, whose existence stunts and atrophies the good work of the productive many for which basic human skills do not pose such challenge as with the morally comatose.

Though one might think that a person such as myself, fitting the description above to a "T", would preach social tolerance and comity, the fact is that a dedication to the moral right trumps any sympathies of mine toward the weak and lazy. Those who put little into life and expect others to bow to their every whim are condemned to obtain from life only the bare crumbs as moral recompense for the misery which they inflict upon others and themselves.

Random bureaucracy notes

2009-06-11T18:19:00.006-05:00

In this collapsing economy where jobs are as scarce as pearls and sane politicians, more young graduates are duplicating the story of my life by following the path of least resistance and entering government service. While the regular economy evaporates, the State gorges on the remainder as the public sector presents an upraised middle finger to thrift and expands in the face of folly.

It has now apparently become conveniently 'trendy' amongst the newly-degreed set to gravitate to public jobs because of a renewed ethos of "public service."

Don't make me laugh. In Louisiana, where nearly one out of five workers is employed by the high-tax, do-nothing Bureaucracy, such eloquent sentiments are rarely if ever expressed with regards to the public commonweal. No desire to "serve" the public poses motivation here. It has long been accepted as a fact of life that government work in Gangman's Paradise is a massive jobs program which fills the gap presented by our lack of an economy and keeps the unemployment and poverty rates lower than they would actually be. Any other justification is a convenient excuse for seeking security in these dark times.

Part of me does not blame them. But when you have occupied the bureaucratic hive for a number of years, you officially become incapable of escaping from the fold back into the world of productivity.

So much for our best and brightest.

Another State-made disaster looms, thanks to the cable and digital programming lobby who obtain their long awaited gravy in a few short hours.

The State imposed deadline which marks the final demise of analog television arrives at 7 AM to-morrow. As if you didn't know, the way Channel 9 here carries on about "The Big Switch" six times an hour. If anything, this landmark will be welcome if only to eliminate the ongoing annoyance of their constant forewarnings of doom.

Of course, despite all this and the efforts of the other terrestrial broadcasters, undoubtedly (this being Louisiana, after all) tens of thousands of comatose trailer court and public housing residents have nary a clue of the upcoming caesura of over-the-air transmissions. So when they turn on their televisions to-morrow, the white snow that will greet them will be a mysterious malevolent force sent to disrupt their precious lives from their constant stream of trash talk shows and "reality" soap operas.

And all at once they will realize what they will need to do to replenish this electronic stream to which they are addicted (for this is more important than work, life, or the Second Coming!), and the greasy mob will doubtless swamp the electronic stores soon after...to be greeted by bare shelves. Not a good mix there.

I would not want to have to visit Best Buy to-morrow for any reason, much less to purchase a digital antenna along with all the other last minute lemmings. In fact, I'm pretty sure that even their parking lot would be useful to avoid entirely. I would take bets as to how fast the digital converter boxes, etc. will disappear from stock, but regrettably I wasn't trained as a bookie.

Trailer court follies

2009-06-09T18:34:00.002-05:00

For the latest chapter in the decline and fall of the Murican empire, look no further than the evaporation of the educated from our landscape.

So now it is official: nearly half of to-day's urban youth on average, and not too many more of their suburban and rural brethren, fail to graduate high school, fail to obtain basic skills necessary to survival in a modern technological society.

For a good majority of the remainder, graduation occurs but is only a non-event, an anticlimax - they remain mal-educated, ignorant, the products of social promotion, holders of a worthless and hollow credential made empty by the dogs of government fiat.

It is clear that ever decreasing levels of achievement and increasing intellectual squalor only serves to depress our economic performance and productivity and debases our once envied way of life. Where once competence could be counted upon in the world of commerce, incompetence and sloth reign supreme. It has become a truism of everyday life that the vast majority of the employees of the various massive corporate enterprises, and thus by extension their employers (most service sector), cannot be counted upon to provide a product or service effectively, efficiently, or with any degree of courtesy. Workflows and processes must be revised and devolved to match the minimum competencies (if that) of a workforce which has hardly demonstrated any sort of allegiance to the work ethic.

A generation has it writ upon their faces "DO NOT CARE" unless it concerns some form of gross orgiastic self-engorgment, generally involving either bodily parts or controlled substances.

Why the sudden embrace of the existence of subsidy, sloth, parasitism, and moral decay amongst the young thug set? Why do able bodied people reject achievement and meaning in their lives for the counterfeit pleasures of substance abuse, sexual excess, et al.?

Because given the choices posed to them, the youth will always take the easy way out. His mindset is fixated on short term indulgences as opposed to long term reward for diligent effort. It is the consistent mentality of the untrained, immature mind.

Formerly this process was understood by civilization, and much effort was expended amongst society's adults to place restraints on youthful behavior in order to restrict the natural inherent tendency toward the pursuit of instant gratification and endless leisure. The structures imposed by social institutions would shape the young person's mind and character, ultimately orienting it toward the pursuit of productive work as the brain matured and the individual came to accept the societal norms of work and effort which are demanded of us all.

But these restrictions have dissolved in the face of a State that provides eternal subsidy for all mistakes and penalizes those who pursue productive paths as the parasitical classes make permanent hosts of the wealth generators. The bonds of family, friends, schools have evaporated to be incompletely replaced by an impersonal and distant god-State.

And when traits of behavior are not learned during the formative years, they remain unlearnt perpetually and can only be belatedly taught only at great expense of effort, usually resulting in futility and failure to correct the destructive habits of subsidy. When the pursuit of perpetual gratification becomes the focus of existence, like a narcotic it cannot be neither continued nor withdrawn easily without the gravest of consequences.

The future of the uneducated masses appears bleak indeed. Illiteracy, illegitimacy, parasitism, and personal chaos ensure that the failure class will be of little use to society in their future lives, and ensure a lifetime of welfarism for each. Assured of rendering but only marginal contributions to the economy (if that), this lost generation will find itself ill-equipped to compete with the rising economies and advanced training of countries in distant lands formerly best known for the frequency of famines and despotic regimes. The tables will soon be reversed as the current crisis of civilizational devolution reaches its inevitable denouement, with these things becoming a fact of life here as the vast majority select the life of subsidy over productive effort, thus relegating anything approaching an advanced industrial economy in this country to the dustbin of history. The remaining semi-productive activities on these shores will increasingly be restricted to those areas which service the nauseatingly eternal belly of subsidy - fast food, drugs, guns, and social welfare services. All of this will be accordingly dumbed down to fit the feeble abilities and barely extant expectations of the ascendant trailer court class.

As the Far East assumes predominance in world economic affairs on the basis of its productive economy, the Lost World of Amerika will degenerate into a destitute mobocracy, filled with filthy, slimy creatures hardly worthy of being described as people, their grimy hands outstretched in a permanent pose of perpetual need to their now-totalitarian government and to the rest of the world. The global masses will but shake their heads, extend a few words of pity, and be on about their business, happy to leave the comatose masses to their degeneracy of mutual slaughter and self-immolation.

As Ayn Rand stated, the mind is the key tool of the human being which enables him to rise above the other animals. Nature did not endow the 'naked ape' with particularly exceptional strength, natural protections of a physical sort, or swiftness of speed. The evolutionary advance that elevated Homo sapiens to predominance in the natural world was the careful use of his intellect and stored knowledge, passed on through the generations via education.

To abandon this advantage is to fall back into the barbarous state of the animal kingdom from whence we came. And for this, this is precisely what will happen. To live as animals is to exist as animals. And it ends as we shall die like animals for our betrayal of ourselves.

Such is the ultimate outcome of the worship of death - the civic religion of our age.

Nature vs. nurture

2009-06-07T20:14:00.004-05:00

I had a wonderful photo to poast here, but since I have exchanged old for new in cellphones and the memory card holder for my old device has disappeared, this lesser poast will have to suffice.

Having just finished watching (again) the film Trading Places, the old question lingers.

Is it true that genes lend to high intelligence and success in life?

Maybe to a minute degree, but hardly moreso than that. While one may be blessed with native intelligence and mental dexterity, this advantage can easily evaporate with age (that is, by your mid-20s) if one doesn't work to retain these skills, or otherwise apply the gifts which nature bestowed. Indeed, many of those with brains feel complacent enough to coast through life, believing that their intelligence will save them while falling farther behind, until the achievements upon which a reputation of skill rests manifests itself thin and feeble.

And on the other hand, a completely uneducated, poor person having faced all the disadvantages of a rotten background can become a rousing success at life. It has happened many times before.

Work and effort is the primary determinant of overall success. Those from affluent backgrounds who believe their "status" will spare them a heinous fate are well deluded in this aspect.

Coming from a person (me) for which great promise was invested in youth, only to be squandered and frittered away by adulthood due to a series of disastrous, self-destructive decisions which did nothing but to produce tremendous suffering for all concerned, that should be counted as life experience earned. So believe it!

More capitol lunacy, and other stuff

2009-06-05T18:55:00.003-05:00

The legislature blackens my mornings with their antics, as dutifully reported by the pretend journalists over at WJBO radio. But no matter about that triviality, for the offenses of our solons are putrid beyond all hell.

Each day brings more potential depredations upon our lives and our freedoms. No talk is uttered of retrenchment, of living within one's means, of permanently doing less with less. Instead the cry is about "evil" budget cuts to public "education" and the protection of bureaucratic privilege, i.e. civil service merit increases.

Hey folks, guess what? I haven't received a pay increase in five years. Between inflation and taxes, that's tantamount to a shrinking income. Yet I'm not up in arms, declaring with fatted lips that I am "owed" an income increase by society, for whose "benefit" my "services" are performed. Unlike our capitol critter friends, regular folks understand that a dollar earned is equivalent to value produced for that dollar.

For those with hands outstretched in perpetual need, (apologies to EON Productions) being handed the world on a silver platter is not enough. The vacuum pit of subsidy demands more, and always delivers less in return.

Gotta love it.

More corpses litter the retail boneyard as the depression grinds on to its bitter conclusion.

But I ask, what about SearsKmart??

A few years back Kmart was bankrupt and on the ropes, a failed merchandiser, about two hair breaths' length from complete evaporation. Sears was healthier but hardly any better, a shell of its former glory akin to Montgomery Ward in its last days.

When these two failed firms were combined, I noted at the time that it was the equivalent of propping up two rotten sheaths of wheat, to keep each other from collapsing into ash.

So in an age of retail death, when formerly indomitable soulless national corporate conglomerates crash and burn on a daily basis, what lies in store for this reprehensible combination?

Failure and more failure, most likely. But it thankfully will have few repurcussions here. The Capital Region has only two Sears stores which are generally mostly empty whenever I visit; and one lone Kmart straggler store in an outlying exurb, rendering the Stick essentially Kmartfrei. (Though there are many dead boxes which litter the suburban landscape here that formerly housed the retailer.) Wise souls here conduct their retail business at the House of Sam (Walton, that is).

One last question, because inquiring minds want to know:

Will "the new GM" be similar to "the new NBC" circa 1979 and to-day?

Because I wouldn't want to go there with a 100 foot pole, if you know what I mean.

(Sorry, couldn't resist kicking a failure while it's down, and likely unable to get up again.)

Age of decline

2009-06-03T18:21:00.006-05:00

Much of the tremors that shake the nation to-day, I believe, spring from an increasing recognition amongst even casual observers of the declining importance, if not outright irrelevance, of this country to the project of human civilization.

It is evident from even a cursory glance that the Untied States of Amerika is engaged in a terminal decline from which it will likely not recover. All around us, the story, the message is that of decline. Entire industries face drastic downscaling and even extinction due to a combination of various factors, the key common ingredient in all being the collapse of investment and a drying up of new ideas and innovation. The decline cuts across any short or medium term economic spasm of the moment. The trends which portend to swallow us into blackness have been with us for some time, at least since the 1970s. These trends do not look to be stoppable or even delayable, at least given all present factors. In fact, with each economic crisis the trends only increase in aggressiveness.

Television, retail, capital production, manufacturing, automobiles, print journalism, and others - the pillars of major industry of the previous century - face a major retrenchment as economic forces of the near term and long term coalesce to render these sectors impotent. While technological and lifestyle changes are certainly partially responsible, such changes are really quite manageable within the skill sets of the talent employed within these firms. If firms fail to adapt despite the talent which they retain, then there is a serious chokehold on innovation occurring. Or worse.

An entire restructuring of the economy is playing out before our eyes, as productive industries fall to make way for the parasitical low-paying, low-skill "service" industries of tomorrow, where moron armies of undereducated welfare staters receive subsistence wages in an unequal agreement with the major cartel-corporate players which now hold effective control of the larger economy. Once hangers-on to the greater productive economy, the service economy now figures central to our economic importance, the rotted weeds remaining after the cane has been cut, an economy of valuelessness and worthlessness where, in Jim Kunstler's infamous words, we all make our living selling hamburgers to each other.

The economic sorting will take around five to ten more years to play out as the old players die off and new players fail to replace them. In moral matters the decline is much more absolute. Indeed, this is where root causes can be discovered. The destruction of the nuclear family by the various cuts of divorce, illegitimacy, and violence; the dissolution of even the appearance of social stigma with regards to these destructive forces; the increased and willful dependence on subsidy, with its concurrent effects of increased sloth, destruction of the work ethic, and rise of pathological narcissism and grandiosity - all these things, which have been touted by "enlightened" minds as a Great Leap Forward, in fact contain the seeds of our own destruction.

Like all empires past their prime, modern Amerika is crass and decadent, a society which celebrates barbarism, glorifies the rampant pursuit of pleasure, coddles and subsidizes failure producing behavior and attitudes, and elevates mediocrity and mendacity to an honored position while denigrating and penalizing hard work, effort, positive striving, and risk taking, those very things which once made this country great and the envy of the world. All empires over time succumb to these forces as the State aggregates more power and forces the dark elements of human nature into ascendance. This of course is the great achievement of the State throughout time - the consumption of the seed corn of once proud societies to fund its everlasting pursuits of war, conflict, and protection of the ignorant.

Indeed, if the rise of the State could be arrested, even reversed, in the EUA even at this dark hour, perhaps we could somehow escape our black fate with only a few hundred thousands immolated. However, all trends point to increased regimentation and authoritarianism amongst both elite and sheeple alike, and the potential for an anti-State revolution appears next to impossible.

The generations of mis-education provided by public schooling (sic) have produced a new 'conventional wisdom' in this country which at all points turns toward the State as salvation, while paying typical fascist lip service to free enterprise. (Even Hitler, socialist impresario, claimed to favor private initiative.) At least in theory, perhaps, the elites support capitalism, since an outright bent toward socialism (a la Michael Moore) is not vogue (yet) even amongst the corporate jet set. However, in practice the total State must by definition aggregate more and more control toward itself, and inevitably push free initiative to the margins if not outright elimination, despite whatever official 'favor' the State organs display towards laissez-faire.

In any case, truly free markets have not existed in the USSA for quite a while now - or at least since 1913 when central banking made its official debut on these shores. Each depredation upon the freedom of commercial intercourse constitutes an advance for barbarism and hastens the progress of decline. In the age of the total State, armed to the gills with civilization-terminating weapons of mass destruction, engaged in imperial exploits around the globe, aggressively conducting wars of attrition against the population at home in the form of regulation, taxes, and quasi-moral crusades upon anything from guns to drugs to low homeownership rates (in short, whatever course of action most profits the elites), when all these things require ever-increasing amounts of limited capital to feed the vortex of wealth destruction, it is plainly obvious that as the State sector feeds, the free sector must inevitably decline if only because it is being squeezed out.

This does not even consider the State sponsored mass misallocations of capital, orchestrated by our liberal use of the printing press, interest rate manipulation, and the "Fed"eral Mastercard, that results in the inevitable periods of economic dislocation and destruction which have been only increasing in overall severity since the 1910s; not to mention the evaporation of around 95% of the value of the pre-central bank dollar. The currency of this country, once a stable source of value, began its final sickening plunge toward complete worthlessness in 1971 when the last links to any stable source of value (in this case, gold) were severed by the dictate of the God-Leader then currently in power. The true acceleration toward unstoppable decline commenced from that point, which not too coincidentially was around the same time real wages ceased to increase and inflation in general became a persistent problem in Amerikan life.

Moral and economic decline become inevitable when people turn their backs on productive enterprise and look to the State in power for the answers to life's unpleasant difficulties. The quest for imperial power, the desire for security both economic and from ulterior forces, the craving for assured profits and socialized losses, the wish to be de-constrained by moral law and economic or personal prudence, and above all the desire of something for nothing inevitably assert their place in a democracy, where politicians know that the key to a long career in public office is to keep the sheeple in an anestheized state, corn fed and content with a constant stream of welfare subsidy, patriotic gore and jingoism buffeted by mass murder in faraway lands, mucho goodies for the special interests and the various official "victim" classes, and willful blindness to moral turpitude (save those 'crimes' which the State considered offenses unto themselves). This is best accompanied by a talent for saying something that sounds important, but in actuality communicates absolutely nothing and is intentionally intended to exist bereft of any meaning or message (the better to keep one's position on a subject vague lest it come back to bite in a big way on election day).

So it is in this age of decline. Economic collapse and certain oncoming Third World status for this nation cannot be undone without the elimination of the State machine. The State machine cannot evaporate unless society relearns, at great effort, the meaning of productive work and the importance of traditional moral values. This will have to occur in the face of a State sector which will do its damnable best (the better to secure its own survival) to ensure that these moral precepts remain unlearned by the majority. When the continued existence of the State and those whose positive welfare are tied to its health are at stake, any bureaucratic inefficiency normally displayed by the public servantry mysteriously (or not) evaporates.

The current ethic of decline which reigns supreme to-day is a certain path to economic irrelevance and permanent impoverishment which will make the Third World seem pleasant by comparison. The Amerikan dream will die a quiet death, relegated to just that - a dream - in a country where the State bankers and their favored corporatist elite allies control most of the shrinking pool of wealth while the rest of us are doled crumbs for our unproductive work, supplemented by State monopolies for those necessities of life which have become unaffordable through this process. For those who long for the nirvana of socialized health care and other services, get ready...to die.

Increasingly it is only through the venue of armed revolution that the most abject threat to the State can come. For it aggregates all takers into its machine, by buying their alleigance or perverting their values. It is only a committed class of freedom fighters, whose consciences cannot be strayed by the Danegeld of subsidy or the counterfeit pleasures of moral perfidy, who can be counted on to save this country from itself, and what it has become: three hundred million narcoleptic, corn-fed comatose morons who could barely be described as human.

Only when blood flows in the palaces of power can the age of decline see its terminus. This country has suffered long enough in the care of moral imbeciles.

Are you ready to birth the revolution?

Game over, Detroit

2009-06-01T20:11:00.003-05:00

GM is finished.

And another section of the empire collapses into ash and rubble, and the broken bodies bloat upon the denuded landscape as the State absorbs yet another portion of our shrinking economy, to float a rotted carcass upon a constant stream of valueless mefo bills.

The dollar cannot be far behind.

You asked for something for nothing, Amerika, and you got nothing. It is the way of the ghetto and the trailer court. Such is the inevitable end result of the bottomless pit of need.

Downtown for dickheads

2009-05-30T23:18:00.008-05:00

It is a truism that downtowns and urban living are now "in" amongst those who ply the conventional wisdom (at least until the next real estate bubble commences in the far exurbs). Like most cities, our downtown here in the Stick has been neglected, waiting for the much hyped renewal it deserves from the moneyed elements. However, there are many unpleasant realities to contend with which stand in the way of such a revival: the armies of homeless people, downtown's distance from the neighborhoods of the professional class, the wear and tear on infrastructure and buildings which comes from decades of use and exposure to the elements, and the simple fact that downtown is "open" for all as the center of the community of all citizens.

So with our real downtown lacking enough of a cool cache for the latte set, the dickheadery in this city instead set out to construct a new artificial downtown for themselves, where all the real life, gritty elements that might upset their discriminating souls have been expunged in favor of a Disneyfied carnival atmosphere centered on high end shopping, entertainment, dining, and other elite pursuits - that is, stuff only dickheads could adore.

So let us pay a visit to:

Resembling a Hollywood movie set version of downtown more than a real downtown, this "town center" in the otherwise concrete wastelands of the suburban ring is a definite hit with the Escalade and designer clothing set.

Look, folks! I'm in Hill Valley!

By the way, if you can make out the lettering on the top of this apparently exploding building, it says "Perkins Rowe Town Hall." The first town hall in history, folks, which doubles as a modern stadium seating movie theatre.

Indeed, the site is very attractive, and pulls in the crowds easily. The urban feel, intended to emulate an urban streetscape, is definitely a major attracting factor, and is far different in nature from its immediate low density surroundings. There is a complex mixture of uses which includes retail, housing, office space, restaurants, etc. In theory one could live, work, and play here without ever venturing into the forbidden zone of suburban crabgrass past Bluebonnet Boulevard.

In point of fact, this may be the most urban location in the entire city, given our actual downtown's decline into a moonscape of parking reservoirs.

But observing closely, you find that living/working/entertaining at "the Rowe" is at a tad different level than what you normal, working folks are used to:

For one, the grocery stores do not cater to an average Joe clientele.

Furniture stores, you find, sell hideous appearing "modern" pieces which resemble every "art" museum you have visited, each chair and table attempting to outdo each other in the race to appear as stark, cold, and sterile as possible.

Don't see too many of these in the 'hood. I don't know too many folks who make under six figures who might shop here. (This store, by the way, is one of the many in the development that are the only one of their kind in Louisiana - most of them outlets of luxury chains that folks here would never miss.)

The reality, of course, is that Perkins Rowe is intended for dickhead sensibilities - an elite clientele with exotic, often bizarre tastes unknown to Joe the Plumber and his other hardworking brethern. Indeed, they inhabit a strange, diseased world of their own, of chrome and glass and spinning shiny metal objects, where bling is king and style trumps substance or moral integrity.

I do not blame the developer - this is where the money squats today. This is the end game of bubble Amerika - an endless parade of buying pointless, overpriced luxury goods and eating at deluxe restaurants for the "experience" above all else. It is the downtown functioning not as the working vital heart of a larger community, but the new downtown a la dickhead: an upscale luxury shopping mall with ample free parking, controlled public places, centered on amusement and self-preening as opposed to productive work and sacrifice.

And while this glittering bubble downtown built on debt and possible fraud (how else, the modern way!) thrives, an actual gods-to-honest downtown not five miles away which was built by productive hand lingers and suffers from lack of investment and activity.

God save us from all dickheads.

Cities are now for fish and bugs

2009-05-28T20:01:00.005-05:00

Or so the arbiters of current planning practice would seem to believe given their undying passion toward "conservation" and environmental "best practices" to the exclusion of all else. Having spent much time in the belly of the development professions, I have witnessed forthwith that selfsame obsession which folks in that field hold toward preserving the natural environment, no matter the costs.

The desire to conserve natural resources is honorable and makes economic sense from time to time. But it is increasingly clear that the "in" thing to-day in city planning, GIS analysis, academic research, design engineering, architecture, and related fields is the overwhelming dictate of the political correctness of our age, to render development and human impacts on the environment "sustainable" and "eco-friendly" - and never mind the costs to the human lives for whom in their name this is all accomplished.

Never mind that human action will have some impact on the environment no matter what, as with any biological creation. Never mind that the environment is always in a flux of change, that species do come and go, that nature has a vast power to absorb the alterations which we effect upon it. Never mind that without anthropogenic environmental manipulation, civilization and all the comforts and benefits that spring from it would not be possible.

When men were close to the earth, life was nasty, brutish, and short. We should thank our "evil" developers and other risk-takers for increasing the quality of life manifold over the last few relatively free centuries (a fruitful era undergoing its death throes by Praetorian depredation as we speak).

It is apparent that the real issue here is not any fondness for the vaunted "quality of life" but indeed, an unhealthy affection for all that is natural which lies in direct opposition to the ability of individuals to pursue the business of their lives. Indeed, the root of the matter lies in a deep hatred for humanity, of all things made by man of productive value, a death wish to destroy human life in exchange for the betterment of fish, birds, and insects.

The death wish of primitivism indeed continues to engage the elites and serves as a professional gravy train for scores of budding dickheads who stake their careers in the exhilirating fields of "wildlife management" and "floodplain administration," needless to say within the confines of the eternally expanding public sector. The State as always looms large in all this, living up to its eternal reputation as enemy of humanity and existing in the service of itself, and consuming and destroying what human chattel stands in its way.

Decades ago the mission of urban planners, as misguided as any a profession to exist, was at least nominally aimed at human betterment, by shaping cities to meet the present and future needs of current and potential future residents. The business was about planning for future public services, expanding needed infrastructure, measuring out future requirements of human populations, and proposing solutions as needed. Now it appears that our vast reservoirs of urban despair, with all its problems of crime, poverty, undereducation, unemployment and underemployment, etc. are no match for the well-being of fish, trees, bugs, and water lilies when it comes to engaging the energies of our best and brightest urban policy makers.

This is a schizophrenic age above all else.

Change we can believe in

2009-05-27T18:51:00.003-05:00

If you are a reader of this blog (likely not) you notice it has begun to sound like a one note record. Not much variation thereof from the usual loser rant of "the world sucks, I suck, yada yada yada ad nauseum" et al. Without Standards and Practices controlling content, things can become pretty monotonous indeed, much like my diet and the lives of ants.

We could speak here to-day about the impending bankruptcy and State ownership of Government Motors. But would I not be repeating myself yet again?

Indeed, there is much to celebrate. In my possession I now have a new chrome plated portable computer, the modern equivalent to the gaudy NBC late 1970s "N" ident of empty glamour fame.

So let us effect change we can truly believe in, unlike that counterfeit alteration from our Supreme Leaders in the Capitol City, itself no stranger to empty glamour of the chrome plating variety.

The story ideas are a'churning again, and so I have returned to the pen (or more precisely, the keyboard), with the wry hope that a new MS Office suite will prove suitably inspiring to effect completion. The companion blog, as you may have noticed, has not been upd*ted due to lack of material, which you can pin solely on the headwriter and his inability to tell a story creatively without losing his train of thought somewhere before the second act.

Death worship day

2009-05-25T19:46:00.004-05:00

Memorial Day always brings with it the most puerile forms of collective madness - a drumbeat of State worshipping paeans to Imperial aggression chanted in unison, a steady diet of war films and other media items which amount to a glorification of Empire, aggression, violence, and worship of the State.

On this day we are supposed to memorialize the dead of all our wars, whose lives were cut short in overseas locales as they died to "protect our freedoms." But this is the great Imperial lie wrought twofold.

First, the escapades amounted to Imperial aggression, plain and simple. No truly national interests were at stake. Of course, the world elites had important issues (to them) at play, but such is the reality of war that the common people must die when the international power brokers have their little temper tantrums and feuds amongst themselves.

Second, it is clear that whatever freedom our soldiers had died to preserve is no longer extant, if indeed it existed at all outside the delusions of our elite cheerleaders for Democracy and Empire. The state managed corporatocracy has determined to squeeze any bit of meaningfulness in life outside that which has been preserved to further the interests of the State and corporate powers. What does not serve to increase the profits of the corporatist cartels enforced by State guns and favour has been erased from existence, leaving the common lot as debt ridden serfs to a corporatist-fascist Empire of lies, deceit, treachery, and above all empty glamour absent of substance or value.

The dickheadery has perverted the tenor of life beyond comprehension, to where the highest and best use of man is to join the ranks of the conformist suits which push the paper which serves to support the creation and existence of the counterfeit wealth that underlays every facet of corporatist society. The Type A "macho man" dickhead and his feather palmed, somewhat more effeminate cousin in the starched shirt and business suit has become the ideal to which millions are expected to aspire by our determinants of social propriety.

Sports and intoxicating substances have replaced the dying embers of nonexistent deity worship as the intensive focus of our culture, the subject to which all conversations turn. A close second in this puerile race for the "good life" is the narcissistic obsession with carnal pleasurement and gratification, the dead end of a moral creed based in nihilism and living for the moment. In short, the same philosophy which undergirds the actions of corporate Amerika, the State, and their supplier/enabler in the Federal Reserve System.

What is left to memorialize in our dead culture? A world which was preserved by millions of corpses - a world of emptiness, treachery, deceit, false wealth, counterfeit privilege, moral and fiscal bankruptcy? Is this what the soldiers who fell at Omaha Beach, Anzio, Monte Cassino, the Argonne, died to protect?

And indeed, it speaks volumes about our intellectual bankruptcy that we declare war to be the highest and best endeavor of the State, that giving one's life for Empire is honorable and good, that the tragic and terrible wastage of productive human lives for a counterfeit "freedom" is glorious, that the right of the individual to his own life ends at the beck and call of the Imperial elites?

We are beyond salvation. The ultimate destruction looms hither.

Turn on, tune in, drop out

2009-05-23T21:04:00.005-05:00

It always fascinates me when the 'learned intellectual' set always frame the costs of "disinvesting" in our wayward youth in terms of the tax revenues which they become unable to contribute by following the primrose path of perdition and thuggery.

As if the only purpose of a productive individual is to feed the state as a veritable slave in chains, the productive wealth generating activity only a sideline to growing the monstrous machine.

Is this the purpose, then, of public policy - to promote and foster career "success" in the corporatocracy so as to feed the twin extractions of tax thievery and corporate depredations?

Are the barren crumbs for playing the game correctly a life of being surrounded by dickhead pansies, soft amoral douches of men with feminine hands left like sourdough from all the hard work of paper pushing and memo writing?

More and more each day I see increased wisdom in that old moniker "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

It is becoming apparent that society has no use for the common man besides functioning as a debt slave to those masters that oppress him by their guns.

In return he is offered a manufactured and unhealthy diet, a bare modicum of dwelling, a smattering of 'toys' and other pertinent possessions, and a constant stream of an increasingly empty and crass popular "culture."

Is this trade off worth the sacrifices to earn the "good life" as a cog in the corporatist system?

Increasingly I am growing to admire those who have dispensed with the system and have blazed their own paths. They are spit upon and lambasted; the dickheadery thumbs its collective nose at them.

They do not feed the phalanx of the unearned and undeserving with their perpetually outstretched hands. Instead, they exist for themselves and live life as they choose. In short, they are free men.

Indeed, throughout history it has been the drop outs that have blazed new trails, explored new horizons, assumed new risks. Without the drop out, any greatness America once displayed would have never come to pass.

Let us indeed encourage the impulse to drop out. With each fatted calf which is lost to the vampire state and its vampire elites, the entire system grows weaker, is undermined, and treads closer to its ultimate destruction.

Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead

2009-05-21T12:16:00.002-05:00

A short, brief news item crossed my ears the other day, spoken almost as an afterthought by the representative of the mainstream media: China and Brazil will stop using dollars to make foreign purchases and instead will turn to their own currencies.

Little are the most critical events of note in our world to-day understood. A small turn of the screw leads to countless millions of excess deaths down the road.

Shall societal collapse derive from this? Not likely. But one small cut too many may be the unkindest cut of all.

Obamanomics is in full swing now, as BO, economic illiterate par excellence, flexes his leadership muscles as his dictatorship over the economy ramps up into full bore. The depredations grow more daring by the day as the Barren One consolidates his blood reign and consigns his enemies (laughable, pathetic fools that they are) into the ether.

The first insult is new Federally-mandated credit card rules that will serve in the end to seriously hamper the availability of credit for those who prove themselves worthy of it, while providing an inprudent subsidy to those for which the words "credit" and "prudence" could never meet in the same sentence.

Understand it for what it is - rules written by the credit cartel itself, imposed by a willing State, to ensure higher costs for the consumer, higher fees and profits for themselves, and less service to the customer all around. The battle to corporatize and bureaucratize all of life has claimed victory in another round, with the common man as always defeated and made to scrimp before his corporate overlord to sustain the right to exist.

This would in itself be enough. But lo! a second depredation fell upon what remains of a free market in Amerika as the State also claimed hegemony over the shrinking automobile industry as it imposed draconian new auto emissions standards that will all but ensure a massive decline in the quality of automobiles: poorer product for higher prices, the dickheadery's wet dream come true.

If this is the change which the Amerikan sheeple believe in, then the words of Lenin, that capitalism would destroy itself from within, have come true.

We are treading in dangerous waters, and soon the torpedos will come to sink the ship of empire. And with that, we all drown in the murky waters of death.

Offline (for now)

2009-05-20T16:53:00.001-05:00

My computer was attacked by a virus a couple days ago and it may be not for long. So no computer means no internet access means no true updates untilI can get it repaired or replaced (no later than this weekend).

Hasta luego for now!

The L word

2009-05-18T12:35:00.005-05:00

There are precious few triumphs or accomplishments in my life of which I can state that I am unequivocally proud. In fact, I can really name only two such events.

The first was placing first overall in World Geography at the State Literary Rally as a high school freshman. (Sad that I must go all the way back to my childhood to find something of merit.)

The second was obtaining my master's degree. (I refuse to include graduation with an undergraduate degree here because that has become an all-too-common accomplishment to-day.)

Otherwise, my life has been a long string of defeats, failures, and losses, all due to my incalculable laziness, sloth, moral squalor, intentional mental disorder, and carelessness. Jobs lost, friendships terminated (or simply not initiated), exclusion from organizations, income and asset evaporation, alienation and estrangement from family and relatives - these I have all seen in my life.

Unemployment and jobless indolence has been my default state for much of my existence. The only human interaction I receive is that of the filthy homeless bums I frequently encounter who apparently view me as an ATM to finance their drug/tobacco/alcohol habits.

Even to write these words conveys the level of human squalor to which I have descended. I expend countless hours lamenting my problems while doing nothing to solve them.

So if you would like to be a dickhead and ask, "Well, whose fault is all that?" I will not play into your hands and say "Don't blame me, blame society." I have not taken leave of all my moral senses. My response will be "I screwed up, and continue to do so each day."

Perhaps it would be better if my conscience were to evaporate. Then I could exist as the feral pigs of the trailer court do - absent of responsibility for a miserable existence and the reprehensible actions therein. I could too live as an animal, a comatose non-thinking being corn-fed on a diet of Cheetos and dollar store cola, shaped more like a pig than a human being, reduced to constant mental chaos with my fellow animal beings in the mud and moral muck of the trailer court. A life lived for the moment, dictated by the mysterious physical whims of the body and its glands.

There is a marked reticence amongst the "better" classes to call it for what it is. The twin dictates of 'tolerance' and 'diversity' have conspired to keep silent the voices of judgment upon others, lest the dogs of political correctness be unleashed. We sit silent as incompentence and immorality goes down at the highest levels (and at many lower levels below the top brass). We permit moral monstrosities to occur before our very eyes due to the need to be "inclusive" of all persons regardless of their "skill sets" or "life competencies."

Fifty years ago, the moral leech would have been thrown out on his ear. Now he is tolerated, merely tolerated, and hated all the more for it.

The word, the concept is "LOSER."

The pain they inflict upon themselves, they deserve. The life and opportunities they lose, they are not worthy of.

Sheep to slaughter

2009-05-17T21:21:00.003-05:00

Lately I have been intensely reading the histories of the imperial Third Reich as established by the Nazis under Hitler.

The story, the gory details of which we hopefully all know, reeks of "preventative war", atrocities, torture, mass slaughter of civilians, the ascendancy of barbarism, the rise of murder to an art form, a comatose civilian population, an unchecked State where decisions turned upon the will of a semi-divine absolute Leader, etc. etc.

How different are we to-day from the madness of the National Socialist regime?

The same patterns as noted above are evident in full bore variety; we simply turn blind to the clear and evident parallels between our own actions and the universally condemned lethality of a defeated enemy. It is not convenient for our leaders or our national psyche to witness these obvious similarities, lest it call into question the basic fundamentals of the modern Imperial state.

There is the same love of power and quest for death, the need for total control and the attendant bureaucratic onslaught backed by State guns, the under-the-table persecution of outgroups under the guise of "social hygiene" (it's called the "war on drugs" to-day), the usual imperial conquests and adventures in foreign parts which consume millions of human lives in the service of imperial elites like so much petrol or spent ammunition rounds.

The fatted leadership class is protected in privilege within the glittering halls of power, their lives secure behind their phalanx of Praetorian bodyguards, able to make decisions to destroy millions of lives free from consequence or contrition for their evil actions.

While the sheeple are brought forth to the altars of human sacrifice to shed their blood for the glory of the State, and millions of black and brown "others" halfway around the world are butchered without a peep in the name of "freedom" and "democracy", life rolls on contentedly for those not in the line of fire.

The monstrous evil of the leadership is clear. What moral character does it bespeak about us as a nation that we dare not lift a finger to protest the horrific deeds which are committed in our name?

And the sheeple deign to wonder why "they" hate us.

Suction vortice

2009-05-15T22:31:00.005-05:00

Public sector employees like to believe that they are integral parts of the economy, that they deliver "services" which are vital to society, that they comprise an important part of the larger economy, albeit the "public sector" component.

It helps the tortured psyche to believe the lie, for self preservation purposes if anything. The convenient delusion works to uplift self-esteem, to assist in momentarily hiding from the fact that they are participants in a monstrous criminal endeavor.

But what value is gained by that person who "works" in the employ of the State, who "earns" a salary performing "productive" labor for the "benefit" of the "public interest"?

Lots of euphemisms there, eh?

In truth, the public employee is no better than the welfare sow, mouth clinging firmly to the State trough, though far more lavishly compensated, comparatively speaking, for his "service" to the State. His salary constitutes an unproductive drain on productive persons and labor, drained from morally proper purposes through the legalized robbery of tax extraction to be put to use for morally nefarious ends. His labor is hardly productive - insulated from competition and the profit motive, the work of a public employee can hardly be described as arduous. To suck at the teat of the State does not constitute "earning a living."

And hardly is there benefit from all of this. Indeed, the overfed, indulged State bureaucRAT is the bovine colossus upon which many a productive venture is dashed, broken by the inane and arcane errata of mindless State regulation and other means by which the looter gang conspire to obtain their take of the profits of productive effort.

It goes without saying that no public interest is served, if indeed there can be said that a "public interest" even exists.

Indeed, if the public interest is defined by its most common understanding - the greatest good for the greatest number - what better means to satisfy this demand other than the goodness of unfettered, unrestrained, laissez-faire capitalism and free markets?

But don't tell Bernanke-bot this. His program might encounter a forbidden fatal error if these words of mortal truth pass his ears.

On the other hand, never mind.

Fat, lazy, and stupid

2009-05-13T19:52:00.002-05:00

So many of us, especially myself, are fat, lazy, and stupid.

We bumble through life semi-comatose, with nary a thought toward others, protected by our subsidies of tenured State jobs and the false goodwill (aka courtesy) of our peers. We live dull, boring, uninteresting, wasted lives that are the just recompense for the smidgen of effort which we put into this world. We lack the desire to think or improve ourselves or others, or otherwise increase our value in a way that might provide us the opportunity for a better, happier life.

A few of us know all this. We are aware of our ignorance, our slothfulness, the utter waste of our mental capacities. We understand how these contribute to our poor health, marginal socioeconomic status, and lack of friends and companions. We have read all the books, manuals, and treatises which spell out, in great detail, how to uplift oneself from depression and sloth and live one's life to be productive and happy, using proven and time-tested formulas.

These books tell us to eat right, exercise, be active. They tell us to treat other people with respect and dignity. They tell us to work hard, make the best effort daily, and seek out new opportunities and challenges. They tell us to constantly avoid one's comfort zone, so that we may advance and grow as people.

These things are all known to us. It is not rocket science. It only takes dedication and will power to execute. The majority of people have mastered this formula.

But the fat, lazy, stupid ones refuse to make the requisite adjustments, despite all the obvious and very positive benefits.

Why?

Because the one overarching aspect of one who is fat, lazy, and stupid is that he is a moocher and a leech.

He believes above all else that there is a magical tooth fairy that will bestow the gifts of health, social prowess, and work ethic upon him, with no effort on his part to work and obtain these things. He feels no responsibility for improving himself, because he desires more than anything else for others to make all the effort of improvement, but for him to receive all the benefits without lifting a fatted finger. For that, he is a useless worthless piece of stinking subhuman refuse unfit to share this earth with rabid mongrels. Such is the utter disgraceful ugliness of the anti-morality he practices.

He is the end product of the welfare state, the something for nothing mentality that is the hallmark of our modern Amerikan society. It is not surprising that with each expansion of social subsidy, the fat, lazy, and stupids correspondingly increase in number. This has been the absolute trend for at least the past fifty years.

As the army of comatose corn-fed simpletons in the cubicle farm grows, the proportion of innovative, productive citizens shrink correspondingly. The rush into delusion and fantasy, into hand holding "psychosis" and the flight from productive activity by so many of our lesser lights whom we charitably (for now) include amongst the human race, is hardly beneficial for technological innovation, our economy, and our society.

When we as a civilization are faced with a truly epic problem of gigantic proportions, a crisis which threatens the survival of civilization and liberty, how will this moron morass react then? How will they fare in the face of a true, lethal threat, as opposed to the self generated, insipid moronia of their minds which they inflict upon themselves to generate pity from others so that they may wallow in their own excrement until the "adults" arrive to "save" them?

Truly, they will react like children. Instead of defending themselves as free men would, they will scream like helpless infants as the liquidators of death easily return them to the earth from whence they sprang.

Indeed, it will be a fortituous turn of events for enemies of liberty posing as State actors, those same forces which conspired to create the moron armys in the first place through generations of coddling and miseducation in ethics (if indeed, morality and ethics were even introduced as a concept at all).

Then the road will be cleared for their thousand year blood reign. There will be no more fat, lazy, and stupids then, because none could survive the bone crushing realities of slavery. But then even sane men, men who under liberty would justly thrive, will have absolutely no hope of even the pursuit of happiness.

So from the despair pursuing pits of moronia, we export despair to all as civilization evaporates.

Not with a bang, but with a loser sucking his thumb, crying in an infantile whine "But I couldn't help it!!!"

So be it.

Disgusting

2009-05-11T17:46:00.002-05:00

What is it as a society which seeks amusement and pleasure in the carving up and butchery of young women?

I ask this question because it has been prompted by my recent viewing (by happenstance, thank you very much) of a disturbing and nihilistic piece of cinematic garbage called The Descent. But of course I could be speaking of many a 'slasher' and 'splatter' film. It appears to be a tradition amongst the producers of the "horror" genre to offer young women for sacrificial slaughter in the most brutal, horrific, and nightmarish methods.

Since many film producers are narcissistic Hollywood types, mostly men, is this some form of craven and crass display of misogyny under the guise of cinematic 'convention', in the same vein of thought that led a certain ex-football star to butcher his former wife and her companion?

I don't think so. There are many fans of the slice and dice school of filmmaking. Indeed, the aforementioned film is allegedly very popular. I observed more positive reviews than not on online sites.

Let me put it bluntly: If you enjoy watching the brutal, horrific, graphic murder of innocent young women on film, you are a seriously disturbed individual. If you find savagery, murder, purposeless violence for the sake of violence entertaining, then what does that say about your mental state, your character, your sense of morals and respect for others?

And they call people like ME, folks who vouch for upholding the decency and finest elements of humanity, "mental defects" for stating these basic truths!!! Who's the actual defect, pray tell???

At one time, women were cherished by society. Women were honored, protected by men; they were placed on a pedestal, idealized, respected, valued as the providers of life and the fairer, civilized companion of the rougher male sex. Without women, there would be no life, no civilization. Without women to tame the machisimo and violence of men and render them responsible providers, the human species, much less all of the greatness we call civilization, would not exist.

This is why women should be protected from violence, shielded from horror. It is our honor as men to perform this duty. All those who disagree know not what it means to be civilized.

It is said that behind every successful man is a good woman. Remember this well.

Perhaps it should only follow that we debase women today, given that civilization is rapidly evaporating, that the role of civilizers is thus shrinking as we slouch inexorably toward the darkness of primitive savagery. As society coarsens in the sea of puerile bread and circuses and even women begin to resemble and act like savage animals (at least on the vast societal margins), we begin to forget what the purposes of the sexes are. In the end we are all sexless, androgynous animals, with only our bare needs to eat, sleep, and fornicate shaping us, existing only as implements for the sterilized minions of Corporate Amerika which demand elimination of all difference and non-standardization, erasing identity and consigning those proud non-conformists to the concentration camp.

When there is no distinction between man and woman, when we exist only to service our animal selves, the purpose of sex as the beautiful consensual act of loving, committed adults is lost, and we devolve into animals chasing bare physical satisfaction, and thus treat each other as such.

We subject women to senseless violence, both cinematically and in the real world, because we have lost our way and devolved into a wicked society which pursues only the basest, most animal of pleasures and has abandoned all that which uplifts humanity for the sake of a cheap and quick fuck.

The wilds of Maurepas

2009-05-09T21:40:00.004-05:00

Recently I had the opportunity to explore the wilderness of the lower Amite River basin, a land unpenetrated as yet by autos or substantive development:

Online dating sucks

2009-05-07T21:41:00.005-05:00

For an urban dwelling, atomized person as isolated as myself, it is suggested that online dating should be used as a venue for meeting other single individuals and arranging for social encounters and possible relationships. Seems to me to be far less effective and more extortionary (in the financial sense) than the old fashioned method from yore of organizing singles' "get togethers" where unattached people can meet face to face. But online romance is the best alternative which our declining age offers us.

In some ways, the online route is superior. For losers such as myself who have the eternal knack for off-putting virtually everyone we cross paths with (save trailer court rabble and underclass incompetents), the lack of direct communication can be a blessing. It is not that one should misrepresent oneself in this manner. However, the online medium serves as a buffer from instant rejection.

Yet overall it is a far inferior method. There are certain arrangements and conventions involved which, if not mastered perfectly, can doom all online pursuits and lead to failure and fruitless efforts. In many ways, online dating etiquette is an outgrowth of knowing basic social skills. If you have absolutely no knowledge, experience, or skill in this area, no amount of training can bring any onling dating endeavors past the point of fishing from a dry hole. A very dry, unforgiving hole.

So for people like me who frittered away our childhood memorizing encyclopedia articles in isolation instead of obtaining a basic social skills education through substative human interaction, more doors are closed and more walls pose themselves insurmountable in our face.

True loners spend their entire existences virtually alone, interacting with others only for functional ends. There are no connections made, no relationships forged. Indeed, the concept of close relationships and human interaction is virtually as alien to the loner as life in space. Their lives turn inward, toward whatever petty interests amuse them. External intrusions, no matter on what level they are desired, are ultimately perceived as foreign and alien intrusions into a hermetically sealed lifestyle.

Social situations of the 'normal' sort are so alien to me, it is like attempting to interpret a foreign culture - at least that is the analogy that sprouts to mind whenever I encounter such a situation. That is how out of the loop folks like me are.

So if we cannot cut it in the real world, then how is online dating supposed to be any different for us? When the time inevitably comes to meet person to person (supposing it ever comes to that), what happens then?

In my online dating experience, it is apparent that 99.5% of all attempts to 'outreach' and connect are fishing down dry holes. For every interest notification sent, about 1 in 1,000 are reciprocated. For every reciprocation and response to same, about 10% (at most) are additionally reciprocated. Beyond that, the chances for further connection are so infinitesimal as to be unmeasurable.

I suppose for most folks, online dating is generally quite fruitful and active, and great benefits and even lasting relationships come of it. Socially balanced individuals find online dating to be useful - otherwise online websites would not exist, much less be so popular amongst the unattached. For the loser who demonstrates no ability to communicate effectively in real life without eliciting extremely negative reactions from the people around him, it is no surprise that online chatting should be no different.

If you don't know how to talk to people, you aren't going to be able to compose a message that will grab the attention of the opposite sex or otherwise make them interested in you. If you agonize over every word, every syllable, when writing a message or a response to a message via an online dating service, that's a very good sign that you are absolute shit at the business.

I would suggest for the social isolate not to waste one's money on online dating services. You are too fundamentally flawed for it to be much of use for you. If you are really, really determined to do the online dating thing, I would first suggest radically altering your personality, outlook on life, and general comportment around other people before even contemplating such a move.

Overall, the social isolate is too flawed to exist in civilized society. That should not amount to an abridgment of his civil rights or denial of opportunities based on merit and/or native talent. For the social isolate, that is all he will likely receive out of life. You get out of life only what you put into it. Lazy, indolent personalities eat shit and breathe lifelong misery, as they rightly should in a morally proper regime.

(I apologize for going off topic somewhat. But what's stopped me before?)

Anyway, take your personal situation into consideration and seriously consider the odds that you will find happiness or companionship via the online route, before parting with your hard earned money. They don't call it discretionary spending for nothing.

No more "E" Guarantee

2009-05-06T12:55:00.003-05:00

The "E" Guarantee is no more!

Personal injury lawyer and local teevee advertising celebrity E. Eric Guirard has been disbarred by the state supreme court for "conflicts of interest, failure to supervise their non-lawyer staff, impermissible fee sharing with non-lawyers, and facilitation of the unauthorized practice of law."

Gotta love the legal licensing bureaucrats and their exclusionary ways. In the age of State supremacy, the dictators of licensure and qualification can deny a person their livelihood if they deem fit to do so. Who knows what 'crimes' Mr. "E" and his law partner committed to earn their ire. Suffice it to say that if you don't conform to the bureaucrats' whims, they can destroy you utterly.

If real crimes were committed, the market would have responded...by evaporating the business of the purveyors of the "E" guarantee, and transferring it to other legal counselors who play legitimately. Don't think that losing business was ever an issue for them, though. Some crimes, eh?

Of course I can't shed too many tears for the legal profession overall. They desired this set-up to make their profession "exclusionary" and thus closed to all but a privileged, well compensated elite. You reap what you sow.

Cities vs. the State

2009-05-04T19:23:00.005-05:00

The radio is my alarm clock, and again this morning I was awakened to the sounds of the morning talk folks on WJBO, discussing some politician's lame proposal to construct a new Amite River crossing between Central and Watson by extending Hooper Road (LA 408) to LA 16 in Livingston Parish. This structure and approaches is alleged to cost over $100 million.

Understand this issue in local transportology.

EBR Parish contains 450,000 people, yet retains a vast amount of empty, developable space around the urban center, much of it located in convenient proximity to major activity centers. Much empty land remains in Central, Zachary, Baker, and the southwest/southeast corners of the parish to accommodate expanding populations near jobs and business centers. Indeed, much land exists in the central city area to house populations right now in areas located close to businesses, schools, parks, and other amenities.

Yet despite all this, the terror of the wretched Other persists, and thanx to the fiat socialism of public education most city folks are faced with the sole "choice" of failing EBR schools, to be shared with the feared Black People. (That is, if they haven't created their own lily Caucasian preserve school district for themselves - this means you, Central.) So after thirty years of White flight, there are now approximately 200,000 souls who live in the neighboring parishes of Ascension and Livingston - with only marginally better school systems, "but hey, at least we kept them jungle bunnies out."

Between Ascension and EBR Parishes, there are only three road crossings - I-10, Airline Highway/US 61, and Jefferson Highway/LA 73. Bayou Manchac (a small, barely navigable waterway otherwise) creates a seemingly insurmountable boundary toward greater communion between these two polities.

Between Livingston and EBR Parishes, there are also only three road crossings, courtesy of the somewhat greater separation provided by the Amite River - I-12, Florida Boulevard/US 190, and Magnolia Bridge (LA 37/64).

All these crossings were constructed in the age when these were exits from the city into the hinterland, not suitable for carrying 100,000 cars per day to and from lookalike subdivisions upon the denuded prairie.

The crux of the traffic problem in this region is the over-usage of these crossings into the crabgrass frontier and the approach roads therein. Simply put, it is like placing a constriction point on a water main every day.

The traffic situation within the exurbs themselves is also troubling, the rapidly developing sprawl spreading over an area served by inadequate country lanes and farm to market roads intended for an agricultural community of small population.

Do we want to sponsor continued development in this vein? Do we wish to beggar our urban centers and permit the complete secession of the capable majority, leaving our cities entirely in the hands of those incompetents, superflys, and sociopathic criminals who are bound to remain? Because this is what our politicians have seemed hell-bent on doing for nearly a century now.

Government policies are always designed to destroy communities, whether it be bridge building to greenfields, erasing civilization via the subsidy of indolence and irresponsibility, creating generations of ignorant unemployable morons via public skooling, or subsidizing the malinvestments of the politically connected dickhead elites (whom we so facetiously refer to as "entrepreneurs") in the name of "economic development."

It stops now. Piss off a bureaucrat, invest your life in the urban center.

Secession!

2009-05-02T20:32:00.003-05:00

Faint, half-serious whispers of secession are in the air as the latest crisis unfolds. I would suggest that these "unreasonable" ideas be accorded greater respect that they currently elicit.

A nation the size of the Untied States of Amerika (sic) is far too large to function effectively under one large, bloated, omnipotent and incompetent governing authority. Events of these latter years have demonstrated this beyond a doubt. Everywhere people chafe under the rule of an arrogant, imperial central authority laid in a distant Parasite City.

History has shown that all empires collapse of their own size. Mega-empires and their dramatic scale can only breed inefficiencies and lead to cascading levels of failure in all walks of society.

Do the folks of the Gulf South have anything in common - culturally, politically, or otherwise - with the inhabitants of the effete Northeastern Yankee enclave, or the smug dickhead dominated Pacific Northwest, or the decayed welfarist reservation of the Rust Belt, or the barbarous and crime/drug flooded Left Coast, or even the mongrelized chaos of the southern Floridian cultural mixing bowl?

Indeed, do the common folk even have anything in common with their near neighbors in the gated subdivisions of privilege who look down upon them like so many human "commodities", fit only as test subjects for their grand social "experiments" backed by State guns?

Have we consented to live with these others, sharing the same government which time after time has been twisted to the ends of the elites and those others with claims on the public trough, to inflict schemes of various sorts which the common folk want no part of?

No consent was given. Birthright "citizenship" does not confer this consent.

Indeed, secession is our right as free individuals.

In fact, allow secession to be carried to its logical conclusion. Let State organizations exist only when there is the consent of all individuals involved. Majority rule be damned. I doubt, given the choice, that the view of the many will be to seek State "protection."

Secession should be carried to its fullest extent - the individual, in free control of his own mind and body, in rule of himself and himself alone.

Let governments fall and freedom reign.

Game over, Chrysler

2009-04-30T18:16:00.005-05:00

Chrysler Corporation is now officially finished. The decades of sloth, complacency, mismanagement, and government bailouts have finally collapsed upon their heads like a house of cards. Hooray!

I wish this was the end of it. But this bankruptcy is not a liquidation as it should be, but a "reorganization" in favor of, as anticipated, the fatted interests. By the way, do not believe the government shuck and jive about this being a "surgical" bankruptcy that will take a month or two. These type of things never last that mercifully brief.

In any case, whether Chrysler survives or not for the short term (in the long term, it's finished no matter what), the game is up for them. As a functional, living part of a free economy, they are finished. They will no longer resemble anything appearing a private company - now the looters are running the show. Decisions will now be made by political functionaries for political reasons alone - no concessions to supply and demand here. The company now exists insofar as precious drops of wealth can be extracted and squeezed from its carcass for the benefit of the clinging parasites that leech from the dying corpse.

The ownership breakdown will be 30% private (Fiat), 10% State (USA and Canadian governments), and 50% band of looters backed by State guns (United Auto Workers) - a match made in heaven by parasites for parasites.

The manufacturing and sale of automobiles is now officially merely a sideline to supporting the suction of wealth down these parasites' reptilian throats. If auto sales cannot support this (which they will not), Joe Taxpayer will be called to cover any deficits between revenues and the parasites' required "standard of living."

We used to call this welfare. The Soviets made this sort of arrangement the basis of their economy and society. Now it's termed "restoring prosperity." In either case, it can only end in mass death and chaos.

It is Amerika's last gasp. These are the end of days. And as predicted, BO is the agent which has pushed a once proud civilization over the precipice.

History will not look upon this dark age kindly.

Dirty swine flu - and moar soap chaos!

2009-04-28T18:39:00.010-05:00

In these increasingly desperate times, the next grate wave of chaos rears its blood-soaked head as the grim reaper of the Mexican swine flu rises to potentially slaughter millions. The shades of 1918 come to light as whispers of "pandemic" alight from terrified lips.

Fitting, really, in this age of civilizational collapse. Disease and other pestilence seem to make their brief but spectacular interventions in history during times of chaos, moral collapse, and economic dislocation.

I really don't think all that much will come of this, in truth. A fair number will become sick and perhaps several thousand will succumb to the illness, but hopefull nothing more. As long as the State doesn't decide to use this event to aggrandize control toward itself and relish in the use of "emergency powers."

Oh, wait...

***
It's ratings terror in soap opera land as the free fall continues!!

We all now know of Guiding Light's demise as the jig could no longer be sustained for them. But earlier this month, the once-mighty ABC soaps plumbed new and unknown depths as all time lows were achieved for all three programs airing. For the first time in perhaps all of recorded history, no ABC soap could muster above a 2.0 on the ratings household share.

In total, the ratings overall are the worst ever for daytime. Let me repeat - EVER. In all recorded history.

Dat's the whirlwind you reap for years of pathetic storytelling, poor writing, unbelievable storylines, absymal acting and character development, killing off popular long-serving characters (the blood of dead Quartermaines is crying out from the earth), and letting untrained teenage actors 'carry' (for lack of a better expression) the show, with characters and stories that no one gives two hoots about, while relegating longtime favorites to the background or the dreaded "recurring" status.

I would name names and point fingers, but not being a regular viewer I am certain that the remaining loyal fans out there already know far better than I do who is to blame for the chaos and whose heads need to roll.

The soaps are marking time, waiting for the inevitable, doing the same thing over and hoping for a different result. Nothing daring, nothing compelling. Suffice it to say that there is little left to hold daytime viewers anymore. The generic-ization of soaps that began in the 1980s has reached its ultimate end, in defected viewers, poor product, and falling profits for the producers. Now that every character resembles an underwear model or a slut - now that storylines can speak of human cloning, alien abduction, and medically impossible procedures without batting an eye - it is done for, it is finished.

Once programs like General Hospital were honored, respected, and aggressively interesting and watchable. To-day, it is apparent that high school drama students could put together a better production. What money the producers have invested in moving to HD should have been more wisely spent in procuring a cast and writing staff that can actually put together an entertaining product (exempting Anthony Geary, Leslie Charleson, and Jane Elliot here - if the show revolved only around their characters, I would watch every day).

Fundamentally, I blame all this on the relatively low status of soaps in the entertainment pantheon. Soaps historically have held low prestige as television products, due perhaps to their primary (if sometimes forgotten) role as advertising vehicles for consumer products. If soaps and the talent employed therein earned more respect from their peers, they might attract better talent in the first place. In a way these aims are contradictory, since it takes quality to attract quality, and lately soaps have not demostrated much quality. But you get the general idea.

At one time, during the peak of the 1970s soap boom, daytime dramas held a modicum of respect and as such were rewarded with viewers and many rabid fans. However, a major reversal has occurred since that time - due to the creative failures of the daytime producers themselves.

It will take a major draw of talent to daytime to make soaps relevant again. In the 1970s soaps were the phenomenon of their time - to the point where there were college classes dedicated to the study and analysis daytime drama. Wouldn't it be nice to know that kind of relevance again?

Because daytime has produced much great drama and some of television's finest storytelling over the years. In my view it is worth preserving and saving, if only for that.

But this is perhaps wishful thinking. The 'talents' in Hollywood are hell bent toward destroying the daytime genre, because in their elite bubbles they perceive something to be entertaining that 99% of the population regards as sheer crap. Not to mention, more importantly, that demographics, the lack of replacement cycles, and general inertia have condemned daytime to be a dying genre.

So thus, it is finished, not with a bang but with a whimper.

History lesson a la Cap!

2009-04-26T21:22:00.006-05:00

Since this city is our state capitol, it is fitting that this visual history lesson should come about. From the Old State Capitol exhibit on Louisiana's capitols, here is a visual timeline in our seat of government:

Old State Cap!

2009-04-24T21:05:00.006-05:00

A tour of the historic Old Louisiana State Capitol in downtown Baton Rouge, as of last week-end:

The central staircase spirals upward, with low hand railings befitting the smaller stature of 19th century folk.

The cathedral ceiling. I have a 1994 photo which is identical to this image; regrettably it is in analog format (boo hoo).

The bureaucratic offices were beyond these windows on the third floor (which is inaccessible to the public).

Entering the legislative chambers from the second story gallery.

The Senate Chamber. It was here that Huey Long was impeached, but sadly not convicted, in 1929.

The House chamber, more grandiose than the upper house in an interesting turn of design. This building served as the state's seat of government from 1850-1862 and from 1882-1932.

Government was much smaller back then:

Even then, the governor's office had all the perks, though:

Famous last words:

USSA implosion update

2009-04-22T17:39:00.004-05:00

News items of note on this Earth Day:

- The truth and reconcillation commission on the crimes of the previous Leader's administration seems to be inching toward reality. I would be extremely surprised if anything substantive came of it, since both Team Red and Team Blue are drenched in blood from head to toe.

But it would be fitting to see some form of justice doled out to the late Leader's chief henchmen and Praetorians. Also it would divert the leadership's attention toward their own personal politics of destruction, which may yet spare us from a more forcible prosecution of Our Leader's plans to wage a Federal war on depression, which from past experience should be just as successful as the wars on terror, drugs, poverty, crime, illegitimacy, et cetera.

Note the lack of any moral discussion of torture in the media - really, it boils down to the minute gradations between what is "acceptable" between Team Red and Team Blue. The torture will, of course, continue - but BO's boyz will just have to be more careful and ensure that this time around, it stays undercover, where it was supposed to be all along.

- Several executives highly placed in the Federally supported financial apparatus have recently apparently either become too tortured by their consciences, or have been delivered poison pills by their Illuminati like handlers in high places. In either event, fortituous suicides such as this elicit few if any tears from we the sheeple, who have lost everything plus their shirts due to the "scientific" (mis)management of the financial sphere - as if anything as complex as high finance could even being to be "managed."

- It's Earth Day, and Our Leader wants us to be more environmentally aware. I'll wager that he'll talk the talk down to the sheeple, but retain the White House thermostat at 72 degrees in a demonstration of his "flinty Chicago toughness."

In any case, if the Federal empire was really serious about saving the earth, it would just disappear.

The State performs no task better than placing a crushing load of onerous and pointless rules and regulations before us which affects us in all walks of life. The regulations only add compounded costs, expense, and additional burdens on us all. All which waste and expend precious time, resources, and doubtless contribute to pollution and environmental degradation.

So if the State desires to retain any moral authority to lecture us on "sustainability", then heed these words: make like a leaf, and blow away.

Walls

2009-04-20T18:18:00.008-05:00

This is a world of walls, figurative and literal.

Each society is comprised of a innumerable series of interlinked but self-contained social networks, admitting entry to a certain number of people apiece. These networks congregate around topics as disparate as shared interests, professional societies, or even a shared enjoyed propensity toward inebriation (as is so common within the dickhead classes).

These networks are formed at precise times during the life cycle. Generally the years of formal schooling, in par-ticular higher education, are the formative times in which it is "acceptable" by larger social standards to form and reform basic relationships with others.

However, when that opportunity passes, the window closes, or at least this occurs in places with stupendously low social capital such as the empire of dickheads we refer to as the USA. The arrangement of social networks freezes into place, and it has been made deliberately difficult by our wise overlords (not) to penetrate these networks without extraordinary, superhuman effort.

There is no school, no formal tautology which teaches the budding entrants into the human race that once graduation day arrives and you have failed to connect, you are to be left utterly, completely alone. The networks are formed, the little knots of cafe society are arranged precisely, and comfortable arrangements prohibit disruption by the inclusion of additional members after the fact.

These social cliques are as closed off in precisely the same manner as the most exclusive gated communities for the elites.

In short, the social isolate, attempting to penetrate the subject after the fact, is faced by walls
both actual and virtual. This can take every form from quiet shunning to the in-your-face presence of a burly, mustachioed, truncheon wielding security "officer" stating that one's presence means we now suddenly "have a problem" - to presumably be rectified by blunt force in the absence of turning one's tail between the legs and immediately vacating the premises.

Those left outside are cast out into the darkness of atomization and anomie, a breed of faceless, presumed inferior Others who are not fit to exist within "higher" society. The downtown areas of our nation are filled with such souls after 5 PM - the homeless, the broke, those reduced to fetching their suppers out of garbage cans, the convenient refuse of "superior" people.

And it is said that fascism was defeated decades ago.

Let it not come as a surprise when the comfortable in power, the latte-sipping class fully behind them, see fit to remove the "inferiors" from society completely, with the lame excuse that due to economic collapse, we cannot afford to let them remain "parasites" on the body politic.

They won't call them concentration camps at that point. But the intent is the same - to remove the Other from sight, to the point of physically destroying him.

This is where we are headed. We erect walls around our comfortable lives, admitting no one who does not meet our warped "standards", permitting no interchange of ideas that might disturb our comfortable worldviews, refusing to take risks by admitting into our circles those that might be even minutely different from ourselves.

One might think oneself safe, secure behind the virtual walls of snobbery and privilege which are seeming protections against those who are deemed by society as "creeps", "kooks", and "schizo." And for a time, these protections have worked to their intended extent.

But the creeps are becoming deeply discontent with their assigned role in the Amerikan corporatocracy.

They are hardly satisfied with the disgraceful position in which they are held by their social "betters."

They resent the bare, unsatisfying life dealt to them, in jobs which provide no spiritual redemption, in a debased currency where they subsidize the benefits paid to their social superiors, to the lack of companionship which a corporatist atomized society provides them.

They most especially resent being forcibly deprived of the comfort which a loving spouse would provide, for the rest of their days, on account of being labeled as "sick" and "anti-social."

But who is the dictator of "social acceptability"? Who is the arbiter of what can and cannot fly amongst the crowd?

Follow the money.

Here I do not speak of truly ill types, such as the late sociopath Cho Seung-Hui and his fellow travellers. I speak of those who lack social skills, for one reason or another, but who do not deserve one single iota of the disgusting treatment dealt them by a society which revolves around the counterfeit pleasures of sports, alcohol, and sexual promiscuity.

If you don't resemble the artificial, underwear model, soap opera version of a "man," you are a "creep."

If you believe that government is not your friend and protector and never will be, you are a "kook."

If you don't immediately trust and say "Hi-de-ho, neighbor" to everyone you encounter, you are "anti-social."

If you use your mind, follow the evidence, and understand the true, ugly reality of Amerikan society, and refuse to whitewash matters when asked your opinion therein, you are "schizo."

Gotta love labels. Leadership classes find them convenient for their divide and rule tactics.

They have grown to make us fear the Other, when it is They who we really should despise. It is They who have debased our currency, squandered our wealth, slaughtered the flower of our youth on faraway battlefields in the name of a false "freedom", pauperized the masses and reduced our standard of living, and championed the perpetuation of faith in a fictional nonentity as "eternal reward" for tolerating all their other depredations.

So wall yourself up, dear dickheads. Keep shunning the Other. Isolate and marginalize large sectors of our society for the sake of keeping your wine tasting parties continue undisturbed by the 'uncredentialed' and the 'undesirables'.

See how far that will get you when the lambs come to slaughter, and you will be desperately begging for our assistance.

But nay, we will be hard pressed to lift a finger to spare your lives.

A future of morons

2009-04-18T21:15:00.003-05:00

To-day I cracked open a cold one (no, not really) and viewed the Mike Judge film Idiocracy for my viewing pleasure.

Crude as it was (the film will earn no awards for quality) it testifies to a real and present danger which our society faces and which has already wreaked massive havoc upon the fabric of civilization.

It is apparent even in the most mundane aspects that society has grown cruder, more illiterate, less intelligent, and essentially less pleasant within a very short span of time. Activities that were once universally condoned as immoral and criminal are now indulged upon with wanton abandon. Every aspect of civilization has suffered: political discourse, human health, quality of life, education, et cetera et cetera. Who here could be shocked that imbeciles now rule in high places, that logical fallacies are regarded as high truths, that anti-intellectualism and cultural narcissism has coarsened the fabric of life?

The style of communication has grown less intellectual and less formal over time. To take a minor example, witness television advertisements from the 1950s that touted a product's benefits in clear and concise language, then compare to the graphics and "spectacle" laden farces of to-day. In the process, we passed through the "jingle" era of the 1970s and 80s which died of its own intellectual squalor

It is such that even a semi-intelligent person such as myself is considered "smart" in the grand scheme of things.

Have you noticed that our society has produced far fewer works of quality, individuals of merit, inventions that have improved your life (and no, Twitter does not count)? Instead of great men, we are offered interchangable dickheads with unremarkable, illiterate sounding names like "Wendig" and "Throop" who are more concerned with jockeying for comfortable positions in the dickhead corporatocracy than providing anything of merit to the world. In this age of the end of freedom, our comatose overfed sheeple do nothing so long as they are fed their quota of tequila and brie.

For further explanation, I suggest you read this article, written by a true patriot and the truest shit you will ever read. The writer is far more articulate in this matter than I ever could be.

As the educated classes dwindle before the inexorably expanding hordes of welfare staters, hands outstretched in bottomless "need" with their expanding wastelines, drain on productive wealth and resources, and pathological narcissism bred by a lifetime of coddling by their State benefactors, it is inevitable that the end result will be a mindless morass dwelling in the electronic corral of an omnipotent police state, bar code tattoos and all, entertained in their mental stupor by endless bread and circuses.

Is this the world you desire for your children?

Change starts when blood runs down the streets of the Imperial City and the steps of its marble palaces to power. May that day of reckoning come within our lifetimes.

Just say no to the housing cult

2009-04-16T20:13:00.006-05:00

Everywhere I go I have people telling me (including, most annoyingly, nearly all members of my family), "You really need to buy a house to-day!!" "Interest rates are lower than ever!" "Housing is a great investment!"

So far I have resisted their exhortations. Why, you ask? "You're missing out on a lifetime of gains by throwing your money away renting!" they declare - even after they have watched their net worth (mostly tied up in their homes) plummet dramatically, putting all their retirement plans to pot.

Gotta love baby boomers. They just can't deattach themselves from the orgy of overextension and moral gluttony that has produced this current crisis of civilization, and is sure yet to lead to much excess death.

No, sirrah, I have my reasons for staying as far from that turkey as possible. Purchasing a house, contrary to popular delusion, is actually a poor financial investment, and probably the most ignorant thing you can ever do with your money. To wit:

1) Precious few of us can hope to buy a non-ghetto dwelling with accumulated cash, given the wildly inflated value (still) of most real estate to-day; therefore to purchase housing we must borrow. If you are reasonably prudent (I'm not even going to mention the madness of subprime borrowing here), the standard option is to pay 20% as a down payment, and borrow the remaining 80% as a fixed 30-year mortgage.

To borrow such a sum of money for such a long period of time is sheer madness. I would carefully examine the mental comportment of anyone engaging in such an activity.

Consider. 30 years is the majority of an adult's working life. To enlist into an agreement to pay this amount over this length of time is basically making a promise to a borrower that:

- I expect that my source and level of income will remain stable and secure for three decades
- I expect that there will be no disruptions to my income
- I expect that the price of the real estate I am purchasing will retain the value of the purchase price

If you hold these assumptions, you are delusional. Between job security (or lack thereof) and the dwindling value of real estate (it doesn't always go up!) to make a promise such as this is disingenuous at best, delusional thinking at moderate, and criminal madness at worst.

Maybe some people can make this promise and be sure that they will fulfill their end of the bargain. (We call them "trust funders" in da hood.) But most working stiffs in good faith cannot do so. And so the rational of these rent, and the irrational lose their shirts when the housing market catches cold.

I shed no tears. They have been warned.

2) Real estate investment is not a sure bet. Read your local business page for details.

In truth, the rate of housing appreciation has always tracked inflation over time. Some great investment there.

3) I prefer not to be a slave to a bank for thirty years. A rental contract is much more short term (one year on average, give or take) and thus can be exited far more easily if you happen to experience income flow problems.

This applies not only to mortgages, but other long term debt such as auto loans and revolving credit. If I had to borrow, I would only string out payments for a year at maximum.

4) Closing costs - an excuse to burn currency if there ever was any. Gotta love the real estate industry, another parasite "profession" if there ever was any.

5) Once a home is purchased, somehow it induces additional expenses in the form of furnishings, "improvements", and other claptrap. In short, it becomes a money sink, which you pour dollars into, only to see it sell for less than a hot dog cart in five years. Nice.

Life is capricious and harsh, and curveballs can fly at us any day that can cause us to lose everything in an instant. Take that as free friendly advice from someone who experienced firsthand this nation's greatest tropical-borne natural disaster in history.

So do not get caught up in the housing charade. To dickheads, it is all one big gamble anyway, another method of obtaining something for nothing, which as we all know is the dickhead's favorite pasttime. So RENT for now!! I know it might stink, but it's better than dealing with the quagmire of the real estate industry, which is just salivating over the prospect of separating dollars from your wallet with an exertion of mimimum to zero effort.

If you must purchase a home, do it when you have the means and ability to do so.

Or you can just wait a few months, when the vast majority of housing will be worth less than a 1989 Celica.

AAARRRR!!

2009-04-14T18:58:00.003-05:00

Oh the life of a pirate
A life upon the seas
Wine, women and treasure
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Another symbol of the breakdown of western civilization arrives in the guise of the second coming of the proverbial Barbary pirates. But these ain't Johnny Depp-like pirates of the Carribean. More like modern terrorists, they efficiently mimic the actions of the States which oppose them by seizing wealth and holding it hostage until the bounty arrives.

Pirate bands, after all, are simply less formally organized gangs of bandits, of which States are the "official" variety therein.

AAARRRR!!

He is still dead

2009-04-12T18:40:00.002-05:00

Easter morning arises, and Christians worldwide celebrate the resurrection of their Savior.

But guess what, assholes? HE IS STILL DEAD.

And none of your fervent wishes for supernatural salvation can save you from this nasty fact.

If heaven is only for perfect beings, then there is no way any human can enter the kingdom of god. So we are thus all doomed to the lake of fire in the pit of the earth. Hell is real; heaven is a fantasy.

So no one, not even god's son, can save you now.

HE IS DEAD

2009-04-10T12:47:00.003-05:00

You may understand by now that to-day is my favorite religious holiday.

On this day, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, Satanists, atheists, Rastafarians, Flying Spaghetti Monsterians can hold hands, sing kumbaya, dance together, and chant in united belief:

HE IS DEAD.

On this day two thousand years ago, there is no controversy about what happened: He who was called the Nazarene died and went to hell.

It is what happened on the third day that the major religions dispute. But that is for another day to prattle over.

How anyone can believe in the literal resurrection of the body, I have no idea. It is rationally impossible! Those who believe the lie are deluded like young children.

But there is no delusion about the crucifixion of the Christ. Death is real. And Christianity rejoices, for in this death he "saved" us from our sins....the elevation of self-sacrifice and the abolition of the self to a malignant, two thousand year old dogma. The idolaters of the State could do no better than this.

But let us indeed rejoice to-day, if only to celebrate the demise of those who would claim to be on par with god!

HE IS DEAD!!!

Daytime television is finished

2009-04-09T21:03:00.009-05:00

I shudder to write those words, but the facts speak for themselves. Take a look at the raw numbers:

Using data from Wikipedia, I plotted the Nielsen shares of all daytime dramas airing at least one season on a major broadcast network (CBS, NBC, ABC) from 1952 to the present. Each line represents a single program. The side axis represents the share of all daytime viewers as measured by Nielsen.

As you can see, recent years have witnessed an almost linear downward slide in the ratings of all soap operas, not to mention the absence of the lively competition for daytime viewers that peaked around 1970. It is interesting to see how nearly all the soaps (except for Y&R, which has double the viewers of its closest competitor) closely track each other on this downward slide. Even Y&R has seen a similar rate of reduction in its viewing audience, but from a higher baseline.

Though it appears that most successful soaps over time experience a large gain in viewers at the get-go, with a long and gradual tapering off at the end of the tail, it is apparent that macro-trends of decline begin to affect all programs within the 1988-94 period. From 1994 onward, declines commenced in earnest.

The instigators were likely thus:

1988 - writer's strike
1994 - OJ Simpson trial

Also, the increasing availability of alternative programming streams (cable, internet) and TiVo use have played a background role in all this.

Here are breakdowns by network:

CBS

CBS soaps got a head start and dominated the ratings charts for years. Virtually all of them performed well, and many all were P&G productions in the classic era. As the World Turns was America's top rated soap for two decades. Gradual erosion of P&G market share due to the birth of newer, more daring soaps, plus the advanced age of its serials doomed most of the longtime veterans on the CBS schedule to extinction by the 1980s. The Young and the Restless, premiering in 1973, remains a strong performer however.

NBC

Of the big three networks, NBC has had a relatively weak daytime drama lineup over time, relying more heavily on game shows in the past to fill the daypart's airtime. The NBC Daytime glory age was roughly from 1967-75, when its top rated soaps Another World, The Doctors, and Days of our Lives comprised the core of its lineup. All three soaps suffered greatly from NBC's late 70s-early 80s collapse, and NBC Daytime has never truly recovered. Only one traditional program (Days) remains in the daytime hours currently.

ABC

From being a non-participant in the daytime race, ABC came to dominate daytime in the late 70s through the late 80s, due to the stratospheric success of its core soaps (and overall lineup) during that time, especially General Hospital. However, it has been all downhill from there since that brief early 80s peak. Note the mid 70s trough for GH (which took it to last place on the ABC schedule!) that led to the reign of Monty and the subsequent dramatic changes that changed the face of daytime, for good or ill.

Masters of sloth

2009-04-08T18:21:00.004-05:00

It seems that everywhere one goes, you can never find nary a bad word about the concept of vacation. In fact, the general consensus seems to be that Amerikans need a lot more of it. We are allegedly "backward" when compared to the "progressive" Europeeans and their mandatory, State-enforced month-long (or more) periods of rest.

What a load of hogwash. Allow some dissent from this tack, if you will:

Humans are fundamentally lazy. And Amerikans in par-ticular excel at sloth and indolence par excellence. It boggles the mind how much waste, incompetence, and slacking goes on in concealed locations, behind the backs of managers and the entrepeneurs who make employment available to the many through their extraordinary risk taking. It makes one understand how major corporations can go through round after round of layoffs, but still never find enough fat to trim.

Vacation and rest is the last thing society needs. There is simply too much to be done - so much work is needed to rebuild our destroyed civilization. Sloth is a non-starter here.

And what brings meaning to life better than work? Work should always be the center of a person's life. A person's work is their legacy to the ages, the contribution of the present generation toward the comforts and securities of their descendants. It may not matter that the work be boring and tedious. If you are unhappy with your work, find another job. But don't take it out on the rest of us and up and loaf upon the rest of our efforts.

The more one works, the more one leaves as a benefit to future generations. Moral societies are future oriented, concerned with the welfare of their children. Immoral societies are present consumption oriented, slated for the bottomless pits of nihilism and chaos.

Those that recreate leave work behind that others must accomplish in their stead. Responsibilities are shirked so that present pleasure seeking may be indulged upon. This is a form of parasitism, much resented and rightly so.

I would encourage all to work 12, 14 hour days if possible - not doing something meaningless, but actually contributing something of merit to the world. Start a business. Invent a contraption. Blog and educate the masses on our society's wickedness.

You will ultimately find more meaning in life's work than any human relationship could ever provide. For relationships are fleeting and ultimately impermanent. But the concrete results of invention or investment may live for the ages and enrich millions.

And there is only so much time in the limited human lifespan to accomplish these things!

So you want to go on vacation? Bah. Waste of your time, money, and opportunity costs. Save your money for a rainy day and spare the extravagances for retirement, if you live that long.

Because even if you slave the rest of your life without "enjoying" the fruits of your labor, this is far more moral than frittering your wealth on meaningless material things.

And you will die knowing that you are a better person than your fellow simpletons.

Hangin' with some G's on the westside

2009-04-06T19:35:00.007-05:00

A collection of photos from various recent sojourns to the other side of the river.

West Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse, Port Allen:

Nottoway Plantation, White Castle:

Old Plaquemine Lock:

New world order

2009-04-04T19:19:00.002-05:00

There are two classes of people in to-day's society: the controllers and the drones.

The controllers lead interesting lives (or what is largely regarded as interesting), attend all the events, wear fashionable clothing, are never seen without a wine glass in their hands, and seemingly have nothing but friends, colleagues, and "contacts" everywhere they go. They are the dickhead glitterati elite that are permitted to live something approaching rich and full lives.

Not so for the rest of us, the drone and worker bees. We are expected to show up to our Corporate Amerika jobs every morning, labor unceasingly for little pay and absolutely no recognition at jobs which provide nothing of moral and spiritual value to society, and then are expected to go home, be satisfied by the bare crumbs which our Controllers have generously provided us, and SHUT THE HELL UP.

Our free time grows bare and fallow with the wasted empty hours, forced into seclusion and immobility by lack of friends, acquaintances, and anyone else with something in common.

For there may be those with common interests out there. But we are never to meet them. Any unauthorized contact means the certain attention of the authorities, which leads to an assured experience at the wrong end of a Taser.

Like cattle we serve as a soulless, deracinated inexpensive drone workforce for the ten percent who make the decisions and wield the levers of power.

Only through a bloody revolution of the masses can the order be inverted and the chokehold of the elite classes, privileged by birth, be overturned so that everyone may have equal shot at the brass ring.

In a meritocracy, those who fail output the least effort. Privilege is doled out by ability and talent, as opposed to connections and how "hip" you are.

It is time for a new world order of our own making.

The Light extinguished

2009-04-02T19:03:00.006-05:00

What you are about to read is not an April Fools' joke.

News of a sad but not unexpected nature has rocked the soap world (for once) as CBS announces it is at long last cancelling 72-year daytime veteran Guiding Light. GL will end its long run in September when its contract runs out, unless Procter and Gamble can find a new home for the serial (which, even if they could, would not likely prolong the program's life much).

Can't say I didn't see this coming a mile away, though even the suddenness of the announcement shocked me. It is very disenheartening to read "CBS cancels Guiding Light" even if you aren't a fan or follower of daytime drama. Like many longtime serials, GL was a constant staple in our lives.

I can't say I was a follower of the program, such as I have been with TPiR and other daytime offerings. I can't say that in my daytime research that I found the program particularly appealing to my sensibilities or especially entertaining. I can't even say that it played a major role in my youthful memories, though somewhere in the crevasses of my mind there is a place where a small sliver of the 1980s version of GL resides. But it was a constant, an unchanging presence in our lives, and a record holder of major import. A 72 year run, on radio and teevee, is nothing to sneer at, even if the program itself offered much to sneer at in its dying death throes.

GL marks a continuous lineage from the birth of daytime drama itself, all the way to the present day. Most radio soaps which made it to teevee died eons ago, and are now long forgotten. But whether due to luck or persistance, GL remained with us all these years.

Like watching a famed personage die after many years of service to society, it is not without sadness that we remark on the passing of this staple of daytime broadcasting. Yet perhaps it was best in the end for it to die of old age. Like most things that grow old, the program in its latter years had grown puerile and senile, even by soap opera standards, having devolved to a level of quality that would suit a high school TV production well, its storylines growing increasingly half-baked, delusional, and outright embarrassing.

But let us not forget the quality that it harbored in its prime. Created by Irna Phillips, it was the last of the true daytime mohicans.

The light has now been extinguished, and it joins its former rivals for the daytime audience in soap opera heaven.

Guiding Light, 1937-2009. So long, friend.

--

In related news, speculation now commences on what CBS actually intends to do with the hour of daytime real estate it has vacated by pulling up the stakes on Guiding Light. CBS, for now, intends to continue programming the hour.

Rumours abound of new game shows, talk shows, maybe even moving TPiR to the afternoon (again). But the likelihood of CBS installing new original programming in this slot, which will endure, is hard to believe. A game show would be cheaper and could likely pull in GL's ratings, thereby making it more cost effective than a soap opera, but I can't see any program lasting more than a year or two in such a situation.

The most likely scenario is that the time will return to the affiliates. If not now, eventually - even if CBS wants to try its hand with cheaper programming alternatives for the time being. Somewhat less likely, but possible, is that daytime's last 30 minute drama, The Bold and the Beautiful, could expand to an hour and move to 2 PM Central, with its old 12:30 slot returned to local affiliates for expanded newscasts or other syndicated junk. But the retooling to bring a half hour daytime drama to a full hour is something which I have heard the producers of B&B are rather hesitant to undertake.

Of course, it would be nice to see a revival of, say, The Edge of Night on daytime, or barring that a brand new soap opera, this time done right. But ya know that just ain't gonna happen.

Hoax day

2009-04-01T17:36:00.004-05:00

April 1 is the day on which society celebrates and perpetuates hoaxes, tricks, lies, and scams.

Oh, if hoaxes and lies were only restricted to this single day. But alas our world has been shaped by the worst of hoaxes, massive frauds against truth which portend to swallow us whole into the inferno of immolation. The hoax of the moment is an old one, but lethally dangerous for our survival, the results of which we currently witness around us as our broken society collapses upon our heads.

That hoax is fiat currency.

A "store of value" backed by a zero, a valueless and worthless nonentity of nothingness, save a feeble, empty, and ultimately false promise by our Caesars to "protect and honor" those debts incurred by legal tender.

And yet this comprises the fundamental basis of our economy.

Fiat currency is the debauched "money" of a debauched age. It is the currency of a society where the predation of man upon one's fellow man is considered normal, moral, and even smart. Whatever "wealth" it comprises is a fiction, a fantasy, prone to dissolution and evaporation in an instant out of the ether of digits from whence it came, once the hoax of the fiat currency's "stability" and "value" are exposed for the lies they are.

It leads straight into the abyss of starvation, famine, and mass death.

Without a currency which serves as a store of value, such as gold and other precious metals, there is no capital accumulation. Without capital accumulation, society may as well return to the age of sticks and stones.

It is easy, indeed, to convince the sheeple to accept wholeheartedly this fantasy world of finance, given that the natural tendency of man is to loot his brother as opposed to making his own way in the world. But when the biggest lie of all is accepted hook, line, and sinker by the majority, the powerful find that anything is possible, thus bringing their greatest elite delusions to life (at least so far as the jig can be sustained).

What is that greatest lie?

The resurrection of Christ.

For the evidence is overwhelming that He died two thousand years ago, but a conspiracy of the powerful and deluded insist that his ghost remains around us, to offer us "eternal life" after an existence of economic rape, physical drudgery, and moral bankruptcy.

Only when we accept that HE IS DEAD and in his grave, can we commence the process toward picking up the pieces of what is left in civilization's smoldering and ashen remains.

For when the greatest lies are exploded, we go a great way to reducing
tolerance for the lesser lies around us.

Random notes from the roadfront

2009-03-31T18:26:00.002-05:00

Now for some random local notes of the viatological variety:

Burbank Drive project complete

I believe that this is the first major road expansion to open under the auspices of the Green Light Plan. This project completes the twinning of Burbank Drive and provides a continuous four lane connection between downtown and south Baton Rouge via LSU.

Since this was originally constructed as a two lane road on a four lane ROW by the state in the 1980s, only minimal ROW acquisition was required and construction proceeded relatively rapidly.

--

New Orleans master plan calls for removal of I-10 Claiborne viaduct

This is a pie-in-the-sky, fantasy bullshit idea dreamed up by some dickhead Northern planners who obviously hate automobiles more than they feel any sort of dedication to balanced transportation planning principles.

Originally, Claiborne Avenue thru Treme was a surface boulevard with a generous, oak-shaded neutral ground, and served as the business district of sorts for the New Orleans Black community in the era of formal racial segregation. During the 1967-9 timeframe, the La. Department of Highways constructed the I-10 elevated highway along this neutral ground, utilizing the most logical and easily obtained open corridor of land through the downtown area. Ever since, area residents have bemoaned the highway’s negative effects on the neighborhood, even as it has become a crucial artery for regional traffic.

One hundred thousand automobiles rely on the Claiborne elevated to conduct their daily travels. It is too critical a piece of infrastructure to eliminate. Like an old fence which vines have covered, to remove it is to create a gaping hole in the infrastructure systems which hundreds of thousands depend upon daily. Any discussion of removing the viaduct now is moot; this should have occurred at the time of construction. I am generally in favor of preserving neighborhood integrity, but not at the expense of compromising regional mobility.

I love how the dickhead “urbanists” speak of freeway eliminations in other cities such as San Francisco, Oklahoma City, and Milwaukee in situations such as this. Disingenuous talk it is. Those freeways were generally spur routes into downtown areas, or were replaced by a new freeway facility at a nearby location. The Claiborne elevated comprises a central part of an important trunkline freeway.

And the state will certainly be cool to any proposal to remove the viaduct, so long as engineering-oriented pragmatists rule the day at DOTD. The viaduct is showing its age, but there is no way that anything less than a replacement freeway will sit in its place after it reaches the end of its lifespan.

Besides, nothing can save those neighborhoods now in their supreme decline toward moral squalor and decadence. The reign of the thug and superfly is far too entrenched in the New Orleans ghetto to-day for the disappearance of a mere freeway to make much of a difference. These are problems rooted in the infrastructure not of the utilitarian variety, but of the moral fabric of society.

Reviving the corpse

2009-03-30T18:29:00.004-05:00

The latest insult to liberty poisons the headlines to-day, as The One makes a naked grab toward economic dictatorship and orders the resignation of the CEO of one of the nation's largest (albeit bankrupt) companies.

The airwaves of talk radio are filled with excited and shocked chatter, as the question is posed "Should the President of the United States have the power to fire the CEO of a private company?" The sheeple protest this depredation upon rationality everywhere (well, at least here in tha Southland).

Nice to know the dumb masses are so concerned about the course of this nation's affairs now.

All of these feeble protestations come to nought; what has occurred is now a fait accompli, as once the emperor asserts the power, he retains it in total forever. That is the eternal lesson of history.

And how could this be of surprise to any? The Small Three of Detroit freely accepted - nay, all but begged for - the poison pen of public bailout funding, government ownership, and socialistic intervention as the price for reviving the zombie corpses of their corporate persons.

So why cry havoc now? When you accept the State as your god and savior, you are totally beholden to it. The State is the key factor - nay, the sole factor - rendering GM and Chrysler alive at this moment. It should not be so far as to understand that with control comes certain rights.

Explainable as it is, this indeed does not make the act any less odious and cancerous to what remains of our tattered free market economy.

Be not surprised at this latest incident. There will be far more like it in the near future.

Such is the whirlwind reaped by the wages of moral bankruptcy, and the support of those in power who would deign without hesitation to slaughter us all to achieve their wicked and self-serving ends.

Death of the metrosexual

2009-03-28T21:00:00.002-05:00

These hard times which have blackened our future more or less permanently, indeed, bring with them a silver lining. Perhaps it will be said of our generation, in distant times, how resilient we were in the face of crisis. If this is to occur, there will have to be some major changes between then and now in our roles as economic actors.

About once a century the multiple insults of State economic intervention cascade upon themselves and cause a wide ranging rearrangement of economic affairs which manifests itself as a major depression. These next few years will witness the gory and painful process of the liquidation of false stores of value, and the concurrent futile efforts of various public actors to restore the fiat-wealth system which persisted during the boom time and which served to so enrich those who comprise the ruling class.

The liquidation of boom period economic structures which can no longer be sustained in an age of a more rational approach to value will be necessity serve to restore the historic traditional roles of social actors within the larger socioeconomic framework. Narcissistic parasitism and pathological economics will be socially shunned, not only because of their tainted association with the irrational strictures of the boom time, but also because of their inherent lack of sustainability in an age of scarcity. Freeloaders are immoral maggots even in good times, but in lean times these impositions on moral sense can simply not be tolerated if recovery and sanity is to prevail in economic matters.

In this vein, expect the death of that sickening societal anti-phenomenon known as the “metrosexual” to be swift and scarcely mourned. Few tears will be shed for the death of a type that served to emasculate men and convert them from their traditional roles of producers and providers into simpering, effeminate, not to mention narcissistic consumptive entities obsessed with image and pleasure. It will hardly be mentioned here how much of a positive impact for the forces of social perversion, in the form of faggotry, was engendered by the rise of the metrosexual in the late boom times.

The latte sipping, skinny jeans set will no doubt be chagrined to hear this unfortunate news. However, as with all malinvestments in finance and character, inefficiencies must be cleared out and sorted, as the invisible and unstoppable hand of capital dynamics sorts things out and renders value to its highest and best purpose, after decades of maladaptive use.

Power is wielded by the few

2009-03-26T19:23:00.005-05:00

It is astounding what sort of tom-shittery goes on behind closed doors in the tabernacles of power, every day, in this city, state, and nation.

In this very city right now, small, self-interested cliques of craven, chardonnay-sipping dickheads band together in groups with "public" purpose, no more than eight to ten at a time, to plan the lives and outcomes for thousands, even tens of thousands, of people - to decide who will live where, what businesses will not be allowed to operate in a certain area, what shade of colors are to be permitted for your shutters, how many stories your home can be and how far it must be situated from the roadway. And so on and so forth.

They call this a "special study" in town planning terms.

Fly on the wall that I am, I was recently silent witness to one of these erstwhile "planning sessions" by which special studies are conducted. The subject was a proposed "overlay district" that is soon to be installed by our solons upon one of the major thoroughfares of this parish. Pity the unwitting unfortunates who inhabit the vicinity.

There were maybe a handful of folks there, many of them area residents for whom protecting their property values and secure suburban lives from "encroachment" by commercial uses is apparently a magnificent obsession and a full time job to boot. Also there were several power players present, the names of whom shall be withheld to protect the messenger (that is, me). This was not a public meeting in the common sense. No mass involvement of those pesky homeowners this time around, when the "visioning" by the "professionals" is conducted. (Presumably the public meeting stage comes in the future, when plans have been drawn up and more or less finalized, despite whatever the sheeple have to say about it. Gotta love public participation.)

The intent of the overlay district, or so our solons will tell us, is to "beautify" this major arterial and render its environs more aesthetically pleasing through the imposition of regulations in the local development code that will establish what types of uses, building types, and manners of construction are permissible within the district. Indeed, this roadway is not anyone's idea of attractiveness, though it is hardly this region's worst offender.

With all the problems facing our local leadership here, you'd think they'd concentrate on pressing issues like crime, poverty, and socioeconomic discrimination. But I digress.

But this is just the "public" story. The real intent, so it seems, is for a select group of homeowners and associated interests to seal off the neighborhood for themselves, allowing only uses which they deem "appropriate" (for their land values, I suppose). That means no filling stations, convenience stores, supermarkets, car washes, apartments with their pesky lower-income renters, etc. etc.

This is the god's honest truth. The discussion at meetings of this sort generally starts with "what we won't allow" and then exceptions are made from there.

Never mind that most people would rather prefer that basic services be located closer to home than not. See how far separation of uses benefited my 'historic' inner city neighborhood, where one is compelled to drive well out into the suburban concrete jungle to obtain basic necessities such as groceries and prescription drugs.

It is indeed possible for a small clique of self-interested citizens to wield the reins of democracy and divert the favor of public policies to themselves. Daily this goes down in the halls of power. And in doing this, everyone else who was (deliberately) excluded from the table suffers, for the political means are always the triumph of the zero-sum game over the freedom and multiplicity of choices which the unrestricted free market offers us daily. For the benefit of a few, the lives of the many are impoverished.

Of course, the roadway in question wouldn't be so goddamned ugly in the first place if the town planning principles of an earlier generation had not been so carefully followed - that is, strict separation of uses and development codes which essentially outlawed anything not low-density, auto-oriented development. All this promulgated, again, because the suburban brie-and-cheese set wanted their property values preserved at all costs - not to mention keeping The Other far, far away. Read your histories of Amerikan town planning if you don't believe me. (And they call town planning a "science.")

Again, government intervenes to "correct" a problem which it itself had created. (And they say that we in this state don't "plan" "enough." Eh?)

So to "correct" the "problem", even more of our freedoms are eroded. We are already not allowed to construct businesses in locations which the State has designated for housing, and vice versa; now we are to be told the precise dimensions to which our homes and businesses are to be constructed, with further specifications as to the precise materials, colors, and architectural styles which may be used. Any deviation from these dictates, and...well, you know what happens when a person "resists arrest."

Smooth.

Of course the solution is to remove all these costly and banal land restrictions which grow our cities into mass dysfunction and let freedom reign. But then the dickhead-staffed homeowners' associations wouldn't like that all that much, now would they?

An anniversary rant

2009-03-24T18:08:00.007-05:00

Guess what? This blog officially turns one year old to-day!

One whole year. Whew, didn't think I'd stick with this sort of thing for this long at all. It's unusual for me to effect any lasting change in my existence beyond the spur of the moment. (Yeah, I'm sure you've heard that out of many a loser's mouth before.) Such is the story of my life - a wasteland of half-hearted fits and starts to improve, but always failure and missed opportunities.

But blogging has been fruitful overall. There have been some highs, and far more lows, some ups and many more downs, but the pursuit has been worthwhile for the most part. I can only hope that my feeble scribblings here have barely managed to raise these pages above the loathed status of "look at me, I'm a self-absorbed narcissist who wants attention!" Likely not, but then such is life.

And to mark the occasion, in true Urban Prairie blog tradition, how about another rant steeped in blood and gore to brighten the day! Because certainly, you don't actually expect The One and his friends in power to give y'all any hard truths, eh??

--

Longer the dickhead's reach plays as the rampaging forces of pull assert their presence in our lives and on the international scene. The image one conjures up in one's mind is of rats scurrying from a fast sinking ship, engaging in every last mental gymnastic to avoid an assured painful and bloody (and justly deserved) demise, all ultimately futile as the vessel sinks into the blackness of the abyss, with no possible escape.

The fundamental reality that all in power (and quite a number out of power) wish to delude themselves into avoiding is that this nation is a failed state - financially broke, economically desolated, demographically wasted. The false mendacity of the paper pushing and sprawl-building economy has been exposed for the unproductive bankruptcy which it always was. The financial strength of the world's once most powerful country was frittered away by its unworthy and morally dissolute inheritors, all to purchase a life of glamour, ease, and comfort with its mansions in the Hamptons, caviar, tailored suits, and $800 Botox injections. The Amerikan sheeple, once the envy of the world, have abandoned any morality which they may have once possessed to pursue the counterfeit lure of subsidy, and thus in the process have become the most narcissistic, entitled, disgusting, repugnant, and intellectually bankrupt vermin on the face of the planet.

Once the lie which underlies all of our modern subsidy-world is revealed, it can never be re-established with any measure of conviction. The present chaos is the product of the process by which the lie is fully exploded for all to openly witness. When the curtain is fully drawn, it will reveal an emperor with no clothes - a currency with no backing, valueless, ultimately nothing more than the worthless pieces of paper upon which it is printed. And then with that realization will come the great bloodletting of moral and physical chaos, as a bovine and bedraggled race of semi-humans scrambles for one last grasp of any morsel of value before all are swallowed up in the deluge that culminates in Mass Grave Amerika.

The few survivors, if any, will look forward to lives which are infinitely worse that anything the poorest African peasant has to face - subsistence (or worse) living conditions, but with the caveat that all which was borrowed in the great letting shall be repaid in full. Indeed, twenty generations in brutal slavery (and I mean just that, in the antebellum definition of the word) shall pass before Amerika the wicked is absolved of its obligations, and then left to die on the vine, a fate richly deserved.

Future generations will come to visit the mass cemetery at the midsection of the North American continent and gape in awe at the wretched extents to which the banality and sickness of humanity can sink. It can only be hoped that what remains of the destruction of a once-proud civilization will be sufficient warning to our descendants to order their lives in the proper manner and declare, Never Again.

But we are far from that desirable day, when human nature is deemed to be man's greatest threat, and the sick shilling for subsidy is seen as the high civilization destroying crime which, unchecked as it grows to-day, it has come to be for us. Staring us directly in the face are the horsemen of the apocalypse - starvation, misery, disease, destruction, and mass death.

Your plans for the future should not anticipate, dickhead-like, any "successes" in your "career" or your "love life." Man will soon be judged by his basic utility to society above all else, courtesy of his "betters." Anyone not measuring up to the elite's "standards" will be shot. The dickhead's dream will come true. It is only what will be deemed fair by our solons when there are 300 million Amerikans, but sufficient food supplies for only about 50 million or so of this number.

You can be certain, when this sad day comes, than no fatcat dickhead in high power or any one of his "contacts" will have to endure this process, much less reduce their own vast caloric consumption and their parasitical weight on the frame of a tattered socioeconomic framework.

But even this will fail, as the dickheadery knows nothing but consumption, and consumption ultimately amounts to a zero. As the last of the "traitors" are lined up and shot by Our Leaders, the dying convulsions of the USSA will finally erase from existence those parasites who feed on its teat for comfort and sustenance.

And then there will be nothing left to Amerika but a pile of bleached bones and rotting corpses.

Good riddance.

Shrinking the state

2009-03-22T18:32:00.010-05:00

Some thoughts on government reorganization in Louisiana.

Of course, the best 'reorganization' which can be accomplished by government is for it to simply disappear, or at least shrink to a size where, in the immortal words of Grover Norquist, it can be drowned in a bathtub. And does Louisiana state government have a lot of pruning to attend to!

While the 1974 Constitution reorganized state government into a more rational and co-ordinated structure, the thorny problems of:

a) centralization of power in the hands of the bureaucrats in Capital City and
b) the State aggregating powers unto itself that should be managed by either local entities or, better yet, the private sector

remain major issues which constitute a massive collective impingment on our freedoms, or at least what is left of them.

Let us consider each state department, one by one, and judge their worthiness of survival in this day and age of scarcity.

The Department of Agriculture, a department serving under the commissioner of agriculture, an elected official, is responsible for the development and growth of markets for Louisiana agricultural products. It provides agricultural and environmental services, pesticide waste control, agro-consumer services, animal health services, and forestry programs. LDAF is also given the responsibility for promotion, protection, and advancement of agriculture, except research and educational functions expressly allocated to other departments.

I have no idea why any of the above should be a State concern. Also, history has proven that the agriculture department is a veritable bottomless pit of pork barrel projects and pandering to the farm lobby and associated special interests. Not to mention the boundless corruption of a commissioner's office that is one of the few elected agriculture-related cabinet members in the USA.

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Department of Culture, Tourism, and Recreation, a department directly under the governor and civil service, is responsible for state parks and recreation and tourism development. It also sponsors the arts, historical and archaeological preservation, and cultural programs. State museums, the state library, and the depository for state public documents are also housed by DCRT.

Nothing that couldn't be handled, far better, by private interests. The CRT, additionally, is the major excuse why we have preserved the useless and superfluous position of lieutenant governor, who for some reason is provided influence over this minor department.

Verdict: ABOLISH (along with the lt. governorship)

The Department of Economic Development, a department directly under the governor and civil service, is charged with the overall improvement of Louisiana’s economy. It seeks industrial and commercial development, provides oversight for industrial tax exemptions, and funds research to support economic development. LED encourages the state's economic diversification, including technology-driven economic development strategies. It separately provides development services to small and medium sized businesses, job training assistance, and helps to develop export markets for Louisiana products.

See, entities such as this, which claim State intervention in what should fully be a private sector matter, are what hold our state's economy back. An entitlement fund set up by dickheads, for dickheads. To wit, the ED secretary is one of the highest paid cabinet members, because he is a friend of Piyush the Boy Wonder and a dickhead par excellence to boot (his former position being chair of the BR Area Chamber of Commerce). His "salary requirements" were much groused over by legislators during his appointment process.

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Department of Education, a department serves under the governor-appointed superintendent of education. The BESE Board of Elementary and Secondary Education was also established as a constitutionally-responsible body. DOE administers primary and secondary education, whereas the Board of Regents maintains governance of higher education. The Department of Education provides school and community programs, including student, school and community health and nutrition programs, transportation, community adult programs, and postsecondary and workforce development programs. The Department of Education is responsible for student and school performance records, comprising of student and school standards, assessment, accountability, and assistance (including exceptional children). DOE provides functions relating to teachers and administrators, including assessment and evaluation, certification, and staff development. Financial assistance and scholarship programs are funded through DOE's budget.

I need not repeat here how much of a miserable failure State education on all levels has been for the people of this state, having produced a generation of ignorant, entitlement seeking, subsidy grubbing failures with few marketable skills, little ambition or striving, and a fatal lack of intelligence, and doomed to a life of minimal economic contribution and domestic chaos.

Verdict: ABOLISH - this includes all school boards and State institutions of higher and special education

The Department of Enviromental Quality, a department directly under the governor and civil service, is charged with the administration and and enforcement of environmental laws to ensure a healthful and safe environment. This includes air quality, water quality, the regulation of solid and hazardous waste, and the regulation of radiation.

And yet with all its efforts, environmental degradation is a way of life here. A more rational approach would be to take a property rights view to environmental quality, as espoused by Ron Paul and other intelligent thinkers.

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Department of Health and Hospitals, a department directly under the governor and civil service, maintains health and medical services for disease prevention. It provides health and medical services for uninsured and medically indigent persons and maintains a coordination of services with the LSU Health Sciences Center, local health departments, and federally qualified centers. DHH supervises, coordinates and provides facilities for mental health, addictive disorder, and public health services, services for developmentally disabled, persons with mental retardation, and Medicaid services.

Unlike most states, Louisiana directly operates a massive system of State run hospitals and clinics, which primarily serve the indigent and other economic parasites. Also, federal programs such as Medicaid are quite popular here due to our large population of subsidy feeders. In many ways, it is similar to what health care would look like throughout Amerika in a Hillarycare world.

Of course you know my position here. Health care should never be a state concern. See how far State health care has benefited the Canadians and Europeans.

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Department of Insurance, a department serving under the commissioner of insurance, an elected official, regulates insurance rates. It also provides administration of state insurance code and health insurance research and development.

Insurance regulation is stupid, and a major reason why I must pay double the auto insurance premium than I would in some other state. (Actually, insurance itself is stupid, but dat's another post.) Not to mention that the elected position of insurance commissioner has an unfortunate habit of attracting folks who end up convicted felons...

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Department of Justice serves under the state's attorney general, an elected official. The attorney general serves to provide public protection (consumer, environmental, and insurance protection, anti-trust, securities, and family violence prevention). The Justice Department provides civil legal services for the state and its agencies, including protection and assertion of rights of state, debt collection, public works litigation, legal protection of state lands, water bottoms, and natural resources. Criminal law investigation and prosecution as permitted by the constitution are the responsibility of the Attorney General (criminal appeals, amicus curiae briefs, habeas corpus defense, assistance to district attorneys, public corruption, institutional and insurance fraud, and extraditions). The Attorney General gives legal representation to the state and its agencies in court cases and legal services for state gaming regulatory bodies, as well as issuance of legal opinions.

At one time, the Attorney General was merely the state's chief lawyer, representing the state in legal proceedings and similar such. But as with all bureaucrats, the attorney general's empire could not be left behind with the expansion of the State over the last hundred years, and now you witness all these additional "responsibilities" which the AG has aggregated unto himself. Of course, never mind that this all serves far too frequently to ruin innocent people's lives (such as the unfortunate Anna Poe).

Verdict: Abolish the DoJ and limit the AG position to its historic role as the state's chief legal counsel.

The Louisiana Workforce Commission (formerly the Department of Labor), a commission directly under the governor and civil service, has programs to protect well-being of state’s workforce. It monitors employment security, provides unemployment compensation, aids with manpower evaluation and training, labor-manangement relations, and administration of the community services block grant. Workers’ compensation and labor market and occupational information are also the Workforce Commissions's duties. The Louisiana Workforce Investment Council (formerly Louisiana Workforce Commission) has become part of the reorganized workforce agency.

This institution is silly as to be laughable. Its duties are "economic development" related, though without the corporate welfare angle. In short, the labor department's role is to funnel "surplus" labor to its Corporate Amerika minions, as well as manage the unemployment "insurance" and workmen's compensation programs. All of which, by the way, are either immoral or more properly a private sector concern.

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Department of Natural Resources, a department directly under the governor and civil service, helps with the conservation, regulation, and development of state natural resources (except timber, fish, and wildlife, which are designated to the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries). DNR also provides coastal restoration and management.

The aggregation of the natural resources of this state to public ownership for proper "stewardship" is a crime and an insult to free men everywhere. Visit the former USSR for a look at what socialist "stewardship" of natural resources gets you. But as with everything else, power and money are tied up in this matter. DNR is almost like the state's IRS, as mineral leases provide for a substantial portion of the state's revenues.

Open these resources up to private exploitation, starve the state!

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Departments of Public Safety and Corrections, departments directly under the governor and civil service, houses the state police, state property security, and gaming control, whose responsibilities include the enforcement of criminal and traffic laws and weights and standards. The Department of Public Safety aids in fire prevention and protection, and provides services for motor vehicle registration, and drivers’ licenses. The Department of Corrections supervises and maintains correctional institutions, the care, custody, and treatment of children adjudicated delinquent or needing supervision, probation and parole of adults, and the custody, evaluation, and rehabilitation of inmates and adjudicated juveniles.

I would argue that certain limited functions currently held by DPS and DOC have merit in a minarchist society; however, there is so much wrong with the overall distribution of justice in this country that it goes beyond any short summation I could provide here. The short of it can be summated thus:

- Many, many laws and regulations for "safety" purposes exist (driver's licenses, safety codes, etc.) which are really intended for revenue or increase of State power, or otherwise exist because we cannot be trusted by our State overlords with employing common sense in our daily lives regarding safety matters;
- The justice system is hardly restorative. Instead, we give criminals free room and board for the terms of their imprisonment, subsidized by further extractions from their victims in the form of taxes;
- Too many laws that exist to "protect oneself from oneself" which are enforced too assidiously, and thus lesser emphasis on protection of the law abiding from outside harm.
- Aggregation of the State role in domestic matters far and beyond what is acceptable. In particular, the concept of the State acting in loco parentis is abominable and should not be tolerated by free men.

Verdict: Delegate the morally proper tasks to local authorities, abolish the balance, and limit state-level public safety functions to the protection of State property, buildings, and officials, as well as administration of correctional programs which should not include subsidized imprisonment.

The Public Service Commission comprises the Department of Public Service and is divided into five districts, each headed by a commissioner whom is a locally-elected official.

The PSC is the "regulatory" body which permits monopolistic existence of State-sponsored utility companies and other "private businesses" which provide "public goods."

I think you know my opinion on this matter.

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Department of Revenue, a department directly under the governor and civil service, ensures the assessment, evaluation, and collection of state taxes. It also regulates alcoholic beverage control and charitable gaming.

Similar to the IRS, I hate the LDR with every inch of my life. However, someone has to manage tax collection in the existence of a State force. Alcoholic beverage control and gaming regulation, however, is just plain ridiculous.

Tax policy is another matter, beyond the scope of this discussion. Of course, with all the abolishin' goin' on here, our state tax bills should decline precipitously in any case.

Verdict: Merge tax collection functions with the Treasury Department, abolish other functions

The Department of Social Services, a department directly under the governor and civil service, provides social services programs, such as the rehabilitation of handicapped persons, child welfare, blind services, public assistance programs, the food stamp program. It licenses day care and foster care facilities. The process of adoption and the enforcement of child support both fall under DSS's authority, as well as paternity establishment and parental eligibility determinations.

Or as it's known in the hood, "the welfare." Subsidies galore for those who desire to survive parasitically.

Verdict: ABOLISH! ABOLISH! ABOLISH!!!

The Department of State comprises the office of the secretary of state whom is an elected official. The Secretary of State is the chief election officer of the state. He administers state corporation and trademark laws, the preservation of official state archives, and the official registry of commissions. SOS also maintains the historical dignity of state government landmarks including the Old State Capital and certain museums. The Secretary of State is considered the keeper of the Great Seal of the State of Louisiana. He maintains a "First Stop Shop" for business licensing in Louisiana, and administers certain functions of the Uniform Commercial Code. The Secretary of State's office holds custody of voting machines and provisions voter registration.

The Secretary of State's office performs mostly harmless functions, such as election oversight and preservation of the State archives. Don't feel too bad; Louisiana used to have a separate Elections commissioner and department, thanx to Earl Long; but after one too many elections commissioners were sent up the river for various felonies, the department was wisely returned to its former stead under the SOS.

Verdict: Retain, but limit to morally proper functions

The Department of State Civil Service, a department directly under the governor and civil service, is responsible for processing many state jobs. It provides administration and regulation of the state classified service and is headed by the Civil Service Commission, a seven-member body appointed by the governor.

Civil service is a ruse for "subsidized, lifetime employment" and a tool to gain permanent power over the powerful voating block that is the State bureaucracy. In a rational world, civil service would not exist, and State employees would have to keep their jobs by dint of performance and sucking up to their bosses like everyone else.

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Department of Transportation and Development, a department directly under the governor and civil service, is generally responsible for transportation within the state: airports, highways, bridges, railroads, waterways, intermodal transportation, public transportation, and mass transit. Public works and flood and drainage control also fall under DOTD's control.

I have noted my support for private control of infrastructure on these pages previously. One of the principal goals of socialism is to collectivize the means of transport and movement. Read the Communist Manifesto if you don't believe me.

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Department of the Treasury serves under the state treasurer, an elected official. Custody and disbursement of state funds, accounting, depository control, and investment of state funds are handled by the Department of the Treasury. The Treasurer's office handles functions relating to the management, analysis, and control of state debt, including the issuance of bonds. The Treasury may also lend assistance to certain retirement boards.

Someone has to manage and disperse State funds. All we can hope for is that the folks in charge are honest and forthright. Of course, in Louisiana, that's not generally the case.

Verdict: Retain

The Department of Veterans Affairs, a department directly under the governor and civil service, staffs the functions of the state's veterans service offices. The mission of the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs is to assist Louisiana veterans and their dependents in receiving all federal and state benefits. Notable responsibilities include the Agent Orange Directory, domiciliary facilities for war veterans, and veterans cemeteries.

I see no reason for this department to exist. The military should handle the dispersement of its own veterans benefits. They still do this, so far as I know.

Verdict: ABOLISH

The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, a department directly under the governor and civil service, sponsors programs related to wildlife and fish, including research and replenishment. LDWF maintains natural wildlife areas within the state. Its agents patrol the scenic rivers and game preserves of Louisiana, providing regulation of hunting and fishing.

See my commentary under DNR above.

Verdict: ABOLISH

Whew! So many State departments, so much superflousness eliminated!

This isn't even counting the various miscellaneous functions housed under the Office of the Governor, including Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (yeah, right), Elderly Affairs, the Oil Spill Coordinator's Office, Abstinence Affairs (!), the TOPS program which subsidizes in-state tuition for college students, and dozens of boards, commissions, and other such tripe. The most important component is the all-powerful Division of Administration, which manages State properties, buildings, community development grants, governmental oversight functions, and other miscellaneous matters. Much of it is, plainly put, crap and could easily be eliminated without a second thought.

In 1900 a photographer took a group photo of all non-elected State employees working in Baton Rouge. Yes, this was possible! In all, the State bureaucracy of the era comprised maybe thirty or so clerks, stenographers, pages, janitors, and other employees. Obviously this state of affairs was too good to last, what with all the threats which the contemporary State has identified that it must "protect" us from.

How I wish we could return to those wondrous days of yore, when the State was small and freedom was great. For all I see on the world scene to-day, this may yet be the case again, in time....

Involved with what's happening around here

2009-03-20T23:03:00.001-05:00

Of late very familiar things have been greeting me over the airwaves upon my arising in the morning with the radio alarm clock.

Each morning at precisely a certain time, my clock radio activates alerting me to the fact that I must arise from bed, in order to prepare myself for work and leave home in time to reach work by the start of the business day. (It's called discipline, for those of you on the welfare dole who haven't mastered this.) I have left the dial permanently (more or less) at the news radio channel. At the time which I rise, the announcer is giving short summaries of the top local news stories for the day. Many of these stories, as can be expected in this State-dominated age, have to do with the workings of local government.

In a position of public trust such as where I work, you are exposed to much of the 'background' and goings-on of public decision-making in this community. So you become intimately familiar over time with the mechanics of what goes on behind often-closed bureaucratic doors, which only now and then makes its way forth in the guise of public pronouncements and some such (which in their own right have been reviewed a dozen times so as to be precisely and carefully worded in true propaganda fashion).

Just the other morning a challenge to the most recent Federally-estimated population numbers for a local parish was issued by that parish's governing officials. This was inevitably one of the day's top stories, and was being relayed as I arose from slumber. I will not be too specific, but suffice it to say that certain things mentioned in the executive office's official statement were items in which I had a direct hand.

I mention this not to brag, but to simply shake my head in wonder: How did a nobody like myself get caught up in all this?

I am actually far removed from the real decision halls of power. My position in the bureaucracy is analogous to the hands of the operation, as opposed to the heads at the top (or "the third floor" which is a euphemism for the offices of the local Executive) who make the major decisions that trickle on down to us grunts in the form
of policies, requests, and procedures.

But it is close enough to occasionally be included in the major moves on high if events so require. Such is the relatively close knit operation of a local bureaucracy, even for a major urban area.

So count me as somewhat involved with what's happening around here. The power, however slight, is admittedly addictive. I thus witness and experience firsthand how monsters such as BO are made.

Amerikan madness

2009-03-19T18:13:00.008-05:00

The emperor makes a tour of his provinces, TelePrompter in hand as always, in his brazen attempt to fool the sheeple into supporting his policies of ruin, with a carnivalesque, campaign-like appearance on late nite teevee to boot. From the looks of it, the sheeple are not pleased. (No question that this will deservedly blow up in our Leader's face. But I digress.)

Meanwhile, the central bank resorts to printing press shenanigans so brazen that even the Noo Yawk Times likens the process to creating money out of thin air (guess Krugman wasn't around to proof that article, eh?). Like the good Keynesian he is, Crazy Ben follows his knee jerk gut reaction and starts warming up the helicopters.

Soon it will be a race between the printing presses and starvation, with starvation coming out ahead, as always throughout history when the elites see fit to devour the people in a fit of moral collapse.

Well the Leader himself is even getting into the spirit. Soon we will all be digging roots to survive. A vegetable garden is just advance preparation for the scavenging time.

If BO spends about half as much time on the economy as he does being caught up in the dickhead prolefeed idiocy that is "March Madness", the country would be better off exponentially. But don't count on it. The Empire is always at the ready!

No, the only March Madness is the goings-on in Parasite City as of late.

As we bicker over tiny portions of subsidy largesse provided by our generous solons to their friends in Corporate Amerika, with the fingers therein pointed at a few irrelevant dickhead traders, millions starve as the Empire's own actions desolate what is left of the free market economy. Meanwhile, the looting commences as the first signs of civil disorder make their appearance among the bedraggled underbelly, for which empty bellies make right.

Not to mention a purely preventable and genuinely sad tragedy, likely caused by bureaucratic bungling by our medi-crat friends in the cold snowy north.

And finally, more bailout madness as new auto interests line up at the subsidy trough. (Who's next? The rental car companies???)

Gotta love how the bailout program shares the same name as the flimsy blue items which covered many homes after another State-made tragedy.

Truly the inmates are running the asylum, in this age of Amerikan madness.

If you merely sensed the chaos some months ago, it is well nigh impossible to miss it now, as it whips you broadside like a two-by-four. The sense is palpable that BO, his imperatorship only 50 days old, is already a failure. But why should you be surprised?

Rush Gasbag said of BO, "I hope he fails." I can tell you with no hesistation about BO: I know he will fail. My desire, or anyone else's, for him to fail or not to fail is entirely irrelevant in this matter. He will fail no matter what, unless he abandons everything which he supports, commits a complete turnaround, and embraces anarcho-capitalism and unfettered laissez faire in economic and all other matters.

The likelihood of that coming to pass is even less than finding life on Mars.

BO has already failed. He assumed the crown and diadem dead on arrival, a morally bankrupt and corrupt monster with only the tendency to centralize, nationalize, and destroy, lacking sanity, moral compunction, or any other genuinely human tendency save the thirst to wield power and deliver death. His erstwhile policies are anathema to life itself. To grow the State is to choose stagnation, desecration, and genocide.

See, even the allegedly evil Wal-Mart benefits the people more than the State ever could. And for that they continue to prosper (and retain my business) even in these dark times. What of BO and his cronies? Could they ever be seen to create wealth and induce productive activities in the economy through their old-school redistributionist schemes?

Darkness is our fate unless we repudiate the power elites and all their dark works. The time is riper than ever for a bloody revolution that will topple the powerful, upend the obese and overfed dickheadery, and wipe out the buffoons who presume to control our lives.

For if we choose to remain in the incapable hands of BO and friends, we are all on the late-nite express train to the mass graveyard.

The jig is up

2009-03-17T17:32:00.003-05:00

Currently I am caught in a long term fatal vise which is certain to lead to personal ruin.

It may not be to-day, or to-morrow. It may not be next week, next month, next year, or even five years from now. But the day is inevitable when my supreme incompetence becomes exposed and explodes into a political embarrassment for certain persons in high places. And then when that day comes will the blade fall.

It could even fall for a less pressing reason. My innumerable life failures have traditionally been predicated by extremely trivial and outright stupid things.

My enemies skulk serpentlike behind my back, speaking in hushed whispers, plotting the chain of events which will lead to my certain downfall. They know which weaknesses to exploit, which screws to turn, which incidents to document, which behaviors to record for later criticism.

I am that easy a mark. Words do not describe how so far out of my league I currently play.

I have the mentality of a small child amongst grown men, rank immaturity amongst those for which the business of life is business, with no time to tolerate idiotic diversions. This makes me one of the walking dead.

This state of affairs cannot last much longer.

I feel the chill of agents of destruction in the air. My enemies are more restless than usual. A plot is up, and thick. There are secret movements being made in dark, unseen places on high to ensure my demise.

And when they have me where they want me, broken and destitute, what say I to them?

I caused this entire mess myself. I cannot compete with my intellectual, moral, and mental betters. They know how to function in the adult world. I am still a child waiting for my permanent subsidy from some angel of salvation.

Well guess what? The angel of salvation is a fiction. I have worn out my welcome from one subsidizer to the next. The last subsidy game in town is the State. And now it too has reached its limit of patience.

So barrenness and destitution awaits me. My deserved fate, as an unmigitated, unapologetic, complete and total failure and ruin.

I am worth more dead than alive.

Bippin' up Feliciana way

2009-03-15T20:11:00.005-05:00

Last week-end's trip to the glorious Feliciana country and the distant Greenwood Plantation yielded these images:

Low bridge! This is the low-water bridge on Solitude Road outside Saint Francisville.

The dickhead must die

2009-03-13T17:49:00.005-05:00

Dickhead Emeritus Jim "Mad Money" Cramer finally gets PONGED!!!

Witness this heroic shellacking of our favorite financial media douchebag by the patriot Jon Stewart, and the dickhead's lame rebuttal!!

Yes, dickheads such as Cramer exist for the sole purpose of transferring wealth from the numbchucks (as they are considered) in the heartland into the overstuffed pockets of fatcat high-finanz playerz on the Street and their elite power broker friends, hangers-on, and other assorted shady characters. Morons such as our Mad Money friend are no more than media shills for the perpetual bull market, the fantasy of a thousand starry-eyed fiat currency regime cheerleaders and other moral freeloaders.

With their perpetual expense accounts and protection within a cocoon of a life of privilege and power, their world experience is far removed from the real world of the working man, the existence of living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck, at jobs which demand much and reward little. The humdrum, grim existence of the everyman, struggling to pay his bills to stave off starvation, is a distant consideration to those who need never fear want, lack of plenty, or scarcity.

But as Mr. Stewart implies, dickhead Cramer is but a fleeting symbol of the Regime which bonds us in gilded shackles. The media (financial and otherwise) merely functions as quarterback for a shadowy coterie of dark forces in high places, those who make the ultimate decisions which make or break (usually break) millions of people - serpent-like figures for which the lethality of their decisions never fall back in the way of consequences for themselves, protected in their elite "untouchable" positions where privilege and power are essentially hereditary.

The elites tell us to invest, and so the Amerikan sheeple comply. And then their savings and pensions evaporate into the pockets of the privileged, and then capitalism is blamed, so as to justify further public intervention which quietly serves to secure the position of the elites even further.

As Stewart says, finance is not a fucking game. Dickheads such as Cramer make it a game in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the economic illiterates in the auto-on-blocks set. And with the game of bread and circuses, our freedoms shink and we are further tethered to the dark forces of false prosperity who preach the eternal gospel of obtaining something for nothing.

Liars, liars, the dickheads all are. Their philosophy is that of lies and deceit, drawing people into the shell game, stripping them blind, then leaving them broken and destitute. In this manner they feed off the productive like scavenging carrion.

The dickheadery is indeed the scavenging class of the economy. Producing no wealth, consuming and borrowing to maintain their over-privileged quality of life, they merely wring their hands and speak of "unfortunate consequences" whenever their nefarious schemes inevitably blow up in their faces. But as always, the dickhead suffers no ill effects - it is the working man who sustains the twin blows of economic desolation and material starvation.

When will it be seen that the dickheadery is a pox on all our houses, a cancerous leech that must be extricated from the withering carcass of the economy if we are to thrive?

Only when this nation retools its work into productive ends will there be salvation. Until this occurs, desolation by the pretty boyz in suits is our perpetual fate as the looted class.

Earmarks shmearmarks

2009-03-11T17:43:00.004-05:00

The skinny jeans and latte crowd is always quick to pounce on the latest "trend", lemming like, in order to retain the all important status of being "in" at all times. This by necessity extends to thought and manner, and thus short-circuits the process of critical thinking which is essential to the existence of a well informed citizenry.

So it is with the hulabaloo over "earmarks" in congressional spending bills.

What are earmarks? Earmarks are riders inserted into a spending bill by legislators which dedicate an amount of money out of the entire public budget for specific projects. They do not serve to increase the amount of funds spent, only to further the disposal of public revenues already appropriated. In this manner, elected legislators specify where public monies are to be spent. For in the absence of earmarks, uncommitted outlays are thrown into a general appropriations pool, to be expended at the will of the executive branch - that is, the dictator, working through his unelected Praetorian administrators.

This process, despite what you hear in the media, is harmless and actually beneficial, as dedicating revenues for say, a community center in rural South Dakota, prevents their use for other, perhaps more nefarious purposes.

The real insult is not how the money is spent, but how much money is spent. $410 billion and counting for the current budget, as the latest insult to the taxpayer attests - not to mention the inconvenient matter of a $1 trillion-plus deficit (and counting).

So why the "hype" on a logical non-issue?

This is just another technique the dickheadery uses to divert attention from the real issues in our society. The morass of intellectual simpletons into which most Amerikans have devolved are easy marks for the razzle dazzle school of propaganda. The skinny jeans crowd, lacking even a shred of personal integrity and ready and willing to sell themselves out to the Corporate power every time, believes every lie swallowed by their media overlords, abdicating their ability to think for themselves and apply their precious university educations to issues which could pose grave threats to their shallow gilded lives.

After all, we're talking about the same folks who think nothing of plunking down $200 or more for "destroyed jeans" at Hollister or some other such retail magnet of the metrosexual class. So why be surprised? Nihilism is their creed, orgiastic pleasure is their end.

Indeed, it will be their end.

The dickhead's world

2009-03-10T17:59:00.006-05:00

Something disturbing this way comes, again, as the banksters and their allied elites conspire to game the system in order to further perfect the suction of wealth out of your pocket and into their greasy dainty hands.

I will let the illustrious Karen DeCoster speak here, in words far more eloquent than I could provide:

The really infuriating part of the credit card problem is that the people who were responsible with their cards, and remain responsible, are getting screwed by an algorithm. The upcoming blow-up, as I've been predicting, is people getting slammed on their credit scores. Good people, that is. The banks - especially American Express - are cutting back credit lines to minimize risk, thus some peoples' cards are made to look like they are "maximized" and that leads to some pretty large hits to credit scores. Even people with a zero balance receive a negative hit from a reduced credit line.

I watched a news investigation on how American Express was managing risk: a guy with a credit score in the high 700s and an immmaculate payment history was massively dinged on his credit limit because he made a few purchases during the course of a month at a few places (like Applebee's, etc.) that were singled out for being the kind of places that, in the past, were frequented by people who proved to be bad risks and/or defaulters. Another guy whose accounts were limited or closed had a letter sent to him from American Express stating the reasons why he was singled out:

"Our credit experience with customers who have made purchases at establishments where you have recently used your card."

"Our analysis of the credit risk associated with customers who have residential loans from the creditor(s) indicated in your credit report."

Americans are already buried 'neath this massive mess created by government and they are powerless to change their misfortune - they are losing their jobs, homes, cars, and the ability to function as free citizens in their daily lives. So now, as if everything isn't tough enough, at a time when credit scores will become more important than ever, people will be zapped on their credit scores, making it more difficult for them to rent a home, get a loan, or even get a job because employers are looking at credit scores as a gauge of character. The credit scoring system is so rigged and so unscrupulous, and now the mistakes on the part of big government and big banks are going to cascade down to ordinary people, making their lives even more difficult and discouraging. And all the government can do is take more of our money, bail out more fat cats, and pit neighbor against neighbor by promising a select few Americans a possible resolution for keeping their homes for a few months longer.

Is it getting any clearer now? Are you listening, folks?

If it was only deadbeats getting screwed, I would have no problem. Serves them right. But as always, the responsible are "asked" to subsidize the failures and shortfalls of the perpetual loser class.

The next thing you'll see is credit companies closing lightly used accounts, even for those customers which have paid on time and in full for decades. Ostensibly it will be done to "minimize exposure", in the words of dickheadese that financial "professionals" so duly favor.

But that's the rub. The credit companies don't make profits off of folks who pay on time. If you pay in full monthly while the grace period is in effect, the credit companies get nothing from you. (That's the only moral method to deal with these companies, in my opinion - essentially use their "products" as a charge card.) The financial conglomerates' profits derive from finance charges - aka "stupidity fees" - indeed, income deriving from those very customers who don't pay on time, who carry balances from month to month, and who maximize their credit limits.

The dickhead life equation only runs one way: suck my dick with no recompense. They have no use for those who play by the rules. The life of ease and no work derives from being in a position of power to profit from the mistakes and stupidity of others.

The world of dickheads falls into three camps:

Us - fellow creatures of privilege who inhabit the same wine tasting circuit
Them - the working folks, "nobodies" who "don't matter", usually those who work under dickheads
Customers - the blame fools who dickheads see as "profit opportunities" and who are dumb enough to be caught in their web of lies and deceit

My, my, I will have to update my dickhead glossary. So many terms here I neglected to add the first time around.

Dickhead behavior varies according to the world being interacted with:

Us - intense discussion of sports, drunken carousing, alcoholic beverages, binging, sexual perversion, and loose morality all around
Them - "Could you help us out with this project? But we can't pay you or provide you direct benefits for your efforts until we say so [fingers crossed behind back]. If you would do this for us, that would be great." (Classic dickhead closing line there.)
Customers - "This Windows Vista tutorial is additional with this $900 laptop, and costs an extra $79.99. We'll throw in a Internet Explorer 7.0 tutorial pack for free - it's an incredible value, a 15% discount! Also, we offer a one-year extended warranty for an additional $150."

(Note that virtually everyone can learn how to use of Windows or IE 7.0 with a few concentrated minutes of use. And virtually all warranties serve primarily as profit padders for retailers.)

It is a cold, mercenary world based around unearned profit, privilege, and how much one can extort without effort from one's fellow man.

To live at a higher economic level than one is entitled by one's efforts generally means that somewhere, the profits of others are being diverted to a subsidy train.

The train ends now. The tracks ahead have been washed out by the economic tsunami. The all night carousing of the privileged glittering class stops now.

It must, if we are to restore moral sanity to our world.

A brighter day

2009-03-08T20:30:00.002-05:00

T-P: I-10 expansion in Metairie wrapping up

The eternal quest to accommodate ever expanding volumes of commuter traffic goes on, as the centerpiece portion of the Interstate 10 expansion project approaches completion.

As always in Louisiana, what would take three years elsewhere takes decades here. This is only one of several project sections, most of which remain unfunded.

In a week the Schooner-mobile sets its wheels to the new concrete. Let's pray that someone's brother in law didn't louse this one up.

Insanity reigns supreme

2009-03-06T18:55:00.007-06:00

B.O. and his moral allies certainly have no equal in the art of economic destruction. Each day brings another fresh Keynesian depredation on the economy and the public. In the name of economic salvation, jobs are evaporating at a pace never before seen. The hidden unemployment rate has already reached Grate Depression levels, a feat which so far has been concealed by the government's convenient fudging of the numbers.

In communities across the land, the starving time approaches, or worse yet has already arrived. Malnutrition and early death are on the rise. The hordes of surplussed labor is offing itself in droves, in a bloody acknowledgment of the reality of their utter economic valuelessness in a time of want.

The stimulus of abominations promises more jobs for technocrats, scientists, engineers. That is, dickheads. As always in life, the prosperous are subsidized by the powerless. High tech jobs of the future? Tell that to the high-school educated, laid off factory worker who busted his ass for thirty years at the auto plant in Indiana who is now facing personal ruination. What benefit will employment opportunities in highly skilled fields be to him? It goes way beyond simple "retraining." After 30 years at the plant, it's going to be well nigh impossible to switch modes into dickhead gear, eh?

The bleats grow greater every day, with each piece of negative economic offal. More State intervention! More fiat currency pump priming! More socialism! Nationalization! Soak the rich!

In short, the exact opposite of what must happen in order to right the economic ship of state.

Indeed, insanity rules the day amongst the alleged "educated" classes. It is not always true that ignorance is bliss. On the contrary, ignorance always leads to mass grave city before long. I don't have to predict this; read your history texts.

Do not think that they don't really know what they're doing. The system they preach does actually work, and precisely in the manner in which it was intended to work.

The privileged with the right connections are to benefit as the booty of the provinces rolls into the Imperial Capital, to enrich our Masters. The 'little people', those that don't count to the power elite, who are disposible, less-skilled, poor, Black, or all of the above, from which this bounty will be extorted by gunpoint, are doomed and fated to receive the short end of it all. Oh, a few crumbs might spill here and there. But by and large the crisis is cover for the greatest legalized money grab in all of human history.

Because the elites know this country is spent, finished. It is clear to virtually everyone not a chest thumping, "terr'ist" hating uber-patriotic lunatic. (Talk about clinging to a dying philosophy.) They've bled it dry long enough, and they see that you can't squeeze any more blood from a dried turnip. So they make one last desperate grab for all they can take, before the final collapse into rivers of blood. Already they prepare for the day when the safe house stored with food and ammuntion will be the only means to survive the hordes of rampaging, bedraggled, skeletal marauders that is our certain future.

The last gasp of the elites is full bore fascism, before it all melts into the primitive animal bleat of tom-toms.

When men are brought to the level of animals, civilization degenerates into a zoo. Call that Urban Prairie Schooner's Maxim of Life #1.

--

A note on my highway rationalization scheme:

After substantial research and much use of the "DELETE" button, I have whittled down the system of Louisiana state highways to a manageable level. Some loose ends need to be tied up here and there, but overall the system is sound and largely complete.

Overall we now have (at least in proposed format):

271 state highways, including spur and auxiliary routes (this is still a tentative number)
All US routes, with the exception of US 371, have been retained (so far)
I-220 has been extended along Shreveport's Inner Belt

I wish there was a method of linking Excel files into this blog, but until I find a method to do so my results will have to remain secreted for now.

The great Christ hoax

2009-03-04T19:12:00.005-06:00

It's Lenten season now, the time when we prepare for the death and resurrection of the Lord.

And so the two-thousand year old scam rolls on. Thankfully, fewer and fewer people to-day place their faith in a fictional ghost which does nothing to heal our world run wicked by the dark works of man and man alone.

It is disgusting to me when men are elevated to the status of gods. B.O. certainly has earned my ire for this. But he is hardly the first man in history to claim divine status for himself. In particular, absolute rulers tend to come to believe in their divinity over time. It is part of the bubble of power. One comes to regard oneself as invulnerable when one is in the possession of the power to destroy civilizations with the push of a button.

Indeed, this is the power that in the past was only seen to be held by gods.

So why should the erstwhile carpenter named Jesus of Nazareth be any different?

After all, David Koresh believed himself to be the son of god. (Guess that turned out badly for him.) What makes the claim of the Nazarene particularly exceptional?

"He rose from the dead."

Folk tales. This is what happened, per the gospels:

A crazy man called Jesus of Nazareth rolled into Jerusalem from the provinces claiming to be the Messiah, or the son of god per the Judaic faith. The Jews, seeing thru his charade, complained to the Imperial Roman authorities. (This too was the age of empire.) The Romans, not being exceptionally nice folks, decided to do something about it.

So they brought the Nazarene before Pontius Pilate, where the obviously deluded carpenter repeated his claims publicly. Pilate might've thought he was insane, but they didn't have mental institutions back then. So he was willing to whip the Nazarene (standard procedure back then) and let him go.

But the Jews, being religious folk, took this as an affront to their faith. They demanded satisfaction.

Thus the road to Golgotha, and execution on the cross (also standard procedure then). It was not pre-ordained, but just what was gonna happen given the circumstances.

And they nailed him to a cross and left him to die in utter agony. You've seen the images if you've ever stepped inside a Catholic church:

Rubbish. They propogandize the whole thing, like they must if they are to uphold the Christ cult which fills their stomachs and retain their parasitically wrought power. Here is how it really went down:

Does this look like a god to you?????

Hear his screams of terrible agony! Do gods feel pain?

Of course not. The man called Christ was merely that, a man, mortal in the end, after all.

And three days later his disciples stole his corpse from his grave, and birthed the two-thousand year hoax of the ages.

The end.

.
.
.

Still here? Read this if you don't believe me.

There is a lot the power players are not telling you, and not only limited to economic matters.

The antidote for winter

2009-03-02T19:24:00.003-06:00

As the stock market collapses to levels unseen since the days when the Macarena was all the rage (dey don't call it a correction for nothing!), winter's last gasp comes bearing down upon us as the final (hopefully) blast of arctic air invades our ostensibly semitropical abode.

So as a counteractive antidote, here are some pictures from the lovely Rosedown Plantation in West Feliciana Parish, taken some summers ago:

Let us hope that the warmer weather returns sooner rather than later!

The peasants are getting restless

2009-02-28T20:55:00.003-06:00

The late Carnival season has now passed, thankfully. And despite the debauchery and sickness that permeates said celebration, it also confirmed to me that many of the "folks" here in the heartland are not so ignorant after all.

The parades here are known for their political satire, and no less this year. And wouldn't you know, Nature Boy's "stimulus" and giveaways to banksters came in for a lot of flack this annum.

They don't call it "Buy Yeaux Bailout" for nothing.

Just goes to show you that the almighty god-king stands on clay feet. The folks in the Southland - the working people who don't consume their quota of one gourmet latte a day - are more than aware that their emperor has no clothes, that he is an agent of the banksters, the dickheads, and all the other elite classes who breathe only to preserve their privilege.

Power can only hold so far as the masses permit the powerful to rule. When this implicit support ceases, revolution is at hand.

By all means, let the revolution occur sooner rather than later!

State highway silliness

2009-02-26T07:50:00.008-06:00

This post will lay out the currently existing state of affairs per Louisiana state highways, and what can be done about it.

Currently Louisiana has about 16,500 or so miles of road under state jurisdiction, not counting "unnumbered" routes such as state park access roads and freeway frontage roads (which apparently don't count toward the limit). These roads are marked and defined by some 12 Interstate designations, about 20 US highway designations and their auxiliary bannered routes, and around 1300 (and counting) state highways routes. All state routes follow a single sequence (the numbering mechanics of which are covered elsewhere in this blog) and are not distinguished in signage or in fact by primary, secondary, et al. definition.

The lack of a clear hierarchical system, combined with the sheer number of state routes in itself, contributes to a chaotic system of numbering and designation. Many state roads, in addition, are minor routes which by no stretch of the imagination could ever be construed as serving a state-wide purpose. It is a fundamental principle of highway jurisdicional practice that state control of roads should only extend to those roadways which serve a state-level transportation purpose. Local roads and rural spurs rarely, if ever, contribute to state transportation needs, though they serve local transportation interests. In that matter, these roads would more logically fall under parish or municipal control.

Louisiana's state system in particular is plagued with such roads and has been for many years. As a proportion of state maintained roads to all roads within the state, Louisiana's state system is one of the largest in the country, even when discounting for those states whose state governments assume control of all their public roads. The sheer number of pointless local spurs, loops, and connectors make a large contribution toward this outcome.

Through observation and study, the ranks of "pointless" minor SRs can be lumped into several categories, based on typology:

Spurs - Many rural state maintained "local" roads are spurs which "lead" to seemingly random or nonexistent locations. In coastal areas, there are longer spurs to communities due to the peculiar nature of the topography of the coastal region (see LA 58), but these do not generally fall under the "pointless spur" banner.

Loops - It is amazing how many state roads function simply as loops; that is, they begin and end at the same roadway, without serving anyplace in particular along their generally short routings.

Connectors - A bare majority of the "local road" variety of state highway is comprised of the connector species. Connectors begin and end at different discrete state roads, the major difference therein between these roads and genuinely useful state highways being that they tend to "connect" nowhere to nowhere.

These roads, as well as other similar types, comprise the functional farm-to-market road system in this state. Unfortunately, most roads of this nature do not rise to state level importance so as to merit inclusion within the state highway system. Most are classified as local or rural collector roads by functional class.

Why is this a problem for Louisiana, then?

Major state highways comprise expensive and heavily utilized infrastructure. The health and vitality of this infrastructure is critically important in the sustenance of a free-flowing transportation system, crucial to the economy and many other things. The primary road building agency must focus its attention upon the existing major infrastructure and the improvement and addition thereof. Diversion of mission to maintenance and improvement of secondary and tertiary level roads serves to dilute the ability of the primary road building agency to fulfill its core goals. Also, a primary focus on major infrastructure serves to institute a pattern of neglect of the road building agency's lesser tasks, which local road building agencies could fulfill were they given the opportunity. The primary road building agency is neither impregnable nor omnipotent.

The argument here is for a clearer deliniation of jurisdiction. Farm to market roads should fall under the responsibility of local roadbuilders, while major infrastructure remains with the primary state road agency.

Currently a long term project of mine is to identify those state routes which can be removed from the state payroll, with a goal toward jurisdictional rationalization. In the future the results of this study will make its way to these pages.

Dickheads' last gasp

2009-02-24T17:32:00.002-06:00

To-day is that favorite holiday of the dickhead, Mardi Gras. The entirety of the productive population of the Southland, instead of using their talents to grow wealth, is busy as we speak making a major effort to become as inebriated and stupor-like as possible, in a mass flight into decadence and delusion. It is the last orgy before the gray rack of slaughter which is our justified fate for our national wickedness.

This is all in keeping with the dickhead holiday from reality. Alcohol and indulgence in pretense and fantasy are the hallmarks of this willing delusion. As events coalesce to render this miracle of history untenable, the dickheads will increasingly cling to their fantasy privileges of the easy life and a constant stream of pleasure. It will be a day of great clamor indeed when the life of ease can finally no longer be maintained, when the unpayable bills to finance the constant orgy come due.

Even as I write, the Imperator is preparing to deliver his speech to the masses which is fully in keeping with this world of privileged artifice. Nowhere will the need to make the hard choices and the requisite sacrifices be heard; nowhere will the realities of the situation we face be exposed. Instead a shuck and jive, counterfeit message worthy of Oprah, of "hang in there, we'll get through this, somehow" is the order of the day.

Of course, with the late Stimulus of Abominations and other piles of pork now in the pipeline and coming to a bureaucracy near you, the path to recovery has taken several giant leaps backward, despite any outright lies which our Leader feels compelled to share with us. Thanx, B.O.

Prepare the bloodied blade. Priceless. The era of lies, liars, and willing believers of lies rolls on, to terminate in the land of mausoleums.

And now Bailout Ben, that master of all things economic, is actually claiming that the recession will end this year! He also claims that nationalization of the banking industry is off the table. For now.

Give him a few months:

"The economic fundamentals have deteriorated to an unanticipated degree to the extent that we are obliged to reverse our previous policy and commence a limited conservatorship of the major financial institutions."

I made that quote up on the fly. But guess how likely it is that this statement will soon emanate from Bailout Ben's serpent like throat. I would bet on it. (It contains the hint of the tyranny to come, but obfuscated enough to fool the undiscerning sheeple.)

Shame.

---

I was just waiting with anticipation for something like this to finally happen. You could see it coming from miles away.

Every year of late, murder has been the order of the day during the Carnival festivities in Chocolate City. It is yet another reason why I avoid that cesspool like a plague on the day before Ash Wednesday.

Another Mardi Gras, another parade route murder. The culture of death also rolls on.

Debauched madness

2009-02-22T19:50:00.010-06:00

Here are some fly on the wall observations from the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade, which regrettably passes too close to my abode for me to avoid:

The teeming throngs congregate their vehicles upon every conceivable open space, even along the freeway shoulder.

Crowds converge upon the parade route.

Here comes the first float.

Spanish Town Road makes for a very constricted environment for both floats and crowds.

Upon witnessing this lawnmower wielding dancing retinue, I could only shake my head in utter confusion over what had just transpired.

With the parade over, the "afterparties" commenced, the drunken orgies constricting the orderly flow of street traffic without nary a thought.

Afterparties being a dickhead invention, I bipped downtown to witness the parade aftermath:

Third Street was noticeably crowded.

Devastation on a war-like scale was left in the wake of the parade's passing.

Junk strewn in the streets is apparently a Mardi Gras tradition wherever you go; this despite the near saturation level of city garbage receptacles placed throughout the parade route. With the sheer amount of beads scattered about, it proves that Carnival is not about the acquisition of the cheap trinkets, but the catching thereof without having to resort to "scavenging" once they hit ground.

(Within 24 hours, though, not a trace of this garbagey scene remained, thanks to our hardworking and underpaid DPW streetcleaners.)

The parking garage which was constructed at great expense by our solons to service overflow Carnival crowds was, ironically, closed to use to-day and thus completely empty.

Therefore, motorists resorted to parking anarchy as any relatively flat and open surface was quickly pressed into surface as parking tarmac.

Even hours after the parade's end, drunken revelry continued into the night for those without moral scruples in this new age of austerity. But for dickheads, life is one long party anyhow, so why bother.

Parasite City, part trois

2009-02-21T20:11:00.005-06:00

Parasite City is not all marble and monuments to power:

Along the waterfront, another structure named for an Imperator comes into view.

Some of the tabernacles of marble, indeed, venerate truly great figures of the Empire's history:

The wise eternal words of the greatest of our Founding Fathers have been preserved for the ages:

It would behoove our current Leadership to learn by example.

Indeed, perhaps the impulse to enshrine our god-Leaders on a grand scale has declined over time as a growing proportion of Imperial peons rejects the Leader worship cult:

Indeed.

But in the end, Parasite City continues to venerate and worship power, glory, and the unearned privilege of the ruling class:

Thus concludes our tour of the Empire's fatal centre.

Parasite City, part deux

2009-02-19T19:10:00.005-06:00

To-nite we continue our tour of the Imperial capital as we approach the tabernacle of our exhalted lawgivers:

We approach the sacred precinct, penetrating the rings of Praetorian gatekeepers.

The general intent is to overwhelm the peon with the aura of power, as the marble majesty comes to dominate the view.

Our hardworking solons are out to lunch to-day. How fitting.

The view from the marble steps of the Legislative Hall is expansive.

The portico where Leaders are invested with their sceptre and orb.

A fitting commentary on our blighted age.

The temple to our Supreme Law-Interpreters stands nearby, looking much like the Roman ruin it is sure to become in the near future.

Bipping on down the Via Sacra, I sought to find amongst the temples the ancient law of laws upon which our system of government is based, that which has been discarded and abused throughout time.

Many others make the same pilgrimage, believing as they do in the words and deeds of our Founders.

The supreme law of the land, which the solons on high in the temple of lawgivers would do well to read carefully and to abide by its tenets.

Of course, that's like asking for snowfall in Hell.

Our tomfoolery is not completed for to-day. I bipped a few more blocks to visit the site of the assassination of that most exhalted of Imperators, that knave of knaves, the Butcher of Dixie:

Here the Leader was slain by the representative of those who chafed under his "enlightened" reign.

Fitting that the murder site was a repository of fantasy.

The sense of religious devotion to the god-king is palpable.

Lo, they have even preserved his death-site! The god-king lives on!

Couldn't resist. Dead retail is cool.

To his memory, a great temple was erected in the god-king's name, where they worship his massive likeness:

Like Zeus in the temple of the Hellenes, the almighty god-king sits for eternity on his perpetual throne of marble, surrounded by the symbolism of power, those objects of the Romans that gave their name to the authoritarian system under which we reside.

If you are a religious person and remember the commandment, "Thou shall make no false idols", then what say you to this?

The words of the Imperator are etched into the marble walls to be preserved for the ages.

If you don't think that much of Parasite City is given over to the glorification and worship of power, think again.

For the next installment, we discover Parasite City's finer edge.

Parasite City

2009-02-18T21:46:00.008-06:00

You may question the source of some of my ferocity towards power which is displayed on these pages. The thing is this - I have witnessed it up close. Real close.

Two years ago I had the rare opportunity, as a mere peon of the Empire, to visit the Imperial Capital and glance in awe at the temples and palaces of marble dedicated to god-men that are the tabernacles of Parasite City.

The wages of the powerful loomed large as I plod the gilt-lined streets of the empire's cold, beating heart, secured of the booty rent from Imperial rampages against its domestic subjects and against foreign foes.

Here is a guided tour of the morbid centre of the new Imperium Romanum, courtesy of yours truly:

Arriving in Parasite City, via an airport fittingly named for one of the dead Imperators which once ruled on high here.

Parasite City has a fairly efficient transit system (which you paid for, of course) to transport the hordes of bureaucrats in the service of the State from their McMansions in the capital's outskirts to the halls of power in the centre.

The main railroad terminal is a transport nexus which brings us to the marble heart of Nova Roma.

Our accommodations for the week. This hotel, by the way, is the same location where the aforementioned dead Imperator was nearly assassinated about 30 years ago.

This phallic symbol of power looms large and erect against the appropriately bleak sky, constructed to honor one of the empire's chief founders who would have likely blanched apoplectic at the attempt of deification therein.

Indeed, it looms imposingly.

Palaces of marble, with deliberate architectural affectation of ancient religious temples, loom large with the booty of Imperial treasure on presentation for its sheeple to witness as we traverse the centre.

Glory upon the bounties of State rampages!

The Hope Diamond is a particularly nice feather in the Imperial cap.

Other marble palaces in the vicinity merely serve as massive repositories for hundreds of thousands of State parasites employed in the numerous Imperial ministries, funded by the proceeds of State booty, diligently performing the People's work so that we may all be happy and prosperous for eternity.

In front of one of the more preposterous looking Imperial structures, it is clear that the grand "grassy" Mall that occupies the centre of this metropolis and is diligently maintained by the Imperial parks service is looking the worse for wear. By the way, this is the middle of summer.

And we trust these same people to "manage" our economy and wage "wars" on terror and a thousand other things. Truly the State is effective in all its grand endeavors!

The propaganda ministry continues its important work of communicating the glories of the State to the huddled masses empire-wide.

I feel a crescendo approaching. Someplace big is just around the corner.

And now we reach the Empire's bloody heart - the palace of the Imperator Maximus, the unitary executive, the god-king of the ages.

In imagery, it appears deceptively far from the street. In person, it is shocking to see how closely the sheeple are permitted to approach the environs of the residence where He who is the fount of all that is holy and true resides.

I thought about flashing the ol' middle member just for good measure, but the Praetorians in blue and black mass quite heavily here for obvious reasons, so I restrained that obscene but patriotic impulse.

Bedraggled victims of the State's rain of slaughter and other depredations make a feeble protest to the entrenched power behind the fence directly across the street.

This was just part one. To-morrow, we continue our tour of Parasite City with a gander at the legislative branch!

Piled high and deep

2009-02-17T19:52:00.004-06:00

The corpses, that is.

No telling how many excess deaths were assured for the future as Our Imperator affixed his Imperial seal to the Stimulus of Abominations to-day, while upon one of his tours of his crumbling, decayed Empire.

Like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of an earlier dark age, this will be remembered as the straw that sealed the path toward utter destruction and ruination.

Only this time, it is certain that after nearly a century of the counterfeit fiat money regime, this go-round at sterilizing the implements of productive activity will spell the end of civilization itself.

The sheep aren't quite grazing in the Forum yet. But millions cling to State rations, perched on the precipice of homelessness and starvation, while the implements of industry fall idle due to the dark works of morons in high places.

There is so much work to be done; yet millions are put to pasture, with the danger that now and future Leaders will mark them as "surplus population" fertilizer, good only for the killing fields, growing by the day.

The moral bankruptcy of the State ranks boundless.

Welfarism is always followed by warfarism, as the elites rush to "stimulate" the failing economy with the mass destruction of material goods, as stimuli and bailouts (even those orchestrated by our ruling men-gods) fail to work their alchemic magic.

At least one profession will be in high demand before long: undertakers.

So it will be piled high and deep indeed.

Dead imperators day

2009-02-16T18:18:00.002-06:00

In case you in the productive industries missed it, to-day was President's Day, also known as Prefident's Day (in republican times), Dead Imperators Day, or Day of Leader Worship.

When you put it dat way, the similarities between the USSA and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (dat's North Korea to you) become far more obvious.

Indeed it is a fortituous time to be a Leader. With the fascism inherent in our system becoming more open by the day, the Leader feels little fear in openly appointing an "envoy for autos" as if this was the old Soviet state economy where every industry was centrally planned.

Give it time. Capitalism "failed" with the late boom crack-up. As the lean times persist and the pale of starvation grips the land, soon the sheeple will be clamoring for European style state ownership of industries and economic "management" by bureaucrat "planners" and "scientists."

And you thought I was kidding so many months back. Wrong, Paco!

But back to the topic at hand. To-day we venerate those former Leaders, those past imperators who left their "legacy" in marble and blood and cemeteries filled with corpses; we worship those immortals as surely as the Romans worshipped their dead emperors as gods.

Many moons back, folks had the minimal good sense to delay the god-worship of our late Leaders until after their bodies turned cold. Until recently, we had at least the gumption to wait until our Leader's terms of imperium were ended before showering them with religious veneration. To-day, in this most "enlightened" period, we now shed any sense of pretense and go all out with worship of our current, sitting Leader as a living god-head.

What progress we have made from the depths of the Dark Ages!

Religion is dangerous, and that is why god is dead and should stay dead. So imagine the fun we can have when a man declares himself above the common lot and arrogates to himself god like status.

Such is the root of the current holiday, linked inexorably as it is to the current blind faith in State action. Of course, with all that the sheeple demand of it, it is evident that only a god-as-Leader could make the State work effectively. Perhaps that explains the worship of men as gods now and throughout history.

Like the concept of god itself, it is a faith-based fantasy. This delusion will take us to our (mass) graves.

Bippin' down to Lafitte

2009-02-14T20:38:00.007-06:00

With some spare time on my hands, what a better way to use it than bip on down the Barataria hi-way down to Lafitte!

And what does that mean? MOAR SINES!!!

The former Lafitte-Larose Highway (aka LA 3134), a road which went to neither Lafitte nor Larose, has now been mercifully renamed the "Leo Kerner/Lafitte Highway." Unwieldy, but it works, I guess.

Those tall lightpoles are way out of place out here in the boonies.

Clinching LA 45, I travelled to its end at Lafitte:

The main road continues somewhat further south (at left), but this is the end of the state maintained section.

Here I found a signage rarity:

Don't see too many of these in the Bayou State.

Here is (most of) LA 302 in all its glory:

The Kerner Bridge over Bayou Barataria, with its rotted wood plank driving surface, is the sole access point to the Barataria community situated on its banks opposite the town of Jean Lafitte.

Ventured to the end of the pointless LA 303:

Not much, I'm afraid.

Swinging thru Crown Point on the return leg, another sineage find was espied:

The single LA 560-4 sign in existence. Well, strike that one from the list of "unmarked" routes...

My return was via the newly extended Destrehan Avenue:

Here Destrehan Avenue enters Louisiana's largest subdivision, Woodmere. I'll stop at this point because past here, we enter some real armpit territory.

Dat's the Westbank for you.

Stimulus of abominations

2009-02-12T19:27:00.006-06:00

The vaunted "stimulus" is just a heartbeat away from the Executive signature that will officially render it the law of the land.

And with the stroke of a pen, the empire falls and the people are raped and plundered into eternity.

Imperial hubris cares nothing for human life, only for power and the acquisition of power.

Each individual life is precious and valuable. With the rise of the State, the individual becomes a cog in a gigantic machine of death, to be expended and discarded as an anonymous corpse in a pile with so many other hapless beings.

You may find this perspective extreme. But there is bountiful proof throughout the ages that when the State becomes the dominant force in a society, the downfall occurs soon after, and the corpses pile high.

For the State is power, the antithesis of life. Life rejects by nature the sway of outside forces seeking to exert that power over the bodies which comprise it. Therefore, the State must reject life, to replace it with destruction and death. The State has been the sponsor of history's greatest mass murderers.

The State, thus, is anti-life.

I rest my case. The power and legitimacy of the State rests on force to the pain of death.

The State must therefore not be allowed to loot, plunder, rape, and kill anymore. For the good of all life on the planet, the State must be destroyed.

Tell that to our god-Leader in chief.

Downtown street scenes

2009-02-10T21:01:00.007-06:00

A collage of downtown scenes from a lazy Sunday afternoon in the Stick:

Third Street on Sunday: dead as always.

The superstructure for the new parish courthouse has been substantially completed by now.

II City Plaza is essentially finished, and awaits its future tenants.

The public sector started construction on their tower first, but private industry beat them by a mile.

The brick and mortar ladies of Third Street greet us from across the moonscape of parking reservoirs.

A downtown institution sleeps on Sunday for lack of meaningful foot traffic.

This gutted, partially renovated structure on Lafayette Street resembles something out of postwar Berlin. Finish the renovation already!

Adaptive reuse: this building houses a restaurant, cafe, and part of the LSU art gallery. At one time, this was a parking garage (hard to believe, but true).

This tower of State bureaucrats sits lonely and forlorn, the public "servants" at rest for the week-end.

A pleasant place to sit and while away a Sunday afternoon downtown.

Utter ruin

2009-02-09T19:46:00.002-06:00

Hearing the Grate One's primetime pronouncements this very minute, I am reminded of the old saying "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Indeed, fools as always are pulling the levers of power, but in this case it can only lead to mass slaughter. There can be no better definition of pure evil.

B.O. has in twenty minutes proven himself to be the most economically ignorant and illiterate Leader of all time. (Not that this wasn't expected.) Given his predecessors, that's quite some feat.

His entire programme is standard Keynesianism, the ante upped per the ramped-up level of public fascism that runs rampant to-day. The only difference now is instead of billions we speak of trillions; but the ignorant and thoughtless "pump priming" ethos remains.

This can, of course, only lead to devastation, as only the few sane people seem to be aware. If B.O. and his powerful friends think's it's bad now...don't hold your breath, as the cities rapidly begin to resemble Port-au-Prince as they degenerate into chaos.

I quote the illustrious Lew Rockwell, who always translates exactly what I am thinking into the written word far better than I could:

I am listening to Boring Barack's economic plan, and thinking that Keynesianism, shorn of mathematics and academic jargon, even sounds stupid: print trillions in paper money, bail-out loser firms and banks, spend massively on political projects, and grow rich.

There was one fun moment when Obama noted that he was shocked that some some people (get ready for the outrage) question the efficacy of FDR's New Deal, a battle he thought had been won long ago.

Nope!

Welcome back to the 1930s. The abyss of starvation and death awaits us, our justly deserved fate as a country. With the likes of B.O. at the helm, it is becoming clear to even the dullest that the corpses are sure to pile in heaps.

---

And now they are talking about a "truth and reconcilliation commission" to investigate the late Bush regime, as if this was some dictatorship or something.

Oh, wait...

But dat won't fly when all the parties in Leadership have blood on their hands. So again, don't hold your breath.

Game over, Cortana

2009-02-08T19:25:00.005-06:00

To-day the course of my affairs required me to visit the Mall at Cortana. Cortana has certainly declined from its halycon days, but insofar business has held constant at a lower but steady level. But lo, what a shock I was in for to-day.

Part of the journey intent was to document the husk of the failed Steve and Barry's, the most recent of two anchor vacancies at this ostensibly six anchor mall:

The closing was recent, so the signage is still installed. But no longer are cheep sweatshirts sold here.

Now inside the mall, I was tempted to stay put for a spell and grab a bite to eat. But what a shock I was in for:

Cortana has in recent years fallen prone to inline vacancies, symptomatic of a declined enclosed center, but their level was low enough to be tolerable. But the number of empty storefronts had clearly grown since my last visit, to the point where the number was alarming and certainly not indicative of a commercially stable shopping center.

Looks like the past holiday season had not been kind to Cortana, for the stores had evaporated quite rapidly. I clearly remember many of the now empty spaces being occupied not too long ago.

I would guess that the vacancy rate is now around 40 percent. This is the sign of retail free fall.

The mall foot traffic was still quite constant, though of course nowhere near the level of a Mall of Louisiana or some such.

And of those stores remaining, about half were clearly "local" brands, with the other half comprised of the usual national retailers. A fair proportion of surviving stores were shoe and athletic apparel stores - always popular in the 'hood.

As is clear, even the kiosks are having trouble leasing.

Some tenants are clearly marked for extinction. Stores that rely on discretionary purchases such as Bath and Body Works and Limited appeared treacherously empty and are certainly hanging by a thread.

It would appear that the depression has finally made its mark in BR retail, with the weakest players feeling the pinch of collapsing incomes and economic dislocation. I can safely predict that there is no possible way that the Mall of Cortana will be open in five years.

Better get started on another greyfield redevelopment plan...

Today's sojourn

2009-02-07T22:20:00.006-06:00

...took us through three parishes covering about 100 miles.

Nothing special, really - mostly roads previously travelled.

Some highlights:

After 30 years of bureaucratic dillydallying by DOTD, LA 16 is finally four lanes from Denham Springs up to Watson! Here we see how it spreads the blight of rural sprawl ever further afield.

A side trip was made to explore the mysterious and pointless dead end state route, LA 1020:

The road ends unceremoniously thus:

Such a waste of state highway mileage.

We traced LA 63 along its weird aligment, spying this oddity along the way:

A "76" ball! Rare in Louisiana, but common on the West Coast, I hear.

We continue along LA 63, finishing our trip in the town of Clinton:

Lovely downtown Clinton.

The historic antebellum East Feliciana Parish courthouse.

Lawyer's Row, an antebellum office building, for lack of a better term. Used to house legal offices (obviously) in antebellum times.

All in all, a needed excursion from the confines of the apartment.

And finally, just for laughs:

Captured on Coronation Day, the new Leader addresses his sheeple flock as he assumes the purple.

Do you remember anything said in that "inspiring" speech? Me neither.

Failure: incompetence as key

2009-02-05T19:19:00.005-06:00

In this second installment in our Failure series, we will explore how incompetence breeds failure and especially how incompetence is born and bred by the State power.

You all know Mr. Incompetent, in one way or another. You all know the type of person who lazes about the office, with an unpleasant personality and an entitlement complex a mile long and an inch deep. Or more likely, he doesn't work at all, preferring to slouch all day, collect a subsidy check, and play loud music all night long, thus disturbing your sleep if you are unfortunate enough to reside next door to him. But incompetence does not always render itself so highly visible. The most destructive incompetence can be concealed under quite innocuous guises.

Incompetents are extremely self absorbed and thus sometimes lose sight of their responsibilities, the results of which ends up affecting others negatively. They may or may not be narcissists, but that is only relevant when it comes time to assign blame in the wake of failure. Incompetents are not necessarily malevolent. Oftentimes they do not mean to cause problems due to their self focus. Incompetence is a natural result of the drift in their thoughts toward items other than the task at hand. They may be consumed with worries about important personal issues (such as finances, always a worry in these difficult times), or perhaps they are afflicted with autism spectrum disorders which render it more difficult for them to focus on something other than the self. No matter what the cause, excessive introspection, aka minor incompetence, leads to a lack of focus on the task at hand and is highly likely to lead to mistakes, errors, and careless sloppiness in performance of tasks, thus breeding incompetence.

Lack of focus means that data may be entered incorrectly, or details may be misremembered or forgotten completely, or small but crucial steps may be skipped, or items may be misplaced or mistakenly destroyed. This is the basis for systemic failure down the road.

Then there is major incompetence. Major incompetents have, for lack of a better expression, a moral comportment that does not lend itself to ease of use in larger society. For them, incompetence and failure are byproducts of deliberate gross negligence caused by egregious self-indulgence. These folks include your standard issue subsidy seekers, welfare moochers, pathological narcissists, resource hustlers, and loss-socializers. Many of these folks are drawn to government as a source of sustenance, whether vocationally or otherwise, since government by definition does not disappear or otherwise suffer ill effect due to the consequences of failure. Indeed, unlike anything observed in private industry and contrary to every moral law imaginable, the State sector uses each and every one of its numerous failures as an excuse to aggrandize even more power and resources for itself!

This, of course, explains the reason for the existence of that multiplicity of incompetent souls which populate and staff the State apparatus. A system built on a foundation of incompetence, and where the proper consequences of incompetence are non-existent, is virtually guaranteed to fail, every single time. And in a system of falsely begotten privilege where the greatest unearned benefits percolate to the top, it can be assured that the most aggressive major incompetent hustlers will rise to the occasion to seize them.

Major incompetents are deftly able when it comes to self-benefit and obtaining what they want. It is in the remainder of life, in performing responsibilities which benefit others, that they fail so dramatically. And with greater responsibilities, the potential for failure only rises and the scale of failure increases accordingly. The Imperial bureaucracy is liberally peppered with examples past and present of this phenomenon (see "heck of a job").

It is clear that the State harbors much incompetence and failure in the world. Due to the special architecture of public power which insulates those in its service from accountability and responsibility, it is clear that even if all State actors performed their jobs with at least a basic level of competence, the State would inevitably fail. In short, the mechanics of socialism require a sort of god-king who will know the unknowable, who will comprehend all parameters that in larger society are the responsibilities of many diverse actors who may never encounter each other. Such is the fantasy of the idolators of the State throughout history - to identify this superman who will be able to perform this unperformable task and finally fulfill the most cherished wish of all loafers through the ages: to obtain prosperity without the expenditure of effort.

With parameters this impossible to meet, is it any wonder that State incompetence and failure occur with all too frequent regularity? Is it any wonder that those god-kings in whom we place our hopes to perform economic miracles always fail to satisfy, while only serving to impoverish us in the meantime?

Such is the impact of incompetence on all of us. The next installment will go further in depth in researching the link between the State and failure.