have i mentioned i have one of those voices that carries?

so tonight at work:

"hey mike, you wanna come in on sunday?"

"no."

"you sure?  it's for [toothsome young first-year associate]."

"look, the only reason i'd drag my hungover ass in here on a sunday morning is to see how [toothsome young first-year associate] looks in sweatpants.  that'd be good for an hour or so, but if he wanted to keep me here any longer than that he'd have to start taking shit off."

i watch my co-worker's guffaw in response to this brilliance freeze into a wide-eyed, fixed smile, and i know without even turning around that...fuck.

and, sure as shit, here his pretty lil' ass comes, studiously looking down at the document he's holding, through the open door.

did he hear me?  dunno, couldn't tell.  but i expect that if he did, i'll probably hear about it.

excuse me, now--i need to go count my fuck-you money again.

another day in congress

1.  the last honest man

representative ron paul of texas delivered his farewell address to the house today, using fifty minutes of the hour alloted to him for that purpose to summarize his core philosophy concerning the role of government--a philosophy and message which has varied little in the 36 years since he first set foot in that chamber--and to leave his fellow members, and his fellow americans, to consider some very pointed questions.

his speech--which i watched in its entirety, and will watch again--can be found starting at about 2:08 in the below CSPAN clip, and i would encourage every reader of this blog, whether you think you agree with dr. paul about anything or not, to listen to every word of it.  because this isn't cheap political rhetoric designed to play to the masses, folks--this is hard truth from a man who can't be bought, and i don't know of anything coming out of washington more rare or more precious than that.




and now, moving to the other end of the spectrum, we have

2.  the least honest men

today, the house financial services subcommittee concluded its yearlong investigation into the MF Global collapse and concurrent outright theft of $1.6 billion of customer funds by announcing it will issue a report tomorrow essentially assigning principal blame for said epic criminal incompetence to its wholly rightful owner, MF's CEO, jon corzine.  the report was unanimously endorsed by every member of the subcommittee--every one, that is, except for the democrats, not a single one of which felt there was sufficient evidence pointing to the guilt of their good friend (and top democratic bundler) mr. corzine to warrant such drastic action.*

the corruption, the conflict of interest--they don't even try to hide it anymore, because they know that, after all these years of it, we're so passively numbed and accepting of whatever it is they choose to foist on us, they can pretty much do whatever they want.  and so they will.

scroll back up there, click play, and cue up dr. paul--it'll be an hour well spent, i promise you.

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* and please don't imagine that i'm painting the republicans as the heroes here by any means.  if mr. corzine had been one of theirs, you can be assured that the vote would've been exactly opposite

it's because we see

they'd asked me, i coulda saved 'em some research money.  it's nice to put the booze goggles on and view the world through the same pinhole that everybody else does; there's comfort in that sometimes.

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