GE investors to sell assets

NEW YORK - In a move that was a surprise to many in the business world, an investor in General Elecric Corp. has announced that he will liquidate his entire stake in the company. Jeff Hendricks, of Aurora, IL, will be liquidating all 125 shares of the company sometime this month, in a move to increase the liquidity in his portfolio.
According to Hendricks, whose 125 shares make up about 0.000000012% of the company and are worth an estimated $1.9 thousand, "I just found out my Gramps left me some stock when he died a couple of years ago." He added, "It woulda been easier if he'd just given me some cash."
Tightened assets and diminished liquidity have been hallmarks of the securities market and investment banking industry for the better part of the last six months, marked by the collapse of the Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers firms, as well as several companies receiving aid as part of a $700 trillion "bailout" package passed by congress in late 2008.
GE executives could not be reached to commeng on Hendricks' sudden and shocking divestment, though a spokesman for the company alluded that a search for new investors and capital contributions is underway.
As for Mr. Hendricks' earnings from the sale, he plans on immediately re-infusing the cash into the economy by "maybe paying my rent" and "buying a kick-ass subwoofer" for his midtown-Aurora basement apartment.

CAFFEINE!

What in the world is it (it being the world) coming to? I just paid eighty fucking cents for a can of pop (not pop [pop]) and they were sold out of fucking Coke Zero, and I still feel Zeroed out and coked up. Please don't make me sit still any longer. The eighty cents is an approximately 6 and 2/3 percent increase on the previous price, which was a reliable $.75, which allowed me to not only buy a pop (fuck soda) with a dollar, but get a goddamned quarter out of the deal, too. The accumulating busts of General Washington in my desk drawer would eventually contribute - in no small part - to my ability to do a little laundry on the weekend, which is a necessity, because the laundry room in my building's basement doesn't have a change machine. So here I am with my Sprite (hm, actually caffeine free. I may have to rethink my mood) and waiting to here the pleasant light tinny clink of two dimes, but am instead bombarded by the resonant gong and crash of four Olympic-Barbell nickels. So not only am I deprived of my daily dose of State factoids (did you know that 2007 was Jamestown's quadricentennial?) but none of my nickels were the Lewis and Clark commemorative editions.

So now I'm thinking of cutting out the pop altogether from my life (again), which is probably healthier anyway. Which I need. But what if I swing too far and start drinking wheatgrass or alfalfa juice and I excreet sweet, dewy, cellulosic scents that no one can stand? On top of this, I no longer am getting my daily quarters, so I can't afford frequent laundry. So my smell getsn worse. Which gets me fired from my job (what if my boss asks what state the Old Man in the Mountain is In, and I am without a reference?) and I loose my apartment. No one can afford that place in these trying times (I think to myself, wistfully inflating my sense of achievement) so it will go unrented, the company goes under, and will get bought out by some conglomerate who puts in a change machine, or those fancy rechargeable-card-operated systems, and I am forced to walk by feeling like I was displaced, the place I was was improved, and someone who could afford the shit anyway profited off of the improvements. And here I am taking shots of wheatgrass or snorting bamboo and wearing hemp (which doesn't need laundered! the smelly girl at the counter told me) wondering how I ever could stand it inside that corporate structure, so entwined and built in upon itself that a five-fucking-cents increase ruins us all.

Start learning to make your own salt pork and shoes, bitches. The depression is a comin'.

Really?

There was a headline on NBC.com that said "Check out Jay's 1984 Lambroghini Countach. The hottest supercar of the 1980s!"

The RNC Election Party

The Capitol Hilton was abuzz with conservative-looking types - guys with crappy hair and Dockers pants and creepy trenchcoats and pale skin that suggested hemophilia. The ties were simple and the mood was OK.

Of the three people I had brought, two were Dems and one "probably would have voted for Obama". We were all excited to be in such a nice hotel, and when we made our way up to the ballroom were were impressed by the chandelier and bewildered by the band, which I think was playing "Mustang Sally" and then played something from the 90s, like Chumbawumba, but not them, and then played "The Twist." We went straigtht to the bar.

Apparently "Paid for by the Republican National Committee" doesn't include drinks, and a separate table sold tickets. Green for cocktails and blue for beers, they were a little overpriced for that sort of thing. Apparently the G.O.P. is looking for handouts wherever they can get them. But one of my posse bought me a beer in return for the ticket, and I went to the food table (food was, thankfully, free) and managed to get a couple of dry oysters down before giving up on them and trying the Pork Chile, which was really quite good.

The giant projector screens were showing the projections, and the crowd cheered when Georgia went to McCain and then when somewhere else went to McCain, and they booed at I think Vermont going Obama.

The room was a large long room, a typical ballroom, with white walls. We entered in one corner that was apparently the back, and the entire front wall was a red curtain, in front of which was the stage where the eight-piece band played it's odd concoction of the history of the pop charts (they played Pink's "I'm comin' out" next). Above the band, on both the right and left, were the giant projector screens, while smaller TVs were positioned along the side walls. The room was in two sides - at the door where we came in were two bars, the ticket table, and the food table that stretched the width of the room. Towards the middle were a few high tables, and then the open space for dancing (although this space was carpeted with the same plush, deep blue rug as the rest of the room, complete with intermittent giant gold stars. There was no real "dance floor"). At the far end of the room, the high tables began again, and the food table, and more bars. A camera crew was set up, pointed at the band.

We were pretty disappointed that we didn't see more famous people, but I led us to the far side because I recognized some folks that I knew. They had disappeared, so I made myself a sandwich of the large leg of beef that they were carving off of, and then piled up a large helping of mashed potatoes (complete with all the fixin's!). I was pissed about paying for drinks, but the food was incredible. Ohio got called for Obama. Our table simultaneously said "Yes! I mean, agghhh!" and giggled at each other like a bunch of liberal pussies.

Obama was easily going to win. He was at at least 220, California would give him 52 more, and if you added Washington and Oregon, whatever they were, he would clear the 279 mark. The band was playing "Dixieland Delight" by Alabama. I had spent all of my cocktail tabs (and the bartender at this side of the room was more open to pouring doubles for the price of one than the stodgy man where we came in) and was eager to look a little more Republican to my city-fied friends. So I sang along as best I could, and high fived the tall southern boy in a blazer behind me who was also singing along. When the song was over he leaned in and said "Hey man, we should secede again!" I said something along the lines of "yeah we better if we want to keep our guns" and returned to my laughing friends.

The fancy food had run out (or it was so clear that Republicans would be suffering major losses that they decided to pull it away from the masses) and was replaced by mini cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and tater tots. Which looked more delicious in my drunken state than more Mashed Potatoes. So I grabbed a plateful and was happily eating when a group of three girls muscled one of my friends out of her spot on the table and dropped a giant stack of burgers and tots on the table.

"That's a lot of food." She was kind of cute in her dark sundress, solid tan and brunette shoulder-length hair.

"It's for all three of us..." Nevermind. She couldn't even form a decent response. Plus, she was rude. Her friend, though, was blonde and had an interesting face, with a kind of sharp nose and small but prominent chin (pointy?). She had on a blue sweater with huge leather shoulder and elbow pads. I was going to ask her if she played football at Princeton back in '32, but she yelled "WHEN I'M UPSET I EAT!" The band played another Alabama song.

When we left, the mood was mellow, but not angry or surprised. A little disappointed, but not unhappy. I've always read that Republicans are cheerier people than Democrats anyway, and I believed it. Even if they weren't as happy as the people screaming and honking in the streets, theirs was a cheeriness that wouldn't be derailed. The euphoria outside could be quickly turned to sharp despair with the news, but the Republicans seemed to have the ability to say "Oh well. I guess we'll have to learn how to live a little differently." And honestly, I felt the same way - and would have if McCain won, too. It made me feel a little left out when, from bed, I read text messages proclaiming that sixteenth street was like Carnivale "with white people". But I guess that's just the way I am. Progressive politics, but a Republican at heart.

NickelEye stands alone

Nikolai is the guy in the back. He can't help but looking alone...

These days, it seems like everyone in the Strokes is diong a solo project. This is a recent facebook conversation my friend Alex and I had about Nikolai Fraiture's solo project, NickelEye (seriously, it's called that) which you should check out at www.myspace.com/officialnickeleye (these posts are taken verbatim, so "Fraiture" was spelled wrong in all of them. However, all other names were spelled correctly the first time). :

Walter:
Did you know Nikolai Frature started a solo project (just like everyone in the Strokes)? It sounds just like you would expect him to: alone, and copying the Strokes. http://www.myspace.com/officialnickeleye

Alex:
His other songs are just him playing the bass lines to Strokes songs on his very own bass that he bought with the money he saved up from his paper route.

Nick Valensi had previously bought him all his other basses.

Walter:
Yeah, but one time Nick Valensi lost his sunglasses and had to wear a pair that Nikolai had bought him for his birthday and he hadn't had time to throw away yet, so they're even.

Alex:
It's like the time Albert Hammond, Jr. borrowed one of Nikolai's shirts because he thought it looked like it was from a thrift store and therefore ironic.

Turns out, it was just one of Nikolai's shirts.

Walter:
Or the time that Julian Cassablancas said "Hey Fab, how's it going?" to Nikolai, because Julian is a confused drunkard. Nikolai wept because he was overcome with emotion. He wept alone and fell asleep alone.

It's the reason he's still trying.

Alex:
That's reminds me of the time that Nikolai tagged along with Fab and Drew Barrymore and then when Fab left to go to the bathroom Nikolai pretended HE was dating Drew Barrymore.

It's the simple pleasures in life you have to appreciate.

Walter:
Did you hear about how Nikolai Frature created a fake Rolling Stone cover using Microsoft paint in his free time, depicting the Strokes, without him, and the tagline "The NEW Fab Four!", and he showed it to the rest of the band and they didn't understand what was supposed to be wrong with it? But just before he went home, Albert Hammond, Jr., said "Thanks for grabbing that coffee, page!" (That's the band's special nickname for for Nikolai).

It feels good to be appreciated for the things you do.

Shakespeare and MTV

(Pop) pop. (Popular) pop-culture philosophy. That's what I'm calling it. What does it mean?

Example: In a literature class reading Shakespeare, the professor asked that we address a quote from Alexander Pushkin about Shakespeare, "Shakespeare felt for all humanity, and he was the creator of an entire humanity. After God, Shakespeare is the greatest creator of living beings." To break this down is no easy task - famed literary critic Harold Bloom has written an expansive work titled Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, which deeply explored that very theme. Is it that Shakespeare was able to create real people in writing? Or that his characters were so recognizeable that they were human? Or that before his writing, no one took such an introspective approach to the human emotion and motivation, and so (as the author of the article linked to above, as well as here, suggests is Bloom's final conclusion) has re-created the way that we see the world, and by that means re-inventing humanity?

I suggested they look at an essay from the book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs discussing the implications of MTV's "The Real World". The author makes the point that the first season of "The Real World" was the most real, becuase there had never been anything like this on television, at all, and the characters didn't know how to act in front of the camera. By the third season, however, the show's cast members would settle into a role, rather than just be themselves. He discusses how stereotypes such as "the militant black guy" or "the virginal southern girl" became the singular dimension of the cast member's personality. It wasn't long after that, though, that he also noticed that even the people he met every day slipped into one of the stereotypes. He ceased to meet multi-faceted, dynamic personalities. He would meet a "Julie" or "a Kevin" or "a Puck", or what have you (read the book -the guy is a certifiable expert). People became one-dimensional. In that way, for his generation (and perhaps mine as well), "The Real World" began to create humanity.*

When I introduced that passage to the class, my thinking was that this was what happened in Victorian times - English men suddenly found themselves meeting "a Falstaff" or "a Cassius", or themselves slipping into those roles. Even today we call a romantic a "Romeo". One other guy in the class seemed to get it, but not everyone bit. The professor himself tried to politely talk the discussion away from that example. Obviously, the idea of comparing the greatest playwright, and perhaps greatest student of human nature (and, in his time, a (pop) pop poet) with something as vulgar as anything on MTV is more than any lover of literature should expect to be asked to condescend to entertain during what should be a serious discussion of the bard's works. However, it should be relevant to any discussion of culture's place in and effect on modern life, so that we can understand what culture does to us, for better or worse.

The author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is named Chuck Klosterman, the poster boy of the (pop) pop mindset. He has constructed the image of "Generation X", which may forever be remembered as the transitional pop-culture generation, by largely writing about the way he feels when taking part in the most banal of activities. The introspective aspect of his discourse is, to a large extent, what keeps it (pop), rather than truly academic. But this is also what makes it an apt means of advancing the study of pop culture: it is reflective of, and part of, what it discusses.

Suggesting that "The Real World" has created humanity is disturbing because it signals a fundamental change in how existence is viewed. But the proliferation of cameras, recording devices, and electronic communications--often sold for their ability to help you "create"--have put a premium on "capturing" rather than creating. Of course, this questions what it means to create, what it means to be "an individual" in so many senses of the word (are you an individual because you have a witty facebook page? Or because you don't have a facebook page? Does facebook allow you to express your individuality, or does it reinforce that you are only a part in society?). And more than this, it takes away the exclusivity of "genius". What once meant the ability to write a book about a man with a great personality, or express and interpret from written words that man with a great personality, now only requires having a great personality. Being the character has become more important, and in the name of equality and respect and individualism more adequate, than creating the character. Performance has been reduced to nothing but spectacle, where it is not interpretation that is on display, but only what draws attention. This is why I say Shakespeare was (pop) pop, because didn't he say that "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players"?

But now I feel stuck in a corner, because I've suggested that by writing about myself, I'm not creating, not even eligible to touch genius. Which is true, mostly. But that is what (pop) pop is. It's us telling us what's wrong with us.


*NOTE: The distinction that needs to be made for the sake of Bardolators and the like is that his writing ability is beside the point in this argument. That simple fact - that he is a creator, not only an observer - will forever distinguish him from, really, anyone to whom he is compared. So leave that behind; it is safe. It is only made safer by the medium - dramas must be re-performed over and over, while the nature of the camera is capture. That is, something that seems spontaneous when done by a character in a play must be written, crafted, remembered, and thoroughly rehearsed in order to be reproduced. If caught by a camera, though, it is a happy accident. Which is really what most of "TRW" is, a series of happy accidents. Because what has been suggested that "The Real World" has done on accident (or its cast members have done on purpose for often disturbing motivations), Shakespeare did somewhat on purpose--and that is creating characters that do not reflect the world, but are reflected by the world--what Shakespeare did was in so many ways greater.

The purpose of life

"We are the witness through which the universe becomes conscious of its own glory."

I'm not sure if this is Alan Watts' exact phrasing, because I've never read Alan Watts. But this is how the line is quoted in Werner Herzog's documentary about Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World. The documentary is really more about those who choose to live in Antarctica, and the utterer of the quote is introduced as only a heavy machinery operator, working a Cat payloader. The film's shallower questions - about how an individual defines himself, or is defined, or what they do, or their relationship with nature - I will ignore, in favor of the deeper question of man's definition and roles and relationships.

Watts' words are beautiful in terms of the Universe as a rational series of particles and energies, and the found footage that Herzog shows, of the otherworldly environments beneath the Antarctic floes, and the space-age sounds that seals use to communicate with each other, only heightens the connection to what we think of as "outer" space. Hubble space telescope images are only a small cognitive step away.

However, they are almost more applicable in terms of a classic Christian interpretation of God - though it shatters some of the faith's most precious, unchanging tenants. In the Eastern Orthodox church, the priest is required to say prayers as he removes his vestments. It is common that an altar boy will read the prayers for him. As a former altar boy, I had done this a fair share. One of the lines thanks the lord "for allowing me to witness the beauty of your mysteries" or something of that nature. But the word "witness" is there. In the framework of Watts' quote, we have the answer to the question that I believe most people would ask God, given the chance: "Why are we here?" To see how good God is at making planets.

Imagine God is - whether alone, or one of many celestial beings - qutie insecure. He creates Angels to serve him, but he knows they only praise him because they have to. So he creates a world and peoples it, then sends envoys and prophets to prove his existence and get people to pray to him, thanking him for the gifts he has given, and otherwise inflating his ego. The large amount of prophets throughout history is probably a sign that God really is new at this game, or, like so many self-concious people, he's never satisfied. The first time he tried to directly influence humans, Adam and Eve only had to say "Ok, we won't eat the fruit. Now go away so we can go forth and multiply", and they could disobey him. Ever since, human life has been defined by punishments for disobeying God's will, and demand for various prayers and sacrifices to give God his oh-so-sought after validation.

"But," you may ask, "isn't God perfect? And all-powerful? And all knowing? Does he really need all this praise? Doesn't he have a plan for us, beyond just demanding blind praise?"

Is God perfect? My answer would be no. But also yes. Any God of this sort is, as far as humans can understand, perfect and all powerful. He had the power to create us, so why not make us just dumb enough and unaware enough to not be able to discern His shortcomings. He's in the back of the limo and we're the drivers. He leaves the partition down just long enough to see the hottie back there with him take off her dress, but then he puts it up and he won't answer the phone. So we don't see when he cries over his E.D. (I mean, think about it. He insisted that one of his most popular prophets was billed as his "son", finally proving his virility). He is greater than us, and can choose what we see. It doesn't make him perfect.

As I may have said before, the Creation story we are given attributes all of humanity's woes on its quest for knowledge (and on women). It was when we ate from the tree of knowledge that sin began, and it is through the advance of knowledge that it continues (which may explain the distrust of intellectualism among evangelicals). The closer we get to truly understanding God and the mysteries of the Universe, the less we depend on him, and the less we are impressed by him. So perhaps there is a built-in failsafe here. The more we "advance", the closer we get to annihilating ourselves ("we" being all mankind - also, see my previous post on the LHC). Then we, assumedly, all go to hell to suffer because God is frustrated with us trying to become actualized without his help, or we get reincarnated in another universe and we are all more reverent because we don't want punished again. Or we get 72 virgins, I'm not sure.

And so we are the eyes through which the universe sees itself. Should we not learn? I'm not sure. Does learning lead to knowing, or for a yearning to know more? I feel only yearning, and I'm not sure I will ever stop. But I also try not to forget to just look, and appreciate the world that I am part of and is therefore made of me.