Yesterday I took a break from working at home and watched the block of channels ranging from BET on the low end and up to one of the generic music video channels up at the top, that I never can remember the name of.
This span of four or five channels is one of my favorite time wasting destinations. Bounded on both sides by the viewing equivalent of high voltage fences (Country Music Television and C-SPAN) I can bounce up and down through MTV, MTV2, VH1, BET and the other music channels and always see enough tits, ass, bling and 80s-era cheese to feel the kind of simultaneous satiation and tantalization that can keep me enthralled for hours.
After a fairly even dispersal of attention among the channels I eventually narrowed my bouncing to "VH1's 100 Hottest Hotties" and MTV's fake reality program "Laguna Beach: The Real OC."
I'd been hearing rumors about this show for some time, mainly that the characters were supposed to be real but were using fake names. Nothing I had read or heard, however, touched upon the compelling nature of this show. Despite a near-complete lack of story, writing, special effects, narrative arc, character development, dialogue or any of the other attributes that supposedly make for enjoyable entertainment consumption I could not tear my eyes from this show and found myself only turning over to the much slicker eye-candy of the 100 Hottest Hotties only during MTVs long and frequent commercial breaks.
The lack of plotline is actually kind of refreshing, compared to the hyper-dramatic soap opera mix of seductions, feuds, accidents, misunderstandings ... that usually make the editing cut. Instead these young, white, rich, goodlooking teens go from restaruant to coffee shop to snowboarding slope casually talking about each other and hooking up.
The dialogue could not be scripted, its far too inane and empty and stupid and repetitious except for inflections that carry the entire meaning of the word (like "bitch" and "slut" becoming a friendly greeting) sort of like I remember Chinese is supposed to be.
I was transfixed through two episodes with a mixture of condescension, awe and envy. These are the popular kids!!! I never got to know what they did when I was in high school and now I do! What's more, by extension, I know what they are doing now. Because I'll wager that the life that the 33 year old versions of Laguna Beach's popular set are probably every bit as parallel as the pathetic, socially retarded bookworm life that I led in high school is parallel to the pathetic, socially retarded, Internet-surfing life I currently lead.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
John Roberts, Arrogant Prick
I know that the press has been in heated competition to come up with laudatory adjectives to heap on John Roberts and what a gentlemanly, brilliant, humble, kind-hearted person he is.
After watching about as much of the questioning as my ADD would allow, I have come to just the opposite conclusion.
Seeing him duck and weave and evade all the substantive questions put to him, simpering all the while, made me think that he is, as the title of this post suggests, an arrogant prick.
He's like the guy who's recommended for a job by a company's CEO, but who needs to get interviewed and approved by one of that company's department managers to make it official.
A truly humble, self-deprecating, decent person would go into that interview determined to win that approval by demonstrated honesty, forthrightness and competence.
But instead our boy has sauntered in, smirk at full strength, propped his feet up on the Manager's desk and said "The Boss told me I have this job already, so I don't have to say shit to you."
After this behavior, any self respecting Manager would look up the company regulations and find the fine print where he gets to block this prick's appointment and do so.
After watching about as much of the questioning as my ADD would allow, I have come to just the opposite conclusion.
Seeing him duck and weave and evade all the substantive questions put to him, simpering all the while, made me think that he is, as the title of this post suggests, an arrogant prick.
He's like the guy who's recommended for a job by a company's CEO, but who needs to get interviewed and approved by one of that company's department managers to make it official.
A truly humble, self-deprecating, decent person would go into that interview determined to win that approval by demonstrated honesty, forthrightness and competence.
But instead our boy has sauntered in, smirk at full strength, propped his feet up on the Manager's desk and said "The Boss told me I have this job already, so I don't have to say shit to you."
After this behavior, any self respecting Manager would look up the company regulations and find the fine print where he gets to block this prick's appointment and do so.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Yes... Firing People Fixes Everything
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - General Motors Corp. is cutting 25,000 jobs and closing an unspecified number of plants over the next 3-1/2 years, CEO Rick Wagoner told shareholders Tuesday, as the world's largest automaker struggles to stem huge losses.
Wagoner, who is also chairman of GM, did not offer more details other than to say the troubled automaker needs to cut capacity by the end of 2008. GM, which has lost $1.1 billion in the first quarter, is facing its worst financial crisis in more than a decade.
----
The best part about this whole debacle is that this Wagoner asshole blamed GM's inability to compete on the high cost of health care that gets folded into each and every car that they make.
That's fucking funny. Health Care. Right.
Not the fact that GM built Hummers and Escalades as fast as America's fattest assholes could jump into them and drive off to the exurbs without ever thinking about what would happen if gas prices ever rose. Because, I mean, it's only a limited natural resource that comes out of the ground in the world's most unstable trouble zones. Who would ever think that something would happen to make the supply fluctuate? To think that far ahead you'd have to get paid a lot more than the $2.2m salary and $2.46m bonus(!) poor Mr. Wagoner got lot year.
I'm old enough to remember when Clinton tried to do something about U.S. health care and the large corporations paraded a lot of CEOs just like Rick Wagoner squealing and crying that there was nothing wrong with the current system and that changing it would cost America jobs.
Wagoner, who is also chairman of GM, did not offer more details other than to say the troubled automaker needs to cut capacity by the end of 2008. GM, which has lost $1.1 billion in the first quarter, is facing its worst financial crisis in more than a decade.
----
The best part about this whole debacle is that this Wagoner asshole blamed GM's inability to compete on the high cost of health care that gets folded into each and every car that they make.
That's fucking funny. Health Care. Right.
Not the fact that GM built Hummers and Escalades as fast as America's fattest assholes could jump into them and drive off to the exurbs without ever thinking about what would happen if gas prices ever rose. Because, I mean, it's only a limited natural resource that comes out of the ground in the world's most unstable trouble zones. Who would ever think that something would happen to make the supply fluctuate? To think that far ahead you'd have to get paid a lot more than the $2.2m salary and $2.46m bonus(!) poor Mr. Wagoner got lot year.
I'm old enough to remember when Clinton tried to do something about U.S. health care and the large corporations paraded a lot of CEOs just like Rick Wagoner squealing and crying that there was nothing wrong with the current system and that changing it would cost America jobs.
Are We Crazy?
U.S. To Lay Off 500,000 In Iraq
By Warren Vieth
Los Angeles Times
05 June, 2003
U.S. reconstruction officials will soon hand out pink slips to nearly half a million Iraqi military and civilian personnel, exacerbating an unemployment crisis that experts say could slow the pace of postwar reconstruction.
The layoffs will mean the loss of a government paycheck for roughly 1 in 10 Iraqi workers. The Bush administration hopes to soften the blow by making cash "termination payments" to members of Saddam Hussein's armed forces, Information Ministry employees and other government workers whose services are no longer wanted. The amount of the payments had not been announced.
Officials of the U.S.-led reconstruction effort acknowledged that the dismissal of so many people will magnify the economic misfortune of a country where a majority of the population depends on food rations; an estimated 30% of the labor force works for the government; and unemployment, as best anyone can tell, already exceeds 20%. The layoffs will be the latest blow to the once-thriving trading nation, already reduced to Third World subsistence levels by nearly three decades of authoritarian rule, international sanctions and intermittent war.
---
Yes, this is exactly what Iraq needs... more economic misfortune at the hands of the United States.
That's what's going to turn the whole insurgency thing around for us. First we invade on false pretences, then we destroy their infrastructure, then we start firing the few people who still have steady jobs left.
Hey jackasses, the last thing that country needs is more people with a grudge against us. Does the phrase 'disgruntled ex-employee" mean anything to you? If you thought that they were bad news in the Postal Service just think what they could do in a country awash in AK-47s and loose bombs stolen from unguarded military installations.
We would be smarter to do just the opposite. We should HIRE another 500,000 Iraqis --- no, make that 5 million --- and put them to work rebuilding their country, shuffling papers, any fucking thing. Just so long as they get a check that says "U.S. Government" every two weeks.
Employees don't kill their employers (often) and I'd rather have those Iraqis sniggering at Dilbert comic strips where they've written "Uncle Sam" underneath that boss with the pointy hairdo than driving into checkpoints wearing a napalm jockstrap.
By Warren Vieth
Los Angeles Times
05 June, 2003
U.S. reconstruction officials will soon hand out pink slips to nearly half a million Iraqi military and civilian personnel, exacerbating an unemployment crisis that experts say could slow the pace of postwar reconstruction.
The layoffs will mean the loss of a government paycheck for roughly 1 in 10 Iraqi workers. The Bush administration hopes to soften the blow by making cash "termination payments" to members of Saddam Hussein's armed forces, Information Ministry employees and other government workers whose services are no longer wanted. The amount of the payments had not been announced.
Officials of the U.S.-led reconstruction effort acknowledged that the dismissal of so many people will magnify the economic misfortune of a country where a majority of the population depends on food rations; an estimated 30% of the labor force works for the government; and unemployment, as best anyone can tell, already exceeds 20%. The layoffs will be the latest blow to the once-thriving trading nation, already reduced to Third World subsistence levels by nearly three decades of authoritarian rule, international sanctions and intermittent war.
---
Yes, this is exactly what Iraq needs... more economic misfortune at the hands of the United States.
That's what's going to turn the whole insurgency thing around for us. First we invade on false pretences, then we destroy their infrastructure, then we start firing the few people who still have steady jobs left.
Hey jackasses, the last thing that country needs is more people with a grudge against us. Does the phrase 'disgruntled ex-employee" mean anything to you? If you thought that they were bad news in the Postal Service just think what they could do in a country awash in AK-47s and loose bombs stolen from unguarded military installations.
We would be smarter to do just the opposite. We should HIRE another 500,000 Iraqis --- no, make that 5 million --- and put them to work rebuilding their country, shuffling papers, any fucking thing. Just so long as they get a check that says "U.S. Government" every two weeks.
Employees don't kill their employers (often) and I'd rather have those Iraqis sniggering at Dilbert comic strips where they've written "Uncle Sam" underneath that boss with the pointy hairdo than driving into checkpoints wearing a napalm jockstrap.
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