That Makes a Lot of Cents

Kroger has a commercial out now about how, if you buy their milk, you can get ten cents off per gallon when you buy their gas. The woman in the commercial says, "at today's high gas prices, ten cents a gallon really adds up."

That is a statement worthy of Yogi Berra.

And, though it may be a total non-sequiter, you can't deny the truth of it. I think that when raises come around at work, I'm going to propose that everyone gets 10 cents an hour more, across the board. When my boss objects, I will say, "At your salary level, 10 cents an hour really adds up." He's probably too dumb to realize that it adds up the same no matter whose salary we're talking about.

Of course it adds up! That's what number do! And they add up regardless of the price of gas. The additive property of numbers doesn't change with the economy. 10 cents a gallon will still be 10 + 10 + 10 and so on, even if gas prices drop. What's more, it would be a better deal at a lower price of gas. If gas is $2.50/gallon, a dime gives you a 4% savings, whereas, at $1/gallon, you would be getting 10% off.

If the woman said, "at today's prices, 10 cents a gallon is marginally less in savings," it wouldn't sell much gas, but I'd be more impressed with the advertisers.

Blue Jean Baby

Conservatively dressed columnist, George Will wrote a column last week stating that our love for denim clothes is "symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche." Will was responding to an article by Daniel Akst who wrote that denim is "insidiously effective at undermining national discipline." Will's lauding adulation over Akst was like that of a giggling bobby-soxer drooling on a photo of James Dean in tight jeans (I use that analogy as one that could be understood by a man of Will's age - which, I believe, is Pleistocene.)

I would like to have a few minutes with Mr. Will to ponder the troubles in the world; I mean the really bad troubles in the world. Let's start with the financial crisis. We don't even have to be partisan about this. Let's say it started with Reagan and deregulation or Clinton and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac or George Bush or Wall Street or Goldman Sachs. The one thing all those people have in common is that, when they gunned down the world economy, they were wearing suits of fine silk or wool.

Oh, when George Bush was off cutting brush for six weeks at a time and leaving the country unattended, his crime of neglect was committed in denim. But in D.C., he and the remaining architects of doom: Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and the other henchmen, were clad in ties and jackets when they launched the shock and awe inspiring destruction of our reputation and our moral values - oh, and people's lives - through a mismanaged war, a policy of torture and the deconstruction of personal freedoms and the Constitution.

Perhaps George Will's tongue was in the vicinity of his cheek when he wrote that column, but he absolutely has missed the real joke, the dark humor in his words. He quotes Akst's statement that "Denim reflects 'our most nostalgic and destructive agrarian longings -- the ones that prompted all those exurban McMansions now sliding off their manicured lawns and into foreclosure.'" They look at the financial meltdown and see the source of it as people wearing jeans and wanting to own houses. Not the slick, sartorial slimeballs who ran the financial scams - it's the common people who are the problem.

Will calls on us to put away childish things, starting with denim. I think it is Will who has deep disorders in his psyche and should be put away.

Songs For the New Depression

(Title stolen from Bette Midler)

The Dow Jones Is Gonna Fall
(A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall)

What have you done my stockbroking son?
And what did you do with my retirement fund?
I sold mortgage-backed securities without regulation
I crippled the credit of large corporations
I ruined economies of world power nations
I stumbled on the slide of inflated earnings
I pumped up the bubble until it was bursting
And it’s the Dow, it’s the Dow, it’s the Dow, it’s the Dow
And it’s the Dow Jones a-gonna fall

And who did you meet, my bank failure son?
And whose coffers increased with big bailout funds?
I met AIG who’d had inadequate reserves
I gave them sev’ral billion that they didn’t deserve
I gave Wall Street massive cash funds with multiple zeroes
I saw them bonus themselves as if they were the heroes
I then criticized poor folks for not paying their mortgage
Though someone else’s greed is why they can’t afford it
And it’s the Dow, it’s the Dow, it’s the Dow, it’s the Dow
And it’s the Dow Jones a-gonna fall


The Boxter
(The Boxer – Paul Simon)
I am now a poor boy
And my stocks have all dissolved
Someone squandered all my savings
On squat propped up by bullshit
And false promises
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And then he does invest

Well I hocked my home
And my SUV
And I sold my little boy
To invest with Bernie Madoff
And some mortgage-backed securities
All uninsured
Now I go
Seeking out the cardboard boxes
Where the homeless people go
Looking for the places
Foreclosed people know

Lie-la-lie--------

Expecting more years of recession
I’ve been laid off from my job
Now I’ve got no prospects
‘Cause I believed in all those whores
CNBC puts on
I do declare---
Chapter Seven – that means bankruptcy
So creditors beware

Lie la lie ---------

Now I’m looking down at wall street
From my ledge, soon I’ll be gone
Going down
And the New Deal stimulus will
Will not be feeding me, or keeping me
From going down

In the driveway stands a Boxter
And a Porsche by its make
And it serves as a reminder
Of wealth evaporated now
And dividends that dried up
And what put me in this mess
I’d be leaving, I’d be leaving
But the car’s being repossessed
Lie la lie lie lie lie lie----

Lie la lie---

Of Course, Then "Big Radio" Would Demand a Bailout

Everyone has a suggestion for better ways that Congress and the Treasury could have spent financial or auto industry bailout money. Face it, most of the public’s ideas are just as lame as the government’s. “Pay off my mortgage.” “Buy me a car.” “Pay the pizza guy, would ya? And can I bum a cig?”
I do agree that the money should go to individual citizens, not big corporation capitalist pig dogs. But I don’t believe the schemes proposed in letters to the editors are any good; my mortgage is almost done, as are my car payments, and my pizza’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno. So your ideas don't help ME.
Suggestions that $700 billion be divided up among all of us are worthless. Even if you leave out overpaid, fat-cat, scumbag corporate CEOs, we’d each get only about two grand, which we would immediately spend on a tank of gas, a hooker, beer and some Slim Jims. The cool people would, anyway.
Instead, I propose that Congress directs the Treasury to fund a series of promotions on C-SPAN to distribute hundreds of billions to the general populous in ways such as these:

• Send your credit card bills to C-SPAN and, if you are watching when they call your name, they pay off all your cards

• Even better: “The Phrase That Pays.” Today it might be “misguided, liberal crapbag, waste of oxygen, mutant misanthrope”. When you hear that used in a speech before the House, be the 1,332nd caller to C-Span and win one million dollars.

• C-SPAN plays a 10 second clip from a Congressional speech and the first caller to correctly identify the Congressperson speaking wins $1 million.

• Or, C-SPAN DJs pick a “most ignorant testimony of the day” during hearings on steroid use in baseball or on bailing out the porn industry or something. The caller who can correctly identify the previous day’s most ignorant testimony, wins one million dollars.

Not only would my ideas boost the REAL economy, they would get people watching C-SPAN and we’d learn more about what goes on in Congress and we’d vote those f-ers out and get some smart people in there next time.
I called my Congressperson, Jean Schmidt, and told her my ideas. She said, “You sound like you are a loser, sad-clown, humor writer wannabee." I said, “So?” She hung up.
I don’t think my ideas are stupid. Giving hundreds of billions of dollars to failed business people and not even asking them how they spent the money…something like THAT would be stupid.

(By the way, “loser, sad-clown, humor writer wannabee” is today’s C-SPAN Phrase That Pays.)

Please list your own suggestions for C-SPAN promotions in the comments.

2008 Annual Letter

Here's the annual family photo - after we took it, I noticed my pants were missing again, but this is the only one where we all were smiling and had our eyes open, so we used it.
I was going to write the annual holiday letter about the family to go with the picture but the bad news got me so down I just quit. I was so upset, I started drinking the dregs in the bottom of the beer, wine and Enfamil bottles lying around and then I forgot what I was doing.
I mean, the year started off with Ohio State getting blown out in a championship football game AGAIN and mostly went downhill from there, so why write the letter?
There was a bright spot when one of our youngest, little Barack, won the election thing. And I am tired of the rumors about him not being part of our family; he was born right here in the US of A, western annex of Hawaii. And our girl from Alaska stopped getting pregnant long enough to run for Vice President; she just had little Bristles take over the baby making chores. It's interesting that three of the four President/VP candidates were from the last three states admitted to the union, even though John McCain was born exactly 50 years before Arizona became a state in 1912. And three of the candidates' states make nice little puns: "Hawaii?" "I'm fine, thank you. Hey, what did Delaware today?" "I don't know, Alaska." If somebody can give me an Arizona pun, I'd appreciate it.
Anyway, the great news for the year was about our Barack, a half African person, being elected and proving that we are half over our racist past. And it also means that, HALLELUJAH, George Bush is out of a job. Sadly, many others are too. Uncle Billy lost the money he was supposed to deposit in the bank. He had a big wad of about a trillion dollars wrapped in a newspaper and now can't remember where he put it. If you see it, let us know. By the way, Uncle Billy still got his $40 million dollar bonus this year despite his mistake - and why not? It could have happened to anybody. Then our big three uncles in Detroit put on a production of "Dude, Where's My Car Company" which flopped, but the 3 Producers made millions by overselling shares in the production. Thankfully, nobody's going to jail - car makers or bankers. I mean, if the war criminals in the administration get a pass, how can we lock up mere financial scam artists? Prison and torture is for foreigners we don't like or understand, regardless of whether they committed a crime.
So now we're in a depression and I'm loading up the truck and leaving the farm to move the family to California, where we hope to make a new life, selling apples on the street or working in the fields for cruel bosses who beat us if we ask for fair wages and benefits.
We hope your family had a good year. Let's all get together soon. Hopefully I'll get around to writing the annual letter before then.