Astroland and Wal-Mart

Yesterday I read that Astroland, the Coney Island amusement park, is closing, and only the Cyclone roller coaster will remain. The rest has been sold to developers.
I felt a horrible blow in my gut upon reading the news. I felt like the world is coming to an end.
Everything is changing (to a bank) in this city, but why mess with Astroland? Why Coney Island? What's going to happen to Nathan's Famous? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Apparently there will be a fabulous amusement park (and condos) and I'm sure it will be much better and nicer than rickety, dirty, nasty ol' Astroland, but that is precisely the point. Not that Astroland was such great shakes, but it is one of the few places in this city that welcomes the great unwashed. It's one place in this city where the great unwashed rule. And now what? What overpriced, generic hell is gonna visit us now?
Some of us have heard the almost mythical stories of the Coney Island of old, which was the most splendiferous amusement park ever. Well, without quite understanding the unfairness of why we couldn't get to experience the old one, we learned to love the seedy one that remained. Now that is going too, and I feel not only sadness, but deep anxiety and malign discomfort at the pit of the stomach. Is this a sign of aging, where at my ripe old age I start bemoaning the loss of nostalgia? Are they really going to make the poor people of this city go away? Does absolutely everything have to be about more profit? Of course for the children of the future, the new place is going to be cooler. They will never understand what anyone sees in Coney Island's decrepit glory. Well, fuck the children of the future. I like decrepit.

I don't want Astroland to go.

As for Wal-Mart, I'm perfectly content to live without it, but couldn't we oppose the demise of Astroland with the same gumption and passion and histrionics we devote to hating Wal-Mart?

I'm sick of hearing that the podunkization of this city is due to market forces. Market forces are ruthless and relentless and they threaten everything in sight. Aren't there counter forces to stop market forces? Can people put a stop to this frenzy of spending and destroying and putting up banks in every corner?

Cool it

I'm the first champion of environmental responsibility. I have not driven a car in 15 years. I turn the lights off every time I leave a room and I think people who leave the air conditioning on while they are out all day should be put up against a wall and shot. But I'm getting sick of Al Gore and his shtick, and I'm getting sick of people like that asshole who lives in 5th Ave and is reducing his "carbon footprint" by not using toilet paper for a year. I would be delighted if he could reduce his footprint so much that he would stop existing.
In any case, Gore sounds like a broken record and like a schmuck even if what he is saying is true. And I'm afraid that people like him and Mrs. Larry David end up doing more harm than good to the cause because they appear to be fanatical and lunatic about the topic. Mrs. David, who gives a fuck, but Al was supposed to have been the prez and he just seems like a clown with a mission.
This country needs to understand in no uncertain terms that we are guilty of criminal waste of resources, that like the fat asses we are becoming, we also consume energy like a supersized Big Gulp. Our gluttony of energy is obscene, criminal and irresponsible. And measures need to be taken to save energy, but Gore saying in the Oscars that the Oscars are "green" is not going to convince anyone.
He seems like such a loser.


ps: you will notice, dear readers, as and if you scan to the more recent posts, that this Sunday's topic is losers. Everybody is a loser, except for moi. I guess Sundays bring out the worst in me. Enjoy.

Land of the fat

Some "restaurants" like TGIF are doing "right size" portions with one third of the food because their gargantuan platters are way too obscene. I think it's great, even though you wouldn't catch me dead on one of those places. Apparently, it is a known fact in the restaurant business that people, for all they complain about fat and calories, don't want small portions; they want to pig out and waste food. They want a 42 oz bucket of soda. If you consume a 42 oz bucket of soda you are a pig and there is no justification for you. You deserve to be a fat ass slob.
This country's demise is going to be brought about by inertia and lardassness, perhaps before we are done in by WMD's. People are going to be too fat to stand up, too fat to talk and too fat to think.
Fat ass losers.

Sue Ray Kelly's Ass

The New York Times reports today that the NYPD spied broadly on activist groups when the Republican Convention came to town.
I think we forgave Mayor Bloomberg too soon and too easy on that one. Those people should have never come here. Except for mayor Bloomberg, nobody wanted them in this town.
But what boggles the mind is that the NYPD spied on many activist groups, which to judge from the marches I attended, are for the most part a bunch of utterly inoffensive, anachronistic, quaint even, lefty loonies. Yet they were being spied upon as if they were actual terrorist threats.
It 's really fucking pathetic.
But this is what happens when more power is given to those who can wield it. Like the dog that scratches his balls, they'll abuse it simply because they can.
And talk about spying on the wrong people. Somehow it doesn't add up that the police used illegal surveillance tactics against people who had every right to disagree with the convention and every right to express that disagreement with for the most part, stupid asinine tactics, embarrassing slogans, and a lot of heartfelt enthusiasm. Not one of them could be seriously considered a threat, except to wit and good taste.
I hope these groups sue the NYPD's ass until it's sore and I hope they win.

Pu pu platter

Alert the media! Stop the presses! Chinese food is fattening and full of salt! OMG! You don't say!
The penchant in this country for turning the obvious into hysterical revelations never ceases to amaze me. As if nobody who has ever been inside a Chinese restaurant didn't know this.
Some individual named Bonnie Liebman of a dubious outfit called Center for Science in the Public Interest, has deemed also that the most unhealthy foods after Chinese are Mexican and Italian.
Boy, do I take issue with this.
1. We all know that Chinese food is a barrel of salt and fat. That is precisely why we like it. And no, we're not going to hold the soy sauce or ask for brown rice, because that is like going to Disneyland and skipping the rides. Instead of giving idiotic advice like that it would be better if they just told you not to eat it. On the other hand, anybody who is against Chinese food is against me. I don't see how my intake of Shanghai style soup dumplings or sticky rice is in the public interest. Screw you, Bonnie Liebman. I challenge you to a duel to see who can eat more soup dumplings. (I once ate 12 and had to walk the length of the Manhattan bridge and back to digest. Two weeks later I still felt like I had eaten the Great Wall of China). Plus, let the record state that the aforementioned Chinese food is best washed down with coca-cola (not diet coke, ever).
2. How dare Bonnie Liebman say that Mexican and Italian food are unhealthy? Perhaps what passes for Mexican food in these parts is unhealthy; it also mostly sucks. And perhaps Bonnie's idea of Italian is Pizza Hut, where, not content with ruining pizza, they put cheese inside the crust (barf).
Let me point out that Mexican food, when done right, is always made with fresh ingredients and lots of vegetables and good things. A typical Mexican main dish has like the entire food pyramid in it. As for Italian food, yes if you only eat calzone and cannoli you may get as big as Tony Soprano. But good Italian food is part of the mediterranean diet and you don't see that many fat asses in Italy as you see here. So don't be blaming the foods.
3. This is nothing but a conspiracy to take the pleasure of eating away from us. There are people in this country who think that enjoying food is sinful, and they will do their utmost to thwart the happy, healthy pleasure of eating well.
To which I say, fuck 'em. Eating well is the best revenge.

Somebody stop George Packer...

... from breaking my heart every time he writes his excellent dispatches from Iraq.
I mean this rhetorically, of course. We need George Packer to keep illuminating us about the appalling mess going on over there, because here we only get the very tiny tip of the iceberg. We don't really know squat about the ugliness of the situation and here everything conspires to keep us in the dark as much as possible.
This time, the article is about the incompetence, ignorance and ingratitude the American government has shown towards those Iraqis that have chosen, with enormous risk to their lives, to side with the US because they used to believe that America was going to bring freedom and prosperity to their country.
It is a brilliant article, but it will make you gag. Your stomach will turn at the appalling lack of vision, the narrowmindedness, the banality, the incompetence, the sheer idiocy of the official policy of the Bush administration in general in Iraq and in particular towards the Iraqis who have tried to cooperate with the US, mostly as translators. They know the culture, they can bridge not only the language gap, but the more important culture gap, but no one wants to hear what they have to say. They need protection and nobody is giving it to them. I can understand a certain measure of caution, but if somebody has risked their life every day for four years to work with you, surely they deserve some respect. You can't use these people and treat them like shit.
And then there are the refugees we don't hear about because they are certainly not going to be welcome here.
Sure, as Packer points out, there are decent Americans out there, Americans who are ashamed and outraged, but they can do little against the bureaucracy and against the official policy that dictates that everybody should pretend that things are coming up roses in Iraq.
Broken record: It all comes from the top. The policy mirrors those who are in office. The ugliest, nastiest, most callous, stupidest bunch of people ever to be in power in this country.
Maybe now that Bush has finally relented and appointed some disgruntled critics of how the war has been handled, instead of people who may have sucked his dick once or are yet to do so, maybe these people will be able to reverse some of the damage that has been done by establishing better policies. We can only dream.

Book report 2

War is sick and I'm sick of war. And luckily, I, nor any of you, I assume, have suffered it in our lifetimes yet. We should count ourselves lucky and blessed and hope that it never comes to our doorstep.
A Woman in Berlin is the anonymous diary of a German woman who lived through the "liberation" of Berlin by the Soviet troops at the end of WWII in 1945. Apparently it is not a generally known fact, because it was in the interest of both the Soviets and the Germans to suppress it, that when the Russians rolled into the Germany they raped everything that moved, in some estimates up to 130,000 German women and not once, but almost usually several times. They raped in exchange for food and in exchange for safety from other rapists. They raped as revenge for the horrors the Nazis inflicted on them and they raped under the permission of their leaders. In order to rape they had to get drunk first and so they drank like cossacks and they raped their way through Germany.
So this woman, who used to be a journalist and who spoke a little Russian, apparently wrote a diary of her life under the Russians in Berlin. One wonders if it is authentic. It certainly sounds so, too intelligent and subtle to be a work of propaganda. The history of how the book was received after it was written is as interesting as the book itself, because it came out in 1954, first in English and other languages and only in 1959 in Germany, where it was received "with hostility and silence". "Some accused it of besmirching the honor of German women". The nerve.
The Germans simply didn't want to know about the massive rape of their women. They did not want to know that many of the babies born were not of the pure aryan race they had cheered for. They did not want to know that these babies were the product of drunken rape, and they did not want to be reminded of their humiliating defeat. And as Hans Magnus Enzenberger points out in the preface, it didn't help that the author shows no self-pity and she casts a cold, hard look at her fellow citizens. It wasn't until the seventies that the book was rescued and reedited.
Her account of survival boils down to how to stave off hunger and rape. She is a strong, smart woman, and meticulous in her accounting of the endless routine of survival. Her observations about her fellow Germans and about the Soviets are sharp. Basically, most Soviets are portrayed as backward, primitive peasants, except one or two higher ranked soldiers who are educated and polite.
Under duress, every German turns into a stealing, conniving wolf, even formerly regal dames. The German men are either all at the front, or old and withered and useless (and hiding, for many are card carrying nazis) and not one steps in to prevent a rape. The women, according to her, are resourceful and strong, but if there is any sense of community it is only when there is a chance for survival. The minute somebody becomes a threat to the common survival, they are sometimes cast away. She shares the plentiful food she gets from sleeping with Russians with a widow and an older guy who is just a pathetic leech. When the Russians leave and there is no more food, the widow and the leech cast her out to near starvation. So much for good neighbors.
At this stage of perdition, people finally turn bitterly against "Adolf", once they realize they've been sold a terrible bill of goods (which they happily bought, not too many questions asked). They've been left to die and fend for themselves by their nazi leaders, who were so crazy arrogant that they refused to evacuate the women and children of Berlin when it was clear that the Russians were coming and there was no more milk for the children. The Nazis destroyed their own people. Which is logical; anybody with such abhorrent ideas about others is inherently self-destructive.
This woman's account is quite harrowing, and for those people who think the Germans didn't pay for their crimes, it provides a small, chilling comfort. It looks like some of them paid. It is an interesting companion piece to If This is a Man, aka Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi. Levi was a great writer and a man with a solid moral conscience and a heart. But also, he was an innocent, and this woman knows that she and her nation cannot feign innocence. And that is a major difference in the telling. Still, hunger is hunger, whether experienced by a Jew or a German, and the fight for survival is the same in the lager and in the bunker, though the lager was obviously much worse.
I find it fascinating that Jews are barely mentioned in this book. Perhaps because of shame. She mentions twice in passing that the Russians transmit news of the concentration camps. Her reaction:

Our German calamity has a bitter taste -- of repulsion, sickness, insanity, unlike anything in history. The radio just broadcast another concentration camp report. The most horrific thing is the order and the thrift: millions of human beings as fertilizer, mattress stuffing, soft soap, felt mats...

She is constantly amazed by the German need and capacity to obey. She keeps saying, with no little irony, that Germans are so orderly, that someone gives an order and there they are, following it.
I guess obedience without conscience is a mark of evil. And the Germans obeyed, most of them without giving it a second thought, for which they deserve whatever destruction came their way.

Patience!?

As our increasingly retarded POTUS has the gall to ask for patience in Iraq, you can read a very disturbing article in the NYT magazine about the fallout for women soldiers in this hellish, civil war made in the USA.
It is not news that women in the military suffer constant sexual harassment and abuse. This should be punished with the most draconian measures and it usually isn't. But if this happens even in enemy territory in wartime, the damage is multiplied to the nth degree. Soldiers raping civilians is horrifying. Soldiers raping their peers is mindboggling. And yet it happens. All the time.
According to the article, this Iraq war has seen the number of women in combat grow exponentially. In this war there will be about 40,000 women performing combat duties, more than ever before. Many of them have started experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, not only because of what they've had to deal with on a par with their male counterparts, but because in many instances these army males abuse them, demean them and rape them on top of everything. And the Army, although it has tried to improve on the way it handles this matter, still hasn't found an effective way to prosecute and punish offenders, and worse, to prevent rape from happening at all. It is a disgrace.
Rape is a fact of war, as we now sadly know from barbaric acts committed in the name of ethnic cleansing in places like Bosnia, Darfur and Rwanda.
I am reading A Woman in Berlin, an anonymous diary of a Berlinese woman who captures the "liberation" of Germany by the Soviets at the end of WWII. The Soviets raped around 100,000 German women, many of them repeatedly, as revenge for the suffering inflicted on them by the Nazis. There will be a report coming soon on this fascinating book. In the meantime, all I can say is war seems to be a particularly male habit of destruction and reading this book you just lose all faith in humanity (if you happen to have any. I don't).
Rape is a form of deep humiliation and subjugation, and in war it is used to inflict damage on the male side of the population as well. As far as I'm concerned any rapist should be shot in the balls and left to bleed to death. But again, if rape happens between peers I can only imagine the bewilderment of the victims, who are sacrificing so much already, who are putting their lives at risk, who are sharing the experience with soldiers of their own country, only to be destroyed by them.
And what is it about men that they can't keep their cocks in order? Is it so terribly impossible not to force yourself into violent sex with an unwilling partner? Can't you use your fucking hand? Are you worse than an animal?
The article gingerly touches upon a reality of this particular war. Iraq is no Vietnam. That is, there are no local whores to be had by servicemen, no brothels, no women prostituting themselves for favors, like in other wars.
Maybe the Army should provide prostitutes (God knows we have plenty of them here at home) to service these randy assholes if they can't keep their dicks in. Draft some whores and have them do something useful for a change. Soldiers will be thrilled, whores will travel and get paid, female soldiers will hopefully be left alone. But the Army should protect its female soldiers from that kind of harm. It is not what they sign up for when they join.

The myth of the nerd

Thanks to Cynthia for sending me this fascinating, albeit deeply troubling article in Newsweek about how exercise makes you smarter.
Deeply troubling because 1. that means that we're going to have start hitting the gym like there's no tomorrow and that is a prospect that needs some getting used to. 2. What about the myth of the brainerd that is constitutionally incapable of anything resembling physical activity? How come they're so smart? And how come some athletes are so dumb? The article doesn't really explain.
I will confess that since I freelance, I hit the gym two or three times a week and I have the luxury of staying for about an hour and a half, for which I feel like a virtual Conan the Barbarian (without the biceps, yet).
Once I'm there, I enjoy it, sort of. Exercise definitely lifts up my mood and makes me want to whistle, sing or horny (sorry, folks, scientific fact). But "once I'm there" is the operative phrase. It's the dialectical argument I have with myself every morning between staying in bed or going to the freaking gym that exhausts me even before I put on my sports bra. Still, I go dutifully because that way I can continue eating like a pig and keeping my weight more or less under control (less and less) and 2, because I want to have biceps like Madonna and 3, because it's supposed to be very good for you.
And I'm afraid it is, empirically: I'm less tired during the day, I sleep much better at night and my mood is much improved. So why is it such a drag to go to the gym?
I used to have a fantasy that the US Surgeon General saw the light one day and announced that they were wrong, that smoking is really good for you, that it erases cellulite, is an aphrodisiac, it makes you lose weight and helps you retain your memory, and will make you rich and famous, etc. I have sort of the same fantasy with exercise. One day they'll wake up and announce that it's really bad for you, and the best you can do is lounge around in your pajamas and either read or watch movies. Same with ice cream, mac and cheese, nutella, bacon, and desserts. Until that happens, I guess it's not quite safe to take up smoking or completely abandon exercise just yet. Our day will come. Just don't hold your breath.
Well, it turns out that aerobic exercise in adults actually generates new neurons in the frontal lobe, which is the lobe for memory. I'm not a scientist. Read the article, which is why I link it here.
And then start running.

This week I had time to come home from a freelance gig, and veg out and watch TV. I was curious about some of the programs people talk about, since I never watch them. My experience and my verdict are the following:
No wonder this is a dumbass country. TV will literally make you stupid. You sit Albert Einstein in front of an hour of sitcoms and he will emerge a moron. It's not only that most of the programs are inane and utterly devoid of any connection to human reality, but that there is something inherent to the watching that lobotomizes you. I emerged from an hour of TV in a stupid daze.

This is what 205 million dollars looks like

The Mexican police recovered $205 million dollars in CASH, from drug traffickers.
I wonder what's going to happen to the money? Where does it go? Who gets to spend it?
How could people keep so much dough in cash in one place? These people were manufacturers and dealers of metamphetamine, the drug of choice of the American suburb (hey, if I lived there I'd want to kill myself too) and/or American white trash. I'm glad President Calderón told Bush to stop giving Mexico so much grief and like start curbing the voracious demand for drugs at home, for a change.
I also watched one episode of the Addiction series in HBO. It looks like America is so bored out of its wits, life is so hard in this stupid country, everybody wants to get high as a kite with drugs. What is wrong with these people? Is this what happens when you have too much of a good thing? If you look at less fortunate countries where the poor are walking sticks, not huge globs of fat, and where there are no jobs, and where there is no democracy and no freedom and no mall and no nintendo and no American Idol, and not so much mindnumbing TV, people don't seem to be so moronically self-destructive, or so whiningly unhappy (they are unhappy, they just don't go crying to Dr. Phil about it). People in poor, unfortunate countries can hardly afford to be addicted to anything but glue or home freshener. And those people lead truly desperate lives. They don't live behind the white picket fence in Frontierland.
I've had it with the suburban meth users, as I've had it with the American penchant for self-victimization. What could possibly be so bad? Get a life, you fucking morons. Turn off the TV for once in your life. Read a book.