Enough Already: Money For Nothing

. a blogumn by Jordan Weeks “Interesting way to undermine a society, I think, is to take some of their money away.” –Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. So AIG (American International Group, Inc., NYSE) is again all over every news outlet because their executives decided to pay out contractual bonuses totaling something like $165 million to some of their traders. The “problem” is that that $165 million is coming from the federal bail-out money the company received, which I believe is somewhere around the $170 billion range. Even since I started writing this last Thursday, there have been “Breaking-News” updates on CNN regarding the AIG hearings in Washington. It’s too much. I don’t know SHIT about the finer-points of ANY of this AIG (American International Group, Inc.) bail-out debacle. I’m not an economist by any stretch of the imagination. But this kind of government involvement in private industry, in the private-sector’s commerce, is highly alarming, completely un-Constitutional and the antithesis of every principle upon which this country’s government was founded. AIG got this total bail-out of, what, $170 billion? And people – including Obama, allegedly – are upset that these AIG jerks are using some $165 million of that bail-out money to pay previously promised (contracted) bonuses to the company’s higher-ups. And right they are to be upset. But I’d like to address a few things here before everybody’s noses get all out-of-joint about where the already-given $170 billion is going. First: $165 million isn’t much more than a drop in AIG’s $170 billion bail-out bucket. Second: after the government gives a private company money (which they should NOT be doing in a laissez-faire capitalist economy such as ours), they really can’t tell the private company what to DO with the money; they have GIVEN it...

Enough Already: Changing the Abortion Rules and Ocean Nukes

. a blogumn by Jordan Weeks Apparently President Obama is planning to “repeal a Bush administration rule that has become a flash point in the debate over a doctor’s right not to participate in abortions.” (“Obama to rescind Bush’s ‘conscience’ abortion rule”; Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press; February 28, 2009.) Here’s the version of the article that I initially read about this, as presented in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The piece goes on to refer to this “rule” as a “regulation”, one assembled near the very end of Bush’s administration. It apparently “strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse to provide a medical service because of moral qualms.” Unclear, nebulous terms aside, the issues at hand here are hefty: patients’ rights to legal abortion services and doctors’ rights to abstain from providing abortion services to their patients because of personal moral conflicts with or objections to the procedure. Should doctors who don’t want to perform abortions because it conflicts with their personal morality be forced to perform abortions? HELL, NO. That’s insane. Should patients who choose to do so be able to get safe, legal abortions? HELL, YES. Now, I don’t personally understand why someone would enter a field such as gynecology if she or he morally objected to abortions, or tubal ligations or other such potential “moral hot-button” procedures – but that’s just me. I’ve known doctors, both men and women, who refuse to perform abortions, or terminations of pregnancy, on moral grounds, and I’ve known doctors for whom the procedure was not morally prohibitive and who staunchly defend the rights of other doctors to abstain from performing said procedure for moral reasons. Nobody should be making anybody get an abortion, and nobody should be making anybody perform an abortion. Seems simple...

Enough Already: The Analog Truth About Digital

. a blogumn by Jordan Weeks The imminent switch of all television broadcasts from analog and digital signals to digital-only signals has less to do with “more available bandwidth” and “better quality” (which, unless maybe you’re dropping five or six grand on a serious goddammm set is a complete fairytale…and even then the shit doesn’t look quite right…) and a lot more to do with corporate control and monitoring of what viewers watch. [There’s no supposing or guessing about this; it’s just fact at this point.] Yes, the ol’ U.S.A. is about to become a test-market of several hundred million Nielsen families, whether you like it or not. And, no, this time nobody’s getting paid to share his or her viewing choices. Oh, also, cable and media companies will be able to regulate what you can and cannot record on a TiVO or other DVR device…all kindsa’ fun stuff ahead. I know what you’re wondering: Is there any significance to the fact that the “switchover” (like it’s no big deal – just someone flicking a switch at Comcast or Warner…) is government-mandated, that the United States government is MANDATING the complete eradication of analog television broadcasting? Nah; probably not, right? I mean – they just want everyone to have the greatest, clearest doggone television picture possible…because they ALWAYS want people to have great stuff and they always want to help everybody, especially in a material sense. They ALWAYS do that shit. And for absolutely no benefit to them. Yep. Our elected leaders are nothing if not reliably generous and altruistic, and always promoting the very best, cutting-edge technology. Yep. That’s our Uncle Sam. Just be careful not to take the last piece of candy from the dish in his living-room…or to sit on his...

Enough Already: Do Androids Dream of Electronic Voting Machines?”

. A blogumn by Jordan Weeks 2008 Election Special Pt. 2: Do Androids Dream of Electronic Voting Machines?” “Yes, we can.” — U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama Believe me, I’m as hopeful as the next person that some kind of positive political sea-change will accompany this Presidential personnel change. And while I’m personally glad that Obama is the “new boss” and John McCain is not, I’m not sure that there’s all that much difference between how the two men would (will) be able to run the country. Or how each of them would be allowed to run the country. For a long time now, and especially over the last eight years, people of uncommon influence and power have re-drawn the parameters of democracy in this country, and it is to the great financial benefit of certain deeply invested interest groups for those new parameters to stay where they are, or to get even more constricting, and for any and all newcomers (e.g., President Obama) to color within the lines of this new design. In a capitalist society (of which I am in full favor), the power is where the money is, and I can’t think of anyone more financially powerful than people who control the flow and price of oil. As part of one of the most connected and wealthy oil-funded families in the world, George W. Bush, along with his cabinet of Constitution-ignoring bullies (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell) and their associates (Haliburton, Diebold, etc.), quickly established a precedent of self-interest and personal profiteering that all but obliterated government by and for the people. There’s been a lot of shadiness surrounding every political, military, and social move these guys have made since January 2001, not least of which has been the veritable hijacking of the...

Enough Already: A Holiday Service Piece

. A blogumn by Jordan Weeks “Happy Thanksgiving 2008!!! from Enough Already” The universal Thanksgiving Day ritual is the cooking and eating of turkeys, America’s stupidest bird. (Sure, people say they’re smart, but come on; take one look at that weird loon and you know he’s a fool.) Presumably the second most-common ritual that takes place on Thanksgiving Day in households around the country is the watching of football. It seems like everyone in the U.S. ingests all stripes of feast food and then parks for hours to watch the footing of the ball. That’s fine and dandy. But I don’t give a shit about football, so I don’t ever partake in that particular adjunct act of post-chow sports voyeurism. Instead, I usually hit a movie or two in the theater along with a couple of friends and relatives who’ve either had enough football for one day or who, like me, don’t have an interest in it in the first place. And if the weather’s prohibitive, we’ll watch some stuff on DVD or On-Demand, if we’re at a location where there’s a second T.V. available. So for me, Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful first for family and friends…but a really close second is movies. I’m thankful for good-ass movies. With that in mind, here are my current recommendations for Thanksgiving Day 2008 movie-going and home-viewing after the jump: IN THEATERS NOW: *  Role Models *  Zack and Miri Make a Porno I do not recommend these above two films lightly, but strongly, with intensity and heartfelt admonition that you see them with all due speed. *  Rachel Getting Married *  Soul Men NOW ON DVD: *  Step Brothers Absolutely beautiful. AND NOW FOR MY On-Demand RECOMMENDATIONS (TAKEN FROM EAST-COAST Comcast’s “Classic Cable”...

Enough Already: Another Two-Parter

. A blogumn by Jordan Weeks 2008 Election Special Part 1: ‘Til Victory Barack Obama is the President-Elect of the United States. What does this mean? Well, at the very least it means that for the first time in eight shitty years we have someone in office who can speak in public. Beyond that…I don’t know. I guess we’ll all see. This guy has stepped into the king of all shitstorms, and while he seems to be incredibly smart, and is certainly charismatic, I don’t know who could deal evenly with all of the battles he’s facing. But I’m keeping hope alive. (By the way, did anyone else find it kind of amusing that Jesse Jackson was crying during Obama’s acceptance speech, given that Jackson publicly stated under his breath while his microphone was still on in-between interview segments on a Fox News show this past year that he wanted to “cut [Obama’s] nuts off” for “talking down to black folks” regarding “faith-based” initiatives? That’s just me? Okay; fair enough.) I considered not voting this year – basically because, I observed, neither of the two candidates who were actually going to wind up in office were the same people they had been before they started their (ultimately negative, sickeningly partisan) campaigns over two years ago. Early in his campaign, Obama talked a little too aggressively about Iran for my taste, and his proposed health-care plan leaves a lot to be desired (as did Her Majesty, Hillary Clinton’s). Just ask a Canadian. McCain talked too aggressively about a lot of stuff – especially about bombing people. I mean, he talked about bombing a country in his little “Bomb, bomb, bomb / Bomb, bomb Iran” Beach Boys “joke” – but I wonder if he realizes that...

Enough Already: Is High-Fructose Corn Syrup Good or Bad?

. A blogumn by Jordan Weeks I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If you’re looking to get a good year’s worth of smoke blown directly up your ass in just 30 seconds, turn on your television. And if you’re lucky, as soon as that goofbox warms up and starts to glow, you’ll catch one of two new commercials trumpeting the (unnamed, nebulous) virtues of high-fructose corn syrup, a molecularly altered version of corn starch, which, over the last forty years, has replaced sucrose (table or cane sugar) and other natural sweetening agents in a huge number of comestibles, becoming the most common sweetening ingredient in untold numbers of food products made and sold in the U.S. Here are the commercials, if you haven’t seen them: Another commercial, plus me losing my shit about them after the jump: Just in case you can’t play play these at wo, here’s a bit of dialogue from one of the commercials: UNINFORMED PUSHOVER DUDE: “You know what they say about high-fructose corn syrup.” ABRASIVE, POPSICLE-PUSHING GIRLFRIEND (PRESUMABLY A USDA MOLE OR SHILL, NOT SURE WHICH ONE): “Like what?” UNINFORMED PUSHOVER DUDE: “That…it’s…that…um…” “That…it’s…that…um…,” indeed, America. “That…it’s…that…um…,” indeed. The main chemical difference between sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup (“HFCS” for short) is that sucrose is comprised of fifty-percent glucose and fifty-percent fructose; HFCS 55 (a widely used type of HFCS) contains only forty-five-percent glucose and fifty-five-percent fructose (hence, I imagine, the nominal “high-fructose” designation). Now, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the amount of cane and beet sugar available (and presumably used) to sweeten U.S. food products dropped from around 100 dry-weight pounds per capita year in 1966 to about 50 pounds in 2006. Conversely, high-fructose corn syrup’s availability (and, again, presumed use) increased...

Enough Already: Fun and Games Pt. 2

. A blogumn by Jordan Weeks Rock Band and Guitar Hero: Post-Modern Harbingers of Absolute Social, Cultural, Emotional, and Economic Paralysis, or Just Bad, Unclean Fun?” “Do you know what a Luddite is? That’s a person who doesn’t like newfangled contraptions. Contraptions like nuclear submarines armed with Poseidon missiles that have H-bombs in their warheads, and like computers that cheat you out of becoming. Bill Gates says, ‘Wait till you can see what your computer can become.’ But it’s you who should be doing the becoming. What you can become is the miracle you were born to work—not the damn fool computer.” — Kurt Vonnegut, “Knowing What’s Nice” (In These Times, November 6, 2003) Don’t hate the player, hate the game. (And the player. A little bit.) I kid. (A little bit.) But listen, this is no joke. Rock Band and Guitar Hero are not harmless, or even merely time-stealing, video games. They are social and cultural impedimenta and microcosms of a larger problem, which seems bigger and bigger with each passing year (and with each incompatible gaming-component upgrade). It’s like an across-the-board “programming”  (for lack of a better term) of Americans, Westerners in general, and folks elsewhere who have or will soon get video games, to be comfortable with what could be perceived, by someone given to such bold skepticism, as a corporate-planned move away from manual involvement in activities of all kinds and toward button-pushing “virtual” versions of these activities, wherein the human element of interaction with other people, or with oneself and, say, an instrument, or a canvas, or a pen and a piece of paper, are replaced with mouse or touchpad controls and button-pushing. Imagine a world where this could…oh, right; that is our world. There is arguably strong encouragement...

Enough Already: Fun and Games Pt. 1

/ A blogumn by Jordan Weeks Exploring the intersection of popular culture, socio-cultural politics, economics, and whatever the hell else… Through the Looking Glass Metallica’s new album, Death Magnetic (released September 12), apparently holds the distinction of being the first new full-length album to be released simultaneously in stores and for “download and play” with the Xbox-compatible video game Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. It may soon hold yet another distinction. Since its release, Death Magnetic has been embroiled in controversy and may be the first album to be re-mixed and re-released due to public outcry (read: copious negative Internet flurry) about the album’s sound. Swarms of vocal Metallica fans apparently feel the sound quality on the downloadable Guitar Hero 3 version is far superior to that of the allegedly brittle-sounding retail-available CD. Now…I have no idea whether there’s any validity to these claims, as I have not, in-person, heard the album being played on Guitar Hero or an Xbox; I have only heard YouTube audio-posts which claim to be “A/B” comparisons of the exact same musical phrases being played alternately on the CD and then on Guitar Hero, and there’s really no way to verify whether these are legitimate, unaffected posts. Someone could easily have adjusted the playback mix of the sample song parts with a home-studio mixer (or even a stereo-component amp) for one sample, then adjusted the mix again for the comparison-post. (The Internet, as you may or may not be aware, is a bastion for subterfuge, nonsense, and loose women. Not to mention sleight-of-hand trickery from precocious, bored, dickheaded opportunists and metal fans, some of whom are probably, like, 12.) But I have listened to much of the album on a car stereo equipped with a CD-player (i.e. not...