Some Good News, Some Bad News
An article written in 1999 states "more
than 90 percent of users receive spam at least once a week, and almost 50
percent get spammed six or more times per week.". How times have
changed. I checked my email server and found that I've received
approximately 7,900 spam emails in the last 20 days. I could
avoid a lot of it by never listing my email address on my websites, but I like
that people can click-and-email me. Besides, I don't have to read more
than 1% of the spam I receive, as it gets shuffled off to a Junk folder.
Jubak has a sobering
article called State of the Nation? Broke. The first
problem is that even a "balanced budget" (which we haven't seen since the
Clinton years) isn't really balanced. All of the military spending for
Iraq, now over $350 billion, isn't included in the budget because it's
appropriated as "special requests". That doesn't mean it doesn't drive up
the national debt, of course. The second problem is the recent trick of
including Social Security payments in the numbers
— these are dollars dedicated to the Social
Security trust fund and should not be commingled with tax revenues. With
the budget calculation corrected for these two deceptions, the yearly deficit is
now half a trillion dollars. That's about $5,000 per family per year that
the U.S. government is spending that it doesn't have. As Jubak says, "the
upcoming crisis is absolutely predictable", because all calculations of
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security outlays to baby-boomers show that by 2030
all (100%) of government revenue will need to be used just to pay the interest
on the debt. The bad news is that well before this happens, the standard
of living for all but the wealthy will decline, as the value of the dollar drops
and interest rates rise. The other bad news is that this enormous amount
of debt is substantially held by foreign countries and their citizens.
This includes current and future adversaries, such as China and Southeast Asian
nations. Nothing less than the future of our nation (and our children)
depends upon doing something to repair the economic damage. What's the
answer? Raise taxes and/or reduce federal spending. When's the last
time a candidate was elected by promising to raise taxes? For another
look, see Where Your Income Tax
Money Really Goes, that demonstrates why almost 50% of the controllable
federal budget goes to the military.
Hey, hey. Ange Mlinko has a fine poem in Poetry. Alice
Oswald, whom I admire, and Albert Goldbarth share the issue. More on that
tomorrow.
Time's lead article is on the 2008 Presidential election, "the most most
wide-open race since 1928". Could somebody please cut off the funds for
those creepy milk commercials where somebody famous has that ghoulish White-Out
smeared on their upper lip? William Shatner is obnoxious as ever in 10
Questions (a sample: Time: "... Claudia Christian ... accused
you of once making advances". Shatner: "Well, who am I to tell a
lady that she's a liar? ... I'm sure it was memorable for her, though.").
A U.N. panel of noted scientists are about to confirm that human activities are
responsible for global warming. Scooter Libby's new trial defense is that
he's a sacrificial lamb to prevent Karl Rove's indictment. A Dutch
pet-shop owner has introduced beer for dogs. Libya is going to lay off
400,000 government workers as it switches to a market economy.
Presidential aspirants are announcing earlier and earlier to get a jump on the
$2 million per week they need to raise to become viable candidates.
Time's summary table of major candidates includes their popularity rating,
recognition percentage, number of appearances in People magazine, and Amazon.com
ranking of the last book they wrote. Time is running out for the 300,000
Israelis who live in what most of the world considers Palestinian land.
While J. Crew, American Eagle, and Abercrombie & Fitch surge ahead, sales of The
Gap (and Old Navy and Banana Republic) continue to slide. Rage and
catatonia are common among 20,000 inmates who reside in federal supermax
prisons, where they are in isolation 23 hours a day and eat alone in a cell
whose light cannot be turned off. Among the many instances of animal
homosexuality, sheep exhibit the highest percentages with 8% of all rams having
sex exclusively with other rams. A long article on the rudely hilarious
Sarah Silverman who stars in her own sitcom in February (in one episode, she
sleeps with God, who is black). Women are taking to the slopes in
increasing numbers. The new supercharged $90,000 Jaguar XKR is the cat's
meow.
If you have a little more budgeted for a car, you should check out the $8
million
Maybach, from the"ultra-luxury division" of Mercedes. It's 19-feet
long, weighs 6,000 pounds and goes almost 220 miles per hour. Make sure to
budget for gas, as well, because it gets 2.5 miles per gallon. Other news
from CNN: In a reversal of the ratio of 40 years ago, women now account
for 57% of all college graduates. The highest federal mininum wage was in
1968, when it hit $9.27 in 2007 dollars. Microsoft is threatening credit
card companies by getting into the online payment business. "Dog Shit" was
listed among the ingredients in a package of British cooked ham, prompting the
firm to fire the employee responsible for the labeling prank.
~~~
Adam Clay has announced the birth of
Typo 9 with poetry by Rachel
Abramowitz, Jim Goar, Rebecca Loudon, Abraham Smith, Jen Tynes and others.
At the MMM Bash, I picked up the latest issue of
Copper Nickel that Jake Adam
York left (he's an editor). There is a lot of good work in the journal,
including poems by Gina Franco, Noah Eli Gordon, Matthea Harvey, Joshua Poteat,
Mathias Svalina and others. The collection is eclectic and highly
readable. Some lines from poems I liked:
Mathias Svalina, After Everything: Before corn was the color of
heron's beaks / I was a dormant husband. / My wife shook me to gurgle.
Joshua Poteat, From J. G. Heck's 1851 Pictorial Archive of Nature and
Science, Mercury asleep and the pretty stars : I bring to this landscape a
spotted liver, and a / house pulled from the sea. I bring a weathervane, /
weatherless with yeast, some dogs kicked in the / brain.
Noah Eli Gordon, from The Year of the Rooster: What a rooster is /
stubborn alienation / plundering cornfields / fertile
adornment
Alison Titus, Dead Letter Office: Besides the gaunt mule stumbling the
thicket behind the factory. // Besides those outskirts of grief. Then
elsewhere.
Nicholas Reading, Dialogue with an Intruder: Now that the door is
kicked in we have plenty / to talk about / with you stoned, me weak
thinking that Grandmother's // tea set / has fallen apart and
give us plenty to talk about while / you reach
~~~
I'd love to get a Wii and play the newest Zelda, but I've been trying to keep my
priorities straight. The Wii is still devilishly hard to find, except on
the Internet. One sells at
eBay
every couple of minutes for about $300, so somebody is getting them.
There's
a 77-square foot
I did want to mention that Rebecca Loudon (no, I'm not her publicist) has
co-composed a 5-part song cycle, Bone Island Suite, with Roupen Shakarian.
Rebecca has written poetry for the lyrics, and the resulting work is just
amazing. You can read the poetry and listen to the suite by going