guttermorality

so where were you?

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:57:00 +0000

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like everybody else, i remember exactly where i was when i heard the news: on the school bus, coming home from first grade on a sunny thursday in houston. we were especially raucous that day--only reason i remember this is because, after our bus driver stood up, turned to face us, asked for quiet and told us what had just happened up in dallas, the utter silence the rest of the ride home was deafening.

i remember the bleak stillness up and down birdwood road as i got off the bus and trudged home that day--the street was completely devoid of life. i remember my mother sitting open-mouthed and silent in front of the television when i walked in the door.

as that grim, black & white weekend played itself out, three things made an indelible impression on my young psyche: (1) the tv on continuously, with that flag-draped coffin the centerpiece of almost every shot; (2) my mother's sudden cries of "oh my god, they shot him!" as the assassination of the assassin unfolded before her very eyes; and (3) every neighbor who had casually and robustly wished for the downfall of the king being struck dumb with horror when it actually happened.

and to this day--as cynical as i am, and knowing all that i now know about the dark side of camelot--whenever i look up and realize november 22 has rolled around again, it all comes back in a flash.

the whole KSM thing

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:13:00 +0000

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while most of the country is scratching their heads trying to figure out the twisted rationale behind the obama administration's decision to forego a military tribunal and try the architect of 9/11 in federal court in new york, to me it was merely another example of how tragically in-over-his-head our young and untried president is.

and as further elements of the story emerge--such as how khalid sheikh mohammed was willing to plead guilty and accept the death penalty without trial at guantanamo--it just gets crazier and crazier.

if you haven't seen the following clip in which senate judiciary committee member lindsay graham (never one of my favorites--until now anyway) questions eric holder on the wisdom of this decision, you need to. the good senator starts out easy, lulls our attorney general into a sense of complacency, sets him up--and then, around 1:50, moves in for the kill.

patrick leahy comes in afterwards and attempts to mitigate the fiasco by blathering about guantanamo for a couple minutes, but the damage is done.

as the foregoing makes painfully clear, holder is not only outta his league, he and his boss haven't even made a half-ass effort at thinking this decision through--not only in terms of the instant case, but as to the precedent it would set should, for instance, osama bin laden be caught. this would be funny as hell if it wasn't so deadly serious.

a couple other senators had some good questions, too:

senator herb kohl (a democrat, btw):

In the worst case scenario and the trial does not result in conviction,
what would be your next steps?

eric holder:

Failure is not an option.

sen. chuck grassley takes a go:

I don’t see how you can say that failure is not an option when you’ve got juries in this country.

holder:

If -- if there were the possibility that a trial were not successful, that would not mean that the person would be released into our country.

wait a minute--what happened to the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven? wouldn't pre-trial statements like this by the prosecution be considered wildly prejudicial? i'll bet KSM's attorneys will think so.

and what all about all the evidence gathered via waterboarding and absent the administration of miranda--isn't that all fruit from a very poisoned tree?

and it's not just holder--his boss the president said something similar to NBC when asked about those who might find KSM's receiving the rights of a US citizen offensive:

I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.

really, mr. president? a foregone conclusion already?

holder even got his own "i'm the decider" moment.

senator john kyl:

You have repeatedly said that your decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Article III courts is because that is where you have the best chance to prosecute… How could you be more likely to get a conviction in federal court when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has already asked to plead guilty before military commission and be executed?

holder:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not making this decision. The attorney general of the United States is making this decision.

yeah, and thanks for that one, eric.

why are they doing this? while i have my own theories, here are the reasons the obama administration is spouting in defense of this most boneheaded of decisions:

1. they wanna show the world how "open" and "transparent" our justice system is.

yeah, and all their "he's gonna go down for sure, and if he doesn't, we'll just re-arrest him on other charges so that he never goes free" statements do nothing but reinforce that idea.

2. they wanna show the world that we're "not afraid" to try him in a civilian court.

of course we're not--as long as we have tens of millions of dollars' worth of police and military personnel and firepower paralyzing the city of new york for weeks in order to provide "security" while this farce runs its course.

and the clear message to the world? well, think about it: can you imagine any one westerner whose presence in even the humblest, most backward middle-eastern country could stir up this much shit? yet here we are, the mightiest nation on earth, preparing to call out half the army to protect us in our own country against possible fallout from KSM's fan base when we "try" him.

my prediction is, this show trial will prove to be the greatest propaganda tool radical islam has ever had--even at my most creative, i can't imagine a better way to give aid and comfort to the enemy.

oh, and one other question, mr. failure-is-not-an-option: what is your politically-correct, diversity-loving ass gonna do about the muslims in the jury pool who swear with shifty eyes that they can be impartial?

this is gonna be rich.

a guttermorality news round-up

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:49:00 +0000

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since documenting the details of the day-to-day march of western civilization towards the abyss has become just too exhaustingly painful for yours truly to rail about on a regular basis, i've decided to do it in big batches at random periodic intervals [i.e., like tonight].

from the guttermorality health-and-science desk:

global ~~warming~~ climate change.

the most inconvenient truth i've come across in awhile was a quote in a recent short-but-sweet article by BBC climate correspondent paul hudson, as follows:

For the last 11 years, we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though manmade carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

[emphasis mine]

heretic? of course he is, and he has been roundly condemned as such by the faithful.

because, make no mistake about it: the global-warming cult is every bit as much a religion--with all its high priests, dogma and trappings--as any of the more traditional religions at which most of its secular adherents would sneer.

and i'm talking not only in its dubious basis in fact, but in its desire for world domination.

be dubious, my children--be very dubious.

from the guttermorality national desk:

the fort hood shooting.

wow, just look at how far america's come.

back at the outbreak of world war II [i.e., the last war we won], the civil rights of thousands of loyal japanese-american citizens were, without much thought or debate, thrown out the window for what almost nobody at the time even questioned was a more important ideal; i.e., the security of the united states of america.

today, a scant 67 years later? hell, we'll happily lay back, spread our legs, compromise our military and our borders and sacrifice the lives of at least 13 of our soldiers, because god knows a minor abstraction like national security is far less important than the all-important goal of not offending our enemies.

has the pendulum swung from one dangerous extreme to the other? what the fuck [assuming you have a rational, functioning brain] do you think?

from the guttermorality world-affairs desk:

the obama bow.

watching this guy veer wildly between snotty aloofness and kiss-ass obsequiousness when he meets with world leaders is kinda like watching oprah back during that period when she was alternately fat and thin--you just never know which one you're gonna get when you flip on the tv.

from the guttermorality political desk:

2012.

the next presidential election will be the republicans' to lose, and it'll probably be the last time they'll ever have a real shot at the white house.

with this in mind, is the gop rallying behind the traditional conservative values of fiscal responsibility, limited government and secularity in order to seek the kind of candidate that will unite and inspire the core of america for what will probably be the most important presidential election of my lifetime?

oh, hell no--they're pandering to the same fools-for-jesus constituency whose collective ignorant, know-nothing ass they've been kissing ever since said crowd proved to be such useful idiots in the reagan years.

so it looks like my choice in 2012 is shaping up to be (a) more of the same; or (b) some unholy combination of palin/pawlenty/jindal/bachmann/huckabee.

i may well opt for (3) costa rica [and don't think i'm kidding].

from the guttermorality financial desk:

hey, even a broken drunk's right twice a day--i can only hope at least a couple of you paid attention to me way back when.

movie night

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:33:00 +0000

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[during which mkf not only socializes with actual people, but even has actual fun.]

after almost two years in the making, (a) the planets aligned, (b) the schedules coincided, (c) our host finally dragged his lazy ass to costco and bought the requisite big-ass flat-screen, and (d) mkf was only an hour late picking up v--i.e., it finally happened:

movie night.

the theme had been planned long before by our host, john, and myself: a double-feature of cheesy-yet-excellent post-"baby jane" thrillers--and everybody brought their favorite dish.

we chose to lead with a classic from bette:

followed as inevitably as night follows day by the immortal miss crawford's

trust me, an inspired pairing if ever there was one.

problem was, by the time we finished with drinks and dinner (which were incomparably excellent, as the following snapshot should attest)

we only managed to make it through the first film (which was a rousing success, of course) before reluctantly calling it a night and promising a raincheck for the second.

hey--suddenly, a reason to live.

would you drop your pants for this guy?

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:52:00 +0000

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no? then obviously you're not straight.

while i thank whatever god there might be that my personal interest in unavailable straight guys lasted only for about as long as it took me to figure out there were all kinds of perfectly-acceptable homogays out there who were more than happy to get naked with me, that fact in no way discounts--as has been mentioned previously--my fascination with the intricate machinations employed by shlubs like jeffrey graybill in order to get into the pants of clueless straight guys.

this guy's shtick? he'd post ads on craigslist posing as a fertility doctor looking for sperm donors and offering the lucky recipients $4,000 for their goods if they met his rigorous standards. needless to say, he found lots of willing idiots--as many as 40, they think--before he got caught.

my favorite quote from the various news sources i've perused concerning this story would be the following:

He would collect semen, urine and blood samples from victims before touching the men inappropriately during hernia and testicular examinations, according to police.

i mean, jesus god--how many stupid straight guys are out there, anyway?

[never mind--total rhetorical question]

it's not just me, right?

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:53:00 +0000

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back in college, i read, and was completely creeped out by, stephen king's pet sematary.

if you haven't read it, its basic premise was: if you lost someone dear and the loss was too great to bear, you could inter your loved one's dead body in a very special burial ground once reserved for pets, and they'd come back to life, and back to you--problem was, what came back was only nominally similar to what had lived before; it was the differences that were horrifying.

these days, and due to the fact that it's my 'hood, i spend a lot of time in the pet sematary otherwise known as beverly hills, and just walking to the drugstore or the dry-cleaners i see countless examples resembling the pic above--rich women with great bone structure who have decided that the horrifingly-artificial semblance of youth is preferable to reality.

today, i took a mental-health day--called in sick, slept in late and ran some errands around my little village. perhaps my poor, overworked retinas were exposed to one too many sad exemplars of the above, or maybe i just had one too many tonight.

whatever--this one's going in before i stagger off to bed.

[apologies to victoria, even though she totally deserves it]

let's try this again

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:45:00 +0000

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[this was supposed to have been last weekend's post, and for a minute it was--until i dragged my ass outta bed the next morning, saw the horrific left turn it had somehow taken the night before and yanked it immediately.

maybe one of these days i'll learn: write drunk, publish sober.]

six oldsmobiles and a chevy

one of the great things about maintaining a blog is that random shit like this--a sudden urge to scour the internet for pictures of every car my family owned while i was growing up--becomes a concrete, frozen memory for all the world (or at least, all eleven of my readers) to see.

as is often the case, what started out as a simple, straightforward pictorial has turned into yet another lengthy, anecdote-filled tale from my past--feel free to skip all the prose and just look at the pictures.

i must admit, i've been brooding about the sad, sorry demise of general motors [because make no mistake, that's what it was] ever since it happened--for me, it truly was the end of an era.

see, i grew up in a time in america when there were only three tv networks and three car companies--namely, GM, ford and chrysler--of any real consequence. while a family might be permitted to promiscuously flip from NBC to CBS to ABC on their televisions, cars were different--folks back then tended to pick a brand and stick with it through thick and thin.

our family? we were GM people--more particular to my branch of the tree (i.e., the ones who couldn't afford cadillacs), we were oldsmobile people, goddammit.

the following is the first car of which i have any recollection whatsoever:

1. 1956 oldsmobile holiday 88 sedan

ours wasn't anywhere near this fun; it was solid white on the outside, but even more red in its interior than the above--more [in fact, exactly] like this:

can you youngsters of today even imagine riding around in a car like this?

long before seatbelts and car-seats shackled the weak impulses of the meek, cowed, ritalin-drugged youth of today, my little brother and i would bounce wildly from front-seat to back in our holiday 88's vast interior, beating each other senseless and laughing maniacally as our mother careened down the road, all windows open in the stifling houston heat, cigarette in one hand whilst screaming and slapping around behind her in a vain attempt to control us with the other.

god, those were the days.

2. 1964 oldsmobile jetstar 88 sedan

our family's first new car.

once again, ours wasn't anywhere near this fun--it wasn't red, and it never ventured anywhere near the slopes.

in fact, its first iteration (so i'm told) was a dark, drab green--my father, having traded in the holiday 88 and picked out our new car without consulting my mother [he had a tendency to do unilateral shit like that], was apparently totally unprepared for her tearful reaction to his nice surprise.

by the time i got home from school that day--i remember it was cold and raining, and kennedy was freshly dead--a neighbor had been dragged in to watch my brother and sister, and my parents were on their way back to the dealership to pick out something my mother could live with. i sat there in front of the tv, literally beside myself with excitement at the prospect of a new car, and counted the minutes until they got back.

i still remember hearing them pull into the driveway, dashing to the back door and flinging it open to watch as our shiny new car, droplets of rain beading across its sleek, sky-blue hood, rolled into the garage.

it looked exactly like this (only much more shiny):

they piled us all into the car, and we went for a ride. it was a miracle machine--i mean, you pushed a button on the dash and ice-cold air emerged, for chrissakes--who'd've ever thought? and my mother could move the thing from lane to lane with a finger, such was the magic of power steering--and the heady new-car smell emerging from its plastic royal-blue interior i remember to this day, but can't even begin to describe.

and, like its predecessor--in fact, like all full-sized GM cars of that era--it was big and powerful and fast: stomp on the gas, and that big v-8 would lay you back in your seat as it leapt forward to claim the road.

ultimately, the jetstar would prove no more durable than the life we thought would go on forever--by late 1970 we were fatherless, near-penniless and sorely in need of a new car.

enter the deus ex machina known around our house as uncle don.

3. 1969 oldsmobile cutlass supreme holiday coupe

that sweet little cutlass--i remember it well.

don drove it down one night, told us it was ours [it had been his company car--he'd bought out the lease so his dead brother's widow would have a decent car to drive], swapped his keys for ours, gave my mom a hug and immediately headed back north to tulsa in the by-then decrepit jetstar (which would overheat twice before he managed to make it home) because he had to work the next day.

incomparably beautiful, our new car was a sleek, glistening, metallic tobacco brown, looking like it had been built for nothing but speed. after don left, we walked around it a few times, just gawking.

my recollections of that first drive (cross-town, to pick up my little sister at her dance class): it was dusk, a light rain was falling, the wipers and air were on low, the rich, brown interior was redolent of don's cigars, neil diamond's "cracklin' rosie" was playing softly on the radio, and at every red light to which we smoothly rolled to a stop, my mother and i just looked at each other and shook our heads in disbelief at how goddam lucky we were.

needless to say, we loved that car.

and it served us nobly and well and with great style until, newly-minted driver's license in hand, yours truly managed to single-handedly deliver the one-two punches that finished it off.

4. 1971 oldsmobile custom cruiser station wagon

[i decided fore-and-aft pictures of this monstrosity were necessary in order to attempt to convey an accurate impression of its sheer size.]

practically the only person who was happy about the cutlass's premature demise was my uncle don's wife, pat--it gave her the perfect excuse to pawn the big green albatross she'd been dying to get rid of onto us.

dubbed "the titanic" by my mother immediately upon delivery, it remains to this day the largest, heaviest, most ponderously unnavigable non-commercial vehicle i've ever driven.

and by "driven," what i really mean is, you gripped the wheel of this cushy, softly-sprung motherfucker, squared your shoulders, sighted across the length of its vast hood, aimed it in the general direction you wanted it to go, hit the gas and hoped for the best--seriously, on the best of days, driving this thing was like navigating a ship on the high seas.

and fuel economy? yeah--you could push the pedal, hear that mighty 455 v-8 roar and literally watch the needle drop towards "e" before it ever started to move.

i used it a couple times for booze runs, though--boy, did it load up nice. the suspension, such as it was, was never quite the same afterwards.

and then there was the time a dozen of my closest friends and i accidentally backed her into the lake with the tailgate down--the electrical system, such as it was, was never quite the same afterwards.

whatever--unloved and unmourned, we all breathed a sigh of relief when the titanic sank and the ringer in this little tale came along.

1973 chevrolet caprice classic

by this time, uncle don had graduated from being a vice-president buying out leases on cars owned by his employer to being the employer buying out leases on his own vice-presidents' cars, which is how ma got the caprice.

and even though it delivered her from the titanic, my mother hated this car from day one (i think for no other reason than because it was black-on-black, and god knows she had a history of distaste for dark-colored cars).

i, on the other hand, loved it--it was big and elegant and smooth and powerful--so i gave her my own new, smaller car and drove the caprice with great pleasure for a year or so, until something unexpected and marvelous happened.

5. 1976 oldsmobile delta 88 royale coupe

'big red,' we called her--she was a total fluke.

what happened was, a vice-president in don's company to whom pat [whom you really didn't wanna fuck with] had taken a particular dislike chose to prove her instincts correct by abruptly quitting and cashing in his stock options--don made all his people shitloads of money, and they mostly crapped on him in return--at a most inopportune time.

[said vp had good taste in cars, though, and had spent a lot of time carefully factory-ordering this one. my aunt pat, upon seeing it for the first time, decided it would be perfect for my mother.]

when said vp walked into my uncle's office to pick up his final check, don's secretary, barbara, told him to leave the keys to his car on her desk.

when he protested--don always let his departing executives take their cars--barbara flatly reiterated, "don said to leave your keys."

the vp in question slammed the keys down on her desk, snatched his final paycheck outta her hand and stalked out.

don, of course, knew nothing about any of this--all he knew was, his most-recently departed vp had for some inexplicable reason left the keys to a gorgeous, practically-new delta 88 royale coupe behind, thus providing a new car for...guess who?

pat, laughing, called my mother, filled her in on her machiavellian machinations and said, "act surprised when don calls you with the good news, ok?"

don flew her up to pick up the car, which was firemist red with a white vinyl top and whorehouse-velour interior [identical to the above, minus the pimped-out wheelz]--my mother finally had the car of her dreams.

she called me as soon as she got home: "honey, i thanked everybody, climbed behind the wheel of that thing, stopped at the first 7-11 i came across, bought a pack of virginia slims, a big coke with lots of ice and the eight-track of saturday night fever, slammed that bitch in, cranked up the volume, thanked god for all that was good and holy and boogied my happy ass all the way home."

god, she loved that car--and so did i.

see, at 21, having been born, bred and fully-acclimated to the marque, i had come to the belief that (a) there was nothing in this world to compare with the sheer majesty and power of a full-size, liberally-optioned general motors automobile; and (b) this particular car exemplified all that was and had ever been good about GM.

here's the only picture i have of big red [she was mine by the time this was taken], parked next to my brother's graduation-present jeep in the lot of the adjacent uncle-don-supplied condos he and i enjoyed whilst attending college on (you guessed it) uncle don's nickel--god, we were so insufferably spoiled, but that's a post for another day.

[in case you're wondering, this picture was taken not because of the car, but because it was a rare snow day in austin.]

all of the foregoing is what makes the final installment of this post so sadly paradoxical, because after '76, it was all downhill for GM--that's when the downsizing began.

and i'm not just talking mass--i'm talking vision.

6. 1982 oldsmobile cutlass supreme coupe

christmas, 1981--gathered together in tulsa, we watched as my mother opened the box containing the keys to the first truly-new car she had owned since that long-ago day when she and my father had rolled into our garage in the jetstar 88.

and, as always, don and pat meant well--it wasn't their fault that the new car they offered up to my mother was but a pale, scaled-down imitation of the mighty oldsmobiles that had come before it.

i mean, look at that sad, pitiful, downsized, impersonal piece of corporately-designed shit up there, and imagine having to reluctantly climb into its diminished quarters after having spent four glorious years in #5 above, not to mention all the full-bodied cars that had come before it--and trust me, the thing was as cheap, tinny, ungainly and underpowered as it looks.

my mother handled the transition graciously, of course--and, much to my delight, i ended up with big red for the remainder of my college career.

[what ultimately happened to big red, you ask? she and i ended up participating in a t-bone collision (refreshingly, not my fault) from which we both walked away relatively unscathed, whilst our opponents--a drunk and his flimsy post-1976 GM piece-of-shit--were (a) badly shaken up, and (b) totaled, respectively.]

of course, several cars have occupied my mother's driveway since, but not a single one has come close to being as distinctive or memorable as even the least of the foregoing.

R.I.P., GM--you will be missed.

from serious politics to dancing penises

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:39:00 +0000

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because that's the way we roll here.

h/t jezebel

a guttermorality political endorsement

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:10:00 +0000

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i just did something i swore i'd never do: i donated money to a political campaign.

mr. schiff has been featured on these pages before--i've been following him for a long time.

this is my kinda republican--he doesn't give a damn about such sideshows as abortion or gay marriage; he's got his eye on the only ball that matters right now: the financial future of the united states of america.

and speaking more broadly, he's also my kinda politician--a successful, self-made entrepreneur who came to politics only after having established his credibility out in the real world, and who is just as even-handedly critical of republican policies (and politicians) as he is of democrats'.

and the icing on the cake? he's going up against one of the chief architects of the financial catastrophe in which we we find ourselves today: that most bloated, corrupt and infinitely inept of all political hacks, christopher dodd.

schiff clearly saw--and has spent the last ten years warning the world about--everything that dodd was so obviously blind to. ridiculed for years as "dr. doom," schiff's critics have all pretty much shut up, as everything he predicted has pretty much come to pass.

and his followers? they're a passionate bunch, to say the least. from its humble beginnings as a grassroots "draft schiff" movement barely a year ago, his campaign has raised over $1.1 million, most of it from out-of-state donors--and far more than has the tainted mr. dodd.

how will this race play out? i think it's gonna be fascinating to watch. first, to see how he does against the various party hacks the republican establishment--who hate schiff and see him as a huge threat to their status quo--run against him in the primary; second, to see how the connecticut electorate take to his message; third, to see how his candidacy resonates nationally; and, finally, the reaction of the dodd camp to this, the most formidable threat they've seen in 30 years.

i, for one, will be following it closely.

if you'd like to get a sense of the man for yourself--or if you just want a quick primer on how we got to the sad, sorry place we are today, and where we're headed if things don't change--i urge you to watch the following clip featuring most of his very first campaign speech, given yesterday in hartford. trust me, there's no empty political rhetoric here:

[and now that he's gotten the stamp of approval from this bastion of respectability--seriously, what could possibly stop him?]

and no, the extra hour of drinking time does not make up for it

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:40:00 +0000

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can i just tell you how much i hate the ugly annual hoax that is daylight saving time?

they lure you in during those first heady days of spring by pseudo-magnanimously tossing you an extra hour of sunlight, only to cruelly snatch it away just when--as everything's dying and the days grow cold and short--you need it most.

i'm always ok (or what passes for ok with me, anyway) once i adjust to the jolt of sudden darkness at 5:00 of an autumn afternoon here in golden southern california--but that first grim week or so?

bleh.

and i'll bet that ribbon around the kid's neck holds a first-prize medal

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:30:00 +0000

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nothing new here, but the pure, complacent idiocy of this photograph and everything it implies just so completely annoyed the fuck outta me i had to post it.

six oldsmobiles and a chevy

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:31:00 +0000

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down for maintenance--check back tomorrow.

mkf defends the indefensible

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:53:00 +0000

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the following is a comment i just made, despite my better instincts, to this post over at puntabulous, a blog i dearly love (and, if history is any judge, from which i will probably henceforth be banned from commenting forevermore).

and it's not like the post in question was even particularly interesting--in fact, it was puked up by some guest-blogger--but what made it comment-worthy by moi were two things: (1) it was, like, the tenth reflexive, unthinking, half-assed condemnation of a column by the controversial pat buchanan which i myself had found fairly thought-provocative; and (2) being well into mkf cocktail #2, i figured, what the fuck--right place, right time.

whatever--if nothing else, it's a blogpost, and god knows i needed one:

i read and enjoy you, but never comment–-seeing as how my particular brand of neurotic darkness is so completely incompatible with all the lighthearted dorkiness that generally goes on here, i figure, why spoil things?

tonight (prolly because i’m a little shitfaced), i’m gonna make an exception, because here’s the thing about buchanan: yeah, he’s ultra-conservative; and yeah, he’s probably a nazi sympathizer; and yeah, he’d undoubtedly love to throw all us homogays into concentration camps and fill our every orifice with concrete–-believe me, i understand all that.

what i also understand–-and what most liberals either don’t, or won’t–-is, he’s also a very shrewd, observant student of history, and has drawn some very compelling parallels between the fall of past so-called eternal empires, and what’s now happening to ours.

in other words: yeah, he can be an asshole, but he can also be (and quite often is) right.

[excuse me now while i crawl back into my bunker at ruby ridge, adjust my tinfoil hat and await the invasion of the black helicopters]

i got nothin'

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:44:00 +0000

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except--since (a) i've been under the weather this week and missed seeing him; and (b) this blog seems to have become my personal scrapbook as of late--this shot of v from the early, heady days of his nascent career as a practicing homogay which somewhat recently came into my possession and which i can't even begin to tell you how much i fuckin' adore.

i wish i'd met you back then, too.

let's talk about swine flu a minute

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:20:00 +0000

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there are those out there (including at least one regular commenter to this blog) who would tell you that mkf gets all his news from fringe sources and conspiracy theorists. i am here to tell you this is not true--i only get about 95% of my news from those places; for the remaining 5% i turn to the mainstream media, because they can be counted upon at least 5% of the time to belatedly confirm what my fringe sources and conspiracy theorists have been telling me for months.

take this H1N1 hysteria, for instance:

seems that a major news organization--namely, CBS news--has, for once, done what all news-gatherers should be doing routinely but in actuality do rarely; namely, ignore what the powers-that-be are telling 'em and dig for the real truth.

bottom line: what CBS news found out is, probably less than 20% of the "swine flu" cases you hear reported in the mainstream media these days are any kind of flu, much less the goddam swine flu.

now that we've got the big reveal outta the way, let's backtrack to find how they arrived at the above conclusion, shall we?

first, CBS found out that back in july, the centers for disease control (CDC) advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, since, it being an established epidemic and all (?), continued testing seemed like a waste of resources.

which resulted in--what?--yes, that's right: anybody who showed up at their doctor's office or an emergency room with flu-like symptoms since july has pretty much automatically been branded a swine flu victim, whether they actually were or not.

so, their curiosity piqued, CBS news asked the CDC for state-by-state test results prior to halting all testing in july. when the CDC balked, CBS went to each and every state and asked for their statistics on lab-confirmed H1N1 cases prior to the july cut-off.

what did they find? this is where it gets interesting. CBS reported:

"The results reveal a pattern that surprised a number of health care professionals we consulted. The vast majority of cases were negative for H1N1 as well as seasonal flu, despite the fact that many states were specifically testing patients deemed to be most likely to have H1N1 flu, based on symptoms and risk factors, such as travel to Mexico."

wow--in other words, most of the people showing up at emergency rooms with "flu-like symptoms" didn't even have the goddam flu. here's a nice graphic that breaks it down for you:

[courtesy CBS news]

so how could the CDC's findings be so wildly at odds with those of CBS news?

well, you tell me. could it possibly be because there's a conflict of interest there--that the CDC's advisory committee is infested with all kinds of drug-industry folks who would profit greatly if swine-flu vaccines--at an average of $50 a pop--were hysterically demanded by a panicked populace?

oh, and even better--because this rushed-to-market vaccine was granted blanket immunity from lawsuits by congress in case anything goes wrong?

in other words, our government has just granted to the drug companies the same deal they gave wall street back in 1999: roll the dice as wildly as you want, baby--we'll cover ya.

and you people wonder why i don't trust the goddam government.

_________________

[oh, and since this story broke, have you seen it in the mainstream media, or did you have to hear about it from some drunken blogger with an audience of approximately eleven?

wake up and smell the coffee, children.]

personally, i would kill to have me as a drunk-commenter

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:47:00 +0000

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but you'd be fairly astounded at the legion of bloggers out there who don't see a visit from moi as the honor i always at least intend it to be (or then again, maybe you wouldn't).

while the following after-comment apology from the tail-end of my golden age of drunk-commenting happened to be issued to josh & josh [who, bless their hearts, still put up with my comments], it could just as easily have applied to any number of others who tend to run screaming when they see me coming.

this one's pretty good, tho--i guess that's why i saved it.

[proving once again you never know what you're gonna find while you're digging around for something else]

______________________

sober update: "tomorrow he'll cringe" woulda been so much better. damn.

and now, a talking head i actually like

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:20:00 +0000

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i've never talked about my friend mark, but something came up recently as regards him, so let's do that.

mark levine is one of the smartest, most accomplished guys i know: ivy-league educated, fulbright scholar, massive over-achiever, dyed-in-the-wool liberal, perennial optimist--in other words, my polar opposite in almost every way.

to give you an insight into mark's nature: dragged to an audition for wheel of fortune while an undergrad at harvard--he got on, the friend who dragged him there did not--mark, suddenly seeing this as his best shot at paying for law school, left nothing to chance. while the other contestants were no doubt crossing their fingers and thinking good thoughts, mark spent every night up until game day in the library poring over letter-frequency charts and books on cryptography and code-breaking, and calculating the physics of how hard he should spin the wheel based on its position. the result?

at the time i met him, mark was in his second year of law school at yale, and was visiting los angeles in preparation for a summer-associate gig at the firm where he would ultimately end up working after graduation. for whatever reason, we hit it off pretty much immediately.

how would i describe our relationship? to paraphrase hillary clinton, mark and i started an argument in the spring of 1991, and almost 20 years later, we're still talking.

always passionate about politics and policy, mark abandoned a successful and lucrative law career in order to take a job as counsel for congressman barney frank; and then, once he'd had his fill of intrigue on the hill, began a new career in radio, where for the last several years his show, the inside scoop, has given his listeners a perspective on washington and national/world events with a depth that they're not likely to get anywhere else in radioland.

i've watched mark evolve from his stiff, awkward beginnings into a polished, confident radio--and now, tv--personality, and struggle with his characteristic focused tenacity to make a name for himself in one of the toughest, most competitive businesses out there.

and it looks like all that hard work is finally beginning to pay off: he is now being heard nationally as a fill-in host on air america, and--the reason for this post, actually--just appeared last week for the first time on fox's the o'reilly factor, where, in the limited time bill allowed him, he gave as good as he got:

[incidentally, this clip is an instructive lesson as to how o'reilly works--avoiding his more formidable opponent and instead devoting most of the segment to a back-and-forth with the blonde bonehead who really contributed nothing of substance other than her apparent eagerness to act as an easy foil for the host.]

if you're weary of the kind of janeane garofalo-level drivel that passes for progressive talk radio these days and would prefer an informed, in-depth exploration of the issues of the day, i urge you to go over to radioinsidescoop.com and check mark out--in addition to his ongoing broadcasts, he has all of his past shows archived and available for free.

oh, and if you're in the d.c. area and think you can keep up, he's single ;)

he's not available? whatever--get the other one

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:32:00 +0000

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i've watched this clip a dozen times, and it just gets better and better.

h/t to v

update: even though i've been watching this clip all day, msnbc suddenly chooses to take it down five minutes after i publish a blogpost in which it is prominently featured. fine, whatever--i'm nothing if not adaptable. you assholes wanna make me create a re-enactment, i'm more than up to the task:

the clip opens with some anonymous msnbc news-chick

stating the following:

joining me now to talk about this--the nation's real problem of joblessness--the reverend al sharpton.

[cut to the following split screen]

the clueless anchor continues:

what's your reaction to hearing someone say, "you know, when it comes to income inequality, all's well--the rising tide floats all boats?"

[cut to the following shot, and the following priceless exchange]

uh, i'm reverend jesse jackson.

at which point the flustered anchor falls all over herself saying,

right--you know, i'm so sorry, the script in front of me said "the reverend al sharpton"--i'm looking at your face and i know you're reverend jackson--we all do--i'm sorry...

at which point the right reverend starts into his canned spiel and the clip mercifully ends.

trust me, it was funny as hell.

update #2: apparently the clip's back up, if only for the moment. whatever--i'm leaving my re-enactment in place, in case it disappears again.

and it's good to see your smiling face again, too

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:52:00 +0000

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first, he was gone for a week, and then just as he got back i took off for a week, and then work got in the way, and then...whatever--it was too long.

i took this picture yesterday with my crappy iphone at the papa john's in westwood as we waited for the crappy pizza we took home and ate curled up in fronta some crappy movie we'd picked up at blockbuster.

it was great.

23 in 79

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:29:00 +0000

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i mostly don't remember shit about my past, but i do remember the night the above picture was taken: it was at a party in austin on a chilly night in late 1979, in the first semester of my first year at the university of texas school of architecture--the gayest school in the most liberal university in the most liberal city in the lone star state, at a time when it looked like gay was gonna take over the world.

four years older than most of my peers, i typically exuded the kinda smiling confidence evident in the above snapshot, but truth be told, it was all a lie--i was scared shitless somebody was gonna find out i was as queer as half my classmates.

while most everybody else in my class partied and fucked each other senseless during our five years there, i mostly kept to myself and fended off advances with lame excuses.

downside of that cowardly decision: i'm the emotionally-stunted wreck you see before you today.

upside of that cowardly decision: virtually every hot guy who hit on me back then has been dead for at least fifteen years.

[btw, i still have that down jacket--it's held up much better than its owner.]

the $3,000 bay leaf and other stories

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:59:00 +0000

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flying into los angeles the other night, i happened to be waiting outside the rear lavatory at just the precise moment that we hit the only patch of turbulence in an otherwise calm flight—my timing tends to be good that way—resulting in my getting pitched against the bulkhead and ending up with a nice, colorful lump in the middle of my forehead.

all day today, it’s been nothing but “oh my god, what happened?”, with the follow-up question almost always being some variation of, “so what’s the airline gonna give you to make up for it?"

i guess i tend to be of the “shit happens” school of thought when it comes to stuff like this—it never occurred to me to even mention the incident to the airline, much less try to extort money or tickets outta them. this apparently makes me, by current american standards, a sucker.

a co-worker told me her mother's the same way--seems she was having dinner at a restaurant a year or so ago and inadvertently swallowed a bay leaf that was in her soup; it got stuck in her throat and she had to be taken to the emergency room to have it removed.

the restaurant tracked her down and not only paid her medical bills, but insisted that she accept a settlement check of $3,000 as their apology to her. when she refused, saying it was her own damn fault and she shoulda been paying more attention, they hounded her for a year until she finally accepted their check.

i haven't been able to get that story outta my mind all day. think about it--some woman does something stupid, and the business in which she happens to do it falls all over itself thrusting thousands of dollars at her and counting themselves lucky for having gotten off so easy.

these stories, i think, speak volumes about the litigious mentality that’s so pervasive in america today—shit, in fact, doesn’t just happen; it’s gotta be somebody’s fault, and somebody’s gotta pay. it really got me to thinking about how much the fear of even frivolous litigation must drive up the cost of everything in ways we don’t even know.

the funny thing is, i was arguing with an attorney friend just the other day—a good liberal—about tort reform; he, naturally, insisted with a straight face that malpractice lawsuits and defensive medicine were negligible factors in the high cost of healthcare in america.

i wish I’d had the bay leaf story to throw at him.

the guttermorality case for gold

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:09:00 +0000

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you know me, folks--i'm no genius; i'm just some guy who gets drunk and transcribes whatever random shit happens to pass through his alcohol-inflamed synapses between mkf cocktails 1 and 3 on any given night.

am i booze-eloquent? yes indeed, i am. am i someone whose drunken pronouncements should in any way be taken seriously? astonishingly (to me, anyway), apparently at least one of you out there thinks so.

so, before the reader in question rushes out to invest his meager savings in gold merely on my say-so (much less any of the rest of you), i feel it necessary to elaborate on my position.

for those of you who couldn't care less, i promise to keep this as short and sweet as possible (and for those of you who wonder, i bought the bulk of my gold back in 2006 when it was half the price it is now and everybody told me i was crazy).

* * * * *

our broken economy is in recovery, we are told; the recession is over. the people who are telling us this point to evidence that (a) the housing market seems to be bottoming out, (b) the dow has recovered 50% of the value it lost since its high two years ago, and (c) leading economic indicators are pointing upwards. cool, huh?

while i would (and easily could) dispute each and every one of the above points, that would make this post longer than i want it to be, so let's just assume for the sake of argument that each is correct.

the thing these economic cheerleaders fail to mention in their pep rallies is that the only reason all this shit is happening is because of something euphemistically called quantitative easing--a fancy name the federal reserve dreamed up for their practice of creating massive amounts of money outta thin air in order to fund all of this foolishness while simultaneously keeping interest rates artificially (and ridiculously) low.

in other words, it's sorta like referring to an intensive-care patient who depends on life-support for his every breath as "recovering."

but damned if all this artificial stimulus hasn't worked, sort of--people are buying houses with government-backed 4.75% 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, and the stock market is suddenly awash in cheap money.

the problem, of course, is that all this inflation of the currency has debased the dollar, shaken the confidence of our creditors like china and japan (upon whom we depend for our lifeblood) to the point that they're hesitant about buying any more of our debt, and driven the price of gold well past $1,000.

the fed has promised the world that it's gonna end quantitative easing at the end of october, and if it actually follows through on this promise, a couple of interesting things will happen very quickly:

first, and most importantly for our purposes, the dollar will strengthen almost overnight, and the price of gold (in dollar terms) will plummet.

second, and most importantly for the politicians, easy money will dry up and interest rates will spike, thus killing not only the artificial housing recovery but the artificial stock-market rally as well. housing prices will collapse, the market will tank, and voters will panic and demand heads on spikes.

so there you have it, my friends--a sophie's choice if ever there was one: will the fed (1) keep printing money in order to maintain the uneasy status quo, even though such a policy ensures certain hyperinflation of our currency at some point down the road; or (2) stop the madness, let the economy finally take its lumps and hit a painful rock-bottom so a true recovery can take place?

with mid-term elections coming up next year, and knowing my politicians as i do, i'm betting they're gonna go with option 1, kick the can down the road and hope they can keep the current bubble inflated for at least as long as they're still in office.

which is why i'm hanging onto my gold.

the thing i've always loved about the post is, they don't fuck around

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:22:00 +0000

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take this article, for instance.

while most american news sources tend to pussyfoot around an issue (if they even address it at all), the new york post, once its attention is drawn, can reliably be counted upon to go for the jugular with pithy headlines such as the one they ran yesterday:

and if macro-economics is suddenly pushing celebrity peccadillos off the front page of the post, what should that tell you, my children?

that's right--read the article, cash in whatever useless dollars you have left, buy gold and thank me later.

[or silver--your choice]

________________

sober update: i hope it goes without saying that, before acting upon this or any other financial advice that drunken bloggers throw at you, you should do your homework and make an informed decision.

i've been waiting for somebody to bring this up

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:52:00 +0000

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but i didn't figure it would come from the insurance lobby, because i thought they were bought and paid for. whatever--it's in the public dialogue now, where it needs to be.

have any of you--especially you under-30 types--stopped to think about exactly how obama and congress plan to pay for their universal healthcare utopia--you know, cover everybody, cover pre-existing conditions, pave the streets in gold and all that shit?

they've been saying they were gonna do it by cutting costs and creating greater efficiencies, but as i've pointed out before, that's bullshit--they haven't even come close to addressing the real reasons why healthcare is so expensive in this country.

no, they had another plan--instead of rocking the special-interest boat by actually trying to fix things, they decided it'd be easier just to increase the revenue pool; i.e., force everybody to buy healthcare insurance whether they wanted it or not, and levy substantial fines on anyone who didn't fall into line.

see, they figured, there's this huge pool of young, healthy, largely-uninsured americans out there who they could suck into the system, and use the premiums they extorted outta them for insurance they'll never use to pay for the costs of caring for the old and sick. from each according to their ability, to each according to their need--see how that works?

under this proposed plan, the doctors and hospitals were happy because they'd get to continue playing their same ol' games, the lawyers were happy because the idea of tort reform never even entered into the discussion, and the insurance lobby was happy because it was offered up all these new customers to gouge and screw.

the only people who might not be happy are the millions of young americans out there who--as if struggling to find work, save a little money and pay off their student loans weren't enough in this horrible economy--would suddenly find themselves on the hook for thousands of dollars in health insurance premiums each and every year, courtesy of the man most of 'em voted into office in the naive belief he was gonna make their lives better.

as the potential fallout became clear even to the clueless democrats, max baucus introduced his own version of the healthcare bill, which, among other things, relaxed the requirements on the uninsured to carry coverage only for catastrophic events like accidents or cancer. seems reasonable, right?

well, you'da thought he'd stuck a flaming poker into the eye of the insurance industry, the way they reacted. the conclusions they reached? get ready, because this is deep:

"Several major provisions in the current legislative proposal [i.e., relaxing insurance requirements for millions of uninsured] will cause healthcare costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system," Karen Ignagni, the top industry lobbyist in Washington, wrote in a memo to insurance company chief executives.

well, no shit--you're promising carte blanche coverage to everybody who's old and sick without bringing in young, healthy suckers at the bottom of the pyramid to pay for it all, so whaddya think's gonna happen? thanks for that expert analysis of the obvious, insurance folks.

of course, the white house and senate are shrill in their denouncement of this blindside attack, claiming it has absolutely no merit. and the rhetorical game goes on . . .

it's time to stop this nonsense. far as i'm concerned, it is incumbent upon this congress and this president to prove to the american people that they can undertake and achieve real healthcare reform--i.e., attack and defeat the special-interest sacred cows of medicine, law and insurance--before they suck us all into some ill-conceived nationalized healthcare plan from which there is no return.

it's funny because it's true

guttermorality@gmail.com (mkf) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:59:00 +0000

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and as always, if you don't get the reference you're probably too young for this blog.

h/t ace