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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Right now in California we are laying off teachers so we can pay prison guards.
This is happening right now, as I write this.
Nobody can figure out how to keep the prison budget under control without committing major human rights violations that even the current Supreme Court would find objectionable.
But it's pretty easy to lay off teachers, so that is how we are handling our budgetary crisis.
1. Cut social programs to pay prison guards.
2. Poor people get more dysfunctional and more likely to resort to crime to stay afloat.
3. Ooops there's more crime -- looks like we have to hire even more prison guards.
4. But where do we get the money?
5. Return to step 1 and repeat loop.
my advice to you: marry a canadian
or legalize weed. get 25% of offenders out. tax sales. fund schools.
When we have to fire teachers to pay prison guards, that means our society is deeply troubled and heading for a crisis.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7270607.stm
1 in 30 males between the age of 20 and 34 is in prison.
1 in 9 black males in the same age range is in prison.
"When I think of the vast sea of to-do lists I've written over the past 20 years ... I'm struck by the utter futility of this incessant compulsion to accomplish stuff."
Don't worry about accomplishment; about doing the right things instead of doing things right; about finding your creative time and defending it ruthlessly; about organizing your life; about what you would like to be written on your tombstone: television is there to help you believe that time is never lost, and to help relegate those productive thoughts to the back of your mind, where they belong. Just keep watching TV!
The fascinating thing about the "Real Housewives" series is the vapidity of the families that are portrayed. They are not particularly bright or cultured or talented or even, despite their money, all that attractive. And yet, they are loaded.
From that perspective, the show is definitely thought-provoking.
I like the Salon composite graphic and how it seems to effectively support what I take as Ms. Havrilesky’s thesis re the unfortunate empty posturing and futile machinations of those who lack a sense of authenticity, purpose and mission in their lives.
The canine in foreground sits in his natural skin, without pretense, dignified, and thankfully oblivious to the dog-and-pony-show antics of the donkeys lined up behind him. One of the donkeys rides on another, both forcing smiles to convince their audience just how playful and carefree the lives of beasts of burden can be.
Lined up next to them are five more donkeys, trained to pose unnaturally, one foreleg in front of another, festooned with bright baubles hanging from their ears, and wrapped in the pelts of other creatures that have been killed for them.
Their costumes, in fact, are such that they will win approving and envious glances when the donkeys parade in Churches on Easter Sunday. But not those of the donkeys who display a bit too much of the sexuality that helped buy them their special adornments and status. They will need to cover more flesh before they parade and give thanks in Church.
If the posing and performing donkeys aren’t really fulfilled, then they have some connection to their audience, whose deprivations are more of a material type. Behind the performers appears to be an urban habitat in decay, behind whose bleak walls their audience takes some pathetic hopes or desires from watching what they don’t have. The audience is confronted in their daily lives with the reality that the basic level of resources needed for a sense of security and safety is out of their grasp, unlike the few donkeys with special status. But most will never let go of their beliefs in the ringmasters, and in what they see in the shows, to the contrary. There must be a TV in every home.
These women don't work, do they? At least the fake-jugged ones had jobs! My favorite character is LuAnn's eye-rolling housekeeper. And my second favorite is Alex's shopping-obsessed husband who actually thinks as a hotel manager he can break into New York society. He's the "help," also, to the social set. Oh, what do I know--I am sitting in my family room in the desert in Arizona. Thanks for the laffs, tho! Oh...one other question (I am watching WAY to closely), why did Jill pay for her kid's duds with cash? What line of work is Bobby in, anyhow?
A previous poster writes:
"The only thing I've learned about making dysfunctional restaurants work from the series is that contempt and cussing out the owners and the help is all that helps them straighten up."
Well, I and mine have backgrounds in restaurants and other types of food service. Perhaps that's why we get a lot out of the Ramsey programs, such as:
Keep the menu simple and authentic
Get the kitchen to work together as a team
Get the "front of the house" and the kitchen to work together
Cleanliness is the first rule of a kitchen
Recalcitrant or incapable employees must leave
The owner/manager must be "the boss", never the buddy
I could go on, but hopefully, I've proved my point with the Ramsey shows.
I believe what's key in watching ANY show is the filter that you're seeing the show through - one's own mindset will guide reactions. The same holds true for reading articles.
tomreedtoon writes:
"Some people wonder why I keep ragging on Havrilesky..."
I don't wonder, and I don't think anyone else does, either. You are jealous, you want her job, you think you could do it better than she does. We get it. What do I wonder? I wonder why you don't write some columns and find a publication that agrees with you. Unless, of course, that would break the tenuous grasp of your fantasy that you are the greatest undiscovered TV critic of all time? If you have so much talent, isn't it kind of beneath you to squander it crafting response after response to peices that are written by someone whose articles you claim you wouldn't deign to wrap fish with? Seems like it might be more worth your while to channel your inner pundit into something more productive than Salon's comments section.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
