Babies

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Noun: Babies.  Opinion: Buckle up.

The world is being taken over by babies.  Everyone I know has been busy getting knocked up and delivering blobular mini-people.  Babies in wombs, babies in bonnets, babies here, babies there, babies everyfuckingwhere, babies babies babies!!!!  Damn.  That’s a lot of…storks.

I have nothing so much resembling a maternal instinct.  Kids and I are cool, we can hang, they like me and I like them, but that is as much a function of my knowing when to call it quits and leave the romper room as it is my affinity for adorably clumsy limbs and juvenile Tourette’s.  I have been friends with girls who yearned for motherhood since they were twelve, but never did my uterus that way incline. 

My doctor tells me that the day will come when my hormones turn on me and I’ll come running to him to inject me with anything that will make my raisin-like ovaries cough out the remains of their fast depleting inventory.  Apparently, Nature gets sneaky on women like me and when time is almost up she releases the crazy hormones, and this pretty much explains the premise of both Sex and the City movies.  I’m looking forward to that.  But for now, from my seat of detached but benevolent observation, I have to wonder at the eagerness of my peers to procreate.

After all, what is the value proposition of life?  You can guarantee this innocent child nothing.  Not health, not happiness, maybe your specific love but not its duration or its acceptance.  You can guarantee it death and taxes.  So, basically, you are bringing in a child to the world offering it nothing certain but that it will have what shit it earns taken away, and an eventual demise that will either come too early or after a helpless decline of youth and vigor.  The brushstrokes may vary in color, but they all paint the same picture.

This line of thinking is most distressing when you see the poignant delicacy of childhood in front of you.  The bloom of innocence and wonder is nothing less than enchanting.  But its transience is foreseeable.  It’s an augury of what is inevitable; it’s an ephemeron, a sunny day with a biting sea breeze.  Suffering is ahead; pain is coming.  Death will be here.  You don’t deserve any of it and you certainly didn’t ask for it.  Your friends will protect you the best we can, but the demons are many.  Ennui, self-doubt, embarrassment, devastation, disappointment, heartbreak and all elements of the human condition are part of the package.  And that’s if you’re lucky.  Even if you escape hunger, disease, avarice and murder, you have to live in a world filled with them.  If we succeed in providing for you to adulthood, giving you a conscience, having you outlive us, you bear the weight of environmental ruin, human neglect, the providence of general ignorance.  Terrorism grows banal.  Oil endlessly spills.  War rages and flares and proves intractably resistant to squelching.  These may, God forbid, reach into the bubble we patch together for you in a combined state of hubris and protectiveness.  Family, for you, will not be a decision to be as blithely made as for us.

But it was never easy, even before we figured out how to start our own fires or whittle a spearhead out of flint.  Because besides shit to make you poop your loincloth like running into the odd roaming smilodon or thunderous electrical discharge splintering out of the darkening sky, there were always the assholes.  God, the assholes.  There are…so many.  So very many.  And even the people you love and are friends with will occasionally be assholes.  I am often an asshole.  But I hate other assholes, as you will.  I guarantee you assholes, and lots of them.

So, I promise you death, taxes and assholes.  But listen, little occupied womb, if you’re lucky you’ll be born with some modicum of imagination and an ability to recognize magic if not create it.  And if you are, there are a few things out here worth coming out for.  Like the Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3 played on a Gofriller instrument where it’s singing—singing!—to the world, drawing from its earth every blood drop of beauty and magnificence, calling to everything good and wonderful until the sunset spills jewels on the ocean, David nods and smiles to himself, ancient epic poetry echo in caves, summer peaches cry tears of nectar, and an undiscovered Vermeer glows quietly in an attic.  It’s the same song you’ll hear when you taste your first velveteen sip of potato leek soup or take a twilight walk by the Seine where the laughing lights make your heart burst.  The world reverberates with beautiful things buzzing and humming to each other, lilacs to kittens to seared scallops to Shakespeare sonnets to Jane Austen novels to pink diamonds to the roar of a crowd erupting out of a coliseum/stadium/arena/theater to big steaming bowls of laksa to sunlight creating prisms through water glasses to downy blankets to Mozart arias to red rooftops on Greek isles to mountaintop monasteries to Seinfeld reruns to mist rising over prehistoric rivers to napping puppies to blazing meteors on an inked canvas sky to your sweet little laugh of pure delight.  And if you manage to place yourself…just…right…where these sonic waves converge…

Well, I’ll let you discover that for yourself.  Here are a few tips for finding that sweetspot—1) your parents will be preoccupied with a lot of things that may seem mundane and silly to you, like safety, family and good health.  Listen to them for longer than you think you need to…you’ll need these things more than you can imagine.  2) You will cry.  It will hurt.  Do not not cry or not be hurt—that’s the worst thing you could ever, ever do to yourself.  If for no other reason than it makes the times you laugh less fun.  Instead, when you cry and feel hurt seek people out whose hugs and guidance make you feel better.  Mom’s a good place to start.  3)  Once you find a moment of being and inspiration, you’re not done.  This is a moving target.  You have to keep looking.  Sorry, no one solicited my opinion about this, either. 

Good luck finding it.  You will, I know you will, but I hope you find it often.  I wish I could guarantee you love and success and a path of bountiful luck and just enough resistance to make you interesting, but I’d be lying if I said those were in the cards for most of us.   Most people will lie to you, and sure, it will feel great!  Yet indulge in too long and you cheat yourself the opportunity of finding what reality and truth have to offer, which isn’t too bad–the list I wrote above isn’t even close to comprehensive.  Seeing those things can take some hard-won strength, which is, you know, hard.  The smart ones always feel like life is hard.  I’d advise against being smart except the alternative is to be stupid, so live a hard life.  If you’re lucky you’ll be regularly reminded that it’s so worth it.

The Judgmentor Jumble

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Noun: Various.  Opinions: Varied.

Come play a game with me!  Sit in the middle of the room with wipeable tiles and scooch your butt cheeks across from mine.   Sometimes there are too many things to judge and simply not enough time.  During these periods of high judgmentable activity, you’re going to spit out nouns at me and I’m going to knee-jerk a reaction all free-association style.  I get three passes.  You get ten seconds to think of another noun.  Whoever quits first loses.  Winner gets Tootsie Pop.

Gay teen suicides: Can we first of all agree that these are tragic regardless of the preceding adjective?  As I’m certain there are fat teen suicides and sad teen suicides and straight-but-perceived-weird-in-other-ways teen suicides every day.  The adjective is not what binds these events together—social rejection is.  Isolation is.  Cruelty is.  The fact that being gay triggers these things is a problem.  That these things are rampant is a societal crisis—bullying is not the way to react to people we dislike or disagree with.  Even if you don’t co-sign someone’s lifestyle, you cannot, must not turn a blind eye to the moral bankruptcy latent in the souls of kids who tease to torture.  It is at least a cavity that can be treated, as they are still young; but this means you are obligated to do just that.  Hate.

Streaker at Obama rally:  Was he doing it for money?  Was it for his sick sister?  Was he protesting clothes?  Talking heads psychoanalyze streaker on news shows.  My mother has a more succinct diagnosis.  “It seems,” she says, “he is naughty.”  My mother is always right.  Naughty people are often naked, or vice versa, either way they are more easily identified when they are publicly nude.  Indifferent.

Syncing (noun credit: Andres): It’s easy to do, takes only a couple of clicks, and is good for you.  I never do it, it’s still a pain in the ass.  I’ve been listening to effing Keane for three years.  Hate.

Ginni Thomas: I give women two and a half more generations of a free pass to release themselves from social and financial dependence on their husbands and start being accountable for the choices they make in marriage.  Deny while you can, ladies.  The day’s coming when succeeding Judgmentors will brutally enforce your honesty and make you stop clawing at each other in defense of a man who should be able to live up to his own damn honor.   Indifferent.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Related, but dissimilar.  I love women who look like they’ll care of it when shit gets real.  I’ll make a run for the panic room and when I re-emerge I’m pretty certain the zombie apocalypse will have been managed to a desirable outcome.  She’ll have played dirty, for sure, but it will be for the right cause and that doesn’t bother me.  Love.

Chipotle (noun credit: Lokesh): I know I’m in the minority on this but this shit just doesn’t curl my toes.  Their chips are unforgivable.  Smart business model, though, so, you know, props for that, I guess.  Hmm.  *scratch neck, stare off into space*  Indifferent.

Rick Sanchez: Have you heard about this shit?  Pete Dominick got away with murder in the press, but only because Rick Sanchez eclipsed him with the immense dimensions of his stupidity.  Making generalized remarks about anyone, like they both did, in a public forum is something less than wise.   Calling Jon Stewart names just sets you up—dude, he’s got an entire staff of comedy writers and you only have your overextended ego staying up at night trembling in a scotch-induced rage.  And look what you came up with.  He’s a “bigot.”  That’s the best you could do.  Sad.  Look, this wasn’t just a Cuban-American journalist making provoking remarks about Jews in the media—there were a lot of layers here and it was a doomed debate.   They stumbled into something too big and serious and complex for them and made a mess of things like the sloppy-thinking bitches they are.  It was like monkeys eating oatmeal with forks.  Facepalm.

Starbucks (noun credit: Katherine): I parked my ass in one of these crack dens recently and had a pleasant enough time.  Until the United States adopts the sidewalk café model of European cities this serves as a completely inadequate substitute in terms of both ambiance and coffee quality but it’s the only thing we got.  Being snobby/counterculture/anticorporate about Starbucks was so 2003, get over it.  My productivity level was pretty low but the sugar high from their surprisingly tasty wee pink sparkly donuts made me feel like I was tearing my spreadsheet up.  Like.

Mustard (noun credit: Sarah): Dijon.  Smooth.  End of fucking story!  No grainy shit!  No yellow squeeze bottle!  Dijon, goddamn it!  Nothing else passes must…er.  Love.

OK, I’m done, you win.  Keep returning for another edition of the Judgmentor Jumble!  Check your local listings.

International Burn a Koran Day (formerly known as 9/11)

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Noun: International Burn a Koran Day. Opinion: Facepalm.

9/11 makes me all opinion-y.

Yeah, it’s personal.  But it’s also become insanely political over the years.  And it makes me all crazy with these thought balloons hovering around my head and I have to pop one so that the words splatter on the screen like this just so I can clear my mental windshield which right now is covered with the carcasses of sensationalist media news headlines and that was a lot of metaphor to get to the point which is this: I am not a big fan of this idea.

I don’t support burning books altogether.  It’s stupid.  But burning holy books…well, that just feels uber-wrong.  Like, it makes me really nervous wrong.  Like someone should do something about this before it happens wrong.  Like this is me tugging at Papa Obama’s suit sleeve anxiously wrong.

Not that I think he can really do anything about it beside wag a finger.  If there’s a stronger supporter for a secular government than me, I would like to meet him or her and challenge them to a humanist face-off (we’d stare each other down then compliment one another’s well-calibrated perspectives contained to demonstrable experience).  But that doesn’t mean I think it wise to disregard the spiritual leanings of our fellow citizens—that would be whack.  We might as well turn a blind eye to their physical safety or educational needs.  One would have to be a full-on, furry-chested, power-top sociopath not to have an intuitive understanding of that which is sacrosanct  and untouchable—whatever that may be to you, be it a book, an idol, a grilled cheese sandwich in the shape of a crying Jesus.  It’s about respect.  And part of me wishes that I could get the government to holla a supportive “fuck yeah” by way of intervention.

I voted for Mike Bloomberg when he was calling himself a Republican and it didn’t even hurt.  I have my differences with the man, but we both come from the school of Get-Shit-Done and I relate.  He has publicly defended Jones’s right to burn holy books under the First Amendment.  While I get that, it still doesn’t sit right; this act plucks the same brain string that’s activated every time I hear of a hate crime.  My perspective on this is more along what General Petraeus was getting to when he said this act would “endanger U.S. troops and the overall effort.”  In the short-term, the former is of utmost concern, but in the long-term, the latter is a serious buzzkill.  If by “overall effort” he means civilization’s efforts to create an entire world of universal citizens who hold mutual respect as the highest value.  Can you imagine?  That would sort of solve everything, don’t you think?

Can that possibly be legislated?  Because we’ve tried relying on people to self-determine their way there, and it hasn’t happened.  It feels like it’s anti-happening.  And when kids don’t behave you ground them.  Can we legally unplug the Dove World Outreach Center’s cable connection?  Or, I dunno, lock them in their rooms and fasten chastity belts on all of them to ensure no reproduction?

I’m not going to make the same mistake you are, Terry Jones, by attributing your asinine and inflammatory behavior to your religion.  I won’t paint broad, black strokes over all the delicate nuances of Christianity.  My disdain for you has nothing to do with you being a Christian.  It has to do with you being an asshole.  It has to do with your lust for attention.  It has to do with your disregard for civility.  It has to do with your hypocrisy.  Most of all, it has to do with that fucking preposterous face mullet you sport.  You’re a dickwad, and you’re ugly.

And for the rest of the world, please hear me—pay no mind to this canker sore.  He’s an outlier, a drama queen, an abortion of a true American.  You have yours, he’s one of ours.  We can’t take him anywhere nice, and as much as he offends you, our aversion to him is magnified by how exceedingly mortified we are by him.  So, sorry about that.  Hopefully the things we do right and the good we offer the world will mitigate this a bit—like, here, take this Coca-Cola.  I hear you like it.

The World Trade Center Mosque

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Noun: The World Trade Center Mosque. Opinion: Build the fucker.

Noun credit: Jen (kind of. Not the noun as much as the act to write something, anything.).

Let me make this clear–I am not at all conflicted about this one. Not even a little bit. I’m not even allowing for my usual sliver of noncommittal airspace for ambiguity lest someone comes forth with new evidence. The Judgmentor has deemed this debate to be DEFCON 1 FUCKED UP–deeply, urgently dangerous to anyone who cares even a little bit about living in an open society and about our responsibilities to each other therein.

I’m not sure how international this news has been, but to bring the Japanese guy who visits here every once in a while up to speed, there is some controversy about building an Islamic community center and mosque a couple of blocks from where the World Trade Center stood. Now, I wish my first reaction to hearing this news had been—“Come again? I don’t get it.” Because the connection between a building devoted to worship and kids cutting out shapes of bunny rabbits in construction paper and religious apartheid and government conspiracy and terrorist attacks and the 10048 zip code IS pretty arbitrary. Jon Stewart does a good job of illustrating why, but I don’t remember what he said exactly (something ironic about the necessary proximity involved in plotting in Hamburg to attack in New York) and I don’t have streaming capabilities on my work computer, so I’ll just wait here while you go look for it.

Never mind, I’m no good at waiting. I will have to admit that my first reaction was actually: “Balls. Here we go.” It was like when you have this friend, and you like him, and he’s cool, but he’s got some sort of short-circuited synapse that doesn’t really let him know when what he’s asking for is—while completely reasonable and within his rights—kind of a pain in the ass. Like, he’s always been cool about lending a hand when you move and shit, and now he’s asking you for a ride, but you have this thing. And you don’t want to do it, it’s out of your way and you’d rather go to your thing. Because you like him and all, but it’s not like you have that much in common, and your other friends rag on you when you hang with him because he doesn’t fit in, but he seems really excited that you’re picking him up in your car, and he’s telling everyone about it, and now it’s become, like, a BFD. And you have to deal with this shit.

You just kind of wish he never asked. You wish he had had the social sensitivity NOT to have asked. But he’s your friend, and he’s an awkward motherfucker, and he asked and it’s out there. And there’s nothing you can do about it, because there’s really only one right thing to do.

YOU HAVE TO DO THE RIGHT THING, even if it makes you squirm. Hear that, shitheads? Because he has every right to ask you of this thing, and it is not the end of the world as you know it, you’re just being an asshole. And I cannot believe (and am still sort of indulging in the denial of) the prejudice and hate that this issue has evoked. It has been utterly demoralizing. And the credibility we’ve given these fuckers by way of airtime has made me question what country I live in. Surely I am safe for at least a few generations before the progeny of Paris Hilton and The Situation take over the world? Man, did I time that wrong.

Alright, I’m throwing down my 9/11 card. That’s right, dipshits, I was there, I saw the whole boom-fire-scream-run thing. And I’m going to make this rule right now that the validity of one’s opinion about the matter is proportional to their distance from the epicenter of the two strike points the planes hit–that means if you were an inch farther away than I was, my say supersedes yours, and that includes you, THE ENTIRE FUCKING BIBLE BELT, ohyesitdoes. This is New York business, go back to speaking in tongues in bed with your cousins. And if you were closer than me, then I’ll match my investment in the neighborhood where I own real estate and have worked for over half my career against yours, and if your investment is greater than mine, then I’ll rub your face in this here copy of the American Constitution until you can read it right.

But if you’re some variation of a thoughtful Christian who lost a loved one in a way made even more senseless by its magnitude, then, first of all, I’m sorry. Any loss is devastating and doesn’t feel any better for manifesting in a smaller scale–but yours in particular demanded that you process much, much more than your personal pain. It was heavily accompanied by politics, war, and national confusion. I can only understand in the abstract but even that weak estimation of bereavement aches hard. The distress you’ve been through and relive every time the rest of us take your tragedy and administer it for our own means—in movies/in the press/in our blogs—must cause no little anguish. It is understandable that you flinch at the thought of a mosque as a symbol of the murderers’ motive standing on your hallowed ground. But let me take your hand and implore you, a thoughtful Christian, to think of the thoughtful Muslims who have experienced the same loss that you have. What you have in common has absolutely nothing to do with this mosque. Your pain is not commensurate to your religion. Your Gods are not contained by this geography. Both of your religions have been perverted to endorse terrible deeds. Preventing this edifice only brings you closer to the bigotry exhibited by the terrorists; it does not bring you closer to finding meaning in 9/11, for which I can only conclude there was none.

If we look at Muslims and think: “You did this”—if we look at a mosque and think: “They’re in there”—if we grip greedily to our rights to worship and refuse to extend them to another—we are embracing a mentality of religious intolerance that breeds and feeds fanatics. Irrational, hateful, fearful fanatics who feel righteous about their sanction to oppress other religions. Fanatics who will slide down the slippery slope from abhorrence to assassination. Fanatics who think nothing of flying planes into buildings filled with civilians. And it wouldn’t matter if we’re Baptists or Catholics or Jews or shamans, this kind of exclusivity is poison. If we even entertain the idea of taking away religious freedom—which has been a foundation of our nation and culture since Charles Carroll signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and one of the most identifiable features of what it means to be American—let’s not mince words about it: then the terrorists really do win.

Debrahlee Lorenzana

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Noun: Debrahlee Lorenzana.  Opinion: Just stop, already.

Mother of Christ, let’s make this one quick.  In, judge the shit out of it, then out.  Because I just don’t have it in me to torture a verdict out of this one.

Debrahlee Lorenzana, whose body is as manufactured as her name, is suing Citibank for firing her on the basis of her eyeball-melting hotness.  You know, by her assessment.  I’m not disagreeing with her, I’m just saying that is not an official Judgmentor-stamped opinion.  Every time she walked by, hard-ons would follow, preventing all kinds of spreadsheets from being attended to and losing the bank billions of dollars.  She was, if I understand the case right, the cause of the Greek debt crisis and the stock market plunge of May 6.  Because she was so distracting, you see.  And best of all, Citibank said so, and it had something to do with her turtlenecks.

OK, I know I’ve used this analogy often enough that most people born after 1935 have heard it.  But it’s the only way I can frame men’s perspective on women in a manner that makes any kind of sense to me.  Men like women the way I like puppies.  Take out any suggestion of weird, sexual fetishism, and this kind of helps me understand.  If I see a puppy on the street, I may give it a whistle.  And I’m pretty sure it likes it.  And if it ignores me and refuses to make eye contact, that’s a little fucked up and kind of hurts my feelings, but whatever, brush it off and laugh about it with my friends.  I may pal around with a random dog at the park, even if I have one at home, and not really feel bad about it—it didn’t mean anything and is no reflection of how I feel about Ginger, I didn’t even know that dog’s name.  I sort of like dogs in general, and the more the better, and the younger ones are particularly cute, and even though one specific puppy may mean the world to me, this one puppy will never be as good as two puppies.  I like the idea of two puppies.  That seems fun.  One black lab and one yellow one, maybe.

Now, let’s play this out and envision a puppy in the office.  I mean, there are several puppies—not the majority of my co-workers, and probably not the friendliest, frolickiest of their breed, but puppies nevertheless, and I’m not very discriminating about which I like.  But there’s this one puppy that’s just…I mean, really, really adorable.  Like, it has the face of a Jack Russell, the gait of a Greyhound and the sweet little ass of a Corgi.  You know, with one of those shaggy, curly pig tails.  Just so goddamn delightful.  And it kind of minds its own business, but you always know when it’s around because it is that cute, and…dare I say…it’s kind of…damn it, yes, I’ll admit it, yes, it’s distracting.  That stupid bitch.

And you know what I’d do?  Because I’m an adult with responsibilities who is being paid to perform at a task?  Because I live in a litigious society and am smart enough to account for it?  Most of all because I can maintain perspective on where my problem begins and the puppy’s problem ends?  I’d suck it up and deal.  I would laugh to myself about being an idiot while thanking my lucky stars that I’m surrounded by lovable puppies.  Then I would observe that puppy’s performance and fire it if it’s not making me money and never once, ever, ever, never ever, mention its Corgi butt.  Because I’m not a fucking moron.  Because I’m an ADULT not a fucking moron.

And if it turned out that that puppy were actually an Old English Sheepdog who just got a good facelift and haircut and tail implant, it would never matter.  If that puppy wanted to do everything it could to distract the shit out of me by being irresistibly cute, it would still not matter—the fact that I like cute puppies is my problem, the fact that this puppy has tragically low levels of self-esteem is its problem.  I hired the puppy, ostensibly, to make me money—and that is the basis on which I will fire it.

And if I, the Judgmentor, were this puppy?  And I wore my rhinestone-studded pink collar a little tight?  If I curled my pig tail in such a way to best accent my Corgi features?  I would know exactly what I was doing.  I would be asking for the attention, but by soliciting it I forfeit my right to reject what is given (attention, that is, not harassment–that merits rejection in every and all scenarios).  Maybe I am particularly retarded in the way of puppy signaling, which happens on occasion…but that is not very likely in this case.

In this case, we’ve seen what results in the perfect storm where narcissism, sexism and stupidity collide.  Which is exactly why I prefer puppies to people.  Because they would never in a million years exhibit such implacably copious amounts of any of the above.

Intention

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Noun: Intention.  Opinion: Conflicted.

OK, so I got the message from the last post.  The consensus was basically an appeal to the Judgmentor to, uh, take it down a notch.  The fan base of the Miss Piggy posts doesn’t necessarily intersect with that which enjoys the entries where I basically contort my entire body into a chevron-like shape pointed towards your face and bellow at the top of my keyboard: “j’ACCUSE, bitches!”

Well, that’s not what I meant.  I’m not in the business of opinion-changing, just in opinion-articulating.  So, it was not my intention to stress anyone out.  I did not intend to agitate.  Any low-grade trauma experienced by readers was not intended.

How’s that working?

What if I flutter my lashes, poke you playfully with my elbow in a mischievous intimation of complicity and call you boo?

If I didn’t mean to and didn’t do it on purpose, it would be unfair of you to hold it against me…right?  In this case, it really would.  Who am I to judge (it’s just what I do), but this little blog and your little panties getting bunched up your little butt crack are not worth the grief.

Instead, let’s look to the recent Senate panel hearing on the Goldman Sachs investigation.  Oh, now there is a worthy assembly of panties wadded up in some of the most powerful assholes in the country!  It was a veritable cavalcade of atomic wedgies.  Man, some goat was gotten over a few securitized assets, huh?  That Carl Levin, he can really tune his voice to a perfect pitch of derision.  And Lloyd Blankfein, I’ve never heard someone toe the line between ingratiation and condescension while scarcely holding off a lisp that is ever so very barely slightly gay but not really (am I alone on this?  Maybe.  I’ll Q-tip my ear canals later but for now I stand by what I hear).  As for the rest of those muttonheads, there aren’t enough whiskey sours in the world to make me feel better about the fact that they exist.  That goes for politician and banker alike.

Any time a politician felt stonewalled or out-articulated, he or she would resort to interrogating around Goldman’s intentions.  Did they sell a bad deal on purpose?  Did they mean to cheat their clients?  Are they playing fair?  Did they intend to lie/cheat/steal?

Does it fucking matter?  The economy popped and all that remained were the ratty shards of a burst balloon.  Yet Goldman seemed unscathed—Goldman was yet burnished.  While their peers fell to bankruptcy and shame and takeovers, Goldman made like Scrooge McDuck diving into his money bin of gold coins.  Its displays of wealth were in bad taste during difficult times, and the SEC couldn’t take it anymore.  Poor SEC…always trying to prove it’s a man, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, coming on too strong with its Napoleonic complex, desperately trying to make up for having only one ball and wondering why it’s never invited to any parties.  But this isn’t about them.  Or even those yahoos we voted into office asking the questions.  This is about how much it pisses me off that Goldman has the gall to cock their heads to the left and give the baroo face as said yahoos tried to extract information from them.

Full disclosure: the Judgmentor has been involved in a credit default swap or two.  Not in any serious way, but I passively made a living by being involved in securitizing toxic collateral and tranching that shit out.  Good times.  The point is the SEC doesn’t really have a case.  In a good year, we wouldn’t be watching this Punch and Judy show, since if not disclosing a hedge fund’s involvement in a deal is wrong when the deal goes sour, it’s wrong when the deal goes right.  This isn’t about that.  It’s not about misleading investors, what a crock of shit that is.  If selling a structured asset to a sophisticated investor is misleading, then every time I sell a stock to someone who is willing to buy it I would be committing fraud.  The entire market is based on disagreement!  You can’t buy a share you think is going to go up unless someone is out there who has one and thinks you’re WRONG and a DUMBASS and TRAGIC because he thinks it’s going to go down and he’s willing to bet you $34.28 for it, and bam, there you have your market rate.  That isn’t fraud, that’s called a difference of opinion.

No, that’s not what is pissing the SEC off.  What’s pissing the SEC off is what’s pissing me off—that face they make.  That stupid Scooby-Doo shrug they do (“I ron’t row, Renator”) like they couldn’t piece the words together in their heads to craft a full sentence where the verbs conjugate to agree with the nouns.  Come the fuck on, boys.  That’s just poor marketing.  It makes everyone hate you, because it’s transparent, and if you’re capable of this you’re capable of fraudulent action, and now we all think you did it on purpose.  That it was all intended.

Intention, ladies and gentlemen!  To Immanuel Kant, it was everything.  Bless his epistemological heart, he was unafraid of the kinds of ideas capable of constipating philosophical discussion for centuries on end.  Impossible to act upon or enforce, his moral philosophy was nevertheless very interesting to think about.  Intention, he thought, is what gave action meaning.  A rich man who gives a homeless man money with contempt in his heart is morally inferior to someone who doesn’t give alms but wants to.

On the other hand, we have the Greeks, who didn’t accept intention as a defense.  One of my favorite myths is that of Actaeon because it makes most decent people squirm with its completely vile discharge of justice.  Oh, it’s so arbitrarily violent it’s beautiful.  Here’s Ovid’s version: Actaeon is a strapping young hunter who separates from his friends and his dogs after a productive chase.  Meanwhile, Diana (Greeks’ Artemis) is being prepared for a bath by her maids-at-arms.  Diana is, of course, the goddess of the hunt—a tall, athletic virgin with a deadly quiver and even deadlier aim.  She’s a frigid little cunt but that’s why they love her on Olympus.  Well, Actaeon accidentally stumbles into the ladies’ locker room, so to speak, and sees Diana as no man or god was allowed to see her.  It wasn’t on purpose.  It was not intended.  It did not matter.  Naked and beautiful, majestic and insulted, utterly and unequivocally pissed off, Diana hisses a curse while splashing water on Actaeon and turns him into a stag.  He is bewildered and desperate when his hunting party catches up to him.  At this point Ovid roll-calls the roster of Actaeon’s pack of dogs and launches into a graphic and detailed description of how each one, by name, sinks their fangs into their master’s flesh and tears into his body.  Actaeon’s cries were sadder than any deer’s cries, being slaughtered by his friends and his pets for a sin he didn’t mean to commit.  And Diana was pleased.

Whether Goldman meant to cheat their client, or their peers, or us, is nigh irrelevant.  The fact is that just by wandering into the shaded pool where we thought we were safe they were guilty of an act of violation.  Look, I don’t think the SEC tearing Goldman to shreds would do anyone any good.  But it would FEEL good…and the Judgmentor would, for a half second, be pleased.

Unions

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Noun: Unions.  Opinion: Conflicted.

Noun credit: Jen.


Among the nicer, more conscientious of you, there may be those who were wondering where the Judgmentor hath been these many weeks.  Among the rest of you are those who never really noticed the absence but are curious now that the topic has been brought up.  And the remaining of you may go back to playing Farmville for all I care.

Where have I been?  I’ve been busy.  Growing more deeply disenchanted with the world is a time-consuming business, I’ll have you know.  I have been off having what little remained of my idealism touched in private parts.  I have been occupied with the violation of an entire life philosophy.  In short, I have been busy becoming more cynical.

The easy joke here is to laugh a not very slightly supercilious laugh, the way Americans laugh at European people, and ask if that is even possible.  Just so you know, there is no faster way to have me get my sanctimony on.  Idealism is not vacuous, or silly, or embodied by your Tickle-Me-Elmo approach to life.  It is not always graced with beauty but it always has an element of splendor.  As if there were virtue in serenity, in canopied buoyancy, in blinding smiles and drawing your mental curtains to screen out the ugly.  Who’s more cynical, I ask—me, who had pursued an exquisite chimera, or you, chipper as you were, who never questioned whether the world could be better?  Me, who made choices with the faith that the result would direct itself towards a normative path, or you, who made negative decisions by accepting the positive reality?  What’s a more cynical statement: “This goddamn fucking sucks” or “That’s ok, it’s just the way things are”?  No, this is not me getting defensive, this is me not getting you.  Some idealists focus on the positive, some focus on the negative, but none of us find willful ignorance funny.  Skepticism is not cynicism, though admittedly it’s a slippery slope.

Chew on that while I climb off my soapbox.  Anyway, the point is that the slope turns into an outright freefall down the rabbit hole.  I (barely) stand witness to it.

The Judgmentor, in fact, never left.  The problem was that my last entry was up for all of two minutes before I took it down—it was too dark, too much, too Tori Amos on downers and pomposity.  It’s the space my brain is in right now.  For the first time in my career, I am working with unions.  For the first time, I am working with those without graduate degrees or suburban upbringings or ambitions that don’t involve winning the lottery.  For the first time, I am working with the noble proletariat, the great unwashed masses who struggle mightily against the new feudal system of capitalism, those whose income come from honest labor and not from exploitative ownership of the means of the production they make possible.  As vulnerable as they are to abuse and mistreatment, as susceptible as they can be to corporate manipulation, do they not have a right to protection?

Well, yes.

Do they deserve it?

Fuck, no.

But not because they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or some such Tory nonsense.  I don’t buy into a merit system based on accumulated wealth, it smacks too much of over-simplification chased with malice (hear me, Fox News cocksuckers?).  Unions don’t deserve to exist because people fundamentally SUCK and because they don’t stop at protecting the innocent from the exploitation of management.  They will grab, snatch and claw at more.  Samuel Gompers, leader of American unions and founder of the AF of L, summed up human nature when he said “we do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more.”   And voila the suckiness of mankind—this isn’t the innocent organizing against corporate evil, this is a simple case of assholery versus assholery.

And what kind of result can possibly manifest from a war of assholes?  Never a good one.  Where’s Troy today, after all (or Greece, for that matter)?  The distortions to the free market system I’ve witnessed that were direct consequences of the union and their irrational demands have been astounding in scope.  Hey, I’m no unadulterated fan of competitive capitalism—but however rickety its operations when left alone, it is fucked upside-down when you introduce a market abortion like a collective bargaining agreement.  What you can do, say, suggest, how you can execute, scratch your pits and carry out reasonable business practices is completely hamstrung.  There is jockeying and posturing on both sides, each trying to position themselves with perceived advantages.  The most charming part about the battle is how very human it can be— arbitrary, irrational, and mean-spirited.  Unions will negotiate themselves right out jobs just out of spite.  Businesses will resort to any covert maneuver to save a buck.   And after all that, management still treats workers like shit.  If asked by any of the manual laborers I come into contact with, you better believe I tell them to go union.

And thus my idealism lies gasping for breath on the asphalt, bleeding from the head.  Beaten to a pulp by the misled notion that responsible self-interest can exist and butt-raped with a broomstick by the idea of dignity inherent in simpler lives.  Absurd, of course.  But worth saving…on the off-off-off-chance that despite all evidence to the contrary, there is someone out there who’ll deserve and benefit from the elusive justice idealism lives to enable.  Because his or her demise is a far greater injustice than all the ill-begotten victories of the assholes put together.  So I’ll resuscitate that pathetic invalid, bandage its wounds, and have it live another day, keeping it alive on bare faith and defiance alone.  It’s gnarled and broken and looks a little like an old Chinese Crested with conjunctivitis, but it’s goddamn splendid.