I’m still wrestling with a bout of the doldrums. In the meantime enjoy these lovely literal versions of videos

First- a bit of RQ life history. I once won tickets to see TMBG in concert because I sang the original version of this song on the radio.

Is it wrong that I still totally love Tears for Fears?

I’m uninspired to post lately. I’d rather look at interior design blogs than read about politics or economics or sexism or whatever else is just going to make me frown.

In the mean time, I work. And work is as ever, good and bad. I have the problem student, who for god only knows what reason took the CAD class this quarter when he doesn’t seem to know the most basic things about computers (Q:Why is the image on my screen smaller than the image in real life? A: The same way things on your TV are smaller than they are in real life. Do you worry because they can fit whole shots of stadiums onto your TV that the stadium might be fake? Q:Why did the file that I saved on the guest login disappear? A: Because you’ve been told a thousand times that if you don’t login under your own name that anything you erase will be deleted. Q: What do you mean “login”? A: No, seriously? WTF? How are you sitting in front of that LOGON screen being such a douche? You’ve been logging in under guest just fine. Q: Why won’t this 3rd party website that is not in any way manner or shape connected to the school do what I want it to? A: Because the internet gods hate you.

I am frustrated with this student so badly that every time he walks in the lab I cringe. And then I just get angry. It’s become pavlovian.

But there is good. I’ve spent the last 4 or 5 days trying to drill holes in my bedroom walls at home to hang up closet rods so the the Kid can have my closet. The walls are lathe and plaster. And a pain in the ass. I nearly blew out a drill (after I borrowed it from work). So in my frustration I’ve been asking for help (Thanks Uncle Jim!) and I asked my boss who lives in the same neighborhood. Instead of telling me what he thought I should do, he packed up his tools, came over and in less than 20 minutes I had 12 feel of closet hung. He also took a look at the shelf I had bought to go over them (only 8 feet long- oops) and took some measurements. He’s making his students custom cut me proper shelves and is leaving them on my porch tonight. He said it’s no big deal, I’m school family. After literally spending hours trying to do this myself, I could almost cry for the kindness.

(BTW- even with an entire wall taken up with my clothes, my room is looking pretty fab. Now I just have to do the same for the Kid. Which will be rough since the closet is maybe 8′ by 8′ with severely slanting walls and a door that is no more than 4′ tall.)

First- go read this. It’s short, I promise.

Let’s take this part as true:

And here’s the bottom line; despite what is said about Roosevelt, no government has tried to spend its way out of a recession the way Obama is intending to do, and the way Keynes recommended. We are watching a very grand experiment.

If we are getting Keynesian spending on a scale grander than the New Deal, then why do quite a few of us feel less than excited about this “very grand experiment”?

And I got an answer for that.

Because at it’s heart, the stimulus plan and even the mortgage plan all work to maintain the systems that got us into this mess to begin with. And they don’t address any of the fundamental causes of the economic collapse, just the symptoms.

The real issue is that free market capitalism is fundamentally flawed. It will ALWAYS lead to corruption and eventually collapse. The only way for a capitalist economy to remain healthy is with a good dose of regulation provided by a strong government. It is the government’s job to make sure that wages are neither too low nor too high. It is the government’s job to make sure that business is kept honest (and not allowed to sell you poisoned peanut butter). It is the government’s job to provide the services that should not depend on profit, like education and health care, so that no one is denied a basic right because they are they low person on the totem pole. It is the government’s job to regulate the economy so that it neither grows too fast or too slow. But for years (30 at least) the government has been doing none of that.

The crisis will end eventually. Sooner rather than later if Obama can help it. But if we don’t do something right now to change the way this country works at it’s core and instead patchwork another few years of life out of this broken system, then the problems will continue to worsen. And no amount of money printing will fix it. Instead we will have the inevitably high tax bill from the stimulus and tarp plans without any permanent fix.

Spending money is fine and dandy, but spend the political capital that comes with it. We need to make the changes to the system now, when it is weak.

So a dude cuts off his estranged wife’s head. (Sorry, this may be triggering for some folks).

And the dude is brown, and Muslim. That must be the reason he did it, right. It’s not the patriarchy. It’s not the entire world view that women are inferior property to be owned by men and discarded as they see fit. Nope. He must have done it because of religion.

So of course the newsbunnies have run to claim this as some sort of terrible Islamic “honor” killing. Cause shit like that doesn’t happen when good Christians are involved. Nope.

I mean, could a guy who loves Jesus soooo that he would get a tattoo like this ever treat a woman like a piece of property?

Surely he must have taken Jesus’ message of turning the other cheek to heart. Right?

Except that tattoo is on the arm of another man famous for (among other things) beating the crap out of his girlfriend. Chris brown most certainly didn’t assault his girlfriend because Jesus told him to. That would be silly.

But wait, he’s also a brown dude. Good, white Christian men would never act that way. Right? I mean they found Matthew Denni in a church camp for Christ’s sake. He not have really meant to blow her brains out.

Actually, the only constant I’m seeing here is religion. Maybe patriarchy based hierarchical religions that treat women as empty vessels to be owned by their husbands are part of the general problem, but hurting the woman you love own most certainly isn’t an Islamic value.

and no one is talking about the origin of the housing crisis. Ok, not no one, but the people in charge are ignoring the biggest problem in hopes of things continuing on as they have in the past once the crisis is over. In the mean time the Rethuglikans and newsbunnies are blaming greedy homeowners, but that’s wrong.

For the last 30 years or so, wages have been stagnant while inflation continues to rise like a hot air balloon on a cold morning. So if people, average everyday people, can’t save for retirement or their children’s education because the money the earn from work isn’t keeping up with the cost of living they turn to other sources of revenue. And because they aren’t wealthy people with stock portfolios, they invest in something much more useful and tangible to them, their homes.

And we as a society and as a country have been promoting this kind of investment for a very long time. It is almost a moral imperative that people buy a home. It is the crux of the American dream.

So people buy homes, even poor people. It’s the only way they can get ahead. And when more people buy homes, home prices go up. And with more competition, people sink more money into their homes to get more value out of them.

So the Kid is moving into my closet next weekend (the closet is the size of a NYC bedroom folks, so it’s not too terrible) and I am rearranging my room so I can hang closet rods on one wall (sorry lathe and plaster, but it’s cheaper than buying a wardrobe). I went thrifting yesterday and found an old 1940’s vanity which has replaced the card table i was using for a desk ($14.99- and I’ve been coveting one of these forever).

To help make the labor go faster, I’ve been playing Gang of Four. Best described as disco punk and an obvious influence on bands like Franz Ferdinand, I love love love the Gang of Four. They had a wee resurgence a few years ago when they played the Live 8 concert. The lyrics are political, the beats are dancey, and it hits all the happy revolutionary buttons in my brain.

I love a man in uniform

Natural’s not in it

Ruth and I watched Bizarre Worlds last night. And they were talking Turkey. And now I am obsessed. Not just because of the history and the archeology and the culture, but because of this. Manly men, covered in olive oil, wrestling in the grass.

So fucking hot

I’ve been thinking about parity lately. It’s hard not to when bankers are crying over salary caps of $500k a year while minimum wage (even with increases) is still far behind the actual cost of living.

If you or I were to rob a bank (no guns, no violence, just a scary note and the threat of violence) we’d be facing some serious jail time. But if you are a banker and you rob the treasury department with threats of violently collapsing the entire world economy, you don’t get jail time. You get TARP money. And you still get to hand out annual bonuses and bitch about salary caps.

Now if you or I had to apply for government assistance, there would be some serious investigation into our finances. If you own a car worth more than a couple thousand bucks ($5000 I think), you have to sell it and use up that money first. If you have stocks or bonds or a 401k even a prepaid funeral plan, you have to use that up first. Then maybe you can get some kind of government help. Maybe.

But if you’re a banker, and you’ve run your company into the ground, your own assets are safe. The government will not require you to sell off your vacation house and pump the proceeds back into the bank before writing a check. They won’t even require salary cuts or end bonuses (who the fuck gives out annual bonuses at failing companies anyways?)

Now the bankers are screaming that if you put restrictions on salary, you’ll run off all the top brains who will take their wads of cash and go elsewhere. Good riddance I say. But isn’t it both morally and fiscally responsible to subject failing businesses that receive government money to the same kinds of pressure and investigation that we subject poor people to?

But one of these things is not like the others. The mere act of having money makes you insulated from the requirements we place on every other person in the country. And that is not ok.