Cassandra's Complex

06/06/06

2006-06-06T17:00:00.000-05:00

Merry AntiChristmas!

The above has been a paid commercial announcement by the Bush Administration.

I've Rediscovered...

2006-06-03T23:29:00.001-05:00

The Joys of Writing Fiction.

You know, the creation of allegories out of the grist of your life. Getting back at all who have slighted you like George Orwell and Dante Aligheri did, and changing the names of the innocent. Fashioning yourself into that Savior that will make Michiko Kakutani wet her pants with glee and get you on Oprah, so you can ensure that you will be banned for life (without having to do something completely Gay like jumping up and down on the couch.)

Yeah, wow, I haven't written on this thing for six weeks and see some of you still check in. Sorry, I've been busy. I thought about about the Bloggin' A Novel thing but decided I was too Old School for that.

Let the rabbits wear glasses! Can I get a Hallelujah?

Summer Movie Preview!

2006-04-18T18:37:00.000-05:00

One would think that after a pleasant vacation I should be serene and rested, but I'm not. Rather I'm more restless and antsy than when I left. I think the only consolation I have is that I'd be even more restless and antsy than I am now had I not gone. But then, is this really a bad thing?

I keep on playing over and over in my mind Howard Beale's beautiful mad rants (God bless you, Paddy Chayefsky), they are truer now than they were 30 years ago. I've watched Network again a few times. Yes, "First, you've got to get mad!"Network easily ranks up there with the greats like Citizen Kane as far as timeless twisted beauty goes, and is as prophetic as Terry Gilliam's Brazil (shopping, plastic surgery, torture and terrorism, anyone?) Sadly enough, if this keeps up, the next prophetic movie we'll see coming true sometime soon will be Soylent Green, but hey, at least then the Baby Boomers will start pulling their weight for once.

Paying my taxes the other day I was accosted by a group called "Mothers Against the War." Do you know where your tax dollars are going? they cried. "Yes, I do and I'm none too thrilled about it," I said. But, it's either pay my taxes or go to jail, or have my wages garnished for a lifetime, unless I can get rich enough to hire someone to find the loopholes to evade paying my taxes legally. I don't know about you but paying for an arrogant war of occupation and pigheaded greed under the banner of freedom on the cheap is by no means cheap. Not only are we putting ourselves in a hole by many billions to maybe a few trillion dollars more to our lenders the Chinese and Japanese and the Saudis, but we're also paying for it by squandering the lives and limbs of thousands of American service personnel, along with our reputation by living up to the image of the Global Bully our violent fanatical critics have bestowed upon us. So, where did my tax dollars go the other day? Maybe to buy a couple hundred or so American flags made in a Shanghai sweatshop which will be used to drape coffins curiously avoided by camera lenses.

It boils down to the slogan I've seen more and more "Support Our Troops: Impeach Bush." We can only hope, right? Is the world mad at us for our freedoms, or is it mad at us for allowing such an irresponsible and disingenuous foreign policy to continue? This isn't about conspiracy theories anymore. It's about what it's always been: Opportunistic Deception with a Smile and God's Blessing. We're following more and more in the footsteps of our forefathers the Romans: a great, noble people laid low by inbred and closeminded senior management parroting patriotic ideals and offering idiotic entertainment to appease the fear of the plebs to get them to go along with the raping of the nation's future. Yep, sounds like the evening news to me.

Home again, home again...

2006-04-15T20:19:00.000-05:00

I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I ever went away on a proper vacation by myself, if at all. There was the one time I went to New York when I was 19 and lived on the streets for a few days and "slept" at the Port Authority. There was the eight months I went tramping around Europe. There were various trips since then but they were either working vacations, business trips, going to see family, or I was with someone else under the influence of drugs.

So, in short, I haven't had a vacation in a while and needed to get away, be by myself, away from the Ant Colony, clear my head, and do nothing in style. My best friend's mother (who bless her heart sees me as another son I believe) allowed me the use of her place on Martha's Vineyard for the week. I also took an email, Internet and TV vacation. I didn't want to go someplace where I "had" to see anything, and given the fact the island is just beginning to wake from its winter slumber, there was practically nobody there! Seeing that I came from New York, I was outright giddy walking through a town center last Sunday (Oak Bluffs) in the middle of the afternoon and not seeing a single other soul around. It was neutron-bomb-a-riffic.

So, what did I do? I read. I didn't pay mind to a clock. I walked a great deal. I rode a bike practically everywhere else and got more cardiovascular exercise than I have all year. I wrote. I had uninterrupted stretches of time in which to think. I stared at the super clean water. I chilled out at several lighthouses. I gazed at the STARS again. I napped on a hammock while waiting for my clothes to dry on a clothes line. I watched parents let their children run around naked like animals on a chilly beach. I spied a woodpecker and watched birds like a Roman. I rode a bike through Correllus State Forest loudly ranting to my deaf god and laughing like a madman high on life, adrenaline and good blood circulation. I walked five miles on a pitch dark bike path during a lightning storm that made me hoot with joy. I smiled at everyone I came across and said 'hi' to them for no good reason.

I had a good time. And I had enough of it. With all due respect, it's easier to find a good pulled pork sandwich in downtown Teheran during Ramadan than it is to find decent nightlife in Martha's Vineyard in April.

Paul Dana's in a Better Place

2006-03-27T22:37:00.001-05:00

Oh, yeah. There was this, too.

I saw the video this morning (and can't find it on the Web, sorry) on CNBC and shouted a very audible "Fuck!" at 8 am in the newsroom when I saw Dana buy it. Wow. Fuck this in my sleep shit. That's how I want it. Excitement. Breathing in. Comparable to a childhood Wheeeeeee!

You know, I like what I do. But Paul Dana is now my hero. Fuck this flying a desk shit. Paul Dana is to journalists what Pat Tillman was to football players.

The Art of Plate Spinning

2006-03-27T19:40:00.000-05:00

The climate at work changes weekly. We are a Dynamic and Successful desk, and we are Expanding. Out of the eight or nine of us who started it, only four of us remain, yet we've expanded to over three times our original size in less than two years. There is constantly a new influx of people, and I am relieved from having to train them because I have other responsibilities ever since I basically lost my right hand who handled the majority of biotech, while I handled pharma and devices.

I'm basically the reporter who does drugs so the others don't have to, and for this, I am loved and revered like a gonzo doctor of journalism. I spare others the anxiety of having to wade through double-blind clinical trial data and p values, and figuring out the difference between an FDA priority review and fast-track status. I'm the kind of guy who can rattle things off like "And as everyone knows with atrial fibrillation there's thrombosis," and say "Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy" ten times real quick. I eventually unravel the Gordion knot of clinical data that goes into HIV trials where reverse transcriptase inhibitors, protease inhibitors, fusion inhibitors, and integrase inhibitors are seemingly thrown together by Tom Cruise into HIV cocktails and tested head to head, for God knows what the bottom line is. And somewhere I find the time to write the songs that make the whole world sing.

It's been busy lately. I'm a Batman with out a Robin. I had a seemingly relaxing weekend where, like Peter in Office Space, I did nothing and it was everything I'd imagined it to be. I napped, I didn't drink, I read pretentiously caustic contemporary French novelists, I spent time at the Cloisters. That probably explains why I'm exhausted after one day back at work.

And, oh yeah, the assault against business journalism heated up, the FDA bitchslapped minor biotechs one and two on Friday, and I'm sure my stab at greeting card writing ~ "As Wall Street gurus change their ranking/We're sad to see your stock is tanking!" ~ made it here.

Enough of this;)

I Want My KFC

2006-03-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

An interesting article from the L.A. Times rebutting the migratory birds theory for the spread of bird flu.

The theory that industrial poultry production, that is, cheap chicken, amplifies the spread of disease among birds is hardly surprising. What happens when a sick kid comes into one of our overcrowded classrooms, or when an office worker with a bad cold "bravely" comes into work because sick days are scarce? That's why industrial "animal farms" often pump their "crops" with more antibiotics than most third world villages will get in a year. And all antibiotics will do (as in your antibacterial soap and your antibacterial tissues and your antibacterial paper towels) is breed a hardier, more evolutionary robust bacteria that will end up going through your immune system like Panzers through Poland.

Then again, antibiotics won't do anything for bird flu, which is a virus. The solution to this, they say, is vaccinate all the birds. But, if you still keep them penned in like Tokyo subway commuters at rush hour, you're just putting a Band-Aid on the gunshot wound, because viruses, hardy little bastards that they are, will mutate into something that survives.

The one thing about bird flu is that it took much of the media attention away from Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or Mad Cow Disease. Remember that? That became a big deal because we wanted cheaper beef, so we penned cows into food farms, and to cut down on the cost of their feed, we fed them parts of their dearly departed brothers and sisters that McDonalds had trouble marketing, like brain and spine tissue, which transmitted the disease. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy: it's what's for dinner!

And if you're a vegetarian, don't feel left out, we got something for you too. While we in the U.S. seem not to have too much of a problem eating genetically modified foods (excepting those of us who pay a premium for the flimsy security blanket of shopping at Whole Foods), our European counterparts are still having a wee bit of a problem.

Why? The GM seed companies tell us the stuff is safe, but then, they have no other allegiance except to their shareholders, and the companies have legal departments to protect themselves from any stock-crushing liability. So, just say that 20 years down the road we find that eating genetically modified foods produces some unwanted effect, like, oh, sterility, it's too late. You can't stop 20 years of cross-pollination. The genie, as they say, is out of the bottle. Some of those who developed Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human version of Mad Cow, because they ate infected beef didn't find out until a decade later.

So the question once again becomes: How compatible is unbridled market capitalism with the survival of the species, namely, ours?

Poisoning Pigeons In The Park

2006-03-11T11:16:00.000-05:00

"All the world seems in tune/On a spring afternoon,/When we're poisoning pigeons in the park./Ev'ry Sunday you'll see/My sweetheart and me,/As we poison the pigeons in the park."--Tom Lehrer

I've always maintained that Autumn was my favorite season. But that has changed. Now it's Spring. I think this is a change for the better. While not technically Spring yet, the fact that it was sunny and in the 60s this morning was enough to get me out of bed and outside to just walk around and breathe the air.

Spring is not only the time of rebirth but it also begins the Roman season of War. The month of March, after all, is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It must have something to do with that added kick of testosterone. As Tennyson wrote in 1842, "In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." I believe a 2006 translation would go: "In the spring a (young) man just wants to fuck anything that moves."

Spring also marks the end of the cold and flu season, but as one of my analyst friends told me, migratory birds didn't get the memo. Beginning in October, any tiny little biotech company that made any development toward an H5N1 bird flu vaccine or treatment had their stock jump. Most of these stocks, which I lovingly refer to as "Chicken Little stocks," have retained their value so far, stoked by reports of the global spread of the virus.

It's not a stretch to say that H5N1 will make it into American bird populations by next year, or even this year. Then, you'll want to short your shares of Tyson and Perdue because they'll be too busy investing to turn their operations into something resembling a computer clean room, because you have to be very hungry or an undocumented worker to want to work around chickens that can potentially kill you.

So, for those of you that thought today's blog title was a tad bit sick, wait until someone finds H5N1 in one of those winged rats that paint New York City with their white poo. Adds a new twist to the term "carrier pigeon." It will be an unrelenting, but merry, slaughter with Tom Lehrer as the soundtrack.

Two Years Ago Today...

2006-03-09T17:40:00.000-05:00

(1) I was in an unhappy marriage to a woman I'd lived with for eight years and I didn't realize it.

(2) I had a serious multiple substance abuse problem and didn't admit it.

(3) I went day after day to one of the shittiest day jobs I've ever had, was less than two weeks away from getting fired, and on my sixth week of a management campaign to make my life a living hell so I would quit instead. Funny, after I lost the job did my wife start making me realize that (1) was true.

(4) I was a paid house emcee at a quaint little comedy club in Northern Virginia and used stand-up comedy as an escape from the much larger problems in my life.

(5) I spent large amounts of money that I didn't have on things that I didn't need.

(6) I didn't believe that I could really do anything with my life.

(7) I hated myself and I wanted to die.

(8) I wanted someone to save me, and I wasn't going to ask for help.

(9) I didn't know what progress meant.

(10) I never thought I could be where I am today.

Funny what can happen in two years.

That's all I got for today, folks.

Epiphany Now?

2006-03-06T19:45:00.000-05:00

"And then one day you find/ten years have got behind you." -- Pink Floyd

Now that I've taught my HAL9000 how to sing "Daisy" again, it is time to make up for lost ground. Oh, who am I kidding, I took a secret delight in having my computer crash on me. Like having a garden filled with weeds only to have someone burn it down. Maybe I'm sick, it's been suggested by a few intelligent people here and there. But I caught up on other things, like reading, from actual books made from murdered trees, and writing that didn't require the use of an electronic QWERTY matrix.

As far as reading goes, I finished Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials and was blown away. How I hungered for something like that when I was a teenager but all I got was Ayn Rand instead. Ayn Rand was fun, but I would have much preferred Pullman's touch. I loved His Dark Materials so much I Amazoned the trilogy to my 12-year-old niece, who is just the right age. I'll grant you, the story is a tough one, one that I've struggled with most of my adult life. This sense of complete and utter alienation that cloys like a wet T-shirt: that I was never right, that I never belonged, that I was always too smart for my stupid friends and too stupid for my smart friends. That when I was a child I was driven to wear the mantle of an adult, and when I became an adult all I wanted to be was a child again. The latter lasted far longer than the former. I'm not sad to say that: it merely is, and that's all there is to it. The scales bend this way, then that way and then they slow. And, if you look hard enough, concentrate hard enough, you finally see the balance.

In his acknowledgements at the end of the last book, The Amber Spyglass, Pullman writes, "I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read. My principle in researching for a novel is 'Read like a butterfly, write like a bee,' and if this story contains any honey, it is entirely because of the quality of the nectar I found in the work of better writers." Brilliant.

Since we're on the Muhammad Ali-like homage, here's a building-sized Adidas ad I studied near Astor Place one fine day in February. I found out later that the quote was attributed to "The Greatest" himself:

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary.

Impossible is nothing.

Much more nourishing than Nike's Just do it.

Ecce Homo. Here I am, someone who has, with some certain amount of shame but also with a certain amount of pride, backed himself into a Henry Miller corner. Was it on purpose? Was it by accident? Was it just what happened? At this point, who knows and who cares. I have done bad things that seemed good at the time, and good things that seemed bad at the time. I'm a journalist who is in his 30s who took to journalism because he incessantly wrote things in a journal and dreamed of things that seemed impossible. But where is the real story here, gentle readers?

I'll try to keep this blog updated more frequently, even if it is just with the spewing of the day's frustrations. But there is other work to be done. And now I know it needs to be done, as if my life depended on it. Thanks to all of you who have made my life Heaven, and Hell, and everything in between.

We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties

2006-02-28T08:35:00.000-05:00

This past Thursday my hard drive decided to self-destruct. After about three hours talking to and trying to understand "Mike" and "John" at a support center I'm sure is located in Bangalore or Bangledesh, we decided the drive was toast and kicked in my warranty so I should be getting a new hard drive in a few days.

I'm surprised how I took the whole thing in stride. Normally, losing use of the computer, several hours of unbacked-up data, downloaded music that I actually paid for, and the prospect of having to reinstall about two dozen programs, would make me blow a small gasket somewhere in my frontal lobe. No, it was rather a Surprise Computer Vacation. I have other things on my mind anyway.

No, it's all relative. When your hard drive crashing strikes you as kind of a minor annoyance, you know you're having a challenging week. So, now that I've broken my rule and blogged at work, I'll be back up as soon as I get my home computer running.

Thank you for you patience in this matter, your call is important to us....

Livin' In Interestin' Times

2006-02-21T20:12:00.000-05:00

"I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." -- Rick Blaine, Casablanca

So much is going on that I can't possibly address all of it: so let's focus on something simple for now, like the Supreme Court, and Raw Power Grabbin'.

I was down in the area of the nation's highest court recently, where the Tribunal of Nine made a decision concerning one of the nation's highest religions: O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal (Or, the Good Spirit of the Vegetable Union -- I'll leave it up to Soo to correct me on my Portugese). The nation's Torture Czar took the Vegetable Union to court claiming that these druggies couldn't be taking no controlled substances to see their "God." And what do you know: Mister Roberts came out on the side of the druggies. I believe the strategy at work here is giving the hippies one before we start picking apart Roe v. Wade.

The Takeaway? Taking naturally-occurring drugs to commune with your Maker, Good; taking naturally-occurring drugs to prevent AIDS-wasting and to alleviate the horrible side effects of chemotherapy, Bad (reasoning being -- and I'm no big D.C. lawyer here -- is that the latter is preventing you from your commute to God.) And as far as drugs and Roe go, we wouldn't want to be selling anything that might prevent the Second Big Virgin Birth because that would take all the fun out of executing Him (or Her) by lethal injection later.

The D.C. Metro area is a repulsive piece of real estate. I should know, I lived there for 9 years and encountered more assholes (thanks to DMcG for the link) at my many jobs alone than a busy proctologist. The general rule of thumb is that rude assholes will cut you off driving up here in New York, but it's merely business, when down in D.C. it's almost always personal. You can tell by the wider smiles down there. And people in New York tend to stab you in the front. See, the game in D.C. is Politics, in NYC it's Money. I've never been good at either game but at least the Money game seems to the lesser of two evils with better written rules.

So, now that I've alienated the entire D.C. Metro area and their twisted approximation of Ancient Rome, I do travel down there from time to time for bad Karaoke contests, the company of a few select friends (who oddly enough didn't grow up there), and personalized blunt emotional trauma. I'm kind of like those teenage girls who cut themselves, those scamps.

Speaking of Personal, in the Department of Irony: Our Fearless Leader has threatened to veto any legislation that would block his pet project of allowing a foreign state government-run company own 6 major ports of which I am within Ground Zeroish distance from two. Golly, we can't piss off our allies now can we? We can't piss off our friends unless our friends, or course, have the gall of disagreeing with us over an expensive personal vendetta like a war in Iraq or the Kyoto Accord or something. No, of course not, we can't piss off our friends as long as those friends have some sort of personal vested interest as we do. That's what worries me, not that Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. is "a Great British company" (last I checked that foreign company was not run by a state), but it's about to be owned by a state that was an "important transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya by a Pakistani scientist."

This is not about Security folks, this is about Power. Hey, what does F.L. care? Really. It's not like it's in his back yard.

Henry Miller Wept

2006-02-16T22:58:00.000-05:00

Tonight, me and the Desk had a going away party for one of our longest standing members because she is transferring to West Africa. It was a happy/sad occasion where one of our strongest members found her calling and took it, and I will be sad to see her go.

I am slow when it comes to office politics so these get-togethers are always valuable to me because after the Irish Car Bombs make their round (to the uninitiated, an ICB is like a Boilermaker except instead of dropping a shot of bourbon into a glass of beer, you drop a shot of Bailey's into a half-pint of Guinness and chug -- it tastes like a milkshake!) everyone starts to loosen their tongues, and if you remember, you get a general landscape of what is going on in the office.

Seeing that I'm speaking about myself here, I discovered that I am perceived as the loose cannon psycho of the Desk, misjudged so because I use stolen martini glasses at my desk for paperclip containers, and like to wear purple a lot, and use a butterknife repeatedly stabbed into a pub table to emphasize a point. Since I write about Big Pharma I'm constantly suspected of receiving free samples (yeah, I wish!).

Sure, I get into loud, heated schoolyard arguments with Corporate Communications toadies over the phone when we're quibbling semantics over one business unit using another business unit's operating loss as a tax gain. Sure, I'll loudly shout to the ceiling when my editor asks me for a comment from "the other side": "Oh Spirits, tell Us whether We should pursue this Pfizer story?!" Sure, I'll talk to myself in a booming voice when it is necessary when others are making too much noise for me to work rather than telling them to shut the fuck up when I'm trying to concentrate. But is this wrong? No, I'm the one pegged to come into work one day like a trenchcoated John Cusack with his boombox blaring Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" rather than Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." What about those on my Desk, the quiet types who keep to themselves, never bothered anyone before, officer? No, I get singled out.

No, I add Color to my work environment. And I've been fired in the past for such a thing too. And if I get fired for it this time around then fuck them too. Where was it written that we have to be so Nice and Docile all the time? Where was it written that we had to have personalities as bland as paste to get ahead? At the old, old age of what most teenagers would consider old, old age, why again have I found myself at the point where all the accoutrements of success seem like thin, passionless ghosts wending themselves around a crux of Nothingness?

No, I know, I need to be doing that thing I always said I'd be doing. Patience, me pet. That'll save me.

I Don't Heart Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

"Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap." --Joel, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Whether I've been in a relationship or out of a relationship, I've always had a thing against Valentine's Day, or as we used to call it as kids, VD [giggle]: Happy VD!

It's not that I'm a cheapskate. Believe me, I've gone into more bone-crushing debt than I care to admit on expressions of love. It's not that I'm not romantic: when properly inspired I gladly offer up my heart to the worst that can be dished out.

When you're not in love (or in a position of unrequited love), Valentine's Day just serves as a false, but very persistent, reminder that everyone else has this wonderful thing that you don't, even though you probably deserve it more than all those other dummies. And when you are in love, it becomes this desperate logistical nightmare to make sure everything goes perfectly because if you don't pull it off then nobody is going to blame her for dumping your sorry ass.

And yes, no misogyny intended, but Valentine's Day is really for women. All guys get out of it is maybe a little something extra later if they've performed their duty. Although, I'm sure Hallmark isn't up to selling Happy Don't Piss Her Off Day cards just yet.

Is Valentine's Day about Love? I don't think so. I think it's about Fear. It doesn't matter what you did the other 364 days of the year (although one's performance on Christmas and birthdays are also potential deal-breakers), Valentine's Day is tantamount to legal extortion.

But then, I don't like the concept of Holidays in general. Or I don't like how we've come to take them so life-or-death seriously. Sure, they can be happy times, but there seems to be a sense that that happiness (rather than the right to pursue it) is an entitlement, so when things go wrong, disaster strikes, and someone is blamed for ruining another holiday.

So even though I don't like Valentine's Day, I still feel under the gun to celebrate it somehow, and not with a bunch of other curmudgeons at an Anti-Valentine's Day party, although I hear these are great places to pick up some fast tail.

No, this Valentine's Day, another broken person who's trying to fix themself and I will likely go down to the Lower East Side in search of some falafel. And we'll look at all the frightened people packing the restaurants and running around like happy maniacs.

To be quite honest I think one of the few good things brought about by Valentine's Day was the one Simpsons episode when Ralph Wiggum finds his cojones.

Solipsistic Interlude

2006-02-10T09:07:00.000-05:00

Normally I wouldn't be writing an entry on this most Holy of Days commemorating the day when the Universe was Created according to Ancient Records, but, what the hey. I took off from my day job and plan to go down to some of the second-hand bookshops on lower Broadway and buy a bunch of books to add to the mounting backlog I have to read.

One thing I won't do is go see the new Pink Panther out of deepest respect for Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards.

Even so, there are a few things that bring a smile to my face on this momentous day. Scooter's starting to fess up. "Abee" (my imagined Bush nickname for Jack Abramoff) continues to assert that he and the POTUS were buddies. And even a group of Evangelical Christians have started to oppose the POTUS on the issue of global warming (Evangelical Christians using science? Next thing you know cats and dogs will start living together.)

Anyhow, the day's a-wasting, and I have some things to do.

Cartoons of the Apocalypse

2006-02-07T19:39:00.000-05:00

"Who would have thought a cartoon would have caused Armageddon?"

And here I thought it was going to be Bil Keane.

The beginning quote would make a fine first sentence for one of my many Kilgore Troutian novels and short-stories I toy around with when I grow tired of the pornography, but the sad state of affairs is that this falls under the category of Current Events.

If you have been hiding under a rock for the past week I have provided this link. The hootenanny of hootenannies came today, when the Iranians decided to up the ante to expose the hypocrisy of the Infidel. Like I said to a co-worker today, the only possible punchline to this story is if the winning entry was submitted by a guy named Goldstein.

This is the point in the program where I go on record: I agree with my colleague U in his blog. The hallmark of a free society is the freedom of speech and expression. However, as a free society we do place limits on that freedom to keep the general peace. We impose sanctions against hate speech, we don't allow Deep Throat on network television, we censor out the word "come" during an elderly man's singing during the Super Bowl. Hell, even Howard Stern will likely heel to his new leash especially since he's been given millions in stock options. And we are proud to say that this does not apply to our right to criticize how badly our present Administration is making a muck of things.

The point is that in civil society (the kind that isn't murdering each other over and over and over again) we place self-imposed limits on our freedom of expression. And I am not advocating censorship. Names may never hurt you, but the sticks and stones resulting from those names do. There are mores at work in the global society, boundaries that demand respect. If you cross those boundaries and basically say "I don't give a shit what you believe," then all bets are going to be, as they say, off. You can empirically test this lesson in the limits of freedom of expression for yourself: Go to your local bar. Go up to the meanest-looking mother there, and say to him, "Your Mother sucks horse [expletive]... while taking elephant [expletive] in her juicy [expletive]. And you know what, you dickless [expletive]? She loves every second of it." DISCLAIMER: Neither Cassandra’s Complex nor its subsidiaries assume any liability for the royal shit being beaten out of you.

Post 9/11, Europeans are feeling the heat. Golly, their liberal immigration policies have allowed millions of Muslims inside their borders, and some of them don't want to blend into the culture they have moved to, meaning, they don't want to become White Christians. My Netherlands correspondent is up on some of this. Theirs was a decision between rotting away in some godforsaken camel-turd third world country with no work, or moving to where the money was. In the end, money wins out. You compromise even your most cherished of values when your children are starving, and like all human beings, you worry about the consequences later. The European reaction seems to have been replacing all that silly anti-Semitism that seemed to be in vogue not so long ago with anti-Muslim sentiments.

Notice how many European papers have been quick to reproduce the offending cartoon. At least the Danish PM has taken to pleading the Rodney King.

So, what is this particular freedom of expression, this crude depiction of the Prophet Mohammad wearing a bomb turban, saying exactly? It's saying (1) Us White People have no respect for the Central Figure in your Religion by reproducing an image of Him, (2) He ultimately represents a doctrine of terrorism and violence (which you yourself advocate simply by believing in Him), and (3) what kind of Subhuman Monster do you think you Are, people like you don't deserve to exist! In my book, that qualifies as Hate Speech. Just because some Muslims declare that Israel has no right to exist doesn't make it right for some of us to say the same thing against them.

But now, the cat's out of the bag. The parties who published the cartoon are going to adhere to a bunch of principles to the Letter of the law rather than the Spirit. It seems like the thought going through these peoples' minds was: Hey, let's piss off a bunch of people who have nothing to lose because they're weird and scary and we have to teach them who's wearing the pants around here. What do we have to lose?

The Chinese say it as a curse, and we're living it: "May you live in interesting times."

Peace out.

die Über Schüssel

2006-02-05T22:06:00.000-05:00

A half-decent Super Bowl. I didn't win any office pool money, but one of my good friends is a happy Stillers fan who is probably helping overturn cars and burning down Pittsburgh as I type. But like the man who reads Playboy for the pictures of young, airbrushed ladies with big hooters, I watched for the commercials.

And I was disappointed. The only clear winner in my book was a continuing theme from last year: the "Don't judge too quickly" Ameriquest commercials. Both the doctors and the defibrillator, and the woman cowgirling the guy on the plane after turbulence were definitely chuckleworthy.

The commercial with the Hummer as the lovechild of the Japan-destroying giant monster and robot? Amusing, but that was just because it was tremendously weird.

But there wasn't much else: it was either weak, lame, nausea-inducing, or simply appealing to my prurient interest.

The last category was easy, as in, who didn't want to see the GoDaddy girl's strap break again? And who can not like a company named GoDaddy? And Burger King's girl sandwich? Somebody's hungry for a Whopper.

But that was it. Madison Avenue fell asleep at the wheel. Nobody deserves a Clio. Nobody deserves a bonus this year.

Do we really want to see Jessica Simpson shove a reprised Nancy Sinatra song down our throats along with some pizza? Do we really want to see P. Whatever-the-hell-he's-calling-himself-today and Jackie Chan pimp diet soft drinks with smirkmeister Jay Mohr (rhymes with...)? Do we really want to imagine Jim Henson spinning in his grave when Kermit shills for Ford? Do we really want to see Kurt Russell as the new Gene Hackman in a remake of the Poseidon Adventure? Do we really want to see Tom Cruise victorious over Philip Seymour Hoffman in a new Mission Impossible?

All the beer commercials categorically sucked (even though that girl in the red #7 jersey in the Michelob commercial was worth tackling, and we learned that one should not staff their office with rabid alcoholics.)

Although, a five-blade razor with a trimming blade on the back? While a lame commercial, I can't help myself. I'm so there.

Lies, Lies, Lies, You Dirty Jezebel!

2006-02-04T14:49:00.000-05:00

A bit of a Ramble to make up for my Unexplained Absence:

It's been a busy week. I'm all business'd out having returned from the Annual Conference of The Secret Cabal of Twelve That Runs The World's Military/Industrial Complex held this year at the lovely Joseph P. Kennedy Memorial Underground Bunker in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. High on the agenda was the continued privatization of the world's fresh water supply, since oil has become so passé. I got a neat skull-shaped stressball tchotchke and was served some fine Norwegian gravlax. I can get away with divulging all this because They operate on the reverse principle of the Nazi's "Big Lie" theory: Go ahead. Tell the Truth. Who's going to believe You, you raving lunatic? Just as the Big Lie worked, so does the Big Truth. It's the perfect cover. This is essentially how the world operates. And I can freely tell you this, because you're going to think I'm just bullshitting you. Oh well, you can lead a horse to water...

After all that is the theme of "Cassandra's Complex" even though my apostrophe S is a grammatical contraction rather than a possessive: What good is the Truth if no-one believes you? The Truth may set you free, but from what: Gainful employment? Relationships? Friends? One of the more humorous instances where the Truth has been recently given lip service was the Oprah/James Frey fiasco. And, hey, who cares, the scandal has helped book sales.

The problem I find is that, like Jack Nicholson's Col. Nathan R. Jessep has said before me, most people can't handle the Truth, myself included. I watch enough TV, I read enough fiction, I pleasantly enough live in more denial than I care to admit (although I don't subscribe to an organized religion because I permanently gave It up for Lent.) But when you get down to it, the Truth is Bleak, the Truth is Sad, and it lacks any kind of Entertainment or Marketing Value.

Sadly, my takeaway from the Conference was akin to that of when I used to bait rabid Born-Again Christians in theological arguments: the Apocalypse is Nigh, the Day of Judgment is At Hand, We Now Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming. And, you know, that's always going to be true. You can speed it up by not looking both ways before crossing the street.

So you're probably saying by now, "Doc, you've been drinking." Nah, I don't drink the way I used to, because when I drank the way I used to I was spared a lot of the mind-splinters I get jammed into my head on a daily basis. I was like Winston Smith with his Victory Gin. Now, I learn to endure it with my own quiet plans of non-violent revolution, planting seeds, perhaps inspiring others to do the heavy lifting because where do you find the time?

That is the constant mantra in my head since coming to New York: Where Do You Find The Time? I mean I am this close to start paying three times as much as I already do to start having someone else doing my laundry because of the two hours it would save me in a week. But the fact that they won't use the detergent I like and the one-and-a-half doses of fabric softener I use holds me back. As much as I hate doing laundry, there's love in it when I'm done. And what would I do with that two hours anyway? Watch TV?

Tell Me a Story

2006-01-31T19:35:00.000-05:00

I went to a storytelling slam at The Bitter End in the Billage last night sponsored by The Moth. It is allegedly the hip thing to do, so my handlers tell me. It was my second attendance to one of these things, and I actually went to it intending to tell a story.

This is the deal: you sign up and put your name into a "hat" and they pick out of the hat who is going to get up on stage to tell their 5 minute story. This is not stand-up comedy. I have done stand-up comedy. This is not stand-up comedy. What this is is something different. This is like the experience few of us have had all too seldom of sitting around a campfire telling stories, except instead of a campfire, you have a two-drink minimum. It's like: imagine if you didn't have TV ("mah stories!") or movies, the radio (if you're over 70), or books. The draw of storytelling still amazes me. It's how I've made (and lost) most of my friends but I've never managed to make any real money off it.

My own story (yes, my name was picked out of the "hat") was a pip. A little number about misguided ambition, only wanting what I could never have, Catholic School Girls selling shooters in test tubes for $5 a pop, and nearly bringing my story to an end when I turned the car I couldn't afford into a 3000-lb. bowling ball hurled at some orange barrels on 95 South on a rainy night. Oh, and the aching desire for the forgiveness for my many sins. That too was supposed to be in the story somewhere.

But, being one of the oral diarrhea inclination, I blew my 5 minutes in setting the whole thing up, and by time I realized my time was up, I hastily tried to bring the thing to a conclusion. I got low scores from the judges, and learned a valuable lesson. Imagine if you were watching Star Wars for the first time and at the point where Han, Luke, Leia and Chewie get out of the garbage compactor, someone fast forwards to the end. Hey, wasn't that a great story?

But, it was a step in the right direction. People tell me I'm good at telling stories and I'm beginning to believe them. I've just had my head up my ass for so long that it takes a while for me to get my sense of smell back.

Star-Cross'd Lovers

2006-01-28T07:16:00.000-05:00

This is hardly news, more of a recap, but I don't blog at work and Hell Week is behind me: I collapsed on the couch Friday after work and shut down like a good robot.

But even though Boston Scientific won the bidding war against J&J for Guidant, the drama didn't end there. Far from it. Just hours after Boston Scientific won, the Food and Drug Administration kind of cleared it's throat and reminded Boston Scientific that it had some unfinished business of its own: namely, their own manufacturing plants still weren't up to code following their well-publicized product recalls from the summer of 2004.

The upshot of the matter was that if Boston Scientific didn't get their act together, the FDA wasn't going to approve any more of their products. Also, Guidant reported 4Q earnings well below estimates because of their own recalls. Both Guidant and Boston Scientific shares were bleeding like stuck pigs on Friday. Some analysts worried that if Boston Scientific shares dropped too low, the marriage could be in trouble.

All this got bandied about the newsroom but I was kept on earnings duty so I got to miss out on reporting the action for my legitimate job. Although, one comment of mine amused my harried, tired, predominantly female co-workers: Guidant had a choice between having a Daddy take care of them (J&J) or a leather-jacketed firebrand with a closet full of skeletons (Boston Sci.), one might be more fun than the other, but which one do you want to marry? Maybe Guidant feels they can change Boston Scientific.

I'm sure there will be more wacky developments coming out about the star-cross'd lovers in the days and weeks to come. J&J isn't losing sleep over it though. With a chunk of unspent mad money burning a hole in their pocket they've already moved on to courting Serono.

The Gospel According To...

2006-01-26T21:24:00.000-05:00

"Yeah whatever...Dre just let it run...hey yo turn up the beat a little bit...eh yo, this song is for anyone..fuck it... just shut up and listen...hey yo--" -- The Way I Am, composed by Sir Elton Eminem

The peak has passed. Now, the 4Q earnings tsunami starts drawing the damned back into the sea and my boss bought the lot of us drinks at O'Hangover's. Is it callous of me to use such imagery? [rant] Oh yeah? How much did you contribute to Tsunami relief? How much do you care about Indonesians that manufacture your Nikes for pennies a day?

Then there's this guy. (Yes, I'm contributing to another blog, folks, deal with it).

It's at times like these when I dust off that book that I keep in the fiction section of my library under the "G"s and quote: "And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, 'Of truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all: For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had.'" (Luke 21: 1-4)

A "mite," by the way, was the lowest denomination of Roman coin in Palestine in the day, i.e., a penny. That JC certainly had a good writing staff. [/rant]

I'm not going to go on about my Christian background. It would probably bore you and merely validate to you my sexual fascination with the color plaid. However, there are certain things about it that I took seriously. Always a hazard given the stories of religious instruction circulating nowadays. But I think the takeaway here (to borrow a business term) is that evil, thoughtless, narcissicist, greedy people will always use religion as a platform for their evil, thoughtless, narcissicist, greedy intentions. Guilty. My evil, thoughtless, narcissicist, greedy intention is to build up a readership so I can start charging ad space for my "thoughtful" typings. But will those pennies per clickthrough really bring me Happiness and the Grace of Those That the Truly Devout Call God? Probably not. It will however give me a mob to which I will have to shout: "You're all Individuals!" to which the mob will reply with a resounding shout, "Yes We're all Individuals!"

The point that I'm badly trying to make is this: when it comes to the chronic ambiguity that presents itself on a daily basis thoughout every day of your life, you have only one thing to trust, as maligned and unreliable as you think it may be, and that is yourself.

Who are these "evil" people, by the way? They're easy to spot. They're the ones who are afraid, the ones that Ben Franklin alluded to.

That's all.

P.S. On a completely unrelated subject for those of you who don't follow the news: Boston Scientific got Guidant yesterday.

Intermission

2006-01-24T19:54:00.000-05:00

Still no word from Johnson & Johnson. Why won't He call? Well, they have another couple of hours before the midnight deadline. And by that time I'm planning on dreaming I'm a big-eyed beagle puppy chasing Playboy bunnyrabbits in the big green field out behind the Mansion. I'm beat and it's only Tuesday. I wrote my guts out today. The cleaning woman at work is going to hate me. So, it's a shorty.

But, we do know that The Mouse is going to finally make a respectable lighting fixture out of the Jumping Lamp!

It's one of those days where I feel like Miles from Sideways, Joel from Eternal Sunshine, Sam from Brazil, or the Husband in "The Monkey's Paw."

Time for a lie down. But first, the fine fellows at Homestarrunner teach us: The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.

Give Us the Money, Lebowski, Or We Cut Off Your Johnson (& Johnson)!

2006-01-23T22:44:00.000-05:00

Monday was tis but a scratch as far as 4Q earnings go. I know, I'm tempting the Gods of Capitalism to do their worst. But I've learned to like living dangerously lately.

Despite my (mostly non-bylined) churnin' of the earnin' today, the most interesting thing to cross my eyes in the reporting of the Bid-ness was the fact that Band-Aid (R) and Baby Powder Magnate Johnson & Johnson had yet to fire off their most recent salvo in the Dallas/Falcon's Crest/Dynasty Soap Opera that is known as the Quest for the Embattled Medical Device Company Du Jour, or Guidant Corp.

Now this is a Corporate Love Story if there ever was one.

Once Upon A Time: back in December 2004, there was a humongous multinational New Brunswick, NJ-based healthcare conglomerate named Johnson & Johnson who looked upon the Fair and Lovely Indianapolis-based Guidant and its line of Pacemakers and Intracardioverter Defibrillators (implanted devices that shock the heart back to a normal rhythm, say CLEAR! Mr. Vice-President) and said, "We wish to Wed you in Holy Corporate Matrimony to the tune of $25.4 billion dollars." And Everyone was Happy.

But, alas, as the wedding nuptials dragged on and on as the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission deliberated to approve the Union, the fair bride Guidant had a teensy-weensy bit of a problem over the Summer. Thousands upon thousands of her pacemakers and intracardioverter defibrillators were shown to have defects, and the Food and Drug Administration said, "These Devices must be Recalled!" And so Guidant did that, and J&J himmed and hauled and kicked the ground and wondered whether this was its True Bride after all, but still, Check out those Pacemakers, check out those ICDs, check out that Market Share that we don't have!

The process dragged on and on and Guidant recalled more and more devices until J&J became very, very sad, and finally said to Guidant, "Maybe you're not as Lovely as we once thought you were." This was around November-time. And Guidant said, "You can't do that! We had a Deal! You loved Us before. Why don't You love Us now? We'll Sue Your Ass if You don't Marry Us!" And Guidant sued, and J&J thought the better of its actions and said, "OK, except we're cutting our purchase price down to $21.5 billion." And Everyone was Happy Once Again.

Until, of course, December of 2005, when the Natick, Mass.-based medical device company Boston Scientific Corp. saw the besmirching of the Fair Maiden Guidant and said unto Guidant's shareholders, "Sucks on that J&J Rogue! We'll pledge $25 billion for Guidant's Pretty Hand!" And amidst the Bewilderment, Boston Scientific proved not to be shitting the Guidant shareholders.

By the way, Boston Scientific is also rival to J&J in the business of drug-coated stents, or tiny wire mesh tubes that are inflated inside of heart arteries to keep them open, with drugs to keep tissue from growing back inside.

From then on, an impassioned battle ensued. J&J responded by saying, "We'll give you $24.2 billion, and close the deal much faster because we already have FTC approval unlike that scallywag Boston Scientific!" And then Boston Scientific responded, "We'll give you $27.2 billion!"

Now, J&J has until the tick-tock, tick-tock of Tuesday to make a counter-offer to Boston Scientific's, on the very day that J&J has to report their fourth-quarter earnings: a very, very momentous news day indeed. What ever will they say? What will they offer on this most momentous of days?

The Calm Before The Shitstorm

2006-01-22T13:53:00.000-05:00

Today is the day to rest. Not just from the Christian perspective. Today is the day when business journalists around the country will be putting extra effort into getting their rest and beauty sleep because tomorrow begins Hell Week, or what is known as the peak week of Fourth-Quarter Earnings reporting.

Some 630 U.S. companies will be reporting this week on how they performed over the past three months and most of them, the ones with fiscal years that coincide with the calender year, will also report on their performance for the year. The companies will not make things easy for the business journalist. They will be highlighting how their operating earnings have a wonderful personality, and how their cash flow has a charming laugh, while burying the quarter's $1.5 billion secret drinking problem down around the disclaimer language where harried business reporters are known to gloss over in their excitement.

Starbucks located around major news outlets will see a spike in sales and demand for full-body massages will rise. Business reporters will definitely be earning their overtime.

I've always bitched about earnings season, but that doesn't mean I hate it. There is a certain rush to it, which inevitably leads to a psychic and physical drain. Yes, I do have a masochistic streak, but it is one of the most challenging times of the year. For a business reporter, it is the equivalent of sprinting a marathon through a minefield: it's all a matter of pacing, keeping mind and soul together, putting one foot in front of the other, and making sure the numbers don't swim too much on the computer screen so you screw up and plug the wrong ones in, because then, the Voice of Corporate Communications at America Inc. booms down upon you, commanding that you Repent and Writethru, you filthy hacking Sinner!

Earnings season, in many ways, is to the business reporter what the Olympics or March Madness is to the sports reporter. It's the biggest show in town and everyone cares about their favorite players and franchises. The Game this week will reach its peak on Thursday when about 260 companies will be reporting, not stretched out over the day mind you, most of it will occur at chokepoints before the market opens and after the market closes.

My friend Soo blogs about what it's like to be a business reporter. And he has a few entries that stand on their own here and here. Much of business reporting can be mindnumbingly dull and wonkish but I think that occurs more out of fatigue than anything else. It's all too easy to get overwhelmed by the numbers and forget what's really going on. Those numbers represent flesh-and-blood people with their own hopes and dreams and worries about the future. They represent mortgage payments and college funds and food on the table. The numbers represent power plays and all flavors of legal fuckery and bitch-slappery among the Titans of Industry. They represent the Great Scorecard of American Capitalism in all its glory and shame. There's always a compelling story there. It's just up to the business journalist to pay attention to that man behind the curtain.

Time to catch up on my rest.

What I learned from (being on) TV

2006-01-19T21:09:00.000-05:00

I was on TV. I had only been on TV two times before. The first time was when the Gallery in Philadelphia opened and I was in the background waving on the newscast. The second time I was in a commercial for the Port Authority Transit Corporation as a bright young employee with a promising future with the Port Authority Transit Corporation. The third time, as they say, whoever they really are (if that is their real name) was the charm. I was suckered into being on a game show (my lifelong dream, Marge) called "Cash Cab."

The first thing I learned was that one must be ready for anything. One must be prepared to quickly answer general knowledge questions correctly in order to maximize one's cash flow. That is, after all, the American Way, either on a game show, or before a Senate Subcommittee.

The second thing I learned was to not trust anyone. The trick is, to let anyone think that you trust them. This can be difficult, admittedly, but it must be done. Of course, you're not like the others, you're special. Of course, I trust you, what kind of monster do you think I am?!

The third thing is to know popular culture. If you don't know about the recent releases of popular rap artists or the tourist attractions of Cleveland, you take a serious chance of missing out on Big Cash Prizes. It doesn't matter whether you know which state holds the first caucus during the Presidential election, or what Joseph Heller was known for: know your rap artists and Cleveland landmarks.

The fourth thing is: It doesn't matter what you do with your life, no matter what you do, or accomplish, or hope for, it will all take a back seat to your being on TV. Just ask Richard Nixon or John F. Kennedy. Oh wait... Ask Nicole Kidman, she had that kicky little movie of hers. When I went into work today, it was all the inquiry. What was it like being on TV? How did you get to be on TV? Did you get to see the TV? And to answer a question posed by my friend akaijen: Yes I was annoyed at first, but deferred to the possibility of Big Cash Prizes.

Another friend of mine was kind enough to record an acknowledgement of my exploit on his blog.

In closing, I defer to Harlan Ellison.

Happy 300th, Ben!

2006-01-17T23:02:00.000-05:00

To commemorate the 300th birthday of Our Nation's Greatest Patriot and Diplomat, as well as the dude whose mug's on our Hunney, I offer up these timely words of his:

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Take some time to think about that, and Be afraid, be very afraid.

Ben was a good guy, not perfect, but a good guy. He loved swimming, tinkering, publishing incendiary broadsides under pseudonyms (sometimes wimmen's), and flirting with the ladies. We could use him now.

The most recent biography I read of his was written by a professor at, of all places, Texas A&M University: a man by the name of H.W. Brands. The book is titled The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. You should check it out.

Do what you can to fight the bastards who are stealing our Essential Liberty out there. And I'm not so much talking about those folk wearing towels around their heads: they're just the Pawns, and maybe Knights at best, in this Game.

I Was Rupert Murdoch's Bitch...

2006-01-15T21:36:00.000-05:00

...along with 48 million others.

I've just finished transplanting my comments from the blog I used to keep at myspace(dot)com. It began to bother me as I started posting more and more that I had somehow become an unpaid shill for News Corp., the company that runs Fox News ("fair and balanced" much like Josef Goebbels was the Lead Cantor at his synagogue and a good father). News Corp. acquired myspace(dot)com back in July. Like I said to someone the other day: "If you're going to sell your soul to the devil you can probably get more than free webspace and a friend network in exchange for it."

I think the last straw was when I got home on the evening of the second day of the New York Transit Strike and ended up writing about my day. After an hour of writing about how the odd holiday-like shock and calm of the first day was beginning to decline into a literal mob-like mentality, where the blocks surrounding Penn Station and Grand Central Station were beginning to resemble Times Square on New Years Eve without the partying or just before the Scoop scene in Soylent Green, my blog entry failed to post and then when I tried to repost, the page experienced an error and I lost all my unsaved work. I had also made a few cracks about that day's coverage by the New York Post, another Murdoch property. I was too tired from my two-hour commute to fan the flames of the quickly-forming conspiracy theory that my comments of a Murdoch-owned paper on a Murdoch-owned blog had somehow contributed to the system error.

Also, Myspace(dot)com recently had a dandy little writeup in the paper of record for people who prefer to get their news from TV, USA Today.

Like shooting heroin into my eyeballs or opening a strip club that only hired ex-nuns, myspace(dot)com was a phase I went through that seemed more exciting than it actually turned out to be. The Web site has more than 48 million users at last count (that's 96 million eyeballs for ads) and is growing. I'd say most of those are teens or twenty(and thirty)somethings who are slowly weaning themselves from their teens. I remember reading something a few months ago that myspace users intentionally decorated their pages like their "rooms," but with everchanging crazy designs, images of their idols , their favorite music clips and so on. As I found, some users seem to go out of their way to design their pages to be virtually unreadable (8 pt. white-grey type on a white background anyone?) or so visually garish and loud as to make one go all Oedipal on their eyeballs (again with the eyes, hmmm...)

The best thing I found in the USA Today article was the inference that the incredible explosion of users may possibly be myspace's undoing. Teenagers are rebellious things and the "popularity" of something is a two-way street. There's nothing that kills cool more than the realization that not only are you Rupert Murdoch's bitch, but you are only one out of 48 million and growing.

Since I'm slowly dismantling my presence there (and if you've read this far, geez, you'll read anything), I figured I'd reprint my posting of "Who I'd like to meet":

Kurt Vonnegut before he dies. And Terry Gilliam. Other than that I'd like to meet other writers and journalists (both struggling and established); creative people in the arts and sciences; people in medicine, and those connected with the pharmaceuticals, medical device, and biotech industries. People who are not bored because they know that only boring people get bored. People who love what they do, but are using it to get someplace better. Oh, and a kick-ass agent, or an enthusiastic fiction editor would be nice too. I'm interested in making new professional contacts and friends, and hanging out in the Center of the Known Universe (sorry, everywhere else). I'm always up for learning something new, or to have somebody give me a different spin on the familiar.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: Chances are very good that I am not interested in your band and/or porn site. If I don't know who you are already and you would like an add, please write me a message explaining why you'd like to be friends. Flatter me, offer me a scoop on the next billion-dollar blockbuster drug to go down in flames, appeal to my baser instincts, add a witty comment to my blog, send me a coupon good for 24 consecutive hours of Tantric sex, compliment me on the shape of my skull, challenge me to a duel demanding satisfaction suh, blackmail me with embarrassing childhood photos, something... Get to know me better, let me get to know you, who knows, together we can build a synergistic testament to our mutual hopes and dreams of a happier life for all creatures on this planet regardless of race, creed, species or body odor...THEN you can hit me with your porn site.

Pullman: A New Hope?

2006-01-14T15:23:00.000-05:00

Every so often I am forwarded an article that revives my hope in the world of contemporary literature. One such article came from my friend Michelle yesterday on the writer Philip Pullman. I'm sad to say I've never heard of Pullman before but now his children's trilogy "His Dark Materials" is at the top of my reading list.

In her New Yorker article, Laura Miller writes:

Strictly speaking, the three novels that make up “His Dark Materials”—“The Golden Compass,” “The Subtle Knife,” and “The Amber Spyglass”—are children’s books, but their ideal reader is a precocious fifteen-year-old who long ago came to find the Harry Potter books intellectually thin.

Talk to me, baby! I could never stomach J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, could never get my Ren Faire geek on long enough to slog through J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis' Narnia books never really caught my interest unlike The Screwtape Letters or A Grief Observed. Perhaps I can't stand the pretentiousness of authors who use their initials in lieu of their first name (but I love J.D. Salinger with the exception of that Catcher abomination, and like H.G. Wells--so much for that argument.)

But I think one of the most compelling things Miller writes in her article (goading me into reading the books) is:

“The idea of keeping childhood alive forever and ever and regretting the passage into adulthood—whether it’s a gentle, rose-tinged regret or a passionate, full-blooded hatred, as it is in Lewis—is simply wrong,” Pullman told me.

Perhaps it's my lack of childlike "whimsy," or my inherent loathing of anything that smacks of magick, faeries or Dungeons & Dragons: but as far as sweeping epics go, I guess I've always been partial to Frank Herbert's Dune series (before it runs out of steam in the fourth book), Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 series and Rendezvous With Rama series, Asimov's Foundation series, and Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy "Trilogy."

My Dog Ate My Fourth-Quarter Earnings

2006-01-12T17:38:00.000-05:00

My friend Soo Doh Nim (not his real name) beat me to the punch with his fourth-quarter earnings preview. However, it's that time of year again when America Inc. cooks their books as legally as they can, and those of us in the business journalism corps get to play the game I call "Drinking From The Firehose" in order to hook the nation's manic daytraders and regular folk up with their latest translations of corporate obfuscation.

Since the bulk of earnings season means turning around stories in less than 20 minutes, making even the most hardcore writers feel like they're assembling Nikes in Indonesia, one needs that shred of amusement to keep one going and that comes in the form of The Blame Game, or the Dog Ate My Gross Margins.

This season I predict the biggest reason companies will cite for missing analysts' forecasts will be the three-day New York City transit strike because it was the biggest diversion on the national news and the financial press was full of woe about how retailers wouldn't be able to make their nut during the most profitable time of the year and how the world's economic capital was brought to a screeching halt by a bunch of blue-collar workers who are lucky to have jobs. I'm sure there will still be fallout from hurricane season and high fuel costs and low consumer confidence well into the fourth-quarter, and these will be the biggest reasons cited for why the year sucked, especially if the company had operations on the Gulf Coast, or in New Orleans in particular.

But seeing that it is presently mid-January in New York and 57 degrees F (Huzzah for Global Warming!) it shouldn't be long before we get a hurricane season that plays all the way out to Hurricane Omega, at which time the smart investors will have already cashed out their 401(k)s and put their futures in ammunition, beef jerky, bottled water and rosary beads.

I'm sure as fourth-quarter earnings season stretches well into February, I'll find more amusing things to bitch about.

Happy Birthday Mr. Hofmann

2006-01-11T00:53:00.000-05:00

Today is the 100th birthday of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who synthesized the compound known as lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, the drug that added gravitas to the children's lyric "Merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream." The New York Times recently had a reporter interview the man about his "problem child." (If you hate registering for online news, the NYT might be worth it. It's not like you have to put your real information in to get the article.)

But defrauding the NYT's marketing database aside, I take this milestone as an opportunity to briefly reflect upon the question: What makes a moral drug?

Hofmann has some cogent arguments about the compound he created: It is not a party favor. It is one of the most powerful psychedelics known to man that allows the user to step out their prescribed prison of habituation and look upon their "chosen" confines with the unforgiving eyes of a child.

In many ways, it is difficult to lie to yourself while tripping. That's why the CIA seriously experimented with the compound as a truth drug during the Cold War. But what sort of truth? As the CIA found, not the kind that's helpful to matters of National Security. Far from it. Like any drug, it induces a state that is not arrived at by commonly natural means. Acid merely strips away the bullshit that is necessary to live a productive life and forces one to stare their surroundings in the face for a few hours. That's why some people in after school specials jump off of buildings thinking they can fly: they're idiots singled out for natural selection because they've made bad choices in the lies in which they have cloaked themselves. That's why LSD and other psychedelics like it (some of which have been used by certain societies for centuries to induce a spiritual mindframe in which to set the path of one's life) are outlawed. We can't have people thinking for themselves and still pop the Dow Jones Industrial Average over that 11000 hump. It's economically unfeasible. You might have people questioning why they are working over 40 hours a week with dwindling benefits at a job they despise, or trapped in a relationship that is poisoning their soul, or kowtowing to an authority that they cannot in all honesty respect.

Good drugs, on the other hand, are those that maintain the status quo. Depressed? Don't evaluate the actions you took to put you in the intolerable position that's forcing your psyche to shut down and want to spend 20 hours a day in bed, take Prozac! Cholesterol too high? Heartburn? Don't accept the fact that evolution has formed your body to be active and that all that comfort food you are hauling away while sitting on your ass is slowly killing you, take a statin or a little purple pill! Kid can't concentrate and is a disturbance in class? Don't accept that the little shit has had its attention span shaved down by TV and video game babysitters, or that school is merely a course of instruction in how to tow the line and the kid is rebelling against it because something inside them is commanding them to live a vital life, give 'em Ritalin and tell the kid that drugs don't solve problems! And when you are sad, sad to the point where bald anger and rage are no longer acceptable options, there's always our good friend alcohol. Cheers!

And if you smoke cigarettes, be ready to have those who know better stick their nose into your business (think of it as payback for poisoning them with second-hand smoke all those years and foiling their ambitions to live forever). The debate on whether employers have the right to fire you because you smoke a cigarette at home is heating back up because of health insurance costs. Ironic, seeing that this country wouldn't be around today if it weren't for tobacco. Call it a historical youthful indiscretion: it's the hypocrite thing to do!

Enough of this. I need to go and be a productive member of soceity in the morning.

Vacation...All I Ever Wanted

2006-01-04T00:04:00.000-05:00

With the transit strike a dim memory, I got nearly everything I wanted for the Holidays. I wanted stress-free and uncomplicated: I got stress-free and uncomplicated. However, I also bought, like, three gifts, but not out of obligation. They were gifts I wanted to buy. I visited and contacted people I wanted to visit and contact. Those who didn't get visited or contacted, were not visited or contacted because I didn't want the stress or the drama I had in spades last year. And those who I merely forgot, they would understand, because I didn't see them calling me either.

I ate home cooked meals three days in a row: All my mom's specialties. I'm like my mom that way. I only cook for appreciative audiences. My mom and I watched Cinderella Man and I laughed while she cheered on Russell Crowe's character and air-boxed during the final fight (probably because Rus was missing his telephone). After decades of being miserable out of misguided obligation, my mom is beginning to lighten up.

My dad and I talked about life and death over drinks in one of the most godless places on earth during Jesus' Birthday: an Atlantic City casino. We would have gone someplace different but he was too anxious to show me the latest abomination at the Tropicana, or slice of "what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war." It was called The Quarter: a shopping mall that literally started to trigger a lingering acid flashback. In a paper-mache rotunda with a painted blue sky and white fluffy clouds sat about a half-dozen restaurants and a "New York-style" uber-bodega (Look! 20 different kinds of Snapple!) My dad took me to go see "Red Square," a Soviet-themed restaurant complete with a 20-foot plaster of plastic "iron" statue of Lenin out in front, which attracted a gaggle of meat-faced tourists taking their pictures in front of it. To the right of Red Square was a "P.F. Chang's" and next to that was a restaurant called "Cuba Libre." A fucking Commie food court trifecta, Comrade! I half expected to see Marx spinning in a window rotisserie. I'm not making this up, either that or I'm not kidding about the flashback. I'm figuring in 30 years they'll have the Al Qaeda Falafel Hut put in with a big old statue of Papa Osama for the touristas' photo ops. Nothing says Mission Accomplished quite like Capitalism. Yes, I was running the fuck out of there in a brisk trot, outpacing my dad, blowing by the ear-splitting electric violin Xmas music and the throng of other meat bags that clogged the mall like human cholesterol. Finally, we found a quiet bar to collect my nerves, thank Krishna.

I also got to see my estranged sister from Florida and my niece, whom I met for the first time another lifetime ago. The kid's definitely part of the family gene pool. She's a wonderful, attention hungry, competitively talking kook with a smile that could melt the polar ice caps. Additionally, I discovered there's something quite satisfying in beating an 8 year old in War especially when she tries to cheat.

The rest of the week was spent being deliciously lazy back here in the arms of NYC, not giving a fiddler's fuck what happened in America Inc. Being lazy is hard work, so much so that occasionally I had to take a rest and hang out with friends.On New Years' Eve I found myself in no condition to travel, as planned, back to the DC Metro area in order to partake in a secret mission involving the appointment of a llama to the Supreme Court. Two days before, I had had my head run over by not one, but five gas trucks, on Bleecker Street while trying to rescue a brave one-legged champion of a dog named "L'il Brudder" from being stampeded by a two-footed elephant named "Tenderfoot." But not wanting to sit ahome in northernmost Mans-Hattan watching the Dick-Clark on my Tele-Vision Receiver, I cajoled my friend Robert out of his Ghettoe Hideaway in Neue Yersej to go join me in some light hearted entertainments with some of the beautiful, growth-hormone fed hipsters of Ye Olde Broeklyn Towne.

It also marked one of the first NYEs in recent memory where I wasn't trashed by the end of the evening. I could have legally driven had I wanted to drive a car, but taking the train back over the Manhattan Bridge was much nicer and reminded me wistfully of Saturday Night Fever.

Happy New Year!

Strike II: The Sequel

2005-12-21T00:04:00.000-05:00

Of course it's a sequel. It's a remake of the 1980 production that starred Ed Koch as "The Mayor" just in time for the Holidays!

So, my morning commute was walking 20 minutes into the Bronx to take a commuter train to Grand Central Station. I walked by my normal subway station on the way and it was like a holiday. Cars were honking their horns at picketers in what looked like support as there were no "fuck you"s accompanying the horns. It was the first time I took a train into GCS and it was quite gorgeous stepping into the grand hall and staring at the constellation ceiling to start the morning. I kept on hearing Gershwin in my head. The walk to work from GCS was pretty cool. Fifth Avenue had been turned into one big bike lane with everybody ringing their little city-ordinance mandated bells as I strolled past the animatronic displays of Lord & Taylor. How Xmassy! The sidewalks were packed even moreso with pedestrians, but they didn't seem as pushy or competitive. Like I said, it feels like a holiday of sorts, fun, different, out of the ordinary. It's stupid but that's what it feels like. I didn't see any grumpy, pissed off people. Everybody seems like, ehn, shit happens. But then it's only Day One.

To Strike Or Not To Strike...

2005-12-20T02:59:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are. Had that transit strike stress build up last week only to be delayed over the weekend. On Thursday, it didn't seem like it would happen, and it didn't. Today, however, it felt like it would...

So, now it's after midnight and I'm waiting with the TV on in the background to see how I'm going to be getting to work in the morning. But, hey, even though I live 8 miles from work, I'm not going to blow a gasket over it. Why? In a way, it's part of the theme park ride that is New York City. Other people have it nuttier and scarier than me: retailers, restaurants, tourist gougers. Transit workers, some 33,000 of them, face crippling fines if they walk off the job under the Taylor law, which basically makes it illegal for public workers to strike. Which makes me wonder, of what use is it to be unionized if it's illegal to strike? Isn't that legally making someone a migrant worker or a true wage slave? If you don't like it, tough. Traffic control in Manhattan will be a nightmare.

I'll have to see how it works on the first day (which at 12:29 am is still up in the air) but I may be one of the luckier ones. I'm a 15 minute walk from a commuter station that'll cost twice as much than the subway (and be much cozier) to get me down to Grand Central Station and then it's about a 20 minute walk to work from there. I'll be one of the 7 million people without their usual ride in the city. The Mayor told us to "get creative." Golly, it'll just be an adventure.

Junior Union-Buster Bloomberg says the strike will cost the city $400 million per day and I'm sure the NY Post will dress Transportation Workers Union president Roger Toussaint up like the Grinch and make fun of his French name. Even though the Metropolitan Transit Authority upped their offer for money to 3 percent for the first year, 4 percent for the second year, and 3.5 percent for the third year, up from a flat 3 percent wage hike per year, and dropped raising the retirement age to 62 from 55, the union did not jump at it. The TWU is still in a board meeting. The workers are already being demonized for being greedy, but you also have to take into consideration that the TWU is the hardest-ass union in the city, you get them to cave, you can take down any other union in the city pretty much. On the news, I've heard people whine about the workers doing this during Xmas. "Why can't they wait until after the holidays?" Um, it's called leverage? It's called being serious. Striking workers risk a shitload by walking off the job.

OK, 12:45 am and still no official word from the TWU as their board is still in a meeting. At either rate, it certainly has been a civics and logistics lesson on NY1 behind me. Fuck this, I'm going to sleep and wake up "surprised." Strangely enough, they say trains are still running...

This is what it sounds like when Kong cries

2005-12-19T02:03:00.000-05:00

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings was OK. However, compared to his King Kong, LOTR was a pithy, fractured "fairy" tale that made me think Orlando Bloom made a pretty enough girl. Jackson's Kong made me cry real Man-Tears, and think I was eight years old on a Saturday afternoon, and made me want to fuck Naomi Watts in my jungle lair gently and sweetly in that Tenacious D (not safe for work) way, and beat my chest in the movie theater. Yes, it could have lost a good half-hour and that whole Jimmy "substory," but not bad for $9.50 on 34th Street. I remember another lifetime ago watching John Belushi on SNL playing Dino DeLaurentis doing an interview after the release of the 1976 production of King Kong raving about "whenna my Kong die, ever-a-body cry. Nobody cry whenna Jaws die!" Yes, I cried when Jackson's Kong died, as well as a few times before when I realized he was going to die (what we literary types call "foreshadowing.") Who does an ape have to rip apart with his bare hands to get a break in this town?

But Kong is the perfect love story. Talk about being wrong for each other. But perfect like Romeo & Juliet and Tristan & Isolde because it captures the essence of love: it doesn't have a happy ending. The only "happy ending" connected with "love" you're likely to get is the one on a massage table for an extra C-note. But the more I learn about love, the more I know what it isn't and what it is. Love is dangerous and tragic just like any other drug. Love has no regard for your safety or well-being. Love makes you climb the Empire State Building, not because it's a brilliant strategem, but because there is no other place to go except to one's own destruction. I'm vaguely surprised that love hasn't been classified as a Schedule I controlled substance by the DEA yet. It's not like anyone in the current Administration uses it.

They've outlawed Ecstasy, which is basically love in a pill, and if you've never taken Ecstasy then fuck off with your retort, it's the overwhelming and temporary feeling of love after you've happened to take a pill and, yes, it will turn you into an E-tard. But the feeling, the chemical reaction, is very similar and undeniably wonderful. The only problem is that you lose all discrimination. You just love Everything. Even though I don't take E anymore (because I like being able to discriminate and retain what brain cells I have left), I'm still convinced that existence is a series of chemical reactions in your particular bag of meat. The great thing about love is that it makes you think it's more than all that, that it has to be more than that. It's OK to yearn for that pastoral plane where you are not alone, where there is a communion between you and everything else, that there may actually be some sort of transcendental parental figure watching over you. But, irony of ironies, all these thoughts get in the way of the other chemical reactions that keep the meat bag alive. Ain't life great? I know I sure as hell don't want to accept the preceding truths, that's why love is so great even though it's bad for you. It goes back to what I always say: The truth is what humbles you, but it's the lies that keep you going.

Love has made me do many, many questionable things that upon reflection become even more questionable. And even though other drugs were involved, love was the most judgment-impairing. It almost makes me wonder why they let people who love each other get married. They wouldn't let you get married if you showed up to the ceremony drunk or stoned, so why in love? Yeah, climbing up the Empire State Building seemed like a good idea at the time. Love is a memory that is not sullied by an intruding reality. Be careful out there.

But speaking of chemical reactions that keep the meat bag alive, I highly recommend Barney Greengrass, The Sturgeon King for brunch. Simply put, up on the Upper West Side, it's where one gets one's Kosher foodgasm on. Such a nice piece of fish there.

Oh, and I've discovered that ice skating with a good friend in New York around Xmas time at night and falling on your ass a half-dozen times surrounded by skyscrapers and colored lights followed by Burek is good for the soul.

My Bunker During the Culture Wars

2005-12-13T00:04:00.000-05:00

I did something I never did before: I joined a museum. I know, you're thinking: Thas off the hook, you bald ass muthafucka. Nex thing you know you be doin something mad crazy like supportin Public Television fo' th' tote bag, yo. But of course you're not really thinking that. If you are here, then you are somewhat literate to begin with. So I'm an Elitist Snob: Deal with it. Or better yet, go watch your NASCAR and couple with your sexually-repressed sister, you white-trash Christian Conservative fucktard hypocrite!

Ahem...what was I saying?...

Oh yes, over the weekend I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and knew I wasn't going to see it all because after four hours of the Egyptians and the 19th century European masters and medieval Bohemian trinkets o' Christianity and Greco-Roman statuary I was burnt out. "Oh that's nice, more culture, wonderful, whee!" Pretty soon one of the world's greatest art collections became the Suburban Yard Sale O' Human Civilization. I needed a break. I was full. I wanted to watch TV or some high-class pornography involving midgets to take some of the pressure off. I wanted to drink single-barrel bourbon and play with large-caliber firearms. So fuck it, I bought a year membership to the place so I could come back and spend some time with some of the cool stuff I had glossed over toward the end while looking for the bathroom and the exit, like the Arms and Armor collection. Plus, the Cloisters is practically in my back yard. Make the fucking place my Saturday treehouse, why not?

But the most important thing is that I appreciated a museum for the first time in more than 10 years without being loaded to the tits with hallucinogens. Golly, who woulda thunk it. But there you go.

A Temporary Thaw

2005-12-06T00:38:00.000-05:00

So, given my recent demeanor, I consented to go see The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center this past weekend. It's never been close to my heart, just some Victorian Xmas fairy tale scored by Tchaikovsky that I'd never really watched. I had enough musicals crowding up the TV growing up to have any stomach for such things. But, whether you've seen The Nutcracker or not, you know the music. It's always weird to get surprised like that.

So I went to Lincoln Center, the place of my first New York memory, when my parents dragged me and the rest of the family up here for a trip when I was four. I remember the fountain and the huge, white arched buildings covered in glass and light.

Over the weekend, the fir tree was up and decked out in ghostly white-blue lights, with white-blue snowflake lights floating eerily in the branches of the bare trees around the courtyard. The air was biting and crisp, a reminder that you are alive and awake. The fountain was going full blast, forming thin sheets of ice on the marble ledge (I know, I nearly slipped and broke my neck running around the ledge while doing my Leo Bloom victory lap from The Producers).

The hall where they had the performance looked like a side set from Logan's Run with all the crystal "life clocks" around and the late 60s design. During intermission, it was surreal to see the children of New York: Manhattan kids, six year olds with more polish and sophistication than I have, talking blithely about production values to the parents, and oh, the choreography was so much better last year...

During the second act, I sat in the dark and watched The Nutcracker, and lost myself, amazed by the dancing, the design, the lights and shadows, the spectacle, the flawless performance, thinking of a thousand things that will never leave my mind, and I didn't care as I found myself laughing through the tears. How long would this last? How long?

OK, so I'm a big pussy. Sue me.

Bah! Humbug!

2005-12-01T21:26:00.000-05:00

What I wouldn't do to be visited by three tripped-out ghosts on Xmas Eve so I can have an epiphany without the virtue of mind-altering substances. I've been underdoing my bits of potato for years and nothing. I wonder if Gregory Macguire of Wicked and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister fame will ever get around to writing Fuck Tiny Tim, Fuck That Little Sniveling Cripple in the Arse: The Jacob Marley Story.

The more I write about America Inc. the more cynical I become about Xmas. You never see the sequel to Dickens' A Christmas Carol, just like you never see anything after "And They Lived Happily Ever After." We don't see when Bob Cratchit shows up to work half-drunk and stuffed full of goose (as big as me sir?) on Boxing Day and the epiphanied Scrooge shakes it off until Bob comes in late and a bit uppity the second day. And then old Ebenezer finds he has to pay for 90 percent of Tiny Tim's health care premium (hey those crutches don't come cheap!) and then Eb says to himself, "Hey, there was a reason I was a heartless sonuvabitch in the first place." Don Vito Corleone cast in the Scrooge role would not make for heartening holiday fare is what I'm saying.

I'm also really curious to see what would happen if a real "Grinch that Stole Christmas" scenario occurred barring some real national tragedy on Dec. 25. No gifts, no celebration, no bling, just the normal yutzes you see day in day out, the bed you made: can you appreciate them without the fanfare and near-suicidal expense of the holiday? Can you convince them that the holiday isn't about the presents, and the tree, and the eggnog, and the accoutrements, without the presents, and the tree, and the eggnog, and the accoutrements?

And there's this one carol that really freaks me out, the one I like to call "We Wish You A Merry Extortion," where these vagabond singing fucks demand you bring them figgy pudding or ... What? What happens if I don't bring the figgy pudding? I don't even know what figgy pudding is? Do they sell it at Pathmark? What happens if I don't bring it? Will you kill my dog??? No, not Roscoe! Roscoe never did anything to you, you Bastards!!

Maybe it's just me. If I see a gift I want to buy someone, I usually buy it without a second thought and give it to them without regard to their birthday or some other sanctioned holiday. Maybe I'm silly but it seems that things given without a sense of obligation tend to be more genuine.

I'm sure I'll pick up on this anti-Xmas-Hannukah-Kwaanza screed later. In the meantime, wear your shoulder pads and helmets when shopping! I'd say it's a jungle out there but jungles tend to be peaceful places.

Black Friday, Blue Saturday

2005-11-26T15:38:00.000-05:00

I am obviously at the age now where I'm beginning to miss the "old" days. You know, when things were "better," and all that selective memory foolishness. It occurred to me this morning that Saturday morning cartoons are basically all for shit anymore, that cartoons since the 80s are just 22-minute-long commercials to sell plastic pieces of crap that are manufactured in China (which is on schedule to usurp us as the #1 economic superpower in 30 years or less because all those banks are going to want to call in those ever increasing trillions of debt someday). But who am I fooling? When I was a golden-faced little boy in the 70s, Saturday morning cartoons weren't selling toys per se, but they were paid for by companies selling sugar-laden breakfast cereals that had toys inside the boxes. Oh, and there were tons of toy commercials too but at least they were not as vulgar and insulting and obvious as to be selling the same toys that appeared in the cartoon. If you are a fan of the Cheat Commandos at Homestarrunner then you are a kindred spirit in this respect.

Toys are still big business, but they're not just for kids anymore. Nowadays they're called "consumer electronics." I watched Black Friday from the sidelines yesterday on CNBC and CNN in what looked like war footage of the Huns sacking Rome at Wal-Marts and shopping mauls around the country. No, it wasn't wacky and zany like "Jingle All the Way," this was real-life bloodsport with the booty being cheap laptops and gadgets, and frustrated, angry Wal-Martyrs with real fear in their eyes, clamoring for a Smiley-faced bargain. One thing I learned on the business beat is why the day after T'giving is called "Black" Friday: retailers apparently spend most of the fiscal year in the "Red" (not profitable) and generally clear the profitability hump during the shopping frenzy that follows T'giving. And here I thought it was "Black" in the sense of a "Black Mass," or a "black mark," or a "black eye." Silly me.

Also during the week, Microsoft released the XBox 360, another fun toy to help us all blur the distinction between fantasy and reality in our minds even more, always a good thing to help drive sales of expensive antipsychotic medications to treat schizophrenics (Editors note: to clear up the popular misconception, schizophrenia is not the same thing as multiple personality disorder. Schizophrenia is a mental illness characterized by cognitive lapses, hallucinations such as hearing voices, distorted thinking, mood changes and emotional withdrawal). There were thousands of gamers across the country standing in line in the cold outside their neighborhood Best Buys to be the first on their block to slap $300 to $400 on their credit card for a console and another $60 per game. It was a momentous event. Then again, anything that gets a gamer peeled off the couch and out-of-doors every few years can be considered momentous.

In fact, since Black Friday seems so crucial to the economy, which is so important to our security, well-being and way of life, I think we should stop fooling ourselves and dispense with the notions of Thanksgiving and Christmas all together and recognize the whole month-long period as one big national Roman Holiday, one big pagan consumerist orgy where instead of sacrificing animals to multiple gods we sacrifice our credit ratings to multiple corporations. Santa Claus can keep his list where the good girls and boys are the ones fueling the economy by keeping consumer confidence high with continued unsecured credit purchases and the bad girls and boys are the ones who question the sanity of going further and further into debt for a standard of living that isn't really making them any happier and is likely doing the opposite. I'm accepting suggestions as to what we can call this new holiday.

One parting question: how is a "gift card" a more appropriate gift than cash? Isn't it more insulting? Aren't you saying: "Hey, I don't know you well enough to actually know what you like and am too chickenshit to risk getting you something that you might actually not want, and I don't want to seem barbaric and give you cash so I'll give you this little card that forces you to shop at a retailer of my choosing and if you don't use it in a certain amount of time it expires or you incur a penalty."

Cheers!

Traditions were meant to be broken

2005-11-24T00:11:00.000-05:00

So, as 37 million Americans have raised their blood pressure by traveling during the busiest travel season of the year so they can gorge themselves on tryptophan-laden turkey and tolerate "loved" ones out of guilt and/or fear, I'm going to do something I've never done before. I'm going to watch massive balloons shaped like Barney the Purple Pederast Dinosaur, Ronald McDonald the Obesity Promoting Clown, and Scooby-Doo the Marijuana Abusing Great Dane in person much for the same reasons I'd go to NASCAR: maybe one of them will crash into the crowd and cause Animal House-like havoc.

I think I might eat Indian food tomorrow (or even Native American food if I can find a restaurant), or see where and what the Godless Unpatriotic Non-Americans are eating. I don't think I'll watch football: I've spent too much of my life watching football. If I want to watch violence, I'll watch the news coming out of Iraq. I may buy some homeless person, whom I'd otherwise ignore and who doesn't have the sense to go to a shelter, an open-faced turkey sandwich at a diner but I won't eat it with them because he (or she) will smell too much of their own urine. I may go on a crusade and try to convince people not to shop on Friday, or at all, for Christmas. I'll pitch it as an experiment called "Who Really Loves You?" Wouldn't you like to know who loves you for you and not for what you do for them or buy for them on the holidays? What a dangerous concept. I can do anything I want tomorrow. I am no longer bound by your petty conventions, you foolish Earthlings.

Drugs...Drugs Will Keep Us Together

2005-11-16T22:12:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal is running a series this week that makes me green with envy called "The Most Expensive Drugs." No, we're not talking about an ounce of White Widow or Lift Passes from the Busboy at BED in Chelsea. It's a series on medications known as Orphan Drugs, which are drugs that treat diseases affecting less than 200,000 people in the U.S. but nobody wants to make because there's no money in it.

The Food and Drug Administration is the agency that gets to decide what orphan drugs are, and getting an orphan drug designation from the FDA is like getting a license to print money. First off, the company gets a 7-year monopoly to sell the drug when it gets approved. The company also gets tax breaks and government funding for development: all because the company is making a drug for a disease that would not otherwise be profitable in a free market economy. Notice the paradox: monopoly/free market economy. Having fun yet?

The centerpiece drug in the series is a drug made for the treatment of Gaucher disease, a particularly nasty and rare genetic condition where the patient's body doesn't make a certain enzyme so their bones fall apart and their internal organs put on more fat than a sumo wrestler in training. Only about 4,000 Gaucher patients take the treatment (not cure, in the drug world nobody makes money on a cure) for the normally fatal condition and they dole out an average of $200,000 per year for the medicine. The Gaucher treatment is an orphan drug. There is no competitor. The drug costs about ten times as much as it costs to make, but that's OK, the company says they're taking all that money to find other treatments (not cures, mind you) for other rare diseases, treatments which will likely be made orphan drugs by the FDA. Isn't that nice of them? So, the next time you complain about the high cost of living, think about someone with Gaucher disease.

The most interesting thing about covering the legal drug industry is the public relations war that is always raging. Drug companies are very much into the old school Marcus Welby M.D./Jonas Salk presentation in that they are all about treating disease, relieving suffering, prolonging life, and improving its quality. "All that money we're making goes into research and development not into multimillion dollar executive bonuses," they say. "If it wasn't for us, you'd be up shit creek. And whatever you do, never you mind that man behind the curtain." Like the current Administration that they contributed a ton of money to, drug companies can do no wrong. Another fun fact is that there are more than 1,200 pharmaceutical industry lobbyists in Washington, D.C. (where the laws are made), more than two for every member of Congress: how's that for a ménage à trois?

However, to get back to the cure versus treatment paradigm: since drug makers are businesses out to make a profit and who are ultimately beholden to their shareholders (hey, if one of their drugs kills you by mistake, they have lawyers for that), you bet your ass they are looking for the next big drug that makes the most money, whether it's a pill that 40 million people have to take every day selling for 50 cents a pop, or an I.V. drug that 4,000 people have to take every day for $1,400 a pop. Either way, hope and fear are the greatest of marketing tools.

That's why there's never going to be a cure for cancer, or for AIDS for that matter. Sure, there will always be treatments much for the same reasons there's more incentive to make hard-on pills for old white guys who have more money than blood flow in their loins, than to make HIV drugs for sick people in Africa who don't have any money at all. And if some of those African people try to make some of their own drugs, hey, there's always Mr. Cruise Missile for that. That's Capitalism, folks. And if you don't like it, they'll call you a Socialist, a Communist, or (hey, let's make up a catchphrase on the fly a little more sexier for the times) an Economic Terrorist.

Always open for debate on the subject. Forward your hate mail, fan mail, and/or room/phone number to the comments section. Why should I be the only person who gets to read it? Cheers!

My Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard

2005-11-12T17:16:00.000-05:00

What does Daddy's Little Porn Star want for Xmas this year? You guessed it: silicone-gel filled breast implants.

This may sound like a bulletin from the Dept. of Obviousness but I love breasts. All shapes, all sizes. There's nothing like a great pair of breasts -- bared or partially bared -- that can stop traffic and cause a 20-car pile up. Recently, I was captivated by such a pair. I was riveted. Time stopped. My mind was in a happy place, and then the woman yelled: "Stop staring at my tits!" Last time I go to that strip club.

However, over the year I have written about two certain medical device companies who are rivals in the U.S. breast implant market. Yes, occasionally in the course of my reporting duties, I get to cover fake tits for a living, the closest I'll ever come to being a male porn star.

Very soon, the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the sales of breast implants in the U.S., will decide on whether to allow silicone-gel breast implants back on the market after a 13-year ban. Silicone-gel filled implants were taken off the U.S. market in the 90s when thousands of women complained that the implants leaked or ruptured and the silicone made them sick. Dow Corning, a joint venture between Dow Chemical Co. and Corning Inc., nearly went out of business because of the lawsuits and just recently emerged from bankruptcy.

So, for the past 13 years, women, and the men who ogle them, have had to settle for salt-water filled breast implants for cosmetic purposes, which, as any porn aficionado will tell you, look suspiciously fake at best and cartoonishly bizarre at worst. They also don't feel right ... or so sources familiar with the matter tell me.

That's all about to change because silicone-gel implants are reputed to look and feel more natural. Earlier in the year I was talking to a stock analyst who covers both of these implant companies, and he said that it's likely that one or both will get FDA approval before Xmas. My first headline, "Better Fake Tits To Be Out By Xmas," was reworded by my editor, sadly. The stock analyst also didn't let me go on the record with his best quote during the interview: "Yeah, they'll make great stocking stuffers."

One of the companies blamed its sluggish third-quarter sales of breast implants on the fact that women are holding off on their boob jobs anticipating the approval of silicone implants.

The most common reason I've heard for women to voluntarily undergo this expensive surgery, which like all surgery carries the risk of complication, is that bigger breasts will improve their self-esteem and boost their confidence. It seems shallow, but then again, we live in shallow times. I'm also reminded of how shallow I am whenever my heated discussion of existential epistemology gets distracted by a wonderful set of cans packed in a sweater. Still, I can't help but think that a woman who believes she needs a boob job to improve her self-esteem and confidence really needs a good therapist instead. It's like plying an alcoholic with dope to stop him from drinking in that the underlying problem is never addressed, just shifted and lost behind the filing cabinet. At least when a porn star gets cosmetic breast augmentation it's a legitimate tax-deductible business expense.

So, before I’m accused of being a misogynist, men are no better when it comes to vanity and insecurity and thinking that a little surgically placed doohickey will solve their problems. Case in point: there are such things as inflatable penile prostheses (I can't help but think of Ben Stiller in Dodgeball).Then there's also the fact that the U.S. hard-on pill market is well over $2 billion a year, dwarfing combined breast implant sales of $115 million for the most current year.

Happy Holiday shopping!

It's Flu-riffic

2005-11-06T17:06:00.000-05:00

The new week looms before me but at least third-quarter earnings season is receding like the tsunami that hits the business desk four times a year. The past three weeks have been a writer's equivalent of assembling sneakers in Indonesia: "Shares of Company Inc., a maker of things it sells, rose after posting strong third-quarter earnings, days after the stock dropped on bad news, proving once again that investors are a fickle bunch. 'We are pleased that our synergies of robust organic growth and acquired assets combined to increase shareholder value,' said D. Man, Company's chief executive, in a statement."

But the big story floating around is what I like to call the Chicken Little Flu story, and I'm not talking about the movie, basically a story that underscores in no subtle terms, that base fear drives the market and capitalism as a whole. More than once in the past month have I written stories that amount to having the headline: "Vaccine Maker Stocks Surge On Pending Apocalypse, Upgrades." I'm not big on vaccines, especially in times of panic. The last, and only, time I got a flu shot, I ended up being on my back for two weeks with the goddamn flu wishing for a bullet. I'd rather get a "flu shot" that was only purified water, in order to get the placebo effect, just like the flu shots given to employees at Exxon-Mobil, which recently posted a third-quarter profit of $9.9 BILLION on revenue of more than $100 BILLION. Ah, yes, capitalism rules. And no, I can't tell you where to find Tamiflu. Let the profiteering begin.

In looking at some of the pandemic numbers, it's not that scary. Sure, death is scary as a given, but it's got to happen somehow. The big one, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, killed about 50 million people worldwide, and only 1 percent of those deaths, about 500,000, occurred in the U.S., where a quarter of the population was infected, or about 29 million people. So, when you think about it, one out of 58 people in the U.S. who got the virus died. I can think of behaviors we participate in everyday that are riskier when you add them up over time. Although, if a mutated bird flu virus does become transmissible from human-to-human, I will stockpile surgical masks, wash my hands more than Howard Hughes, and bike to work, as well as cancel any plans to travel abroad (or anywhere) if they already haven't been canceled for me. It will be Lockdown America.

Since we're on the topic of immune systems, I'm with George Carlin and Kurt Vonnegut on this one: the Earth is trying to get rid of us. We haven't been very nice to the Earth lately, and the Earth is running out of sick days. Global warming causes wacky weather that leaves disease in its wake. Viruses, tsunami, hurricanes, tornadoes: it's all the Earth's immune system.