Ironic Capitalist

2004-02-10T18:25:00.000-08:00

Apparently, when Dr. Atkins died -- after slipping on ice -- he was gigantically fat (at 6 feet, he weighed a hefty 258) and had a history of congestive heart failure.

I'm uncertain whether to down some bacon or some broccoli at the news.

Also, I anxiously await retro JFK buttons.

2004-02-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

There's a simply wonderful mass of news today to suit all sorts: political junkies, business watchers, science geeks. And I fear it all may force Janet's nipple back into hiding.

But her boob's influence does continue. CBS has announced it will run the Grammy's on tape delay. And that means everything's fair game, so grab those crotches, expose those breasts and swear like the sailor who slept with your mother.

Marvelous.

2004-02-02T17:51:00.000-08:00

Everyone's talking about the Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake controversy. Do we all really not realize that's the point?

Her boob won.

Now, if Justin was dressed in a diaper and played the baby, then maybe we should be talking.

2004-01-19T10:05:00.000-08:00

I return with a mixed review.

I, one who typically enjoys the stereotypical clear and brown alcohols but has determined not to be bound by such de rigeur rigors, found the Hpnotiq like a day trip from the city to the shore. Refreshing. Just fresh. Even delightfully different. But not something you'd do every time you had a free afternoon.

My drinking partner, whom I had chosen for her alcohol enthusiasm and relatively loose interpretation of traditional morals, was decidedly unimpressed. "I believe it's the first alcohol I've ever had that I didn't like," she said, after giving it a fair shake both over ice and mixed with champagne (which did win the race mentioned below). Too much pineapple, she complained.

The caviar, however, went down perfectly.

2004-01-17T18:16:00.000-08:00

At an after-party Friday night, I quizzed the bartender (at the outside and therefore uncrowded bar) about Hpnotiq. While he was busy serving -- and I was mildly shocked this was still so popular -- Red Bull and vodka (Grey Goose, if you must know), he happily played up the wonderful effects of that trendy New York libation.

So, with my foreign bred and born absinthe dwindling to precarious levels, I thought "why not?"

So, I have before me a bottle of this mesmerisingly blue liqueur. I'm uncertain whether I'll be imbiding it over ice, with cognac (I have a fairly fruity bottle of V.S.O.P, no oak casks here) or champagne. The champagne is leading the race, however, because next to my Hpnotiq bottle is a small jar of caviar, and it is weeping to be paired with a sparkling drink.

Before I do that, however, here is a short list of decadent things you can do.

1. Finish five martinis before noon.
2. Find the richest, and possibly costly, dessert you can and make it your lunch.
3. Stand too close to a fire-breathing performer.
4. Enjoy pomegranate seeds, already seeded.
5. Opera. Almost any.

2004-01-15T10:24:00.000-08:00

I've been too wonderfully busy this week to get to an issue that's been simmering like a split pea soup all week. There was a decadent meal at a throw-back Continental restaurant, which began with oysters and champagne and included a gorgeous beef Wellington, there was a night at a Puccini opera (yes, the one that almost comes to mind) and a day of 45 holes of golf (we managed a final nine).

But, I'm actually content to say, there was nothing like this. (I'm embarrassed that it's from the Times.) The topic? "[O]ne of New York's sauciest underground social scenes."

Or, more precisely, sex parties. But not the '70s swinging sex parties. In these, the Times allows us, "[u]nlike the dismal, failed swinging attempt in 'Carnal Knowledge,' in which two husbands make a surreptitious deal to seduce each other's wives, the younger scene is driven largely by women."

Hurrah, I hear? I, naturally, thought so as well. Wonderful, was my reaction. But as I read further, I found a series of sad, old hegemonic plays:

"It's not just, `I'm going to go to this party with my boyfriend to have sex in front of other people,' " said Melinda Gallagher, 30, a former graduate student in human sexuality at New York University and a founder of Cake. "The philosophy is that women need their own space to explore sexuality. The women in the room direct whatever happens."

and

Ms. Gallagher of Cake said the media deals were part of the sexual revolution she wants to encourage. "You can't be subversive for your whole entire existence and make the huge social impact we want to make," she said. "You have to be in it to win it."

and, finally

Perhaps not surprisingly, not all men who attend the events find the new paradigm particularly enticing, or even necessarily new. Rob Press, 36, a computer consultant who has attended several One Leg Up parties, said that in his experience, "women are the gatekeepers anyway" in sexual matters.

"If you're going to keep making them more empowered, then I become a commodity," he said. "It just makes it fashionable to hide behind political jargon, unless they're attracting guys with an emasculation fantasy."

Rob is nearly on to the point. All this talk of sexual revolution and social impact misses the flaw of nearly every revolution: what Adorno saw as its co-opting. The power, and its problems, remains.

Note that the women in this story are not coming to a new sexuality, or even refining the one we've enjoyed since man first bashed woman on the head with a club. They simply are taking on the male role. It reminds me of those terrible power suits for women from the '80s, with their ridiculous shoulder pads (which trickle down, as fashion does, into everything). The oppressed revolt, and then set themselves up in the very form of their oppressor. Hello, Napoleon.

Civilization won't gain anywhere until someone breaks us from this cycle. Women, who have such wonderful qualities to offer, fail us all when they lower themselves to men's.

2004-01-09T10:07:00.000-08:00

Now that the champagne cocktails have worn off, I feel I simply must revise the Proustian (length-wise, anyway... ) entry below.

I've given far too much space to the National Review. Clearly, the National Review should only be consumed after a headful of drinks.

And, I am abashed to admit, I flawed my argument adroitly. We should establish a slave-level class in America, with controls on beatings and other ill treatment, but otherwise exactly as the Romans did it. We will then have all the grave-diggers Marx could imagine.

2004-01-08T22:21:00.000-08:00

There has been no vacuum of crazed reaction to Bush's proposal to offer illegal immigrants (aka illegal aliens or undocumented workers) temporary legal working rights in the U.S. As the New York Times put it: "The proposal drew criticism from some groups involved in the issue for not going far enough to help immigrants and from others for rewarding people who had entered the country illegally." The country's best blow-hard, O'Reilly (why does no one recall him from his insipid and utterly unforgivable A Current Affair tenure?) kvetches mightly. I'd quote him, but it is sheer folly to attempt to do his screeching justice on a written-esque page.

There is also this, from the mighty in its own right National Review. It attempts to make the ludicrous argument that there really aren't jobs no one but illegal immigrants will do. Forgive me for quoting so much, but you'll see how necessary it is:

"I want to look at the basic assumption underlying the whole Bush plan: that there are jobs Americans simply won't do, so that the importation of foreigners is essential. Whether these foreign workers are illegal aliens, guestworkers, or permanent legal immigrants is a detail to be worked out by us, the argument goes, but our need for them is unchanged.

Even many opponents of the proposed Bush Amnesty assume this to be true, leading them to propose new and improved guestworker programs, with provisions for stricter controls against permanent settlement, greater incentives to return, tighter enforcement against unscrupulous employers, etc.

As well-meaning as such efforts may be, the basic assumption is false — there is simply no economic reason to import foreign workers.

If the supply of foreign workers were to dry up (say, through actually enforcing the immigration law, for starters), employers would respond to this new, tighter, labor market in two ways. One, they would offer higher wages, increased benefits, and improved working conditions, so as to recruit and retain people from the remaining pool of workers. At the same time, the same employers would look for ways to eliminate some of the jobs they now are having trouble filling. The result would be a new equilibrium, with blue-collar workers making somewhat better money, but each one of those workers being more productive.

Many people fear the first part of such a response, claiming that prices for fruits and vegetables would skyrocket, fueling inflation. But since all unskilled labor — from Americans and foreigners, in all industries — accounts for such a small part of our economy, perhaps four percent of GDP, we can tighten the labor market without any fear of sparking meaningful inflation. Agricultural economist Philip Martin has pointed out that labor accounts for only about ten percent of the retail price of a head of lettuce, for instance, so even doubling the wages of pickers would have little noticeable effect on consumers.

But it's the second part of the response to a tighter labor market that people just don't get. By holding down natural wage growth in labor-intensive industries, immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, retarding technological progress and productivity growth."

First off, I'll take the unprovable truth of anecdotal evidence in this case any day. (As Wilde, said: "The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!") Can anyone who has seen gardens being tended, houses painted, cars and dishes washed or -- and perhaps this will be most recognizable to those who argue otherwise -- golf carts tended and maintained truly believe that these jobs would ever be handled by anyone other than the unskilled? In the case of foreign workers, of course, their lack of skill is largely tied to their inability to speak English (and, as an aside, anyone who has stepped into any community college classroom would know that the ability to write well is not the God-given right of Americans), not necessarily their lack of knowledge.

To say otherwise is ridiculous and downright unmannerly.

But to another point of this National Review insanity. At one point, the write suggests that unskilled labor accounts for "perhaps four percent of GDP," pressing for the sheer minimalism of it all. But then the writer goes on to say that this unimportant part of the economy is not only holding down wage growth but is actually "retarding technological progress"!

My gracious, no!

Really, I mean it, no. It simply can't be both. Either unskilled labor is a meaningless part of the overall economy or it is so meaningful that it can, and does, affect "ways of doing business." Such as getting a slightly better estimate on having carpet or flooring installed. Or even constructing homes and office buildings for a price people and businesses are willing to pay. (Such arenas are apparently begging for innovation, according to the National Review. But the innovations suggested -- houses built in factories? -- sound a lot like the kinds of things tornadoes always tear through. So, no thank you.)

Now, to my point. Bush's plan will continue to stir debate. Among the many interesting questions to be answered are: Will they be able to change jobs? (Answer, apparently, probably.) Will there be a new "unskilled" minimum wage? What happens at the end of the three-year period? (This is playing out as a biggie, in part because there has been indications of the big C as a reward.)

I have an answer for the last. And, as is often the case, the answer lies in the past. This time, with the Romans. Rome, of course, had slaves. But slavery wasn't the race-based system of U.S. history and these slaves were a much more regular and routine piece of society. And an awful lot of slaves actually were given their freedom. It was called manumission. And it could work as an incentive to work hard.

Now, I'm not in anyway advocated slavery (though if it comes about, I hope I have early dibs), but why not hold the possibility of citizenship out as a true incentive, one to make people first sign up for the program and then work diligently and prove themselves worthy? Certainly, there are a number of Americans who were born into their citizenship who don't much deserve it.

Why not swell our ranks with the best and brightest?

2004-01-06T22:56:00.000-08:00

An explanation:
My e-mail, as stated aside, contains only one "c." The reason? I unwisely attempted to outsmart hotmail. My attempt to establish "ironiccapitalist" blundered when I elected the e-mail's owner to be a mere 3 years old. Hotmail then wanted the tykes' parent to provide a credit card as proof that someone in the household was older than 18. A difficult proposition to prove, indeed, and one I declined to do. So keep your c's to yourself, and enjoy.

2004-01-06T22:49:00.000-08:00

A few aesthetic changes have been made, which may strike some as unimportant, but me as utterly crucial.

Certainly, it is much more important than my dropping Google ranking, which I predicted. The Curse of Ernulphus upon the reader who urged me to write.

Other mixed news -- no, not the faltering dollar and threat of interest rates, not the garbled aspirations of California's governor, not the Dean-Gore-Bradley menage a trois -- but a partial response from Bobbie at "L&D," which I have linked permanently at the side. I'm garroulous, apparently, and worthy of some mention, but not, to this point, a return e-mail or some Match.com-type token of returned affection. (Might I add, after a quick curiosity check in my area, I'm stunned by the 20 pages of eligible partners?! And my field of choice was narrow.)

My e-mail, admittedly, was short, nothing more than "I spied your wonderful words and put a response 'here.'" So maybe I shouldn't wish for more than I received. Perhaps more shall come.

2004-01-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

I worked once, six months or so, in retail, which proved a glorious, iconic time: flirtatious women, desperate men and children scampering about so full of life because life had yet to claim them. And I made oodles of money (one afternoon on that job, I recall, I first used that melodious word as I planned a long weekend).

It was, suffice to say, quite unlike this woman's description of her time behind the counter. Mine was, in the end, a land-lubbing version of Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. Without all the back-breaking labor.

What might have changed between my experience and this loudmouth's, er... dilettante's (I joke, of course, she is both loudmouth and dilettante!)? Why did she suffer "the worst of humanity" and I recall the best?

We should look to society, as I turn all William Bennett or Pat Robertson (have you heard, God has told our modern-day Cotton Mather that Bush will win in a landslide, information I have yet to see used to predict the Democratic nominee. Surely, if Robertson's uber-Christian God says that, we can assume Sen. Lieberman to be our November sacrifice). But it is not a decline of American values, but a proliferation of American money.

Our dilettante -- she clearly is a dilettante, in the end, despite the protestations, for who else would react to news of Saddam's capture, a tinglingly true time to put punditry on a blog (which, by the way, is a full crap of a word, quite the contrast to oodles), with words from Shakespeare's Henry V -- has happened upon the new, great unwashed rich.

Only they would refuse the pleasure of waiting in lines, when money allows moments to stretch extricably into moments when the money lasts. Only they forget the distance between them and the help is the length of the birth canal (forgive the unpleasant image, but it's true). Only they show no class to match their credit.

The 90s boom may have busted (though signs now show a slow boom-like trend), but not everyone turned collateral damage. The unwashed rich survived, and seem to be thriving.

It is not a phenomena without precedence (is there even such a thing?). But that preview was not post World War II, when a new class of middle class full of hope bred by education expanded in the 1950s. Look back to the late 1880s and into the 1890s and you find a new cache of rich rose, playing havoc upon the class system of American society. It took a depression, well after a war on foreign shores, to erase those rich.

And think. We are now in such a war. Can a depression be far behind?

But I refuse to give into such thoughts. No, this morning has dawned with the crystal blue that winter brings to forget the gray. And my thoughts work more to our dilettante, to what I assume is her own words, unfolding in takes and starts before the world. We are none of us exiles if we can make connections, and what else is this ether of an Internet that connections?

So, to an unknown, loudmouth dilettante, I offer:

Her Voice
by Oscar Wilde

The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing.
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,—
It shall be, I said, for eternity
’Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done,
Love’s web is spun.

Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown, but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.

Look upward where the white gull screams,
What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On some outward voyaging argosy,—
Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.

Sweet, there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may.

And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty,—you your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
Like me and you.

I'll say nothing of hopes of photo to come, husbandlessness and wealth.

2003-12-09T16:24:00.000-08:00

A reader -- and I had assumed that was a club of which I was the sole member -- has informed me that my "google ranking," whatever that really says, is 4. "Get a post on there, man, before you lose your audience," the reader urged, judging my gender rather callously, or at least rather generally.

I must protest. As my ranking, and assuredly a "4" is better than the "0" I have borne since I began this blog, at a moment I wrongly assumed to be a time when I would have space to write, has bloomed, I must assume that whoever is responsible for its growth is reading precisely because I am not updating. Perhaps in a blogsphere dominated by innumerable postings of inanity and pundintry, a certain familiarity has set in, a stasis or comfort, knowing that in this one place nothing will have changed.

For ruining that, I humbly apologize. And I promise, half-heartedly at least and at most, that soon there will be time to post a plenty. And google ranking be damned.

2003-11-09T15:15:00.000-08:00

One thing or two. At some point I'll get more posts on here. But I don't plan to do all quick hits on Iraq, the White House, etc. I'm looking to do something different. So stay tuned.

2003-11-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

A welcome on a day when many things look up, some continue to look quite down.

Who am I, why am I here? To add a voice that can't quite be classified, one that can sweep from left to right as the particulars of a matter dictate (be they social, economic, moral or whatever catches my fancy) but more importantly can keep swinging past the right until it's back left again. But, why, but why? Because the Internet allows it. And I'm just sure enough in what I have to say. But who, but who? Someone who knows I want the fancy clothes but can't forget who makes them and how they live. Real irony isn't comfortable. The lame irony of the late 20th Centure that's been pronounced dead was always too cocky and unaffected. Real irony survives.

Now, the up:

All signs are that the U.S. economy has turned the corner. Treasury Secretary John Snow sees it continuing through 2004 (after the election?).

Greenspan's equally bullish. If there's a way to combine higher productivity with increased numbers of jobs, hello 1999, minus the Y2K bug.

No major bubble to burst in home prices, at least in one high-profile area.

Anyone can see anything they want in consumer confidence numbers.

The down:

There are still a lot of unemployed.

Attacks continue in Iraq ... and spread to Saudi Arabia.

Rethinking of key piece of Iraq policy suggests things really aren't going well.