american gigolo

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he hit me up last night with a simple "fuck me".

always an intriguing opening.  i clicked on his profile, saw a buffed-out torso, saw "escort", responded with the pertinent question.

he came back with "for you, it's free," and with that, i grabbed my keys.

he answered the door wearing a jockstrap and a baseball cap, shooing away the chihuahua that tried to greet me--a beauty, but i didn't tell him that, wasn't gonna ruin it--looked me up and down, said, "i'll do anything you want."

"well, for starters, lose the damn cap."

he shyly took it off, i said, "look, balding's only a problem for guys with bad bone structure--quit hiding it," and dragged him off to the bedroom, where i proceeded to work him over to our mutual satisfaction (he didn't come, of course, nor did i expect him to).

afterwards, i told him, "thanks--you're sweet," and his face got hard and he said, "no, i'm not--i'm only sweet for you because you're my type.  for them, it's all about control, letting 'em know who's boss.  here, i'll show you."

he picked up his phone, which had been buzzing with text messages the whole time i was there, picked one, punched the callback, snapped, "yeah, be here in half an hour, but you won't be fucking me tonight [because i'd pretty much wrecked that option]--i'll be fucking you," and hung up.

"see?"

and indeed, i did.  he told me to come back whenever i wanted, but i probably won't--i don't like guys who are mean to their dogs.

ralph lauren, eat your heart out

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here's a bit of authentically authentic western americana for ya:  from a recently-discovered cache of photographs, a shot of my grandmother as a young girl in west texas, circa 1915.

it's a short road back to hell

dear twink from thursday night:

i managed to overlook your insisting i pick you up at the abbey right now, and then making me wait half an hour--i understand it's not your fault you get mobbed by adoring fans who recognize you from your porn films wherever you go.

i tolerated you going on endlessly about your jet-setting lifestyle, your kardashian connection and the trust fund waiting for you when you turn 30, and then hitting me up for ten bucks for cigarettes and juice because you found yourself short.

i was happy to allow you to totally embarrass me at the supermarket where i shop regularly, first by loudly complaining because no one was there at 2 a.m. to fresh-squeeze the orange juice your refined sensibilities demanded, and then by hanging all over me while drunkenly critiquing the fashion choices of everybody else in the slowest-moving checkout line i've ever endured in my life.

when we got to my place, i grudgingly gave you points for consistency when i discovered you were every bit as delightful in bed as you were out of it.

next morning, i indulged you in your "lost keys" drama, and obligingly tore my house and car apart in a futile effort to find them.

upon driving you home, i dutifully waited until you came back out, grabbed your shit, said, "the manager let me in; you can go now", slammed the door and walked away without so much as a backward glance (and i can only hope the elderly asian lady walking her pomeranian past your apartment building at that moment was able to overlook my screaming, "hey, it was nice fucking you too!" out the car window as i screeched away).

in the fullness of time, i can forgive all of the foregoing--hell, i've endured far worse in my time at the hands of far messier twinks than you.

what i will never be able to forgive, twink from thursday night, is your leaving that freshly-opened pack of marlboros for me to find when i got home.

*sigh*

eighteen years of abstinence, down the drain...

one for the birthday boy

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because the only time i ever feel close to Him is when this song comes up on shuffle.  give it a listen--i promise al will make a believer outta you, too.

merry christmas, everyone.

can we just cut to the chase already?

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to the red team:

it's gonna be mitt.  it was always gonna be mitt, because that's who the money wants; the others were merely a collective sideshow whose individual stars were programmed to rise and fall in rapid succession leading up to iowa and new hampshire.  ron paul's stubborn refusal to go quietly wasn't part of the plan, but he'll be dispatched quickly enough--in fact, his assassination is already well underway.

so, face it--you're stuck with a loser, whether you want him or not.


to the blue team:

unlike the red team, you're blessed with a candidate who inspires fierce passion among the rank and file of your party, and who wins regardless of what the match-up turns out to be.

problem is, she's not about to challenge an incumbent who's willing to hold your party hostage with his automatic lock on 90% of the black vote regardless of how spectacularly unfit for office he's proven himself to be.

so, face it--you're stuck with a loser, whether you want him or not.


to america:

either way, guess what?  you lose.
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for those of you who still don't get it

i know they'll probably unveil an all-new model in june, but i don't care--i had to have me one of these while they still exist.

why would i buy a product so late in its life cycle when there are faster, cheaper competitors available, you might ask?

simple:  because, to my mind--i.e., that of an overly-picky depressive who finds fault with everything--the iphone 4/4s comes as close to perfection as any mass-produced object ever made, at any price.

the conventional wisdom among american manufacturers has always been that, in order to achieve mass acceptance, it's necessary to dumb brilliance down--because either the idea itself or the attendant cost to bring it to fruition is more than the masses can bear [you want proof, just look at the difference between any concept car by any company and the lame-ass model that ends up in production].

this, to me, is the true genius of steve jobs:  he made brilliance not only acceptable to the masses, but something they'd be willing to trample each other to pay double for.

so screw all you naysayers who dismiss apple products as nothing more than the darlings of the trendy, vapid and pretentious--because if that weren't so, they wouldn't be accessible to

me.

i'll blame this one on george harrison and cheap vodka tomorrow

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autumn 1993 [or thereabouts--noblesavage will know]

he'd summoned his courage, sneaked outta the compound and travelled to weho from venice by bus.  he knew it was against the teachings, but could deny the urge no longer.

it wasn't just the shabby clothes and weird hair that set him apart on the boulevard that night--it was the sweet, guileless smile that grew even wider when our eyes met that caused me to drop the twink i was talking to like a bad habit and head in his direction.

and so we met.

after that first night, he'd steal away after evening prayers whenever he could and come see me, usually bearing fruit or flowers from the altar.  we'd talk into the night--he loved his life and his deities, and it showed in that smile.

it was a slow seduction.  i didn't push; i knew i'd have to be careful with this one.

finally--i think it was a sunday night--

it had to have been sunday because that was their high holy day, and i remember he hung the garland he'd stolen from the statue of krishna around my neck, gave me a long kiss and used it to drag me to the bedroom

i introduced him to the garden of earthly delights.  and with each new discovery, his eyes and that smile grew wider, until his joy knew no bounds.

couple nights later, there was a knock at the door.  i answered and there he was, arms laden with treasure, eyes dancing with delight at catching me by surprise.  until he looked past me and saw the boy on the couch.

that night, i watched his smile die.

because i killed it.

why? because i wanted that goddam playstation

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so this year, i entered the firm's "describe your most memorable holiday" essay contest.  out of ten entrants i came in fourth, behind two secretaries and a word processor.

it's true--blogging success is transferable to real life.

christopher hitchens, 1949 - 2011

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I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire, who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.

and what does your generation have to offer that's any better, you smarmy, post-ironic twentysomething loser?

.

not that i'm really that worked up about this, but i figure it's never too early to start rehearsing my indignation for the day when the above snot-nosed punk and thirty million of his closest friends try to take away my medicare ten years from now.

a rare populist rant

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if, like most americans overwhelmed by the complexity of our current financial crisis, you know the banks pulled some really shady shit but can't quite put your finger on what exactly it was they did, allow me to present for your delectation a little bank fraud to which everybody can relate.

consider the situation of one veronica gutierrez:

veronica, like many americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, was watching every penny.  yet, as careful as (i'm sure) she was, it was inevitable that one day she'd fuck up.

hey, we've all been there, right?  i can easily imagine veronica kicking herself when that check came back, knowing it was gonna cost her $22 she didn't have to spare.

what i can't so easily imagine is how veronica must've felt when she got her statement at the end of that month:

confused?  lemme help you out:  apparently, the good folks who ran one of the richest, most powerful banks in the country were so desperate for every last penny that they developed an algorithm which re-ordered the transactions of their poorest [and, presumably, dumbest] customers in such a way as to maximize the overdraft fees they could extort from them.

was veronica amused? not in the least; nor were the attorneys who made her the lead plaintiff in their class action.

everything i've ever said on this blog about frivolous lawsuits and/or outsized jury awards aside, screw the $66 wells fargo thought they owed veronica--i hope the bitch got $66 fucking million outta the $203 million the jury awarded in the case.  and then punitive damages on top of that.

*     *     *     *     *

of course, we all know that's not the way it played out; veronica and her co-plaintiffs probably each got next to nothing, while their attorneys all became multi-millionaires, if they weren't already.


bankers, lawyers--whatever, they're all motherfuckers.

reason #427 why mkf is beloved throughout the blogosphere

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with all that's going on in the world, there were weighty matters i was intending to address on this, the first night i've permitted myself alcohol in over a week.  but, for better or worse, i chose to warm up with a little blog-surfing first.


as for what follows, what can i say--in guttermoralityland, the opportunity for a satisfying drunk-comment trumps current events every time.

and will i be appreciated for saving this kid at least two years of expensive therapy?  hell, no--i'm just a lonely voice in the goddam wilderness, goddammit.

[for those who care, the above was provoked by this post and follow-up.]

people keep asking me what i think about OWS

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in 2000 [i could go back further, but whatever], america elevated a guy to the presidency for no better reason than because he was amiably redolent of the guy it had voted out in 1992.

in 2008, america elevated a guy to the presidency for no better reason than because his flashing white teeth promised hope and a change from the last guy america had elevated to the presidency.

in 2010, america allowed its midterm elections to be swayed by a fringe group of conservatives who, sensing something was seriously wrong, screamed for limited government but woulda cut your nuts off had you dared threaten their medicare or social security.

in 2011, sensing even more is wrong than the last guys, this would seem to be the best that our best and brightest can come up with:

 *     *     *     *     *

in 1776, any sixteen-year-old american entering college was expected to be conversant in latin and greek, and prepared to develop a thorough mastery of logic and argumentation--what we call "critical thinking" today. furthermore, theology was a mainstay of education back then, providing a foundation of [gasp] ethics.

i keep waiting for some modern incarnation of washington, madison and/or jefferson to rise up and lead america outta the wilderness in which it finds itself today.

needless to say, i keep being disappointed.

*     *     *     *     *

in 2006, a guy i respect advised me to cash-out everything i own, convert it all to gold in a singapore bank, follow him to chile and renounce my american citizenship before the shit hit the fan.


he's laughing at me now, and i can hardly blame him.

mkf discovers fire

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couple weeks ago in austin, i met up with an old architecture-school buddy who, unlike me, stayed with the profession, and who over the course of a few premium margaritas

whipped up by an equally-premium lil' bartender who couldn't stop talking about how helplessly drunk he got whenever he imbibed tequila, all the while casting significant glances my way (and yeah, he got a big tip)

filled me in on the current state of the art.

while i probably pull down far more coin in my glorified "want fries with that?" job than does said friend in the highly technical and specialized position he's so painstakingly built for himself over the last 20+ years [and for which sorry state of affairs feel free to blame the profession of architecture rather than my lazy, underachieving ass, ok?], our conversation still made me think.

and i mean long and hard--about what i'd walked away from all those years ago, and why.

to the point that when i got home, i set myself to googlin'--and while in my waning twilight years i'll probably never have the time, money, knowledge base and/or attention span necessary to master the current professional standard, i figured i might as well take a shot at google's low-rent alternative.

so i downloaded it.


two weeks ago:

my first model--i was so proud it turned out just like the one in the tutorial that i saved it.


last night:

point of this post:  if 3D modeling software had existed back when mkf first contemplated abandoning architecture, the world might be very different today (ok, maybe only mkf's world, but whatever).

as for the half-finished kitchen above (not to mention the rest of the goddam house):  more to come.

fuck you, chip

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the cartoon you sent me couldn't be any more off the mark, because as any fool could plainly tellya

• my chair is infinitely more stylish
• i keep my secondary laptop to my left
• i'm not nearly that fat
• my tv is way across the room
• my cat is long gone
• my faggot ass wouldn't be caught dead blogging in a wifebeater

i could keep going, but you get the point, right?

right?

somebody just kill me now

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a rant in three parts (part 2)

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this one may not be ready for prime time, but if it'll push the last one below the fold, it's good enough.

and for the lost, it's part 2 of this one.

the myth:  the only reason america is still in this recession is because our leaders don't have the balls to crank up the presses and spend our way out of it.

the basis for the myth:  world war II ended the great depression, thus proving forevermore that massive spending solves massive economic crises; ergo, nothing short of another world war II-level stimulus will solve our current economic crisis.

yeah.

ever heard of the broken-window fallacy?  it's a staple of austrian economics, and hazlitt's version goes something like this: 

A kid throws a rock at a window and breaks it, and everyone standing around regrets the unfortunate state of affairs. But then up walks a man who points out that this is not a bad thing after all. The man fixing the window will get money for doing so. This will then be spent on a new suit, and the tailor too will get money. The tailor will spend money on other items, and the circle of rising prosperity will expand without end.

you can see the problem with this scenario immediately, right?  this "circle of rising prosperity" occurs at the expense of the poor guy whose window was broken--the money he might himself have spent on a new suit or other items went instead to something he wouldn't have needed had the window not been broken in the first place.

easy to see the truth when it's just one little window, but apparently not so easy when you scale it up a few orders of magnitude.

consider:  between 1940 and 1945,  the united states of america spent billions of dollars and employed millions of people to essentially do nothing but build lots and lots of really expensive rocks, and throw 'em through the windows of the world.

did all this destruction solve the depression?  not by a long shot--it enriched a handful of bankers and industrialists to be sure, but by the end of world war II, there was nothing left but a world full of broken windows, a huge american workforce and military suddenly left with nothing to do, and an america that was monstrously in debt.

which brings me to my point:  it wasn't world war II that ended the depression, people--it was its aftermath.

in august 1945, we were the last man standing, an untouched-by-war industrial powerhouse to which the destroyed countries of the world, allies and former enemies alike, were forced to turn in order to repair their broken windows.  and we were all geared up for production, had an enormous skilled workforce and a captive market--how the hell could we lose?

now, compare and contrast the america of 1945 to the america of today.

back then:

• america was brimming with wartime factories that could easily be converted to make things the world needed and wanted--and we had virtually no competition.

• government was still small, and had infinite room to expand.

• the bankers and the corporations hadn't yet leveraged the financial and commodities markets into the bloated, voracious monsters they are today.

• there was no medicare, medicaid, welfare or food stamps to drain the national treasury, and social security payouts were barely a blip in the budget.

• personal debt among the citizenry was almost non-existent.

• almost half of americans lived on farms, and produced their own food.

• our underclass was far smaller, far less entitled, and far better behaved.

• the veneer of civilization was far thicker.

i could go on, but you get the point, right?

in other words, back in 1945 we were a lean, mean america whose bubble was just beginning to expand; today, we're a fat, soft, bloated america whose bubble has burst, all the stimulus in the world won't reflate us, and the new lean, mean, more productive economies of the world are circling our cooling carcass and licking their chops.

and you think larry summers and his "spend our way to prosperity" cronies don't understand this?  of course they do.

so if they already know massive spending isn't gonna work, why is it that they're preaching this fallacious gospel, you ask?

well, if i told you now, there'd be no need for a part 3, would there?

have fun with 498, kid

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readers of this blog could be forgiven for thinking mkf only has tragic sex, when the truth is it's just the only kind he writes about.

and it's what happened today.

the pictures hadn't lied:  young, fresh-faced nordic blond, not my usual type.

takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom from the bright sunlight outside, and by then he's already halfway to the bedroom, talking in that fast, mumbly sorta way they do--the whole time, i have to make him repeat everything at least once.

as i undress, he starts moving piles of laundry off the bed but keeps getting distracted, wandering off to check messages, but finally clears off enough stuff to make room, drops the bathrobe off his perfect lil' speedo body, kneels with his back to me on the edge of the bed, presents.  realizing an opening kiss is probably outta the question, i get down to the business at hand.

i try to pull him towards the center of the bed, but he resists--too far from the laptop, i realize, which pings from time to time with new hits.

eventually i zone it all out, hit my stride and he suddenly groans, pulls away.

"sorry--did i hurt you?"

"no, you almost made me come and another guy's on his way over."

damn, so close.*

after a minute he recouples, determined to get me off.  i try, but by now i'm so over this beautiful boy i'm forced to fake it--convincingly, of course--and with that, we're done.

five minutes later i'm hosed off and throwing on clothes, and he says, "you're 497, right?"

"huh?"

"497--isn't that you?"  i look up, see the phone in his hand and realize he's talking about the first three digits of my number.

"yeah, 497--that's me."

"cool--turn the bottom lock on your way out, wouldya?"

not a problem.

___________________
*bringing a tweaker to orgasm:  (a) almost impossible, and therefore (b) the LA top's holy grail.

the problem with three-part rants

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is that by the time one gets to part two, it's not really a rant anymore--the immediacy has faded, and one has sobered upit can be put off for another day.

which is what's happened here--but trust me, that day will come, and i promise it will come this week.

meanwhile...

a rant in three parts (part 1)

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The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending.

larry summers, director,

white house economic council

and there you have it, folks--laid out in a reuters opinion piece this week for all the world to see by the economist and former treasury secretary whose opinions have held more sway over two of the last three administrations than any other single individual--the neo-keynesian strategy reduced to its essence.

i want you to go back and re-read the above quote--maybe a couple times--and sit with it a minute, see how it plays in your mind.  and then i want you to indulge in a little wordplay with me--imagine just for shits and giggles we take that quote and strip it of its specificity, like this:

The central irony of [a] is that while it is caused by too much [b], it can only be resolved with more [b].

and then substitute for the phrases "financial crisis" "and "too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending" the cause-and-effect pairing of your choice.  i'll give you a couple to get you started:

the central irony of lung cancer is that while it is caused by too much smoking, it can only be resolved with more smoking.

or how about

the central irony of flash-flooding is that while it is caused by heavy rains, it can only be resolved with more heavy rains.

see where i'm going with this?  with the possible exception of a hangover, i defy you to come with any [a] caused by [b] which can be resolved by shoving more [b] at it.

yet these-these economists would have you believe that their dismal science is the exception to the rule, and that fixing the mess for which they themselves are in no small part responsible requires that humanity suspend its critical faculties and blindly believe the above bullshit.

and as much i'd love to deride and dismiss larry summers as nothing more than a common dumbass for not only the above statement but many others as well, i'm afraid i can't--because, far from being stupid, this guy has long enjoyed the well-earned distinction of being the smartest guy in most any room he chooses to enter.  in fact, all these guys who espouse this bullshit are smart--krugman, rubin, bernanke, all of 'em.

so how could this legion of geniuses possibly justify something so counter-intuitive as the above, you ask?  simple:  they learned it in the best schools in the country at the knees of the generation of economists that preceded them.  and where did those guys get it?  that's simple, too--all this "spend our way to prosperity" nonsense derives from one great, shining, deliberate lie.

[next:  debunking the "world war II as the ultimate stimulus" myth]

the frugal gourmet

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figuring any ol' red would do, i snagged a dusty bottle somebody'd given me years ago, opened it and after dumping most of its contents into the crockpot, took a swig, found it unusually tasty, googled it outta curiosity and found that the cabernet i was cooking with is currently going for $125 a bottle.

made a decent beef bourguignon, what can i tellya.

dah-veed

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there's this boy i fuck sometimes [i use the term "boy" here loosely; while it applied when i met him, he's a little longer in the tooth these days, as are we all].

thing about david: he was, is and always will be his own closed book.

if he was reserved before the meth got him, that's nothing compared to where he is now that he's come out the other side.  before, i could usually use his love of languages and music to open him up; now if i can get him to talk at all, it's mostly cryptic twelve-step shit, which i put up with because it seems to be holding him together.

whatever--outta the blue he'll call and i'll drive across town to get him, bring him back to my place, work him over and then take him home.  and every time, the drive back is so bleak and silent i think, "that's it--never again."

until the next time he calls, anyway.

what differentiates this boy from all the others, you ask?

nothing really, except for those brief shining moments when his fingers dig into my back and suddenly he's not a thousand miles away anymore--he's right there, in the moment, eyes wide and laser-focused on mine--he's with me, and i have him.

until the moment ends and he pushes me off and heads for the shower.

i told him one night on the way back to his place-i said, "you'll never give it up to me, which is maybe the only reason i keep coming back for your scrawny ass,"  to which he just smiled--not at me, of course--and looked out the window, which only served to remind me how twisted and unhealthy my priorities have come to be.

it's been two months--should i call him?

a typical carefree, fun-filled mkf vacation

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saturday:  fly to austin, sandwiched between two people fatter than me fat people.  pick up the rental, drive to ma's house, commence the packing.

sunday/monday:  continue the packing (despite her best efforts to thwart me by insisting on trying on every article of unearthed clothing and looking at every picture).  find the $10 gold piece i gave her for christmas 35 years ago that she thought she'd lost.

tuesday:  supervise the movers, begin the cleaning, break for dinner with the neighbors.  try to tell 'em how much i appreciate their being there for my mother all these years until judy tears up and makes me stop.

wednesday:  attend the closing, sign the papers, kick myself one last time for not holding out for more.  wait for the thing to fund, then head north to tyler, watching ma closely in the rearview as she follows in her car.  spend the night with my cousin mike and his wife kim during which we sit out on their deck until 3am, hand-feed cheese nips to the raccoons while kim and i reminisce about our days at tyler junior college and kill two bottles of really good red wine and i marvel at how easy it is after 18 years of abstinence to smoke half a pack of mike's pall malls without even really trying.

thursday:  one last lunch before delivering ma into the clutches of my brother's perfect little world.  we drive by my grandmother's little house on fenton street and sit there a minute, each of us lost in our own remembrances of what once was.  she says, "i met your dad for the first time on that little stoop," as if she'd never told me that before.

drive the four-and-a-half hours back to austin, turn in the rental, catch the (packed) flight home, arrive at ten pm, bone-weary, debate calling an old friend when my ride flakes on me but [my birthday gift to you, noblesavage] elect instead to take the two buses necessary to reach beverly hills and cab it home from there--end of a perfect trip.

and how was your week?

quote of the week

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We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this.  Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?

wall street CEO

three memories

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i don't remember exactly, but i think the barbie got shitcanned when i hit kindergarten.

not because i'd tired of her (i hadn't), or because my friends teased me (they didn't), or because my father disapproved (he no doubt did, but never said a word).

it was none of those things--it was more like one day i opened my eyes, saw what was up, made the safe choice and never looked back.

poor linda hussey and her barbie up the street probably never knew why my barbie and i suddenly stopped returning their calls.

get over it, linda.

*     *     *     *     *

his name was mike baxter, i found out by casually asking around after spotting him on the playground that first day of fourth grade.

that afternoon, i got on his bus, got off where he did, trailed him at a safe distance and then walked home (as luck would have it, not too far).

the following saturday, i biked over to his street and rode aimlessly up and down until his sister noticed me.

"have you seen my friends?" she hadn't, but invited me over to play until they showed up.

at the end of that day, the baxter family piled into their car and headed off to dinner somewhere, with mike hanging out the left rear window, waving at his fine new friend and grinning from ear to ear until they disappeared from sight.

and i sat there astride my bicycle, waving back, thinking, "gotcha."

*     *     *     *     *

his name was ricky brock and he couldn't have been any more fey if he'd tried; ricky's saving grace was, he didn't seem to care.

we spent hours talking on the phone over the course of that eighth-grade year, although i wouldn't have been caught dead talking to him at school (he didn't seem to care about that either).

he didn't even seem to care the day i sketched that caricature which so perfectly captured his mincing walk and passed it around health class--he laughed along with everybody else.

thank god being bullied back then wasn't painful like it is today.

_______________________

this post was inspired by the story of a boy who, like ricky, didn't hide.  may his sweet young soul rest in peace.

oh, jackie

.

note:  whenever reading anything mkf ever writes about any kennedy, please keep in mind it's always a conflicted collaboration between a young idealist who once viewed them as gods, and the world-weary cynic who now knows better.

*     *     *     *     *

when i first found out that (a) not only had the new widow sat down with arthur schlesinger back in early '64, sloshed some scotch over the rocks, lit a cigarette and recorded hours and hours of recollections of her white house years, but (b) choice excerpts of same were gonna be featured in their unexpurgated form in a two-hour ABC special years before she had intended their release, i sprung a lil' historical boner in spite of myself.

because this was the woman who had famously dubbed lyndon and ladybird "colonel cornpone and his little porkchop", so i was expecting some good shit.

what i shoulda remembered was, this was also the woman who had not only retroactively invented camelot, but had on very short notice managed to research, script, art direct, choreograph, stage-manage and star in the most spectacularly successful state funeral in recorded history.

in other words, i shoulda known from the get-go the whole thing would be nothing but an artful perpetuation of the kennedy myth--but still, i had high hopes.

so i DVR'd it.  and tonight, i watched.  my favorite quote [from her fevered account of the cuban missile incident her husband turned into a crisis and which is a subject for another day]:

Please don't send me away to Camp David ... Please don't send me anywhere.  If anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you ... even if there's not room in the bomb shelter in the White House ... I just want to be with you and I want to die with you.

and all i could think was, "really?  then hold still, dammit."

what a difference a decade makes

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presented for (a) all you empiricists out there who insist dollar debasement inflation isn't a problem; and (b) anyone who thinks that anything foisted upon us by anyone in power during the past 10 years was a good idea.

h/t mark mchugh at across the street

what, you were expecting hearts and flowers?

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every year at this time, as america is manipulated by its government and its media into alternating bouts of patriotic wailing and rending of garments on one hand, and scared-rabbit fear of an anniversary attack on the other, i go back and watch the video i posted on this day last year, and a cold, quiet rage reignites within me.

not, understand, at the ragtag band of allahu akbar-shrieking primitives we're told planned and pulled off all this destruction all by themselves, but at the masterminds, whoever and wherever they might be.

only this year, i find i'm far from the only architecturally-trained skeptic out there.  an organization calling itself "architects & engineers for 9/11 truth" has produced a riveting 15-minute video, which, in the three weeks of its existence, has already garnered some serious attention.

i really don't care what your views are on conspiracy theories in general or 9/11 in particular--i invite you to tear yourself away from the ground-zero circus long enough to watch something that might actually matter.

i've been waiting for this for weeks

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you know, take in some light, escapist fare, get my mind off things.

would you buy a used krugerrand from this man?

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so today i'm scrolling through my news aggregators when i come across the following:

wait--the great keynesian oracle of the left has, after a decade of dismissive condescension whenever the subject is raised, finally deigned to address the 800-pound bull in the room?  "oh, this is gonna be good," i think to myself as i click.

what follows are select quotes from dr. krugman's little treatise, interspersed with my comments.

he opens with the following parenthetical:

(Yes, it’s 4:30 AM where I am. I found myself wide awake, thinking about gold prices. You got a problem with that?)

i have not the slightest problem believing this--the barbarous relic's galling and unfathomable rise against all keynesian reason has no doubt caused the good professor any number of sleepless nights.

In assessing economic prospects since the financial crisis of 2008, there have been two kinds of people: inflationistas and deflationistas.

actually, there's a third kind of people he apparently can't fit into his model:  those (like me) who believe that as the crisis progresses, essentials like food, water, fuel and farmland will experience breathtaking inflation, while non-essentials (i.e., ipads and pretty much every other first-world frill one can think of) won't be worth the pound of rice one would rather have.  but i digress.

I am, of course, a big deflationista

well, no shit, paul--that's the only way you can claim with a straight face that all that stimulus couldn't possibly cause inflation (in fact, all of the chaos and death that took place over the course of the recent "arab spring" as a partial result of your and your cronies' misguidedly inflationary policies--maybe that's what should be keeping you up at night).

But what about gold? As some readers and correspondents love to point out, you would have made a lot of money if you’d bought gold early in this mess. So doesn’t that vindicate the inflationistas, to some extent?

a good question, i say.

My usual response has been that I have no idea what drives the price of gold

again, i totally believe him.

and then he goes on to take a gratuitous swipe at "glenn beck followers" before taking his readers down a twisting path to his sudden blinding insight:  gold is rising because of...wait for it...deflation!

how did he come to this unprecedented conclusion?  by a line of reasoning which is so torturous and convoluted--replete with diagrams and arcane references ("hotelling"--really, paul?)--that i won't even attempt to condense it here.  seriously, you gotta go take a look for yourself.

anyway, after contorting himself into a rhetorical and logical pretzel in order to make the square peg of reality fit into the round hole of his worldview, he comes to the following conclusion as regards his shiny new model:

And this says that the price of gold should jump in the short run.

really, paul--ya think?

he then goes on to gloat about how "intuitive" his new revelation is (so intuitive it took him ten years to dream it up), and humbly closes with the following:

But suppose this [my theory] is the right story, or at least a good part of the story, of gold prices. If so, just about everything you read about what gold prices mean is wrong.

that's right, doug casey--and jim willie, aubie baltin, peter schiff, doug mcalvany, roger weigand and all the other other clear-eyed analysts i follow who started tracking the rise of gold right after the dotcom bust back at about the same time the good dr. krugman was saying shit like

To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

all of you rubes may have been right, but it was totally for the wrong reasons, you got that?

*    *     *     *     *

so now that dr. krugman has devised a face-saving way for him and his fellow academicians to climb aboard the gold bandwagon, will their mainstream followers be far behind?  is this the push gold needs to enter phase two of its long bull market?  stay tuned...

a post-labor day post

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i used to be such a conscientious blogger--you know, posting semi-regularly, responding to comments, following up on dangling threads, that sorta thing--but all that has pretty much gone by the wayside lately.

all i can offer by way of explanation is that i've become a deer caught in the headlights of world events--events i've long known would come to pass, and from which i've profited handsomely, but which have nonetheless stunned me with their unfolding speed to the point that i can do little but watch in dismay as the world as i've known it disintegrates before my eyes.

one of the things each of my chosen prophets predicted (and the thing which prompted this post) was that the global elites who caused this mess would, when the shit finally hit the fan, set the victims of their crimes against one another, thus effectively deflecting blame from themselves.

and this they've done, brilliantly:  first, by making their crimes so complicated that barely a handful of their educationally dumbed-down victims could begin to grasp the enormity of what had been perpetrated upon them; and second, by enlisting their bought-and-paid-for media shills and politicians to fan the flames of (lower) class warfare.

so the tea party's declared war on labor, and labor has just declared war right back, when their collective rage might be more constructively utilized by, say, banding together, rampaging through the streets and hanging investment bankers from every lamppost in lower manhattan.

not that i would ever advocate such a course of action, you understand.

they say it's the first thing to go

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me:  wow, so you're really an art detective?

him (enunciating carefully):  no, i'm in architecture--we design buildings.

funny, never heard from him again

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[from the archives]

a corollary to the pomona theorem:  it can be wise to refrain from exercising one's scintillating wit until after one has closed the deal.

the parable of the dented fender

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remember back at the end of this post where i proclaimed my love for my new car?

yeah, well, we always hurt the ones we love (or maybe that's just me).

when i went in for the estimate, i pushed the guy to try and keep it at or below $1,000, that magic number being my deductible--that way, i figured, i could just pay for it outta pocket and avoid filing a claim with my insurance company.  when he balked, i told him i'd be perfectly happy with a used fender, and the bumper didn't look too bad--it just needed a little touching up.

for a minute, it looked as if it might be possible--until he opened the hood, that is.  as he poked around, finding more and more wrong, my heart sank--as the total inched inexorably toward the $1,500 mark, i realized i'd have to file a claim after all.

with that realization, my attitude did a complete one-eighty.  screw the used fender and the touched-up bumper--if the insurance company was picking up the tab, we were gonna fix this fucker better than new, goddammit.  as he continued to poke around, finding more and more wrong and the total inched inexorably past the $2,000 mark [because by now he knew the insurance company was involved], my satisfaction grew--suddenly, i was all, like, "hey, look at this" and "don't forget about this" and "i know it's on the other side of the car, but can you fix this, too?".

in other words, i displayed the kinda behavior humans can reliably be counted on to lapse into when, as the redoubtable mrs. thatcher so memorably put it, it's "other people's money".

what's the point of this little parable, you ask?

simple:  next time you wonder why (a) healthcare and college in this country are so expensive; (b) government spending and future entitlements are orders of magnitude higher than revenues; (c) the welfare classes are rioting in europe; and/or (d) [insert leftist- or corporatist-induced economic distortion of your choice here],

come back, read this post and multiply the above numbers by a few trillion.

look out, here comes tomorrow

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[i know this blog hasn't been much fun lately.  i promise some entertaining shit soon.]

so the market's crashing and everybody's all, like, surprised and shit.  or should i say, everybody but my eleven readers, upon each of whose memory is engraved in letters of fire that immortal post i wrote back in april in which i laid out exactly why what's now happening would happen right about now, right?

no?

(sigh)  i really wonder why i bother sometimes.

well, lemme start this post with why what's now happening is not happening:  it's not happening because, as our "let 'em eat cake" president maintains, the recovery he so splendidly engineered has suddenly hit a patch of bad luck

You had an Arab Spring in the Middle East that promises more democracy and more human rights for people, but it also drove up gas prices -- tough for the economy, a lot of uncertainty.  And then you have the situation in Europe, where they’re dealing with all sorts of debt challenges, and that washes up on our shores.  And you had a tsunami in Japan, and that broke supply chains and created difficulties for the economy all across the globe.

the irony of blaming the "arab spring" uprisings which were caused in no small part by the inflationary policies of his phony recovery aside, what the president failed to mention in that nice little speech was the fact that, despite each of the incidents he cited, the american stock market had, by the end of june, regained the ground it had lost over the spring and was approaching its two-year highs.

in fact, the stock market has continued the climb it started back in march 2009 (i.e., the beginning of the "obama recovery") through all sorts of bad news that in any sane universe shoulda sent it tumbling to 4,000 long ago.

was this because the american "recovery" was sufficiently strong to weather such storms, as the president, his lackeys and so many in the media maintain?  fuck no--it was because, for most of the last two years and four months, at the first sign of faltering,  the plunge protection team (aka the fed) was there to pump whatever liquidity was required into the market to keep it buoyant [seriously, i only wish i had a nickel for every late-session turnaround "rally" the market has staged over the last couple years].

but then the quantitative-easing party ended: as of june 30, there were no more liquidity injections courtesy of helicopter ben.  the market see-sawed around through most of july like one of those staggering cowboys that had taken a bullet in a bad western, and then it was finally time to drop.

and drop it has, just like back on april 8 i told you it would:

if, as promised, [bernanke] ends QE in order to curb the inflation, our vaunted "economic recovery" that's been running on nothing but this fed-provided life support will promptly collapse, taking with it not only precious metals (temporarily, anyway), but the stock market, job creation, what's left of the housing market and whatever shreds of hope barack obama might still have of re-election.

i.e., what's happening now is a long-delayed continuation of what started back in 2007:  the inevitable death spiral of the american economy.

ah, but i was wrong about one thing, wasn't i?  see, usually when the market corrects in any serious way, it takes metals with it, if for no other reason than because investors are often forced to liquidate their winners to cover their losers.  but boy, not this time--people are starting to catch on.

so where do we go from here?  by the time you read this, tomorrow will have come, and i don't expect it to be pretty.

on august 26, ben bernanke will give a speech from the fed's annual economic symposium at jackson hole, wyoming.  why is this important, you ask?  because he used the occasion of last year's speech to announce QE II, which promised infusion of new liquidity gave the market another year of seemingly vibrant life.

if, as is widely anticipated, mr. bernanke uses the occasion of this year's speech to announce another round of, as governor perry of texas recently put it, "money printing" in an attempt to stem the current market bloodbath and thus kick the can down the road one more time, will it work again?  i honestly dunno--the world is waking up awful fast.

here is what i do know:  at the time of mr. bernanke's speech in august of 2010, you coulda bought an ounce of gold for a little over $1,200, and an ounce of silver for a little over $17.

august 2012?  extrapolate for yourselves, bitches.

i guess it's all in the spin

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so today i got an email from an old friend, the pertinent portion of which i've reproduced below

which depressed me unutterably.

why?  because this particular friend (let's call her "babe"), as far from stupid as she happens to be, and despite the screaming evidence all about her to the contrary

still feels the need to self-deprecate and apologize for taking an eminently rational step towards protecting her hard-earned wealth.

as i sat there and thought about why the stigma surrounding gold could still possibly exist in america, i realized that for many it probably all comes down to its association with

see, like so many of my friends, the babe in question happens to be a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. and while in other circumstances i generally consider that condition nothing more than a minor, benign and often amusing derangement, i'm now realizing that it and the knee-jerk prejudices it breeds is probably going to doom many of her ilk to future and unnecessary poverty.  many, but thankfully not all.

you did the right thing, babe.

day 36: it was fun while it lasted

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and no, we're not talking about the failed "one blogpost per day" experiment--we're talking about the number of days since mkf last allowed vodka to pass his parched lips.

i'll (probably) be more specific later--for now, please allow me a minute to bask in the long-denied glow, ok?

day 16: i got nothin

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committing to a blogpost a day for a month is a fine idea. committing to abstinence from alcohol for a month is also a fine idea.  doing them both in the same month has turned out to be a really, really bad idea.

day 15: and the world hangs breathless on our fate

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Playing poker is part of politics, as is theatrical posturing. That's fair enough. But what America is currently exhibiting is the worst kind of absurd theatrics. And the whole world is being held hostage.

some german newspaper

it's fascinating to watch as a fat, complacent government grown used to kicking the can down the road is finally forced to deal with the consequences of decades of political expediency and make damned-if-it-does, damned-if-it-doesn't decisions.

and this is just the warm-up round, folks.

day 14: propaganda shot of the week

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this little tableau struck me for a couple different reasons:

(1) its utter absurdity; and

(2) the fact that, while he was one of the early cheerleaders for the full-body scanners the TSA currently employ to keep every innocent man, woman and child in america safe from one another, ol' rummy obviously isn't about to step his wrinkled ass into one.

(and while i could be wrong about this, i'd be willing to bet he's never allowed so much as a sip of diet coke to cross his lips, either.)

day 13: if you only watch one video today

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make it this one, in which the man who singlehandedly dictates U.S. monetary policy reveals his complete and utter misunderstanding of the nature of money.

[and in which representative ron paul reminds us of what the nation will have lost when he's no longer around to speak truth to power come january 2013.]

or if you just want the cliff-notes version,

day 12: why are we over there, again?

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so after ranting on the subject just last night, i wake up to the following headlines:

a decade ago, we committed our military might, the lives of thousands of our soldiers, our treasure and our national prestige to the dubious tasks of waging war and nation-building in afghanistan and iraq.

and for what--so that these countries can descend into chaos as soon as we withdraw, leaving their region far less stable than had we done nothing?

if there's a god up there, may he damn to hell the foolish, arrogant men who foisted these follies upon us.

____________
update:  i can be a little cranky when i first get up.

day 11: chart of the day

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so, as the red and blue teams in congress continue their bickering about how best to rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic, i would ask you to take a look at the following chart, courtesy of the st. louis fed--i've put it up before; it's one of my favorites--

and, as you contemplate the more-or-less straight line in which federal spending has increased over the last 10 years--a doubling, from $1.9 trillion when dubya took office to $3.8 trillion today, during a period of relatively low inflation--i ask you, my readers, the following question:

is your life better or easier than it was 10 years ago?

and i'm not asking whether your quality of life has doubled like the federal spending; no, i'm just asking if all this debt creation has benefited you, mr. or ms. average joe or ethel, in any material way.

no?  you must not be a banker or a federal employee.  how about this question:

do you feel safer than you did 10 years ago?

i remember back when bush and his cronies initially estimated their glorious iraqi adventure to make the world safe for democracy would cost a mere $60 billion, and afghanistan a fraction of that--and scoffed when it was suggested the cost might go as high as $100 billion.  today, of course, such numbers seem quaint when compared to the $1.2 trillion we're at today.

but hey, small price to pay to make us safer, right?  no?  well, something the government's doing has gotta be working, doesn't it?  how about this question:

is all the stimulus money at least creating jobs like it's supposed to?

well, yeah, it is.  of course, these new jobs are costing us an average of $278,000 apiece--but hey, if it gets people back to work then it's worth it, right?

no?  well, here are a few more:

are we a stronger, more powerful or more prestigious nation than we were 10 years ago? 

is our industrial/manufacturing base stronger?

is public education better than it was 10 years ago?

is our infrastructure better than it was 10 years ago?

are there fewer poor people?

is social security better funded? 

are healthcare or college more affordable?

no, no, no, no, no and no?  then, if creating and then spending all those trillions of dollars didn't solve any of the problems mentioned above, i have to ask all you taxpayers out there:

as its catalog of failures and voracious appetite both continue to grow, are you still willing to continue to feed the beast of big government in whatever quantities it demands?

and if the answer to that question is yes, then can somebody please tell me

why?