It’s all about the oil
Bush: US Must “Get Off Oil” — and onto what, President Smartypants?
Look, can we stop acting like there’s an excellent, cheap alternative to petroleum all ready to go, and we’re just too lazy or stupid or stuck in our ways to take advantage of it? Or that a moon-landing style government program is going to get us there faster?
There’s a shit-load of money in oil. You know what? There’s a shit-load of money in whatever is going to replace oil. And, working on the assumption that such a thing is really out there, the oil companies want to be the ones to find it. The car companies want to be on top of it, too. So do lots and lots of little guys (did you see the air car idea? I liked that, mostly because it caught me by surprise).
Capitalism is the mindblowingest driver of technological innovation that the world has ever known. There’s a gigantic money to be made. And people who already have gigantic money yearn for more.
Greed + resources + huge impatient market = we’re on it already!
March 6, 2008 — 11:43 am
Comments: 54
Because government is evil, that’s why
In times like these, when there’s so much bustle and turmoil and upheavel in my life, I often think, “hey, what the hell happened to the Dionne quintuplets, anyhow?” Because, let’s face it, my head isn’t wired up too good.
The Dionne quints were born on May 28, 1934 on a little farm outside of Moosetesticle, Ontario. They were the first identical quintuplets known to survive infancy, and it was a close run thing. They were two months premature. Their father was a poor man with five children already and suddenly found himself with ten of the hungry little bastards in the thick of the Great Depression.
There was a world’s fair going on in Chicago at that moment — the Century of Progress Exhibition — and Dionne (reluctantly, says Wikipedia) signed a contract to exhibit the quints, as soon as they were strong enough, in a special pavilion. The Canuckian public howled with outrage and the Ontario government took custody the following year, to protect the babies from exploitation.
Then they built a special amusement park called Quintland for the girls and their caretakers, so visitors could come watch them play behind mesh screens. I shitteth thee not. Six thousand people a day filed past to watch five little girls not get exploited by their parents. Viewing was free, but the gift shop (!) and general flow of visitors to Ontario netted an estimated revenue take of $51 million over the years. Then there were the movies and newsreels and product endorsements.
Their mother never gave up fighting to get them back. And I damn well don’t blame her. If I blew five watermelons out my hoo-hoo one dark and stormy night, I would expect ALL MANNER of earthly reward. She won custody eventually, but by this time they were nine years old.
Nine. They’d never gone to school or done chores or played with other children or seen a member of the family. They’d barely left their little wire mesh freak show at all. They’d known nothing but nurses and the noisy shadows moving in the darkened space behind the wire.
Not surprisingly, it didn’t work out too good. Nothing did, ever after. I’m guessing, considering B.F. Skinner and all, they were just this side of squirrel-poop crazy.
They never adjusted to family. One by one, the quints died. All the ones who lived long enough developed epilepsy. They were desperately poor when the surviving three finally won a settlement of $4 million Canuckian, in 1998. It’s down to Cecile and Annette now.
Isn’t that a heartwarming tale of government stewardship?
November 15, 2007 — 7:46 pm
Comments: 27
Skål!
Well, well. I always thought Americans were the only peoples goofy enough to attempt a ban on sweet mother hooch, but it turns out we weren’t even the first. Iceland was dry from 1915 to 1922 (and beer stayed banned until 1989), Norway was sober from 1916 to 1927 and Finland was thirsty from 1916 to 1932. By contrast, we didn’t climb on the wagon until 1920 (mark your calendars — next year will be our 75th anniversary of the repeal of 1933).
Iceland, Norway and Finland. Jesus. Three places where there’s got to be sweet fuck-all to do but get pissed as a newt and pass out in a snowbank. I bet they were all, like, “dudes. Let’s go to Denmark for the weekend and par-tay!”
Today is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of prohibition in Finland. A European would write the date as 5/4/32 — the “countdown” date was supposedly chosen deliberately. And appropriately — wannabe drunks were lined up ’round the block at the new, government owned and charmingly named Alko stores.
The US still has a patchwork of state regulations. I grew up in a dry county. Beer was allowed, but not liquor. My mother called it the Bootlegger Protection Act. The next county over was wet, but liquor stores were allowed to sell liquor and nothing else, presumably for fear some innocent might wander in for a Coke and stumble out a skid-row bum.
In some states, alcohol is sold by the government in Alcoholic Beverage Commission stores (a friend of mine once humiliated her family by reciting “ABC-Store-EFG” in kindergarten, in all innocence). Whereas in louche Louisiana, liquor is sold in the grocery store. Selling liquor on Sunday was forbidden in Massachusetts and Rhode Island until a couple of years ago. Not that yours truly is ever in danger of running low. I gots backup for my backups.
Anyhow, what got to Finland at last was the depression. No, no…not the perfectly natural depression that would derive from living sober in Finland, I mean the global economic depression of the 1930s. Finland’s sauce-producing trading partners to the South were not happy with prohibition and threatened tariffs on Finland’s…wood. And lumber. And timber. And that liquor tax money began to look pretty sweet.
A rare occasion when the venality of government served freedom.
Skål!
April 5, 2007 — 9:36 am
Comments: 6
There once was a stoat from Pawtucket…
I had to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles this morning and deal with some paperwork. The state’s main DMV is in Pawtucket (Home of the Rude Limerick) and for several years now has been housed in what used to be a department store. I bought a microwave there once. They took out the clothing racks, brought in some cubicles and left everything else the way it was, which is a little brain-hurty. On the wall behind the Registrations lady was a sign that said, “No More Than 4 Items at a Time in the Dressing Rooms.”
I asked her about it, and she said the higher ups were so certain they’d be moving to a proper building right away, they didn’t want to do anything to settle in. Three and half years and counting. It’s a shabby and depressing place, but the staff are much friendlier than they used to be and the process isn’t too slow or painful.
But, jeez, last few times I’ve been in there, everyone waiting in line has been very young, very recently immigrated, very shabby or had…something wrong with them. I know that dealerships take care of the plates for new cars, but surely everyone has to show up in person for his or her driver’s license photo? Where are the shiny middle-class people? Is there a special Middle Class Day? Why didn’t somebody tell me?
If I’ve been stricken off the White Privilege Mailing List again, I’m going to be so pissed.
March 27, 2007 — 4:13 pm
Comments: 2
Paperwork
This was Bill Paying Weekend, a monthly trauma I endure under the soothing alfluence of incohol. I have the money to settle my accounts these days, but I still dread this ordeal…sorting through a month’s worth of special offers from credit card companies cleverly designed to look like overdue notices so I’ll open them for sure (thus pissing me off so thoroughly they’d have to be Pretty Damn Special offers before I’d take a second look) and all the other irritations and stupidities that fall through my mail slot in thirty days.
Like this thing. This is a thirty page questionnaire from the Census Bureau. Why am I getting a questionnaire from the Census Bureau in 2007? Presumably because I blew them off in 2000.
I know, I know…I’m a Constitution-humping ‘winger and the Constitution says the government must do a census every ten years. I wouldn’t mind being a part of a head count. But I got the long form in 2000, too. Remember that? Some people got the usual few questions, and a random selection got a thirty page beast that asks nosey junque about years of schooling and income and how long my commute is and a bunch of other nunya bidness stuff. Oh, and about twenty different precise choices for race, of course. I’m an Eskimo princess, fuck off.
I wouldn’t, perhaps, be quite so set against it, if it weren’t marked “YOUR RESPONSE IS REQUIRED BY LAW.” And inside there’s this “title blah-blah-blah of the US Code, section blah-blah-blah, imposes a penalty for not responding.” Without, of course, mentioning what that penalty is.
OH! Threaten me? They can smooch silky weasel ass. I ain’t doing it. I assume the penalty is a fine, but you guys’ll visit me in the pen if I guess wrong, mmm?
Then I get four more pages of nosiness from Blue Cross. Do I smoke? Did my doctor tell me that’s bad? Naw, I gave up cigarettes so I could afford more heroin. Jesus.
So it was like a breath of warm Spring sunshine to get this in the mail. It’s NRA sweepstakes time again. I love the cheerful, breathless way the NRA flat-out fails to comprehend it’s supposed to be ashamed of itself. Guns, guns and more guns! Get one for grandma!
Though I prefer the one where they give you a page of stickers with photos of guns, and you have to peel off ten of your favorites and stick them on the Grand Prize page so they know what to send you when you win. I can spend a happy hour working out the logistics of that, maximizing the flexibility of my arsenal but minimizing the different kinds of ammo I’d have to keep in stock. Plus, colorful stickers!
Ooo! Mustn’t forget a shotgun for Grandma!
March 12, 2007 — 7:12 am
Comments: 5