Oy

The only way to call up an original thought is to string together words that have never coexisted before. In this way, the writer is like the host of an eclectic dinner party or living-room gathering. Maleficent electric pole. This phrase is new to the world; I just birthed it from my tiny vagina.

Love is fleeting, I find. Therefore, it's most readily shared by strangers passing each other on crowded sidewalks.

Frisson.

What They Said Then

"I have great, great confidence in our capital markets and in our financial institutions. Our financial institutions, banks and investment banks, are strong. Our capital markets are resilient. They're efficient. They're flexible." -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, March 16, 2008

"Our policy in this administration -- laws shouldn't bail out lenders, laws shouldn't help speculators." -- President Bush, May 19, 2008

"Our economy has continued growing, consumers are spending, business are investing, exports continue increasing and American productivity remains strong. We can have confidence in the long-term foundation of our economy...I think the system basically is sound. I truly do." -- President Bush, July 15, 2008

I love this...

This is incredibly depressing news...

China stops lending to U.S. banks

Bush's Address

I predicted this economic crisis in January and earlier. I said then that there might be another Great Depression. The economic indicators pointed in that direction. I was completely right, and I won't tire of saying so for at least a year.

I just watched Bush's address on the economy. He didn't say anything surprising - though earlier in the day his White House mentioned that we're in a once-in-a-century economic crisis. But I thought the fundamentals of the economy were sound?

The only notable thing about his speech was a constant, muffled oozing noise emanating from the microphone. It sounded like stomach juices churning.

Since I've tried my hand at economic forecasting once before and succeeded, let me lay out another prediction.

Washington Mutual, the nation's largest savings and loans bank, is going to collapse in about a week. Just yesterday, ratings agencies on Wall Street downgraded its stock to an 'E' rating, which is below the 'Junk' rating. It'll likely be taken over by the FDIC as soon as Friday; or it'll be split up among several banks which are looking to buy it out. The latter scenario is preferable. If other banks take over Washington Mutual, there'll be no blood.

If Washington Mutual fails, however, the Virtual crisis which has scarred high finance will spill onto the streets. Bush assured us in his little address that the FDIC has all the banks in America covered, and that nobody has ever lost a dime in an FDIC-insured account. But people, the FDIC is nearly bankrupt. It has only $60 bn dollars on hand to insure the trillion dollars or more in banks' vaults.

In particular, Washington Mutual has 140 bn dollars of insured deposits. If and when it fails, the FDIC will have to make up for an 80 billion shortfall. It undoubtedly will do so by taking out a loan from the Treasury. But before that loan is finalized, and the accounts are transferred to the FDIC, there will be a banking panic in the United States, the likes of which have only been seen in the Great Depression. Thousands or hundreds of thousands of Americans will line up outside Washington Mutual and similar banks like Wachovia to clear out their accounts. Many of these Americans will discover at the bank teller window, after an exhausting wait, that their money is not available.

Then, there will be blood. Good thing I'm flying to Australia tonight. See ya, suckas! And God Bless America.

To Boys and Men

You should remember something
which is that women don't know
how to suck cock;
they might learn, but for them
it will always be an obscure
agrarian chore,
like plucking carrots.

It should read

Software spots the spin in political speeches

Software creates the spin in political speeches.

Hold Onto Your Oxygen Masks and Seats!

Today, Lehman Brothers, which is America's fourth largest investment bank (meaning, broker hive), fell 7% in NYSE trading after announcing a 3Q loss of $3.3 bn. Yesterday it fell 45%. To stem the profuse bleeding, Lehman is offering a 51% stake in its most prized investment sub-unit to any willing sugar daddy (meaning, sovereign wealth fund). There's a growing consensus that Lehman will not survive the month (even though it survived the Great Depression).

A little word on Lehman. I noted many, many posts ago that one of the underlying causes of the Great Depression (leverage and subsequent, catastrophic de-leveraging) is repeating and once again threatening to undo the seams of Wall Street. In case you don't what leverage is, it's the amount a bank or broker or hedge fund borrows to keep its capital trough topped up and overflowing. According to several reports, most banks, brokers and hedge funds are leveraged 30 - 1: meaning they have 30 borrowed dollars for every dollar they own. Lehman is especially guilty of this, but the whole system is complicit and vulnerable.

Leverage is great for speculation: nobody worries about bottom lines and everyone borrows from everyone else. It's one big orgy until the speculative scheme implodes - as it always does.

Also today, Washington Mutual shares fell almost a dollar, or 30%, to $2.32. WaMu is America's largest savings and loans bank, with nearly $200 bn in deposits. Earlier this week, it got a more-than-routine visit from the Office of Thrift Supervision, which is responsible for shutting down banks when they're broke.

Americans are used to thinking that bank failures will always be taken care of by the government - specifically, the FDIC, whose little signs and stickers at bank counters promise to insure deposits up to $100,000. The funny thing is, the FDIC is itself almost bankrupt. It has somewhere between 30 and 40 billion dollars. If WaMu fails, it won't be able to cover even a third of the bank's deposits.

Now, the FDIC will have to borrow approximately $100 bn dollars from the Treasury if WaMu fails. That's on top of the $200 bn + that the Treasury just committed to the Frannie triage scheme. How long can the U.S. Treasury throw hundreds of billions of dollars into sinkholes before IT goes bankrupt?

I starting saying a half a year ago, or more (check the archives if you please), that America is trending toward another Great Depression. I take that back. The dominos are in a row and what's coming might be -worse- than the Great Depression, in terms of capital contraction, social unrest, and unemployment.

What's worse, the Great Depression of the Zeroes will probably be presided over by the tortured cancer, McCain, and his creationshit, Palin.

Please place your tray table in its upright and locked position. Place the oxygen mask over your face and remove a life vest from under your seat. After crash landing, follow the lighted signs to the nearest exit. Remain calm. Brace, brace.

What is Deserved

I love America. Aesthetically, it's a beautiful place. Mechanically, it's super-efficient. Many of our freedoms are either gone or moribund, but there is still the freedom of space, movement, buying, work, and play, which count for much.

However, America deserves to wither away. McCain and Palin are pulling ahead in the polls. I hate to even regard the polls, but undeniably the country is swaying toward the Republicans. Now it should be said that Palin is a creationist, and she's a member of a church in Alaska that heralds the coming Christian apocalypse. On the subject of Iraq, Palin said recently: 'I'll have to read more about that.' (McCain admitted to an interviewer that he doesn't know much about the economy - or how many houses he owns. Shouldn't this be enough to rule them out?)

While we're on the subject of Christianity, let me say directly to the Christians that Christianity is stupid - it's a brain-softener, and I have no milder or more refined way of saying that. The fact that manymodern Christians adhere so lightly to it nowadays is not in your credit; it is a sign of the great Christian blood-thinning. Also, your Savior is a fraud. He is the Apocalypse Christ, a skinny man on a wood post - what better symbol for the fall of Man? As Allen Ginsberg says, it is not clear if the Christ was brought by God or Satan. Your religion exalts in suffering and the Final Judgment, but not in joy or strength. Your religion is against my taste. Your jealous God is the Void. He has always been the Nothing. You, Christians, are nihilist; and you have weak, incurious minds, and eyes which do not know open space and do not penetrate. This should've become clear to the whole world long ago. Unfortunately, Christianity lives on zombie-like, feeding on more than a billion human hosts and, in the case of the Catholics, phenomenal gold and real estate assets and Third World ignorance. Oh, and Catholics: your priests are pederasts as a rule. And how about your Gucci-sunglasses wearing Pope? In his Hitler Youth days, do you think he ever sat on Rohm's lap?

One more word spoken in vengeance: Catholics ruined European civilization and presided over the Dark Ages, which science tore us out of.

Anyway, if America is going to elect a tortured cancer and a Creationist frontierswoman to the White House, it deserves to whither. I'll be waiting eagerly for Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers to hit zero so that the hygienic violence and anarchy can begin. And if I perish in the violence, so it goes. At least the Earth shall be cleaner.

Nikola Tesla Quote of the Day

"You see there the first of a race of robots, mechanical men which will do the laborious work of the human race."
- referring to his radio controlled boat on public display in Madison Square Garden, 1898.

Italian Futurism Quote of the Day

Let the reign of holy Electric Light finally come, to liberate Venice from its venal moonshine of furnished rooms; and...we are developing and proclaiming a great new idea that runs through modern life: the idea of mechanical beauty. We therefore exalt love for the machine, that love we notice flaming on the cheeks of mechanics scorched and smeared with coal. You surely must have heard the remarks that owners of automobiles and factory directors commonly make: motors, they say, are truly mysterious... They seem to have personalities, souls, or wills. Hence we must prepare for the imminent, inevitable identification of man with motor... This nonhuman and mechanical being, constructed for an omnipresent velocity, will be naturally cruel, omniscient, and combative.

My Dying Words

America is just the futurist empire!

Poker Night

Last night,
I sat down for my first poker match with Satan.
tucking my legs under the chair
and flashing just enough nervous for a sec
to win his respect.

he dealt, of course.

'I don't even know how to play poker, I was possessed to say
you'll learn' he replied
i made it on my first try
it wasn't hard
my hands moved but i didn't look at the cards

satan did the same

the green furry circular table is set
in the center of a low-ceilinged, dim-lit saloon -
in a dusty wooden corner,
an old man with a big beard, saggy hat sits on a stool
strumming a guitar

a boy crouches next to the old man's
open case, into which
patrons throw nevada bank notes
this is a rich,
austere space -

above the table, a hanging lightbulb humming
beneath the table,
my erection growing
to the steady,
lovely green strumming

- my eyes don't show it
fixed right on satan's
time passes but doesn't

when satan talks,
his handsome, triangular face
flashes shades of red;
looking him in his eyes, i don't listen
but admire their glisten.

- my eyes don't show it
fixed right on satan's
time passes but doesn't

'you know the world's going to end.
maybe, maybe not' i retorted.

he didn't like that.
he won every hand.

Bye

I smoke a joint of salvia
and go for a stroll
round the hood -
kicking a stone down the road.
It goes this way and that,
but remains in my foot's control
till it spins off into the grass
and I let it go.

The moon is about half tonight,
I can see it through my window
as I right now write.
Around its rim
there are bands of purple and blue.
I don't need the salvia to know
this is true - the moon often has
a sliver of a rainbow girding its edge,
sometimes orange and red.

(I share this secret of the moon,
at risk of destroying the secret -
so you know the stakes.)

I'll admit to you
that I walk and think only of him,
asking him tender questions in my head -
of course, getting no reply.
I... well, no...
I can't confess my sin
but my feelings for him
make me cry.

Faith.

I'm slightly drunk off of a beer called Fin de Monde, which is made in the far reaches of Canada: to be specific, on the right bank of the Hudson Bay.

Our dream life was given to us for a few reasons, in my eyes. One: so that humans can fly. Two: so that we can travel to the stars. And three: so we can look for and contact the aliens.

Again, I'm drunk.

I'm chugging my second beer for inspiration. Disclaimer, the following contains drunken messages.

Modern civilization won't succeed in coming off of oil. Either this generation, or the one following it, or the generation following that one, is doomed - doomed like that Chinese generation that lived through the glorious Cultural Revolution.

Then again, you could believe the Soviet Union's theory that oil is not a fossil fuel, but a renewable resource.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

The Earth is so full of useful things. The universe emerged out of nothing, gave birth to the Earth, and now there's a metal pot on a stove cooking loads of ingredients for spaghetti. How did - that - happen?

Palinpocalypse. Creationshits.

The most astute men will notice that women emerge from the mirror. 'Through the looking Glass'.

Fuck

Palin and McCain can't be elected. The apocalypse has crystallized around the Republican Convention and it's glittering. I shouldn't speak too generally of the apocalypse. What I mean specifically is the coming oil and nuclear catastrophes and West Rot.

"Drill Now" "Drill Now" "Drill Now"

Please, China - pull the plug! I'll go down with the ship. But pull the plug!

The Republicans have not lost their incredible skill for image management. They are seances who invoke the raspy voice of the people. Fred Thompson (the Law and Order star) gave a brutal description of McCain's five, six, seven year torture at the hands of the Vietnamese. I couldn't help but think of Passion of the Christ.

Christians! Let it be known before the flood waters drown all our voices that you and your apocalypse Christ, your shriveled ascetic woodpost, brought us to this stage at the Republican Convention, where the apocalypse of modernity is a hum the dogs and cynics hear.

But no, I'm all wrong!

The Mirror Deception

I'm cracking apart in the mirror. There's a loud thumping
sound, coming from outside the house
I think it's coming from Oakland Park Blvd
- sounds like a bassline or the apocalypse.

I'm cracking apart in the mirror. I've never known
the mirror to tell the truth. Jimmy, the cat, has noticed the sound.
He's trying to figure out the source. What could that be?
It's continuing.

This is Paradise

Everything looks futile from here
I'm too lazy and I'm too hungry
I'm staying up too late
I have work too early in the morning
I hate my job.
I have low confidence.
I have very little money.
I make almost no money.
I don't have a license yet.
My dreams don't look good from here.
My stomach grumbles.
My head aches.

I hate the mirror, I can
barely look at my face.
I hate Florida, I can't
stand this place.