 A few political odds and ends here. Stan Goff reminds us that Dr. Dean's prescription of "bringing in the UN" or the Arab League to run Iraq is pretty much hooey as long as we're fighting a guerrilla war there. "You fucked it up, you fixed it" is going to be the world's attitude. Either way, why is it for non-Iraqi institutions to determine the country's future (other than us paying reparations for invading without cause)? Are the Iraqis kids? Goff reminds us that Nixon beat the so-called antiwar candidate in 1972, but it was the antiwar movement that ended the war. He lays out a credible Green critique of the globalist agenda that I agree with almost entirely, but I'll still vote for whatever lyin' blowhard and corporate shill the Dems put up, to be rid of the unctuous Jesus freaks and war loons currently in office. Goff alludes to the Twilight Years of the Gasoline Economy we're currently living through (how long will it take Gaia recover after we've burned all the fuel?), and James Howard Kunstler eloquently indicts the unbalanced cities we've built for ourselves in such an economy. A constant theme of his Architectural Eyesore of the Month (page back through all of them--it's worth it) is how the automobile dominates planning priorities, giving us ugly homes, parks, and workplaces. I lived in the Washington DC 'burbs for a few years and it got to be heartbreaking watching developers tear out yet another chunk of forest to make room for some crap-ass subdivision, with big fuel-guzzling houses accessible only by fuel-guzzling autos. I flew over Atlanta recently and felt like crying for the same reason. Our slash-and-burn lifestyle is just nuts.
Nothwithstanding the above (and apropos of the bloodsucking theme in the upper left corner), the most potent issue in the coming campaign should be so-called outsourcing of jobs. Here's an article about CPA firms sending tax-preparation work to India. One might argue that the trend makes sense economically if it weren't for the record salaries upper managers are paying themselves. Keep pushing it, guys, you're really gonna enjoy the view from the lampposts you'll be swinging from in a few years.
curious to know which washington burb you lived
in.
i spent my high school years in columbia located between baltimore and washington. the city built
by a shopping mall developer and financed by an
insurance company.
Detroit just surpassed Houston (and Springfield?) as the country's chunkiest city. An official from Detroit said something along the lines of "Uh ... must have somethin to do with the cars".
The Poodle Abattoir was my favorite among the eyesores.
That's a good one. I find it hard to choose, but at the top of the list would be this one ("Here we see the nearly complete metamorphosis of the two-family house into an industrial loading dock"), or this one ("Hannibal Lecter Elementary"), or maybe Philip Johnson's "labyrinth of unnecessary pillars." Oh, they're all so good/bad.
nanmac, in my high school/college years my family lived in Fairfax County, VA. It was a great place to be a teenager, because there was still farmland and forested areas around the subdivisions where you could misbehave. Now it's almost completely developed, or so I've read--nay, it's become one of the most congested areas of the country, where a regular heated issue for county referenda is whether people can dig up their front yards to accommodate parking for extra cars. So-called single family dwellings now accommodate several families of fairly well off recent immigrants, each of which has wage earners that need to drive across the city to get to work. (This isn't an anti-immigrant screed, I actually found it fairly interesting that the neighborhoods were changing this way, it's just saddening that everyone's so dependent on cars.) It's funny, I don't mind the idea of Indians coming to the US to work and be Americans, but I object to corporate employers empoverishing Americans by moving jobs to India. Mainly because the companies worship profit (for those at the top of the pyramid) and don't give a fuck about the communities that originally gave them their licenses to steal.
i had a less positive experience in the washington
burbs. i pass on this quote that friend rick conroy
sent to me describing maryland.
From the newyorker book reviews, "briefly noted":
Important things that don't matter, by David Amsden.
In this fictional report from the stripmall frontlines
of Generation Y (or are we on to Z?), Amsden's twenty-year-old
narrator offers a selective account of his life and loves in a dull,
suburban Maryland. His parents are divorced, and his father is an
intermittent, largely pathetic presence. Nonetheless, the encounters
with this hapless parent are the touchstones of the young man's memory.
Another abiding obsession is the landscpae around him, the overnight
subdivisions and cyclical shopping centers, of which he says,
"Whoever designed them knew that families would spend their
lifetimes in these parking lots, going in and out of these stores,
and wanted to create a building so fantastically boring
that no one noticed it was really there."
Hello,
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I would love to volunteer my time to fix your website errors for free! For real.
But this offer is only good this week, for the first 10 clients, so take advantage of free website fixes before you miss out.
Did you know that the number one reason that will get you on the first page of google is how fast your page loads?
If you want some support, I am here.
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Talk to you soon!
Clean-up in isle 7
|
Goff alludes to the Twilight Years of the Gasoline Economy we're currently living through (how long will it take Gaia recover after we've burned all the fuel?), and James Howard Kunstler eloquently indicts the unbalanced cities we've built for ourselves in such an economy. A constant theme of his Architectural Eyesore of the Month (page back through all of them--it's worth it) is how the automobile dominates planning priorities, giving us ugly homes, parks, and workplaces. I lived in the Washington DC 'burbs for a few years and it got to be heartbreaking watching developers tear out yet another chunk of forest to make room for some crap-ass subdivision, with big fuel-guzzling houses accessible only by fuel-guzzling autos. I flew over Atlanta recently and felt like crying for the same reason. Our slash-and-burn lifestyle is just nuts.
Nothwithstanding the above (and apropos of the bloodsucking theme in the upper left corner), the most potent issue in the coming campaign should be so-called outsourcing of jobs. Here's an article about CPA firms sending tax-preparation work to India. One might argue that the trend makes sense economically if it weren't for the record salaries upper managers are paying themselves. Keep pushing it, guys, you're really gonna enjoy the view from the lampposts you'll be swinging from in a few years.
- tom moody 1-05-2004 9:46 pm
curious to know which washington burb you lived
in.
i spent my high school years in columbia located between baltimore and washington. the city built
by a shopping mall developer and financed by an
insurance company.
- nanmac (guest) 1-06-2004 6:42 am
Detroit just surpassed Houston (and Springfield?) as the country's chunkiest city. An official from Detroit said something along the lines of "Uh ... must have somethin to do with the cars".
The Poodle Abattoir was my favorite among the eyesores.
- mark 1-06-2004 2:39 pm
That's a good one. I find it hard to choose, but at the top of the list would be this one ("Here we see the nearly complete metamorphosis of the two-family house into an industrial loading dock"), or this one ("Hannibal Lecter Elementary"), or maybe Philip Johnson's "labyrinth of unnecessary pillars." Oh, they're all so good/bad.
nanmac, in my high school/college years my family lived in Fairfax County, VA. It was a great place to be a teenager, because there was still farmland and forested areas around the subdivisions where you could misbehave. Now it's almost completely developed, or so I've read--nay, it's become one of the most congested areas of the country, where a regular heated issue for county referenda is whether people can dig up their front yards to accommodate parking for extra cars. So-called single family dwellings now accommodate several families of fairly well off recent immigrants, each of which has wage earners that need to drive across the city to get to work. (This isn't an anti-immigrant screed, I actually found it fairly interesting that the neighborhoods were changing this way, it's just saddening that everyone's so dependent on cars.)
It's funny, I don't mind the idea of Indians coming to the US to work and be Americans, but I object to corporate employers empoverishing Americans by moving jobs to India. Mainly because the companies worship profit (for those at the top of the pyramid) and don't give a fuck about the communities that originally gave them their licenses to steal.
- tom moody 1-06-2004 5:32 pm
i had a less positive experience in the washington
burbs. i pass on this quote that friend rick conroy
sent to me describing maryland.
From the newyorker book reviews, "briefly noted":
Important things that don't matter, by David Amsden.
In this fictional report from the stripmall frontlines
of Generation Y (or are we on to Z?), Amsden's twenty-year-old
narrator offers a selective account of his life and loves in a dull,
suburban Maryland. His parents are divorced, and his father is an
intermittent, largely pathetic presence. Nonetheless, the encounters
with this hapless parent are the touchstones of the young man's memory.
Another abiding obsession is the landscpae around him, the overnight
subdivisions and cyclical shopping centers, of which he says,
"Whoever designed them knew that families would spend their
lifetimes in these parking lots, going in and out of these stores,
and wanted to create a building so fantastically boring
that no one noticed it was really there."
- nanmac (guest) 1-07-2004 1:25 am
Hello,
Read this if you have website errors.
I would love to volunteer my time to fix your website errors for free! For real.
But this offer is only good this week, for the first 10 clients, so take advantage of free website fixes before you miss out.
Did you know that the number one reason that will get you on the first page of google is how fast your page loads?
If you want some support, I am here.
Take advantage of this offer by following the link below where you can select the best time to have a conversation that works for you.
https://fwf.wikiiapp.com/fwf-7229
Talk to you soon!
- April Jeffrey (guest) 10-18-2022 7:09 pm
Clean-up in isle 7
- bill 10-18-2022 8:46 pm