A bad week for celebrities and fast food

I was disappointed twice this week in matters of food and publicity. celebrities

First off, Obama and Biden’s glorified trip to a strip mall (with the press core in tow) to get hamburgers seemed amiss to me. Study after study demonstrates that the beef industry leaves a massive carbon footprint – well beyond any other meat, let alone crops – and is the least efficient use of arable land. To drive across state lines in order to then publicize a meal that harms the environment seems off point for a White House that has paid so much lip service to combating global warming. Moreover, hamburgers and potato puffs are not the healthy foods that the American diet so desperately needs. The poor diet in this country is a major contributing factor to high healthcare costs. It’s illogical to think that you can simultaneously aim to improve healthcare while creating a media event over the gormandizing of high-caloric foods.

If he wants to lead by example, Obama should walk from his office and purchase a healthy meal that doesn’t leave a massive carbon footprint. If he wants a burger, have the White House kitchen make one. I assume he doesn’t smoke in public out of fears that it would set a bad example. Is it too much to ask for him to do the same with his meal choices? If he wants to indulge his vices, fine; just do it with a modicum of privacy.

The second disappointment was Oprah’s give away of KFC coupons. I understand that it was an attempt to push a ‘healthier’ option, but if you add up the calories in the giveaway, they still total in excess of 700+ for the meal, not including a beverage or condiments. While by no means the worst thing that could be ordered from KFC, this it still a far cry from healthy eating. Furthermore, the entire promo has the secondary effect of sending people to a fast food outlet for yet another meal. These are the habits that should be broken, not reinforced. Moreover, the promotion neglects the growing numbers of Americans that are either vegan or vegetarian (or those who keep Halal or Kosher). A tie in with Subway would have been far more inclusive, and sent a much clearer message of health. Or, even better, the promotion could have been structured in such a way as to spur people to prepare their own food.

All hail paterfamilias Obama!

Masquerading as eudemonistic soothsayers, the soon to be Obama administration strike me of late as condescending autocrats with noble intentions yet a dismal view of the citizens they aim to save. America voted for a president, yet unwittingly appointed a pontifex maximus. President elect Barack Obama has a demonstrated a chilling predilection towards paternalism. And of all the varieties, his seems to be the worst brand; not the comparatively benign demonstrative variety that most politicians trend towards, but rather the dangerous and miasmic type predicated on disimpassioned utilitarian calculations. He believes He is helping the plebeian masses, because only He - The Chosen One - can comprehend the complex world that swirls around and confounds us hoi polloi. He must protect us from ourselves, because left to our own machinations we will surely flounder. Cigarettes are terrible (it's OK for dad to smoke, but best not let the kids), so He will help us all quit by raising the already sizable taxes. (Am I the only one whose first inclination was to draw parallels between this and Kim Jung Il’s dictate that when he quit smoking, everyone in North Korea must also quit?) Trillion dollar deficits? No worries, who better to spend future generation’s monies than His team of the best and the brightest, all under the patria potestas of paterfamilias Obama. He has crunched the numbers – He used focus groups and survey data to pitch his stimulus plan to congress. Mark Twain once opined “there are three types of lies: lies, dirty lies, and statistics.” The governance of the next four years will be strikingly different from that of the last eight, if for no other reason through a shift in tactics from the first two varieties of obfuscation to the third type. Get ready to witness the world when a team of self-anointed Cassandra’s (this time with statistics!) takes charge. Perhaps if we are lucky, they can spare Troy from destruction.

Say it ain't so...

The New York Times reports that Barack Obama is defending his choice of Rick Warren as a keynote speaker at his inauguration : "But Obama told reporters in Chicago that America needs to 'come together,' even when there's disagreement on social issues. 'That dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about,' he said."

Should Obama also invite David Duke to speak so that he can "come together" with white supremacists? Or should have L. B. Johnson felt the need to have noted segregationists speak at an inauguration (hypothetically speaking)?

I find this exceptionally disappointing. I understand the need to bring people together, but there must be limits to the bigotry that you include, and including a man who took an active role in stripping the benign rights away from citizens based on a myopic view of morality clearly crosses this line. Yes, I believe Obama should continue to engage Evangelicals in an open and respectful dialog, but I think it is rather obscene to give Warren the cache and acceptance that an inaugural address grants.

Drunk on technology

I keep hearing that the US is falling behind in science and technology. So what? What are the opportunity costs of gains in science? Less literature and music? Less idle time for the young? Less time spent home with family? Less values? Less joy? In the extreme, we will have a generation that can create the wonders of the future, but have no moral bearings as to if and how they should. It seems that often it is not more technology that is needed, but rather less. The problems of systemic obesity in the US will not be cured through the further implementation of food science, but through its significantly reduced application. The world will not be safer if we continue to master the splitting of the atom, but rather will only be secure if we remove the Damoclean nuclear threat by obliterating the technology used to achieve the feat in the first place. The advances in risk management technologies have not insulated our investments from wild swings, but rather have acted antipodal to this desire, creating unprecedented volatility and uncertainty: created systemic risk. Everywhere I look technology seems to be at the root of our problems; the very same technologies developed a generation before with the intent of fixing the problem leftover from the previous technologies, and so on and so forth. We have become drunk on technology and the misbegotten hangover is just starting to commence.

That is so classist (classless)

“You had a library in your house? That’s so bourgeois and snobbish of your family.”

“You honestly think so? You know, if this was a TV room we were talking about no one would bat a lash at its mention.”

“No one here is creating a fuss.”

“No, hear me out. It is completely acceptable to spend thousands of dollars every four or five years to have brand new state of the art televisions and hundreds more on speakers and cables, and DVD players, and God-knows-what-else, et cetera, et cetera. And then add on top of that a thousand dollars a year for the satellite hookup and TIVO subscription, and movies at $20 a pop…and all that extravagance is completely non-elitist, non-snobbish, kosher middle class values but when my family decides to spend an equivalent, or perhaps even lesser sum of money on properly and adequately storing our books all of a sudden it's snobbish. That is downright classist when you say that. Now I’m not accusing you of being malicious, but subconsciously all this disaffected middle class propaganda has definitely infected you, turned you against us.”

“Wait, you think there is some sort of middle-class war on the rich?”

“Not against the rich per se, but against upper-class intellectualism. It’s these same people that turned the words elite and elitism into pejoratives in the first half of this last century. And do you ever watch TV? Remember Frasier? The whole premise was let’s have viewers laugh at these two upstanding brothers because they are well educated and have modicum of refinement. Or on Law & Order, it is always some rich old-moneyed type who is involved in some heinous crime. It is all right there.”

“Wait, I thought your family didn’t have a TV room?”

“No - of course we have a TV room, but that's immaterial here.”

Thoughts on Brooklyn

There is something very organic and comforting about old Brooklyn. I can work north down my avenue and find boutique shops and Zagat rated restaurants, but there is something missing. Everything is too transitory. South, that is the direction I want. People at the diner know each other’s names. “Joey A died yesterday.” “I heard.” “His poor mother.” “She never did nothin’ to no one.” It is almost perverse, I feel, to sit at that counter and absorb their lives. This is their congregation, their lives intersecting; their stories concatenate and entwined, knit in one grand cloth that covers the blocks and guards their souls. Walking home I see the candles lit for Joey A, struggling in the wind, outside his poor mothers stoop. I want to stay here long enough so I too can feel their pain, can say things like “But what can you do?” and have it mean something. I see the condo buildings rising down Forth and hate them now. This is not their neighborhood, they will not cry and bleed here, and they will not sit at that counter and listen.

The guy-girl friendship matrix

And yes, the solution is sub-game perfect.

I was so much older then, I am younger than that now...

I have become convinced that the American soul is incredibly undernourished and see this as one of the most pressing policy concerns of the coming decades, if not the most pressing policy concern. I do not think hundreds of channels of TV or the proliferation of i-pods is going to do it. And no number of youtube videos or blogs can make up the deficit. We need a system over-hall. Jesus, I already sound like an old man. Maybe, but I see no other truth.

Economics and my heart

As always, Bellow puts it best...

Cities that I incorrectly assume are neighborhoods of New York City

-Baku

-Doha

-Lobamba

-Oslo

-Philadelphia

SAT Analogy

Barack Obama in March – “What exactly is this foreign policy expertise? Was [Hilary Clinton] negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no.”: Barack Obama in December “[Hilary Clinton] is an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence, who knows many of the world's leaders, who will command respect in every capital…”

Me in March – “I sure hope this change motif is real.” : ?

A. Me in December - “Gosh, this change seems very much like something I’ve seen before.”

B. Me in December - “Thank god change is here. All that two-faced politicking was getting old.”

C. Me in December - “I wonder if this means McCain is really qualified for the office?”

D. Me in December - “I need another beer.”

But what units are the budget contraint in?

waiting to be inspired

...There are instances when I finally loose myself, moments where the narration in my head ceases, my ego stripped away, myself left bare and empty, filled anew with the words replanted from the page to my soul, bypassing translation and becoming fact, becoming me, filling my veins and capillaries with something new, something that I can stomach, something yet cancerous. That is why I read, for these infrequent transcendent moments where I find my foot tapping out some chthonic and primal rhythm, my body rocking in step, hovering over the page drinking it straight to my blood. Sadly, I find very little in current prose or poetry that fills this need. Recommendations to the contrary are welcome.

They did say please...

Custudy Hearings 2.0

Statement of Purpose: (DRAFT)

I want to put together something that attempts to capture the zeitgeist of this generation. The technology, the digital voyeurism, the guilt, the nihilism, the private life and the shit that fills it, the rejection of the American dream: we do not want to produce more, to have more, but rather want only to loll around and love and be loved more. We dare to be ironic but are too apathetic to realize that we already are. We are a sham generation. We will be shorter, fatter, dumber, and poorer than those who came before, and will achieve this through increased hours, heightened use of technology, increased efficiency, and all the culminations of modern health and science. We pushed into office a president of change, and seemingly did it with ever giving a thought to what that meant. We no longer have the bible, but believe rather in the infallible invisible hand. The market it supreme. Hail the market. We just need to fix the market. The market did not fail us, we failed the market. This is the now and this where I want to intercede.

The Manchu State

The ichor of callow lords coursing verdant, spilt for us,
Splayed in doffed raiment of flaxen hemp and fustian might,
The vatic pride of prescient wisdom of the pending fall,
It is all too much for me tonight.

The world is too flat and hot and crowded they’ll say,
No reason to sire those who cannot play,
Or lift a spoon without the guilt of this;
Their footprints mashed and without bliss.

We are the new Qing Dynasty, with bounded carbon-feet,
Hobbled still with awkward hope and trenchant grief.

...wait, the wine glasses cost the entire month's rent?

With god on your side

“Religion [to me] meant the church of Rome. Quite conceivably it was an empty ritual but is was seemingly the only assimilative, traditionary bulwark against the decay of morals. Until the great mobs could be educated into a moral sense some one must cry out: ‘Thou shalt not!’” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

Modern man has succeeded in throwing off the chains of Catholicism – the American church has shrunk, its authority waned, and congressional enthusiasm diminished – but in its place did not find higher callings or moral instruction. Instead religion was thrust into the marketplace. Now there are a thousand sects, and no one has a disagreement with their lord God. Where once the church imbued modesty and moderation, the modern church now praises the individual and tells them: ‘I agree, you are right!’ This is the problem. There is no thought, but merely people’s prejudices projected into the God construct. If you’re gay, you can have a God which embraces his queer sons and daughters. If you cannot stand the homosexuals, then there is a God who condemns them to hell. Like your wealth? There is a god for that as well. Want to forget the world and live alone in a cave? God allows that too. There is a God for everybody now who wants one. Christianity may have won out over paganism in the West, but monotheism is now dead. There are now as many gods as there are points of view, with each incarnation of the god of Abraham competing against the other for your soul. America is no longer one nation under God, but rather a nation of people living under their own, unique, all approving self-lords. Have it your way McLords.

I am curious into the entomology of the term ‘church-shopping,’ for I feel that the emergence of this phrase into the lexicon corresponds with some crucial tipping point in which the masses fell away from moral authority and begun to worship themselves; the seemingly logical progression of materialism and liberalism. There is now a private life, but only shit to fill it, but that’s OK, because God is on your side.