general

i should know better than to start this…

From: Al
To: manny
Subject: I should know better than to start this
Sent: Nov 7, 2008 12:38 AM
So are you happy that Obama won but yet sad at the same time because he is going to spread your wealth around, i.e. raise your taxes?
Thanks for tuning in to our new segment, “What makes Al so fucking angry”:
Actual quote from someone who voted for Obama:
“I voted for him because what if John McCain catch a heart attack? Then we’d have to vote again”
(After I punch a few babies and get out my aggression, I laugh at that last part)
Don’t these people know that you get a heart attack shot with the flu shot now?

Well he’s not going to raise mine, we’re actually going to get a bump bc of him.
But I sure as shit am glad that some health insurance credit isn’t going to be taxed vis-a-vis the mccain health plan.
The ones that are really going to be screwed are small business owners but that has been the case for years now.
Al, I don’t mind talking about this stuff, and I am open to criticise any politician, dem or republican. I’m a registered independent: so both of these clowns were trying to appeal to me. For national and judicial candidates, I voted dem, for state and local, I went repub. Frankly, I think we need stronger 3rd parties, but that’s not going to happen bc it would disrupt the status quo and americans like keeping everything either/or, black or white: they’re too lazy to actually be involved.
Mccain made a huge mistake pandering to the religious right and putting palin on the ticket: the woman was a moron and the choice of her is indicative of a kind of brash arrogance on the part of mccain. He wanted to snub the gop’s nose in it bc he really wanted lieberman and they wouldn’t go for it. Mccain at the start of the campaign is radically and disappointedly different than the mccain that finished. That guy wouldve given me a run for my money, but not this guy who thought so little of the vp position and so overconfident in his own health, that he chose a moron, and I really think she’s a moron (have you ever even tried to work through some of her sentences? They are utter gibberish), someone he barely knew, as his running mate.
But here’s the rub, and this has always been my stance when we’ve talked about these kind of things: in the end, it doesn’t matter, there is too much money to be made abroad for large corporations to bother with americans. There are countries who lack a strong consumer class and it is in the interest of global capitalism to develop those countries so that they afford more products and services. And I say this as someone who has seen it within my own company: american profits only rose like 5%, where overseas (latin america and asia) went up 40%. Employees in these countries are being paid 40 to 60 % less than american counterparts.
It’s hard to make the argument against outsourcing with numbers like those. Clearly more employees are need ‘out there’ than here.
This is why the whole corporate tax thing, at least for large companies like citi, exxon-mobil, is meaningless. Lowering their tax burden will not give them incentive to stay: they were already planning leaving. Would you stay with your current employer for a 10% bump in salary when you could be making 8x the money you’re making now?
It’s the middle class and small business owners that’ll get fucked, regardless of who or what party is in control.

frags

city break

sometimes the pain inside her is so great and numb that it bloats her out from the insides, makes her face puffy and her skin shiny and taut. i believed in her. she looks out into the world from a window at street level and all she can see is the trash everyone above her has left behind through iron gates painted over black and brown and red and hard black enamel again. it reeks even in the winter, it just piles up until all she can see is the colony of rats weeding their way through and out. even they are desperate to move but cannot leave for fear of survival: what will they eat? where will they live? hounded. but as she draws thick red gloss across her bottom lip, she promises herself that she’ll get out of here, maybe california, maybe nevada, where it’s sunny all year round. she’s had enough of this, she’s had enough of the city. it only breaks you.

general

good obama

the first african american presidential candidate has been elected. celebrations as far as kenya, his father’s birthplace and even japan. i hold no hope, despite the historical moment: we are all entralled but miss the point. this is all show. this is all diversion. social reform will not heal the economy. a greener economy will meet great resistance. we are too entrenched, our politicians too corrupt, the system a sham. the global economy, or rather global capitalism has already found new territory to sow, reap and plunder. they have been planing to leave for decades, the impetus to stay long gone. too much potential in developing third world countries into a fresh consumer class. we’ve run out of money, it’s already gone. just speculators and strewn confetti left for us now.

frags

good hanging

she twists and turns in her sleep, sheets tie limbs down into something that passes as rest. tears for pillows, the slumber of a man beside her who breaks her constantly. children who wake in the night vomiting into his arms and the tired limbs of a mother bent over double to change the sheets. i’ve poured everything into this or i’ve poured nothing, but i am mourning for it, of it, of him and her and what they used to be. and i dream of nooses, i dream of hanging, i dream of an unmarked grave.

frags

quick, easy & disposable

death like anything, warmed over. i clasp bitten nails around shoulders torn, a lover’s misstep, a wife’s bounty, and jackals that lurk between trees. there is not one promise i will not break into and ransack as my own. eyelashes that peel off before sunrise and we mock the necks of bottles broken inside the necks of lonely men. so quick, easy and disposable: this is what we’ve come to, this is what passes.

frags

quick, easy & disposable

death like anything, warmed over. i clasp bitten nails around shoulders torn, a lover’s misstep, a wife’s bounty, and jackals that lurk between trees. there is not one promise i will not break into and ransack as my own. eyelashes that peel off before sunrise and we mock the necks of bottles broken inside the necks of lonely men. so quick, easy and disposable: this is what we’ve come to, this is what passes.

frags

here here, there there

here, here and the jeers, she fingers along the the gap where his tooth has fallen out, still bloody. do you like the taste of it and i wasn’t quite sure if i was asking the question or being asked of it. but she smiled and laughed and wept suddenly into the bowel of this atrocious feeling of being broken and slivered and sliced and somewhat happy in all of it. there there, she said and picked up what looked like a piece of a tooth and it might have been mine or her last lover’s but she fit it into my mouth all the same, we were all the same, she was all the same all over, despite the night, despite the glare of the sun, despite the entire entourage walking on thin ice.

internals

torturer, tortured, instrument and pain

He says to me, we have a lot of work here: we need to get you off this cross you’ve put and nailed yourself upon. This cross that you’ve also built.
And I laugh again inappropriately because the image fits: I’ve trapped myself, this is all my doing. But the image is wrong as well: I am no martyr, just the torturer and the tortured, the instrument and the pain.

frags

everything else just bruised

we see the color all red and something in the vein, like pouring, like a match just lit or exhausted, the ember of it. two times i’ve stumbled across feet as large as bricks and only my own, scarred and calloused palms that did nothing to stop the falling only deflect my teeth from smashing against the concrete. she says to me, that’s why your smile is so beautiful, everything else is just bruised.

frags

break everything

by the pond, he kneels, rubs his hands into the mud, it’s all mud, he says, it’s all become fucking mud. i can’t separate the dirt from the water, the pebble from the glass.
he bows his head, heaves, i can’t tell the difference, he says, between the spring and the fall, the crush of death and the passion of love, the light of the moon and the warmth of the sun.
he chokes, digs his nails into his scalp, i can’t tell the difference between the pain and the sorrow, the torturer and the torment, the prisoner and the cell.
i break everything, he whispers, i break everything.