Respect Authority

Who cares?

My how the tables have turned. Turns out, there won’t be any money left by the time he retires… serves the old bastard right.

In any event, I’ve long given up hope that ancient social safety nets would still be around when I’m inconceivably old, but I guess 32 is creeping up on me faster than I thought. That being said, here’s a long overdue guide to Millennial retirement:

Get really rich and “work” until you’re 90

Think about it, retirement age billionaires like Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, and Warren Buffet have nothing to worry about! They’re not only still vigorously working but also outrageously rich and successful. Their brilliant retirement plan is to get into a position of power and rot while taking in a fat paycheck. What’s more, running a business into your twilight years also guards against the more subtle pains of retirement. People are both forced to listen to you and have to pretend they care — solving classic old people concerns.

Invest in Rich Old People ASAP

Without talent or intellect, the first option is easier said than done. However, if you have looks — you can invest in your future by marrying dying rich people today. A riskier investment strategy is stripping. It worked, sort of, for Anna Nicole and scores of other young women however the quality of billionaires who marry whores is spotty at best. A more conservative and gender-blind approach is to earn a degree with the University of Phoenix and apply for Administrative Assistant positions at major Fortune-500 firms. Dress conservatively with a hint of slut and wait for a return on your investment.

Live Fast, Die Young

Of course, society must prepare for those citizens who haven’t prepared themselves. This is why Social Security was invented in the first place — to bail out the assholes who just had to live paycheck to measly paycheck while supporting dozens of kids.

Therefore, our society has to be just as forward thinking as our grandparents’. Luckily we currently offer endless ways to slowly kill yourself and market them to the lowest common denominators in society. Chances are, if you’re eating McDonalds and KFC more than three times a week, playing Wii instead of actually exercising and watching American Idol instead of reading — you probably don’t have health insurance which means you’ll probably die before you can retire. Coupled with drugs, alcohol and deadly diseases you can only really catch if you’re an idiot — many of us will never have to sully our beautiful little minds with plans for retiring after 65.

Is it bad that I just realized lil’ Chicago’s a candidate city for the 2016 Olympics? I’m sorry, but its just that I forget that there’s anything between New York and Los Angeles!

In any event, Chicago’s trying to host the Olympics in 2016 ya’ll and this time America’s actually got a shot. During the 2012 selection process, NYC represented the U.S.’s only realistic chance of winning the Games because it’s the only U.S. city with enough casual anti-American sentiment to be considered “worldly”. But even NYC’s notorious anti-ness couldn’t make up for just how much Europeans hated Bush so they gave it to fucking London… again.

This time, however, people love our president. In fact one of the IOC selectors has a picture of him on her refrigerator (not kidding). Obama, not one to squander an opportunity to capitalize on his fame, is making his interns post videos of him on YouTube talking up Chicago and how awesome it would be to have the Olympics there. That coupled with the shocking fact that almost every single one of his very successful advisers used to work for the Chicago 2016 bid committee bodes well for Chicago’s chances at winning this thing and will ensure endless frustration for Aaron if he doesn’t get out of Chicago before it’s too late.

Just imagine… years of construction so that millions more people can fill every corner of Chicago for two long hot weeks in August.

[Politico]

Time’s cover story this week is about Obama and his magical hundred days, and the story’s already online. The short end of it? He really hasn’t done anything yet, and even if he did it’s really Jim Jones’ fault for being too weak; besides, he shot the pirates. What’s more interesting is this picture of his private residence! Looks like his Mac’s hooked up to a brand new Apple Cinema Display with a custom high-resolution White House wallpaper.

And he might be using his Blackberry while reading four books at the same time. Also, his lamp’s a little fey.

Jamal Al-Sparrow in an undated photo.

In our modern world, there are three types of pirates: Disney pirates, everyone who’s ever downloaded anything “illegally”, and Somalians in boats with guns. The latter is generally considered to be more menacing than the first two — but no more?

According to an article from The San Francisco Bay View (hippies), some Somalian pirates are following in the subversive footsteps of all the noble pirates before them — standing up to oppressive imperial navies of the 21st century. Alright, I’ll bite.

If you’re like me, as I suspect you are, Black Hawk Down is your only background source on Somalian affairs. Therefore, it seemed totally logical that the rampant, amphetamine fueled thuggery would eventually spill over into the high seas (or space… I can’t wait for space pirates). But apparently, our assumption is misguided! The failed state of Somalia has been unable to protect its waters from greedy Europeans that have been stealing all their fish and then dumping toxic waste off their shores! Piracy is now the only recourse for Somalians trying to fight back against Imperial powers and eke out a living for their miserable, starving, irradiated population.

Maybe in a hundred years or so, Disney World Dubai will have a Pirates of the Indian Ocean ride and movie franchise with Obama’s great grandson playing the lovable and harmless Somalian pirate — Jamal Al-Sparrow.

The hoopla concerning the “name change” of 1WTC was a reminder that, fuck me, they’re really redeveloping the World Trade Center site. For nearly a decade anyone living or working south of Chambers has had to put up with closed streets, cranes, dump trucks, and smelly construction workers bogarting deli lines with little more than a well-organized hole in the ground to show for it.  But by 2012 (hopefully), the pain will be over.

When it was first revealed, 1WTC’s design failed to make a real impression (at least Daniel Libsekind’s piece of shit allowed me to hate it). The “Freedom Tower” branding was woefully uninspired and the symbolic height of 1,776 feet - retarded. The entire project reeked of sloppy politics. 

But as early as September 11, 2008, rumors were spreading that the “Freedom Tower” name was falling out of favor among the developers. With Pataki gone, Rudy diminished (to put it diplomatically) and the Bush Administration tarred and feathered (also a diplomatic euphemism) - the professionals were left to their own devices. The public announcement two weeks ago that the “Freedom Tower” brand has been cast aside was really an official announcement that the project is out of the hands of bumbling politicians and vision-less real estate magnates and in the control of the some of the best designers and engineers in the world. Trust me, it shows. Read More ›

In the interest of national security, President Obama isn’t allowed to have a Respect Authority account and therefore will post infrequent updates from his friends’ accounts.

From the snowy peaks of the Catskill Mountains to the temperate zone of Orange County, we have crisscrossed this great nation for about two months, charged with the people’s work of hope and change.

To be honest, Air Force One is great and all but the workload, stress levels and tension headaches are getting pretty annoying pretty fast. Sixty days ago, I thought I had this. I said to myself, “Barack, you’re a young, smart guy with a slightly larger than average penis — you got this.” But now I’m not so sure.

For example, last week I was on the Tonight Show. Sure, the venue was a bit unusual if not unbecoming of the office, but I was just trying to keep things light, especially appealing in the face of, oh well I dunno, something like a depression. And so there I am, with Jay, and I accidentally make a retard joke. Fuck my life. Read More ›

Yes, he is.

While, I’ve long lost interest in America’s Death Spiral (I’m busy plotting the comeback!) Krugman’s latest blooooog entry annoyed me enough to care again.

The Geithner plan has now been leaked in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie ideas have won.

Zombie ideas? Really? You’re a fucking Noble laureate Paul Krugman. Aren’t you beyond awkward fitting analogies? Aren’t we, as a people, beyond alarmist propaganda? You have no idea how to fix the economy, no one does, and your pseudo-intellectual doom-saying doesn’t address the problem at hand.

Maybe Geither’s plan to save the world is like pumping gallons of seawater into my California roll (oh my, that’s fun) but I believe in happy endings. In my worldview, when the handsome lead desperately pumps the chest of a decidedly drowned love interest — just when it seems certain they’re dead — the beautiful maiden finally coughs up water and is ready to make out. America’s waiting for her Zac Efron, Paul Krugman… get on board.

[The Conscience of a Liberal - NYTimes.com]

I swear to God, once you program me with a conception of freedom and equality - I'll kill you.

That being said, the finale was a little… disrespectful. Not to the fans, but to the show itself. Obviously fan boys will have a problem with the loose ends (Starbuck and the millions of coffee shops named in her honor, God and his time traveling mind minions) but the real outrage should be directed at Ron Moore - who’s ego nearly swallowed the show whole.

Battlestar, from the mini-series, was always a show that paralleled reality but it did so without penetrating it. It was about humanity when its chickens came home to roost… then surprise-attacked us and turned our social/political world upside down. It was brilliant because it was about 9/11 without being about 9/11. And because the protagonists were both the heroes and yet also the instigators, it was about us without actually being about us, because ultimately Battlestar Galatica is a television drama, set in space, with space planes and killer robots.

When, thankfully, the show was picked up and transformed into a full fledged series, it was given the latitude to use dramatic representations of familiar social struggles – like abortion, religious expression, and civic freedom - to advance more entertaining plots that revolved around gratuitous, post-apocalyptic sex scenes and, of course, space battles.
Read More ›

After about a thousand pages and what feels like years of babbling, the apocalypse-averting stimulus-recovery-rescue bailout package has been finally passed and signed. The economy works again! Right? Right?

Um, maybe.

The first point that merits making is that the Republican bitching was kind of intellectually honest — in that the bill wasn’t exactly a stimulus package, nor did it directly address the emergency at hand. They complained that the monies appropriated by the bill are for something called “spending” rather than “stimulating.” Which, according to Republicans, doesn’t equal “job creation.”  

That being said, Republicans haven’t proven themselves capable of crafting sustainable economic policy, so any criticism they offer should be taken with a huge, absolutely inedible grain of salt. However, it still remains to seen whether the Democrats’ bill (with provisions for birth control, education, and energy independence) will fill America with smart, capable and productive citizens who can do something other than manage other people’s money (poorly - I’m looking at you, you fucking bank managers). Read More ›

Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg is about to retire thanks to butt cancer. What remains to be seen is whether or not her retirement will just be from the Supreme Court or from LIFE (I’m sure we’ll find out later). In any event, we should get on with the business of handicapping her potential replacements.

The easiest way to go about this is by predicting Obama’s historic pick along gender/racial lines. We’ve already had ladies, a black, and Sicilians are basically classy Hispaniards. All that’s missing is a mellow yellow lady! So here’s a list of all the Asian female US District Court Judges appointed by a Democrat:

• Mollway, Susan Oki

There you have it. The Honorable Susan Oki Mollway will be the next US Supreme Court Justice. How can I be so sure? First, fuck you for questioning me… I’ve never been wrong before. Second, she’s from Obama’s Hawaii and Harvard Law School. Three, she’s a tough on crime or something like that.

I did a lot of things that were mostly right. 

And with that, now-former-governor Rod Blagojevich lost his job. What’s more, the Illinois legislature barred him from ever serving in public office again. Concluding months of media coverage on the second-slowest political train wreck of the century (the first being the entire Bush Administration).

But the real wreck wasn’t so much the taped conversations or the melodramatic U.S. attorney press conference, it was his refusal to resign while going on a quoting tour of British writers and appointing crazy blacks to the Senate instead… which sort of worked on me.  

Crackheadish rambling aside, he did have a point: he didn’t actually do anything, or rather he didn’t actually do anything yet — a technicality he maintained right up to the incredibly bitter, 45-minute end. Blagojevich’s final desperate “defense” amounted to begging legislators to put themselves in his shoes and spare him the embarrassment of having to tell his daughters that his gubernatorial career made Sarah Palin look competent… which, again, is bizarrely reasonable.

[nytimes.com]

In a few hours, America will swear in its first real life, jive talking, b-balling, black-Hawaiian president, and sometimes I forget how significant that is (probably because I’m too busy planning my shanty house for the shanty town we’re all moving into). 

Barack Obama’s election means a lot of things to a lot of people, but fundamentally it symbolizes, in no uncertain terms, that anyone in America can grow up to be the President. A huge departure from the sort of recovering alcoholic, coke snorting retard you’d like to have a beer with who stole the election eight years ago.

Unlike Bush, Obama can’t do much worse. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who’s doing better than they were eight years ago. The world is ending environmentally, economically and politically. Holiday Season 2008 was like a menopausal mother who ruined Christmas by going broke over unaffordable makeovers that haven’t really worked.  

Politically, well, omgshoes. It seems the only thing we’ve been spared these last eight years is a huge famine in a part of the world that isn’t always starving (I’m looking at you Africa, get your shit together). In other words, Barack Obama was elected to save the fucking planet.

The least we can do is draw up a tidy list that organizes Obama first term’s various challenges in bullet format:

To Do

• Invent 10 million jobs by organizing the largest governement infusion of capital in history. Make sure that money is spent on sensible infrastructure improvement, viable social programs and not stolen by inept/corrupt local politicians across the 50 states for pork projects. Kill Rod Blagojevich. (New York Times)
• Save an auto industry that thinks it’s a good idea to use millions of bailout dollars on full page ads in the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal thanking America for its “investment” in them. (Gawker)
• Transform America’s energy infrastructure and industry so that we don’t turn our purple mountains and fruitful plains into an oven we stick our fat heads in 50 years from now. Try not to look like Jimmy Carter. (Houston Chronicle)
• Redirect troops from Iraq into Afganistan and establish stability in a state that hasn’t seen law nor order since before my parents graduated grade school. Try not to look like an international pussy. (RealClearPolitics)
• Reestablish reputation worldwide. (Daily Telegraph)
• Hope that asteroids, aliens and hurricanes stay away. (Colbert Nation)
• Run for President again. (NY Post)