{ Monthly Archives }
September 2008
- Schlep - If you’re unsure how to affect this presidential election or desperate for a quick fix before the new season of The Sarah Silverman Program, then you ought to take a few minutes to check out The Great Schlep.
- Slate - I often use Slate as source material for this blog. On Thursday night, homeowner and relapsing fish enthusiast Justin Brunson beat me to the punch by forwarding this short, humorous piece to my gmail account.
- Housekeeping - Regular readers may notice that, though I attempt to foster a participatory environment, I rarely address comments directly. It’s not that I don’t read and enjoy them - I do - but that I want to use this forum to keep people informed and occupied at work without getting mired in ongoing debates.
Similarly, you may have noticed that I attempt to give credit where credit is due, as in the above bullet point. As much as I would encourage Web 2.0 participation here - particularly as it may build traffic to the point where I could start selling banner ads - I also recognize that not all messages are appropriate for the public forum. Thus, anyone reading the blog without access to my personal email address can feel free to email blog [at] levikafka [dot] com.
- Inexplicable - Looking back at my Porn and Pie post, there’s something I forgot to note that’s since gotten stuck in my craw. If I remember correctly, one of the award recipients said the following in her acceptance speech: “I can’t believe I’m crying. I don’t even cry when I get electrocuted.” The inexplicable reference to electrocution as a comparison to recognition continues to make my mind race. Does this woman electrocute herself to some satisfactory end? Is there a bastard child of porn and torture porn of which I’m unaware? How often does this person get electrocuted? Does such electrocution involve a specific apparatus, such as a chair, or is it impromptu, as in inadvertently touching an exposed wire?
- SNL - If you weren’t parked on you couch watching TV on Saturday night, then you can click here to see Tina Fey reprise her role as Sarah Palin. Hopefully, there will be only 5 more weeks of this hilarious phenomenon.
- Debate - I’m certain that some of you arrived at work this morning, began seeking a means of procrastination, and were disappointed (or, at least, surprised) to see that I had not yet produced an extensive rant in response to the first Presidential debate. At this point, the partisan divide has become such a chasm that there’s really no way around it. Being rational, college-educated, and born after 1972, my preferences are well-known.
Substantively, Friday’s debate offered little new, if anything. Each candidate hit his talking points, often speaking past or around the other. The real difference between the candidates was their demeanor. While Barack turned to address McCain and attempted to make eye contact while listening to his opponent, McCain made his intention not to look in Obama’s direction abundantly clear. I found this tactic to be strange, off-putting, and borderline offensive, and my rational interpretation is that McCain refrained from eye contact as a pre-emptive means of controlling his rage. McCain’s temper and distaste for Obama are open secrets, and maybe this was the only way he could be sure he wouldn’t show the American public just how vicious and heated he can become.
- Acceptance - I believe I have previously expressed regret at my inability to personally cancel Lipstick Jungle, NBC’s television show adapted from Candace Bushnell’s book of the same name. After screening another randomly selected episode, I can see the problem a bit more clearly. LJ’s main characters are wealthy, dramatic, middle-aged women; I relate to none of those characteristics. However, if you happen to enjoy far-fetched tales of people maladapted to the requirements of their lives, then I won’t begrudge you this program.
- Unacceptable - In the interest of keeping an open mind, I viewed an episode of Knight Rider. It quickly became apparent that, though KITT, the super-intelligent car, has the speech patterns of a three-year-old, every pseudo-technical bit of dialog has been written to be as cumbersome as possible, presumably in the hopes that the audience will be impressed by obfuscation. Here are a few other points at which I took umbrage:
- The opening scene occurs at a party whose location is named “Foreign Consulate, U.S.A.” Gee, I hope Mssrs. Doe and Cardmember don’t cause any problems.
- The party is a black tie affair, and it’s not long before the protagonist wonders how the bad guys caught wind of his presence. I’m guessing he drew attention to himself by arriving in a tuxedo with a hot date and asking the valet to park his Mustang.
- Having been struck by a missile, KITT is aflame and struggling to keep the cabin temperature lower than that of an oven. I applaud any car with such robust A/C capabilities. For their part, the passengers begin disrobing so as not to be roasted alive, even though their clothing is insulating them from the hazardous heat external to their bodies. By that logic, firefighters would be safer wearing only oxygen tanks and hard hats than they are in flame-retardant uniforms.
- Lunacy - John McCain suspended his campaign yesterday, claiming that it was distracting from congressional efforts to address the debt management crisis. As part of that suspension, he wants to postpone tomorrow night’s debate, the first of three between the two presidential candidates, until a resolution has been reached. In addition, he now wants to postpone next week’s vice-presidential debate. Although the McCain campaign is selling this maneuver as high-mindedness, it reeks of misdirection. McCain has historically favored deregulation, and the current economic woes are due in no small part to inadequate securities regulation. More pointedly, the New York Times reported on Tuesday that McCain’s campaign manager has been receiving payments from Freddie Mac for his lobbying work.
- Obit - Fellow underemployed Exonian and avid reader Kyle Koch was haranguing me last week to make note of David Foster Wallace’s procession into the hereafter. Having never read the man’s work, I have nothing to say on the matter. Thus, I defer to Sarah Hepola.
- Excerpt - “…the emotional consequences, too; like, what if he doesn’t call or he doesn’t say ‘hi’ to you at school or, worse, he tells all of his friends?” - 90210
Despite evidence to the contrary, I’ve never actually been a teenage girl. Thus, I wonder at the accuracy of this progression of potential catastrophic coital outcomes. The first is an etiquette point to which at least a few well-intentioned adolescents may not yet be attenuated, not entirely dissimilar from sending a note of thanks after a job interview. While the second point may be as legitimate a concern as an upper-middle class teenager has, the last one makes me laugh. Maybe boarding school left me with a skewed perception of the standard high school microcosm, but, as I recall, the chances of a fluid exchange remaining on the down low were small enough that a person might as well have wired a car alarm into his or her genitalia.
Addendum: I see that MSN picked up my complaint about the underweight 90210 cast members.
- Review - Now that I’ve seen Michael Clayton, I can see why it got nominated for so many Oscars. For starters, MC gets a lot of points for refusing to go the A Civil Action route, despite being centered around a corporate liability suit. At least as important is the acting, which is impeccable. Really, if you’re in the market for a moderately predictable, dour character study, then MC should make it to the top of your queue. My only complaint is that the necessity of the final plot development precludes the possibility that it might allude to a resolution of the protagonist’s character arc; most people will ignore that argument.
- Confusion - Why did I just see an ad for ING Direct on TV? Oh, I see the problem: I’ve confused ING with AIG, one of the many financial companies set to receive billions of dollars in federal loans as part of a government effort to delay complete economic collapse. For the benefit of anyone whose cave just got the internet this morning, I will attempt to recount my understanding of the ongoing financial crisis. Please feel free to correct me.
Recap: Local mortgage brokers lent money to individuals who used real estate as collateral. Because that debt was secured against actual material assets, it could be sold up the line and repackaged into a bond-like security, which then propagated its own line of derivative securities. In theory, that’s all well and good; so long as people keep making their mortgage payments, the securities retain their value as written.
When debt became a more fluid, it became an even more lucrative business, and more investors joined the club. As the cash pool outstripped the existing pool of lendees, the requirements to receive a loan had to be reduced so as to expand the bottom-level customer base. In short, a lot of irresponsible and/or predatory lending behaviors became commonplace, and, by the time the bad mortgages those behaviors produced began to bear fruit - in the form of a statistically relevant number of defaulted loans - a whole lot more debt had been written that no rational person could expect to collect. Meanwhile, that worthless debt was repackaged into the aforementioned securities in crafty and irregular ways that maximized their bond ratings while (one assumes) minimizing their reliable value. Also, the unwarranted accessibility of debt inflated housing prices, which, in turn, allowed more money to flow into the debt market.
Now, the sky is falling. Individuals are defaulting, en masse, on mortgages they shouldn’t have taken in the first place. The asset devices those mortgages have become cease to pay dividends when the mortgage payments stop arriving; beyond that, the surplus of foreclosure properties lowers housing prices, thus de-valuing the material assets against which the debt asset devices and their derivatives had been secured.
There are some other implications that I, in my relative ignorance, am leaving out of the picture, such as the role mortgage-backed securities may play in certain companies reserve portfolios and the inability of the holders of such securities to assess the value of their own holdings.
The pertinent result of all this, at the moment, is that congress appears primed to allocate upwards of a trillion dollars in deficit spending to the discretion of Secretary of State Henry Paulson, for the purpose of disaster aversion. On the one hand, measures must be taken to ensure the existence of a critical mass of liquidity. On the other hand, this administration’s penchant for asset relocation and haplessness in the face of crisis must give one pause.
For more effusive - and better informed, one assumes - outrage on this topic, visit TMQ.
- Disappointment - Admittedly, Heroes would probably have to have delivered some form of in-home [Warning: NOT work-appropriate] Lingam massage to produce the amount of joy I expected from the season premiere. Out-sized expectations notwithstanding, I suspect last year’s writer’s strike may have delivered the show a critical blow. Inter-season continuity is lacking, and the ever-growing ensemble cast doesn’t help. Also, it might just be my soft spot for adorable sadists, but I find it unnerving to see Kristen Bell credited as a guest star rather than as a regular cast member.
- Remember - The first of the mere 3 presidential debates will take place Friday night at 9pm EDT. Should you feel compelled to use your Friday night more frivolously, please either record one of the many simultaneous broadcasts or leave it on during your previously scheduled orgy.