Two guys from India who have never played organized baseball before in their lives have been signed by the Pirates. They’re cricket players who apparently can throw a 90 MPH fastball. Rinku and Dinesh are their names. They’ll be at spring training and spend some time in the minors.
Here’s an excerpt from their blog entry just after they signed contracts with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
We right away went to the internet to locate Pittsburgh on map. It is in north east part of USA and looks like very good city. First we go Florida which is the south east part of USA. We train there with all other Pittsburgh Pirates teammates and live there too.
The stranger ahead of us opens the glass door to the rest stop for us, and lets us pass by him. Why? We step past the crane game and into the foyer of souvenirs, just beside by the Sbarro neon signs. White fluorescent lights are everywhere. I take note of the Starbucks Advent Calendar. I had no idea Starbucks was so religious. Would you look at that guy in that T-shirt with the picture of wolves on it? A wolf montage T-shirt. Is everyone here diabetic? And if so why are they drinking more Coca-Cola?
What’s that trumpet sound? I know those trumpets. I step forward twice to orient my head directly underneath the beige ceiling inset mono speaker. The sound is tinny, but I recognize the song immediately — Going Underground by The Jam.
When you’re at a rest stop on the turnpike, there is absolutely nothing underground about it. There’s no direct exit to the underground from the turnpike rest stop. No one at the turnpike rest stop was going underground any time soon. The turnpike rest stop is decidedly overground. And yet they play the song.
Sometimes context adds meaning. Sometimes it removes meaning.
Some people will say that the true history of Thanksgiving is a story of two alien cultures coming together for a bountiful meal at harvest time. Other people will say that the true history of Thanksgiving is about smallpox and imperialism. However, neither are the real true story. The true meaning of Thanksgiving is: Turkey Fucking.
Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.
– The Guardian
But now that nearly two weeks have passed and no formal announcement has been made, apparently they’re all just full of shit.
Citigroup is still going to pay the New York Mets millions of dollars to keep their baseball park named Citi Field. The AIG logo is still going to be on the Manchester United uniforms. Any pretense that our monetary system is anything closely resembling a meritocracy is being abandoned in the orgy of looting. People are starting to ask the question, “If rich people don’t have to pay their bills, why should I?”
It’s not as if our monetary system were a meritocracy before, but now it’s just that the true nature of the system lies clean-shaven before us. Anyone bothering to look can see that the profit-takers no longer have any plausible moral justification. People will most likely continue to play along (What other choice is there?) but now with a new understanding that our system is not democratic, but plutocratic. Moral authority is gone, and all that’s left are raw claims to power, and the assertion that a league of strongmen is preferable to chaos. The system endures due to pragmatism, but any sort of faith in our system as an ideal one is nearly gone. Who can take a financial system seriously when the stock market is betting on who will get the best welfare?
Did you ever wonder why the Batman movies are popular but nobody cared about the new Superman movie? I think it has something to do with how a latex wearing vigilante who stalks the night dressed as a bat with a belt full of magical accessories is appealing and realistic if you just have a little movieland suspension of disbelief, but nobody can quite take seriously the idea of “Truth, Justice and the American way.”
Of course, nothing will change until people can clearly conceive an alternative system, and broadly accept it to be superior. If our system continues to collapse, it won’t be long before any alternative looks better than what we’ve got.
Charlie Rose just asked Vikram Pandit (CEO of Citigroup) “Is the U.S. Government becoming the world’s bank.” And Vikram’s response was, “Um…” It wasn’t an unqualified “No! Why of course not. What a silly question!” But, “Um…”
Vikram pointed out how important Citi is because they’re in nearly two-hundred countries worldwide, which is of course why the bailout is so neccesary. Which made me wonder, how come none of those other countries are bailing out Citigroup?
Vikram says that Citigroup needed to get a big cash reward because it’s so important for them to make loans so that people can buy houses and stuff — cleverly dodging the important question. Nobody disagrees that people shouldn’t own houses. The question is, why do we need Vikram Pandit and Citigroup to facilitate it?
I believe this is a direct quote, “Citigroup matters because it is the means of globalization.”
I think that this skinny little dude is, in a rather bland way, making the case for an imperial monetary system. And he looks very serious and concerned while doing it. Fascinating.
Do you know how on sci-fi TV shows, they always have the episode where there’s some sort of accident with the space-time continuum and the characters meet their alternate reality selves? And they’re always shockingly different but still intimately familiar? That’s what Thanksgiving with your family is about. This old man is you if you were a young boy in the Great Depression. This girl is you if you had Multiple Sclerosis. This middle aged office lackey is you if you never read On The Road when you were sixteen.
If there’s a blank spot on your wall which is crying out to be decorated with a calendar featuring photos of female conservative pundits wearing the carcasses of dead animals, then are you ever in luck!The Pretty In Mink Calendar is available for purchase now. Personally, I can’t imagine anything I’d rather look at throughout the entire month of September than Ann Coulter wearing a mink jacket and nothing else.
