The Golden Rule

So it looks like Emperor Bloomberg is testing the waters now (via No More Mister Nice Blog). The money paragraph (bearing in mind that this is from a Bloomberg media site) is here:

The former New York City mayor seems like the perfect solution for Wall Street's problems with the current field of presidential candidates. The Street sees him as a centrist technocrat who adeptly managed one of the most complex cities in the world. They think he understands the global business community.

You could just about FJM every syllable in that paragraph, but what it all boils down to is this: Only a man who made billions from finger-banging spreadsheets and sending American jobs to third world countries can possibly understand the sheer anguish that is endured by other men who finger-bang spreadsheets and send American jobs to third world countries. It's a complicated political recursion, you see.

Where did these people come so untethered from reality that they seem to genuinely think that completely unfettered, unencumbered hyper-capitalism is the only true path to prosperity for all? The events of the last decade have clearly shown that that is not remotely true; such an arrangement promises only wealth for the oligarchy running the perpetual-motion machine scamming the rubes out of their hard-earned pittance. All the wealth generated goes to the top 1% (or smaller). The math does not lie, only the people do.

So what would "Wall Street's problems with the current field of presidential candidates" consist of, that they don't genuflect quite enough? What the fuck do they want, blowjobs to completion on the steps of the NYSE? Isn't that what CNBC is for?

"They think he understands the global business community." Yeah, run that one through Google Translate into Lower Middle Bullshit and see what you come out with. I would almost respect these shameless bastards more if they just flat-out said, "We don't have enough money. We will never have enough fucking money. You might as well resign yourself to that fate. It is our expectation that American politicians will deliver for us, first and only, alpha and omega, with the understanding that if we are in the mood, we might share a crumb with the proletariat. Otherwise, have a nice bowl of go fuck yourself."

We see what "understand[ing] the global business community" really means -- more of the same, and to a greater degree. The idea that these shameless spreadsheet diddlers have been challenged whatsoever in their unholy pursuit of filthy pelf is one of the more remarkable conspiracy theories, right up there with lizard men and such like. These motherless fucks already run the entire world to their own benefit, and it's still not enough. Keep that in mind whenever you trudge to the so-called ballot box, even in a midterm.

Realistically, Bloomberg has to know that there are giant sections of the US that will not vote for him simply because he's a J-O-O. Ugly but true, and Bloomberg is a lot of things, but he's not an idiot. It's just as likely that he's testing the waters on NY governor, as Andy Cuomo is likely to be a veep contender.

As for the idea that Wall Street might have issues with Jeb Bush, give me a fucking break. He'd be even easier for them to control than Hillary. The thing that is always most disgusting is that most people get what's going on and vote for their approved "choices" anyway.

Hatesong

Why did I not know about this before? I'm just now discovering Hatesong, and there is something noteworthy about, say, David Lynch despising It's a Small World so much, he won't let the interviewer refer to it by name.

Fortunately, I'm at a point in my life where I simply don't encounter most of these awful songs. I mean, I've never heard Katy Perry's Firework, like not a single note. I've never heard more than a few seconds of My Heart Will Go On. I've never heard a Justin Bieber song, again, not so much as a single note or word or melody. Life is too short.

Still, I think we've all had jobs in the past where workplace radio is plopped onto some lowest-common-denominator shit sandwich, endless streams of commercials sandwiching three-song blocks of heavy-rotation dreck. No wonder the American worker is stressed out to the point of a breakdown.

But most of us are certainly familiar enough with some of these songs, so when you turn a fine, observant mind such as Steve Coogan on the aerosol can of cheese The Lady in Red, hijinks are bound to ensue. Yet there are still people who listen to it on purpose, there are nostalgia radio stations that play this sort dreck deliberately.

This makes me sad, really. It makes me think of a person who has been stuck in a basement or a cornfield in Kansas their entire life, with no radio or TV or internet, and so they think that the entire world is a desolate cornfield, because they've never seen anything else. Not that I expect other people to like exactly what I like; far from it.

But there are songs (and Lady in Red is a prime example) where, as Coogan points out, creativity is absent, nothing but trite greeting-card sentiments are listed. It's the musical equivalent of having sex through a hole in a bed sheet, missionary only. To enjoy -- or even to be not offended by -- inert, lifeless crap just seems to be a symptom of missing out on a whole 'nother universe of great stuff.

Most of this stuff is very fish-in-a-barrel; honestly, do you know anyone who likes a floater like Mambo No. 5? But pairing the right person with the right song is just magic in this context, as the legendary Matt Pike demonstrates in his evisceration of the Aerosmith handjob Dude (Looks Like a Lady). Pike hates not just that song, but the band with a level normally reserved for someone who you just watched run over your dog. On purpose. Fun stuff. Check it out if you haven't already.

[Update:  Also, too. Certainly a valid point here, in that someone's taste -- or lack of -- doesn't pick anyone else's pocket or break their arm, so why sweat these poor folks on their schmuckery?

Two reasons, says I:  one, it's frequently funny (and some of the commenters in the Hatesong pieces are flat-out hilarious); two, beyond the subjectivity of mere pop-culture aesthetics, the fact is that when these objets de merde are popular, however long that toxic half-life may be, it's tough to get out of range of the smell.

I've never seen so much as an episode of Survivor, American Idol, or really any reality teevee, and yet a certain amount of "informational" oxygen and media space gets taken up with coverage of this sock-drawer-sorting nonsense, so I know way more about these things than I would ever have wanted to. You can only change the channel so fast; you have to read the headline before you can choose to skip past it. This stuff becomes very difficult to completely avoid. The same can be said when it comes to music, for those poor folks who are compelled to share communal space with aficionados of said dreck.

It's one thing to posit that someone who lurves them some Mambo #5 is no worse or better than someone who knows every Beethoven string quartet by number and key; it's quite another to have the mambophile blaring their crap over the cubicle wall every day.]

The Art of Bore

In case you've found yourself wondering where our most beloved ex-preznit ambled off ta, welp, apparently some hacker and Teh Media can answer that li'l riddle for ya. Supposedly "liberals" are unglued about this, but clearly there's nothing to get bent about either way. He's no John Wayne Gacy, is he? Hell, he ain't even Andy Warhol.

Already some art uh-fishy-nachos have attempted some snarkonalysis, but there's very little point to any of that. You've probably heard (via The Departed) the urban legend about Freud saying that the Irish cannot be psychoanalyzed. Well, in all seriousness, I believe you could make the same claim about George W. Bush.

I freely admit to being a total philistine when it comes to art appreciation; there are certainly plenty of individual pieces, artists, and even movements that I can identify as "liking" or "disliking", with some reasonable explanation as to why. Beyond simple notes on color and composition, however, I can't really expound much. Either I can identify skill, technique, passion, and vision, or not.

And let's face it, if the two paintings shown above had come from anyone else -- or no one of any note at all -- nobody would be talking about them in any respect. They are not noteworthy in any particular way, near as I can tell; neither good nor awful, merely there.

One finds nothing at all in the way of passion, vision, ambition, or really even any identifiable emotion or thought here. They're just glimpses of random days, sketched by a hobbyist of unique means but modest skill. Scenes From A Washroom. Who knows, maybe they're part of a series in progress; perhaps the third piece of the Homebody Triptych is Self-Portrait of Upper-Decker. You probably won't want to "download" that one (see what I did there?).

Looked at that way, perhaps these newly-hacked objets d'art really do qualify as a portal into the interior life of the artist, insofar that that's pretty much all it is, all it ever was. George shaves in the shower. Then he watches his feet in the bathtub. It's not like he was going to paint Guernica with Fallujah as stand-in. Himself never was much for self-reflection; these are the musings of a man who is almost completely bereft of uncertainty, or even curiosity.

I mean, really, what did anyone think George W. Bush would do with his post-presidency existence -- build homes for the homeless; give back to the world in gratitude for his impossible luck in life; lend his diplomatic expertise and gravitas to a tumultuous planet; learn to play Bach's Sonatas and Partitas on the violin? It's a small miracle he hasn't yet guested on Celebrity Apprentice or Duck Dynasty.

[Update 2/9/13 3:45PM PST:  'Scuse the post title change, I knew I could come up with a better one,given enough time.]