Nov 2K5

Turkey Haze

Very nice holiday weekend with LadyK and her fams. Ate a wide assortment of fine food. Sampled several adult beverages, and watched the Lions get poached by the Falcons. Now the Christmas rush is upon us.

And how.

I need to organize and pack all my stuff and shuffle it from here to our new digs some 240 miles away, by 16 December. That in itself is nothing. I also need to finish a Christmas cartoon, a multimedia demo for a perspective employer, and try all the while to be a hap-hap happy camper during this season of chilly chicanery, packed stores, and special egg-nog. I'll do it for the children, and by children I mean generally, not mine, cause Lord knows I don't need that kind of surprise right now.

Besides, the new house isn't really made for rugrats. It's a condo, one half of a duplex, next to a biking and hiking trail-- which will be useful in 6 months when the temp again regularly stays above freezing. The condo has three levels, a big kitchen, vaulted ceilings, two full baths, space for a guest room, and an office. I want to replace the carpeted particle board with red oak, but I'm patient and and winter is long. We'll see. If organized and executed properly, the move should go well and I'll be a jolly old Christmas ambassador instead of Bad Santa.

The key to moving, I think, is chucking aside all the crap you don't want or don't need before you pack the boxes. Moving is cathartic. The process forces you to make choices about materialism as it relates to your past and future. Part of me wants to be a packrat, and the rest of me fights that urge tooth and claw. Clutter is bad, especially in today's sensory saturated world. Too much useless crap not only dulls you personally, it literally steals time away from your life because you're dealing with aforementioned useless crap...and this takes me to my relationship with the Detroit Lions.

I mean, speaking of useless crap.

I missed the first quarter of the Lions game due to transit issues. A confluence of slick roads, periodic white-out conditions, and a flood of old coots driving Town Cars atop balding tires stretched a one-hour drive to Grandma's house into almost two. We could have left earlier and caught the entire game on Grandma's hi-def, and at one point LadyK suggested just that, but I wasn't worried. I knew what was coming.

"I won't miss much of anything I want to see," I said. "I don't particularly care for snuff films."

After dropping two must-win games against Chicago and Dallas, the Lions were ready to fold for 2k5 against Atlanta, and they didn't disappoint. By halftime Coach Mora and his Falcons were up 17-zip against his former mentor and his sad collection of overpaid talent. Once again, the Lions offensive line sucked. The receivers ran poor routes and dropped passes, and Joey played like Joey-- erratic, confused, doe-eyed and begging for euthanasia. By time Jeff Garcia came into the game it was all window dressing. Face it, if a hobbled over-the-hill Jeff Garcia is the best you can toss out during man-up time, deep into Year 5 of Matt Millen's 1,000-year road to mediocrity, well then, forget it.

Useless crap.

I knew that the other shoe was finally falling to the ground by how Detroit's defense played. Atlanta gained 253 yards on the ground, on Detroit's field. For the 1st time this year, the defense seemed to understand what the rest of us had known for at least two weeks-- that the 2k5 Lions would be different from other Lions teams of recent vintage by receipts and tax returns only. The product still stinks of failure and death.

Steve Mariucci is gone. Either in a few days or a few weeks. Matt Millen will sketch out another plan and hire another coach that absolutely no one in Detroit will care about or believe in. Might Millen assemble a good offensive line, for starters? Is that too much to ask, you know, after 5 years of tinkering and dithering? Just insert the personnel and scheme needed to keep NFL defenses out of your backfield on every play. Millen played the game, why does this stuff escape him? Why does he have a job? Why are the Lions destined to be Arizona Cardinals North?

Good questions, all, but I've got more important things to deal with...where did I stick them moving boxes.

- k

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GM Deathwatch

General Motors is in the headlines again. During my living memory, if they're not slashing prices to eliminate profits and inventory, the mighty GM is slashing its domestic workforce. After 30 years of downsizing you'd think that there was nothing left to trim. Not so. Thirty-thousand jobs between now and 2008, gone; plus a dozen plant closings or parings. This of course affects the already diminished future of Flint and Detroit, but what's new. Did Nero continue fiddling after Rome had burnt to the ground...when the Huns were roasting Senators over the dying embers? If so, what was his muse?

My father, both grandfathers, and all my uncles worked for GM. I never considered joining the fray, for reasons obvious to me when I was a tot...and now obvious to all. Most folks didn't understand what globalization was about in the 70s and 80s, but I bet they get the gist of it now. I once thought that GM's long-term work-force reduction was merely their way of eliminating unionized labor...a mindset surely influenced by growing up in Flint, inside a family where every living male for 3 generations worked for Flint's Big Daddy. Once it became cost-effective to build cars overseas, or domestically with robotics, well-paid blue collar workers slipped off into other industries, like Wal Mart and Jiffy Lube. Theorizing types call this a Sea Change.

GM Chairman Rick Wagoner says these latest moves will make GM competitive again, and I have to believe, at least, they want to be competitive, though they have no better idea than Kevin Federline how to become competitive...meaning, if past performance is any indication, and in the real world it is. CEO types are usually consumed with legacy issues, meaning, how they'll go down in corporate history. Once you've amassed about as much money and power as you can, you sights become a wee more transcendental, unless you're Dennis Kozlowski or Tony Montana. So either Wagoner and his predecessors are criminally negligent or they are idiots.

General Motors pays some $6 billion a year in legacy costs-- for retiree pensions and health benefits. GM has 2.5 retirees for every active worker, a demographic nightmare and a massive competitive disadvantage. Japanese and European car companies, where retiree considerations are handled by the government, have no such legacy costs. GM has known for at least 30 years that because of automation, increased competition, and outsourcing, that its worker to retiree ratio was going to get screwy. There are business development people who get paid good money to plot this stuff out, and GM has legions of business development people, then and now, whose job entails figuring out where the company is going. If you plan, with 30 years notice, you can phase in structural changes and make investment choices that will keep your business afloat when the aforementioned demographic crunch happens. Now, the only methods available to GM for handling these costs are through savage cuts or bankruptcy.

The UAW (United Auto Workers) says they will fight the latest round of cuts. Meanwhile the UAW has said it may strike on all Delphi plants in the wake of that company's Chapter 11 filing and subsequent demand for steep cuts in personnel and wages. Delphi, for those of you outta the loop, supplies parts to GM. If GM is suddenly choked for parts, well, flatline. Yet any given union, by charter and empirical status as a union, must represent its workers as best as possible. It is impractical and counterproductive to strike against a company in critical condition, but doesn't it become a larger issue, now? Unionized labor in the U.S. manufacturing center is clearly going the way of the horse and buggy, so do the workers take the company with them?

I feel bad for legions of laborers long under the impression that if they put in 30 years of honest work and demonstrated loyalty to company and company product, the company would look after them. Despite the fact that I could never trust a bureaucratic entity to have my best interests in mind, a promise is a promise. Union workers did what they were under contract to do, and in return GM's boardroom designed one bland hunk of poo after another, watching its market share and prestige slide into the abyss, and their credit rating to level 3 Junk. The fat is falling into the fire.

The company is screwed. GM needs to design and build automobiles that people will want to buy, but that's going to require an upgrade in talent and corporate culture. The funds needed for such a rejuvenation are currently going to retiree costs, and creditors these days lock their safes the instant a GM suit stumbles onto their property. Anyone who doesn't imbibe sustenance from the GM kool-aid trough has zero faith in the latest restructuring or GM's ability to again be a leader in production and innovation. Corporate raiders are licking their chops and Wall Street is waiting to see if GM will emerge from this round of cuts as a viable but forever hobbled company, or if the UAW declares war, and GM declares bankruptcy, and Kerk Kerkorian then swoops in to buy the company up and sell it for parts.

This long fiasco will be in business texts for generations. Nice legacy.

- k

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18nov05

Wanted: Saudi Enlightenment

Early reviews on the toon seem to be quite positive, but maybe I'm reading too much into it. I plan to have another up on the server before Christmas, so assume it'll be, well, Christmas-like, cause the Midwest goes balls-out for the Holiday Season. It provides not a little unintentional comedy, and the kids see enough crazy lighting arrangements to guarantee that they'll be experimenting with hallucinogens before they graduate high school.

Scanning the news and saw an article that details how a Saudi Chemistry teacher has been sentenced to 750 lashes and 40 months in prison for Blasphemy. Supposedly he went out on a limb and defended Jews while criticizing some aspects of Islam. Yep, these are definitely folks you can negotiate with.

Say what you want about America's domestic policy, but I'm glad that I can prattle on about anything that comes inside my head without fear of government backlash. There's some really whacked out published and posted material every day in this country, material that calls elected officials retarded war criminals and baby-rapers, and worse. In Saudi Arabia or Saddam's Iraq, that kind of yakkity-yak would award you and your family with an eternally restful dirt-nap.

Of course, America's foreign policy chafes my britches, but said policy is as much about best-worst option bargains than evil intentions. For example, we have a long history of supporting odious regimes to guarantee our energy supply. Though we've done poorly at weaning ourselves off from the oil trough, since 9/11 we've done somewhat better at calling a spade a spade, with one very major exception: Saudi Arabia.

Here's a country that's straight out of the 11th century, with an inbred and bloated monarchy atop a ring of reactionary mullahs who see woman as chattel, and non-believers as targets. We've seen, since large deposits of oil were discovered under Saudi soil early in the 20th century, a fantastic amount of easy money pumped into a stagnant and reactionary society. Any society that poo-poos the infidelity of men while simultaneously accepting that adulterous women or practicing gays ought to be stoned is an odious society.

Every major culture and kingdom on the planet, has at some point, been roughly where the Saudi's are now. The United States was once a nation of slavers, and China, Russia, and other places each have some pretty scary history. Thing is, we all evolved and became better societies. Yes, even Russia. The modern West treats women and minorities much better than we did a couple hundred years ago, and because of the Enlightenment, we've learned to embrace, or at least tolerate, religious freedom.

Saudi Arabia embraces the 'ride or die' ethos when it comes to Islam. This is partly because of the oil in the ground, and also partly because of a Faustian bargain Saudi rulers, the Saud family, long ago made with the Wahhabi Mullahs, who today hold sway over the pissed off (aka 15 out of 19 hijackers) masses. The Saud's basically said that if 'you support us in power, we will let you preach your crazy gibberish to the masses, and we'll fund it too.' When your society stifles critical thought, and holds back completely half the population, tensions eventually rise, especially among young folks with plenty of time on their hands, money in the bank, and yet with no marketable skills...which is exactly what studying the Koran and the Koran only for 15 years gets you.

Ever see what ignorant jackasses do with too much money? Right, lots of bling: Cars with ridiculous rims, a tiger-on-a-leash in the back yard, a staggering amount of material possessions to compensate for intellectual vacuity. You won't see many lotto millionaires sink some of their money into a library or long overdue formal education. Large portions of the Saudi Royal family, and there are many thousands of them, live exactly like that. This creates a natural enmity between the fervent masses and the corpulent Royals. Thus, the Royals instruct the Mullahs to blame everything that's wrong with their lives on Americans and Jews.

Check out a video of public-square Riyadh someday. Or better yet, fly over yourself and walk around a souk in a nice neighborhood-- more iced-out trinkets than a 50 Cent video. You're not going to find a copy of the Satanic Verses anywhere, you won't have the slightest idea what a Saudi female looks like, and you damn sure best not question the ultimate righteousness of Islam. Good times.

Obviously the best way to keep an overfed yet underemployed general populace in check is to fill'em up to the eyeballs with some fire-n-brimestone Old Time Religion, and keep the curtains drawn as best as possible on the Roman-orgy lifestyles of the elites. Here in the states we got the Pentecostals-- who are thankfully on the margins of our religious society. In Saudi Arabia they have Wahhabism. The ascent of Wahhabism can be directly traced to Saudi Arabia's rise as the world's gas station. Our highly-hyped War On Terror is a byproduct of this.

Anyway, that's what we all tolerate to keep the fossil fuels flowing. Maybe, just maybe, we can push a little harder for energy independence, forcing the Saudis and their backwards ilk to reform their ways. I mean, Arab women are beautiful. Shouldn't they be treated as such?

- k

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Balanced Animation

Toon is done, is being tested. I've already found two tweaks I need to implement before sending it off into the world, and that'll be knocked out soon after I finish blathering atop this here virtual real estate.

Start with the weather, which is where we all start when we don't have much of consequence to say. Here, blustery, near-freezing, and the overall look and texture of an old wet grey sweater. It sucks. Was wonderful yesterday and for most of November-- unseasonably warm, gentle breezes, and me thinking that mid-Michigan has caught a break from the gods. Last winter just about broke my spirit. I'll have to ride another out before I return to Cali....I now give thanks to the makers of fine bourbon everywhere for giving me the strength to see the freeing weather through.

I've noticed that since the tragic death of Michael Kelly in 2k3, the formerly wondrous Atlantic Monthly has dropped to merely excellent. Kelly was a conservative, but I'm not sure if it's that cut and dry. The Atlantic's run of greatness was due to balance, not so much from paragraph to paragraph, but from writer to writer. Kelly has not been replaced, therefore the Atlantic is ever so slightly off. As a reader, you know what you'll get from the Atlantic's masthead.

William Langewiesche is, for my money, the best serious features writer alive right now. Between his stories on the WTC clean-up and nuclear proliferation, Langewiesche has combined his curious nature, attentive research, dry wit, and humanism to untangle some of the knottiest issues of our day. James Fallows is the Atlantic's chicken little writer. Read his material about the future of our economy or our involvement in Iraq and you'll come away suicidal. Yeah, the world is a dark place for sure, but methinks Mr. Fallows is in a dark place in the micro sense. However, Mr. Fallows is too a fantastic researcher and fact-checker, so his glum conclusions carry weight.

Which hopefully gets us heading back towards whatever point I was going to make today. Optimistic and pessimistic attitudes are both easily supported by facts, irregardless of topic, and we're all cherry-pickers, of course. That's part and parcel the joy and pain of being an individual. We can not, as Hemingway once claimed, see the world whole and clear. Our experiences and chemical balances, or lack thereof, makes us see things with a certain tint. Michael Kelly was a positive man, yet came of age in the den of subdividing glad-handing hackery that is Washington DC. Must of been a good childhood, good wiring, who knows? One of Kelly's trademark pieces focused on Clinton's sex scandal, and from that, why character is important. I wonder what he'd think about incurious George W? Are there policians of character, besides McCain and the late Paul Wellstone? What I cherish about the Atlantic- and I hope they find one more conservative voice to balance things again- is that after I read an entire issue, I have a very good snapshot of how things are.

The crap weather today makes me think darker thoughts because I'm a man who thrives in warm sunshine, even though my skin isn't made for that kind of thing. However, even in my darkest moods, I refrain from spewing bile about the destruction of our planet or the vast right-wing conspiracy that is, at this very moment, seeking to dispossess everyone who's ever owned hemp clothing or a fuel-efficent car. I would love it if MoveOn brought in a handful of conservative thinkers, not O'Rielly-like retards, but folks like Fred Barnes and Ramesh Ponnuru who, through experience and study, have a damn good idea why things are the way they are-- bad intentions have very little to do with it, and entropy has much to do with it. Anyway, maybe they could all do some kind of mind-meld and figure out how to make our pie higher. ungh.

My toon takes a few shots at the wing-nut left AND right. They deserve it. But the first rule of marketing tells us that if we ignore it then they're not, um, there. Wonder if that's working for global warming, too?

Check both sides of the street before you cross.

- k

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Turning The Lights On Again

Been disconnected from the internet and the television for the past 10 days or so. It usually happens on a whim, and I'm always glad I did it. For 10 days I had not a clue what was happening outside my neighborhood or the downtown Y. btw, been getting back to squats. Nothing like it. Squats are the only freeweight exercise that makes me sweat after one set. Brutal stuff, but if your back and knees are healthy enough, I highly recommend it. The human body responds to squatting heavy weights by building as much muscle mass as fast as it can, assuming your diet leans more towards lean meats and protein shakes as opposed to pop tarts and smoking rocks...er, more importantly, your energy level skyrockets. It is, after all, a buzz. I like buzzes. Of course on the downside, squats can make the body simply collapse upon itself. It's happened to me, and sometimes it takes awhile to locate the somas. At any given time either my knees or my back are in shambles, so when the stars align and both areas of my body are feeling righteous, or at least a fair distance from crippled, then why not put a couple hundred pounds on my shoulders and hop on the floor? Builds character.

The first Massive Sack animated feature is rushing towards completion. After an insane number of hours invested into this project, and others that'll look just like it, I'm ready to breathe the big sigh of relief, even though there's not going to be relief, but more animation, more of my jabbering, and a slightly redesigned site, since, you know, I need a section to stick the toons, and Mr. Snowflake never really caught on so I suspect he'll be giving up his sack of real estate, but if you're on of the four of five documented Johnny Snowflake fans, fear not, he'll prolly make his way into cartoon form. Pimps and hustlers are greats mines for cartoon content, and this was true way before the age of hip-hop.

So, Motorheadz will be posted next week, prolly late next week, since I need to round up some folks to test the damn thing, making sure that my UI doesn't send an unsuspecting viewing to some Russian bridal-auction site instead of into the guts of my newest creation. Yeah, just more ways for me to gather attention, cause that's how I am, tis why my name appears everywhere throughout this site. How does that old torch song go...'if you don't know me by now.'

There will be other tweaks. I plan to start writing more about music. Ha, how dumb is that? Writing about what I hear, about what you should be hearing, or about what we've both heard and why we don't feel the same way about it. Beggars Banquet or Let It Bleed? Such questions need more attention. I've been listening to lots of classic Stones lately. Man, those guys could f**king rock before the dawn of video gaming. The crescendo to Stray Cat Blues renders every other rock song about sex impotent...it's the Stones saying 'three cheers for cocaine and whiskey.'

Because I was disconnected from the world last weekend, I was spared the horror of watching the Lions getting teabagged by the Vikings. What a sorry-assed team. I wrote my 2k5 Lions tirade a couple weeks ago, so I'm not going to fly around the bend again here, because they are not worth the trouble. Basketball season is up and running, and I love basketball, and what else is there to say? The Pistons represent everything I like about sports-- awesome talent, teamwork, creativity, and drive, and the Lions represent everything I detest about sports-- overblown egos, entitlement issues, underachievement, and getting rich while putting forth a product that looks and smells like rotten ass.

- k

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