The Problem With Offshoring

Corporations can move capital relatively freely but the labor pool has no such luxury. Thus corporations can outsource offshore with impugnity, relocating wages, but the labor being replaced does not have the choice to freely relocate. E.g. a software developer in the US might very much like to relocate to India to retain a job, with commensurate reductions in both salary and cost of living to maintain a fairly consistent quality of life, but that's not an option. There's an imbalance of power, with the corporations having more options than the workforce.

End The Bend

More proof I'm going native: tonight's London mayoral debate featured a heated argument over bendy buses. This should be a ridiculous debate topic, and it was, but I was really into it because I have an abiding hatred of those things. Shame I can't vote.

Victoria Park

Neighborhood news:  the ginger pig has finally opened here! Better late than never. And the tapas place that used to be an organic gastropub (good pub, lousy food) has closed and the space is now reopening as a pub.  I think most tapas places are doomed to failure. It's taking something that works in kind of a pub crawl model and trying to turn it into a dinner. Tapas menus are so long that unless the place has huge daily turnover, I'm leery of anything I order being fresh enough to be good. And it's not much fun unless you're in a large group.  Although I gave it the benefit of the doubt and went a few time when it first opened (inconsistent food), I'm not sorry to see it go.  

Back In The Region

The Calumet region is the little-known northwest corner of Indiana, abutting Chicago, Lake Michigan, and a hybrid rural/suburban DMZ that gives way to the yokeldom, culturally and geographically, for which Indiana is much better known. It's tempting to call The Region disowned or disavowed, but it's mostly more benignly a simple blindspot to Chicagoans and Hoosiers alike. A land of slag and ditches, oil tanks and rail tracks, industrial candles of flame-topped stacks, it presents both great ugliness and great beauty (either in turn shocking, forlorn, melancholy, bemusing) if you care to look.

The current economic crisis in the US is accurately being described as [probably] "the worst since the Great Depression", but for the Region already had its worst.  One hundred years ago it was a pulling in boatloads of ore, coal, and industrious immigrants,  extruding steel, tidy little neighborhoods, and a burgeoning middle class. Decades ago, irreversible oxidation claimed much of the miniature metropolitan infrastructure and the middle class that had built it. True tales of Gary of old are now most likely to be dismissed as myth.

But the Region is still here, and I am back for my grandmother's funeral. Granny lived in Miller when I was born. Her obituary and funeral brought out names from the extended family and friends that would sound like home to a Region expat:  Molik, Zemelko, Krejci, Kolachovsky, Miklos, Kantowski, Lobodzinski, as would tales both mundane and mythical: near-crippling injury shrugged off as minor nuisance, cars driven with 200,000 miles but no brakes, Uncle Lud offering a standing reward of $1000 to anyone who names their baby "Ludwig".... Fortunately for my boys, Uncle Lud is long gone. But they will be passed on the history, as the Region offers lessons not only of avoidance, but also of aspiration.

Arb My Auto Rental

I booked a car at Budget for a few days, in the US. Via their US website, paying with a US credit card, I was quoted 338 USD. Seemed awfully expensive. I tried from their UK site, using a UK credit card, and for the exact same car, same times, same location, was quoted 66 GBP. I opted for the latter.

Investment Banking Explained

"It's ridiculous, totally ridiculous." [Bear Stearns executive cmte chair Alan Greenberg, commenting just a few short days ago about rumors of liquidity problems]

"I have detailed information about the situation...which completely proves that what they allege are illusions . . . They lie every day." [frmr Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf]

USD punctuation

Headline in wire release: Saudi Arabia Says Dollar Is Undervalued, a `Good Buy'. Clearly this was spoken and simply transcribed incorrectly by the press. The correct headline would be: Saudi Arabia Says Dollar Is Under, Valued a 'Goodbye'.

...except in FED speeches

during which helicopter SFX should be playing in the background

No more SFX. Seriously.

Sound effects detract from, rather than add to, scariness in movies. Just saw Diary of the Dead and, while I thought it was ok (hard not to like zombie movies), it was not immune to the Loud Startling Sound compulsion that has gripped filmmakers for quite some time. If any recent horror movie should have been entirely devoid of the sonic shock syndrome, it should have been this one.

Toyah Toyah Toyah

My new musical, banking a bit on Mamma Mia but with better music. Does it need to be set in Pearl Harbor? The 3 Toyah sisters (Claire, Kim, Deborah) are reunited to save their mother from a cult, save their love lives, and save the world (possibly from aliens, possibly from evil cyberpunk villains). Using entirely non-original music from Blondie, Altered Images, Toyah, Bow Wow Wow, Kim Wilde, Siouxsie and the Banshees, heck, even shamelessly jumping decades (pretenders, breeders, belly, catatonia, dolly parton), it will pack them in with toe-tapping sing-alongs,  futuristic dancing, and boyhood fantasy girl-on-girl musical action. Investors welcome.

John Connolly

Picked up The Unquiet by John Connolly at an airport with very low expectations but have been delighted by the quality of the writing. I've only ever read a bit of Stephen King, 20+ years ago, and thought he was really hacky. Despite the detective/thriller angle, Connolly is everything I wanted King to be. Like magic in Tolkien, there is only just enough "horror", and it is wrapped in ambiguity allowing for (and sometimes arguing for) simple madness, rather than the bug-eyed-monster-realism of King horror.

Ted Rall

Why do I keep reading? Been doing it for years but realize over and over how crap it is. Am I hoping for sudden, or even occasional, absence of sucking? I give up.