You mean you haven't seen this movie either? What kind of Xer are you?? Man, I think I gotta get you a NetFlix subscription...Originally Posted by mgibbons19 (71)
"Now this is the most important, Rat. When it comes down to making out, whenever possible, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV."
I'm a mid-wave Xer too, and I never got around to seeing it. There are plenty of movies from that era that I wish I hadn't seen . . .You mean you haven't seen this movie either? What kind of Xer are you??
"My generation, we were the generation that was going to change the world: somehow we were going to make it a little less lonely, a little less hungry, a little more just place. But it seems that when that promise slipped through our hands we didn´t replace it with nothing but lost faith."
Bruce Springsteen, 1987
http://brucebase.wikispaces.com/1987...+YORK+CITY,+NY
To be honest, I didn't see Fast Times when it first came out. I was only 15 at the time; they were much more restrictive about letting kids into R-rated movies those days, and my parents weren't about to take me. I finally saw it around '93, long after the characters depicted were relevant to my life. Anyway, for me it's gotta be Drew:I'm a mid-wave Xer too, and I never got around to seeing it. There are plenty of movies from that era that I wish I hadn't seen . . .You mean you haven't seen this movie either? What kind of Xer are you??
Mmm. Uh, what was the topic of the thread again...? Oh, right, avatars. Well, the fellow on the left is the movie icon I would least mind being confused with. However, in real life I probably more closely resemble one of the other characters from Office Space, like this guy, this guy or even this guy. Or probably more like Tom Green, who I can't stand (not the least because he had Drew, if only for a little while...)
Hey, Hurst, uh, I mean Hirst :wink: , did you notice that those Office Space guys are all in some 2005 "unnamed" Mike Judge flick currently in "post-production". Oh God, I hope it's Office Space II. That would be so frickin' cool.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Sorry to disappoint, but here's the blurb from IMDB:
So it's another take on that hoary chestnut, H.G. Wells' time machine. At least it's a comedy, unlike that dreary Guy Pearce vehicle. So I guess it's Sleeper II.
Lamely attempting to tie this back to the topic of this thread, I sometimes have this weird vision of the future where the cities have fallen into utter disrepair and decay, as in 1984 or D.A.D.E.S., and the countryside has reverted to bucolic squalor, as in Deliverance or Salem's Lot; the point sort of being that the Red Zone and the Blue Zone both need each other now more than ever.
When the Crisis begins to work its way through all our institutions, "It's not my fault" will be cold comfort.
Excerpt from the Daily Reckoning:
There are some pleasures best enjoyed by abstinence, we
keep saying; some fights aren't even worth getting into,
let alone winning.
People have made a lot of money in stocks and houses. In
the former, gains have been modest. In the latter, they
have been extravagant. But at this point, both represent
the kind of pleasures a wise man might want to resist.
Neither stocks nor houses pay much in the way of dividends.
In both cases, owners are merely betting that another owner
will come along with even more money in his pocket to pay
for them. There's the fatal flaw, we think, because real
hourly earnings in America are not going up; they're going
down! Which means that all the fulsome money we see
sloshing through Americans' hands comes not from the sweat
of their brows, but from the beads of liquidity that drip
from every pore of every financial transaction in the
country. The Fed turned on the fire-hoses three years ago.
The economy has been saturated with cash and credit. The
big question we all ask is: How long before it dries up?
As long as the bar's open, a man might as well enjoy it,
say the TV pundits. But it is a party that continues on
borrowed money and borrowed time. That is not to say you
might not enjoy it, for a while. Still, the few moments of
enjoyment are likely to be more than offset by a long
period of regret.
We are indebted to our president for a marvelous turn of
phrase that tells us why. George W. Bush is rarely
described as having a "silver tongue." Nor is it often that
people quote the president's aphorisms or his perceptive
insights. Instead, entire books have been written,
preserving forever the language of a man who can barely
pronounce a compound sentence without getting tangled up in
a dependent clause. But here, at least this once, America's
commander in chief has found the 'mot juste' - an
expression so precisely correct, so poetically
economical... and so cleverly ironic, it must have been
accidental. Poetry can be achieved by even randomly
stringing together words. All of a sudden, in the
juxtaposition of one against another, we see something new
and unexpected. Poetry can have a kind of serendipitous
logic... and unintended intelligence. Prose, on the other
hand, takes organized thought. The president, it turns out,
is a poet.
It was a "catastrophic success" said George W. Bush of what
he hath wrought in Iraq. He might have said the same of
Greenspan's massive dose of cash and credit; it
successfully held off a serious correction, but only by
luring consumers even further into debt and setting up a
catastrophic correction in the future. The expression might
come in handy in the courts too. In divorce court, a woman
might use it to describe an affair with the local butcher.
Or, in the bankruptcy courts... as speculators describe
their 2004 stock and real estate investments to the
receivers.
You might want to check this guy out:
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/
"Bringing about catastrophic success is hard, hard work . . ."
OMG, I am SO curious to see what the history books later in the century are going to say about the Dubya Years.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Re: Come November 3rd
A post from last September:
Yes, Bush is either the godfather of the grandest conspiracy known to mankind or he is a dumb-ass who utters stuff like "catastrophic success". But today we hear this:Funny, I hadn't realized how huge this Bush conspiracy was until today...Come November 3rd... *Figures such as 144,000 may be seasonally (political season) adjusted after sixty plus days. Not that the numbers would be as the WMDs in Iraq, non-existent--just "massaged". In the coming Ownership Society the State will own the Statistics still.Well, that takes care of the conspiracy issue: Bush is no conniving genius lording over the Commerce Dept.
- Economy Grows Faster Than Thought in 3Q
Dec 22, 11:05 AM (ET)
By JEANNINE AVERSA
WASHINGTON (AP) - The economy revved up its engine in the third quarter and advanced at an annual rate of 4 percent- even faster than previously thought.
The new reading on gross domestic product, released Wednesday by the Commerce Department, exceeded the previous estimate of a 3.9 percent growth rate for the July-to-September quarter. It marked the best showing since the opening quarter of this year and was up from a 3.3 percent pace in the second quarter.
He's just a dumb-ass, you see. :wink:
p.s. I'll take the catastrophic successfull dumb-ass anyday of the week, thank you very much!
Re: Come November 3rd
[quote="Devil's Advocate"]WASHINGTON (AP) - The economy revved up its engine in the third quarter and advanced at an annual rate of 4 percent- even faster than previously thought.
The new reading on gross domestic product, released Wednesday .../quote]
Yes, but the GDP is denominated in dollars (and the dollar has been fairly widely acknowledeged as dropping in value over that period). Let's check out what that 'whopping' 4% (annual) gain means from a bit wider perspective.
First, the actual growth rate for the quarter itself (de-annualized) ends up as 1.3% (assuming they used the annualization method which will provide the smallest possible rate -- it could actually have been only 1%). So the GDP went from it's initial state of 100 (index number) to 101.3, as denominated in dollars.
Next, we see that the dollar went from 0.82 Euro at the beginning of July to just a hair over 0.78 Euro at the end of September. Applying this to the economy's 'gain' over 3Q04, the US GDP went from 82 to 79.1 -- a drop of 3.6% over the quarter -- annualizing (using that same method as above) to an 11.2% annualized decrease.
Picking another relatively hard currency, the Yen, (109 @6/1/04 - 106 @9/30/04) gives us an indexed drop from 109 to 107.4, or minus 1.5% for the quarter, or minus 4.5% annualized.
And one more, just for the hell of it. The Aussie dollar (1.43 @6/1/04 - 1.33 @9/30/04) gives indexed 143 drop to 134.7, minus 5.8% for the quarter, minus 18.4% annualized.
Good news?
Re: Come November 3rd
You're right, the current business climate can't hold a candle to great times we were having during the Clinton nineties:Yes, the present business climate does indeed look pretty bad (or not nearly as good as we "Bush-lickers" would like to paint it).
Sorry, my bad. :oops:
Re: Come November 3rd
Umm. Is the 'leading economic indicator' index based on USD-denominated metrics? Probably not entirely, but then again, I notice that for 3Q04 (the interval of your initial posting) the LEI index declined by (eyeball-estimate) 0.5%. Not really the point you were aiming to make, I assume...
NTTIAWWT
:arrow: :arrow: :arrow:
Re: Come November 3rd
Good news is always bad news for somebody out there. That's human nature. The New Dealer's song was Happy Days are here again! But wasn't Hoover's "A chicken in every pot" slogan of 1928 ultimately fulfilled forty years later?Umm. Is the 'leading economic indicator' index based on USD-denominated metrics? Probably not entirely, but then again, I notice that for 3Q04 (the interval of your initial posting) the LEI index declined by (eyeball-estimate) 0.5%. Not really the point you were aiming to make, I assume...
My point was, our individual and collective mind-set, in the USA, is always centered on the positive, not the negative doom and gloom that pervades this website. The Saaris, Seadogs, Kifflies and Rushes have got it all wrong, no matter what side of the political fence they're on. They are simply the black-holers in a world full of teaming stars. :wink:
Re: Come November 3rd
I see your line of thinking and agree with it, Libertarian Boy. I guess one problem Americans are having realizing all of this is that the drop in the dollar's value hasn't really affected us all that much yet, except for some discomfort in fuel prices. But the fact remains, as you've pointed out, that the "growth" we've been experiencing is illusory.
It's like a family living beyond it's means by racking up huge credit card bills (a very direct analogy, I might add, in more ways than one). They can seem like they make 100K/year when they really bring in only 70K. After a few years of that the interest payments start becoming troublesome and the creditors tend to stop raising credit limits or issuing new cards. And an end game results from this "prosperity".
If I may apologize to Mr. Saari for bringing some semblance of Georgical flavor into the discussion :wink: , it could also be likened to a farming family binging on it's "seed corn" in winter. They may be livin' it up and looking better than the Joneses in January, but come Spring they're screwed.
There are apparently those among us who occasionally suspend their onanistic activities and creep out of their cave to display the obtenebrated nature of their minds who cannot understand something as simple as "seed corn". Ah, what Kool Aid can do for you.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Re: Come November 3rd
Hmm.. gives the whole "Oooh YEAH!" a new twist, now doesn't it?...
Re: Come November 3rd
Hmm.. gives the whole "Oooh YEAH!" a new twist, now doesn't it?...
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Here's an interesting viewpoint:
http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary12.html
A probably accurate, if cranky, analysis.
Personally I hate Las Vegas.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Since some of us here are discussing the relative strength of the euro vs. the dollar, we might be interested in the article available at the link.
Euro Trash
Even drug dealers are giving up on the dollar.
http://slate.com/id/2111504/
"Dans cette epoque cybernetique
Pleine de gents informatique."
Whoa. That says a lot, doesn't it?
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
My mother lent my older sister, who lives in Sweden, some money some time ago (I don't know the exact amount, but it was several thousand dollars). Of course, my sister had to change the dollars into Swedish Krona.
My sister decided now was the perfect time to repay her. And she did. With the money she made off the weak dollar, she bought airplane tickets to the US for herself and her youngest child, the only one that isn't yet grown and living on his/her own.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
Socialist Thought & the Roe Effect Threat to Economy?
Socialism kills economic incentives:
Will We Be Richer Than Our Kids?
By James K. Glassman Published 12/27/2004
Lurking in the background of President Bush's economic conference last week was the most profound question America faces: Will the future be like the past?
Throughout our history, children have lived better than their parents, usually by a wide margin. The math is simple. The U.S. economy, despite occasional dips, has grown consistently at 3 percent a year or more. So, at age 48, you will be four times richer than the average American when you were born.
That means a house four times as large, a bank account four times as big (in real dollars, not eroded by inflation), and clothes, food, cars and vacations four times as lush.
There's reason to worry that the glorious period of Wealth Americana could be coming to an end. "We may be at a point," writes a perceptive and unbiased analyst I admire, Byron Wein of Morgan Stanley, "where the children born in the 21st century will be the first generation of Americans since the Pilgrims landed to live less well than their parents."
The real danger is not what you read about in today's newspapers. Yes, the dollar is weak against the euro and our trade deficit high. But those problems are cyclical and transitory. The budget deficit exceeded $400 billion last year, but our government's debt is still far from excessive.
The U.S. economy today is far and away the strongest in the world. Our Gross Domestic Product, the output of all goods and services, is greater than that of the five runners-up countries combined. GDP in the United States has grown 4 percent in the past 12 months -- the best performance of all 15 developed economies.
There are three developments, however, that threaten the standard of living of our children in the longer term. All three require far-sighted public-policy solutions of the sort that our political system doesn't readily devise:
We're developing a science gap....We're discouraging what economist John Maynard Keynes called "animal spirits" -- the drive to take business and investing risks that ultimately benefit others as well as ourselves. Proximate cause of the new risk aversion is runaway lawsuits and stultifying regulations like those in the Sarbanes-Oxley law that followed the Enron scandal. But at root is a general attitude of entitlement and irresponsibility spread by politicians who promise constituents wealth without risk or pain.
We won't have enough workers to provide the Social Security and Medicare benefits for retired Americans. Today, there are 3.3 workers per retiree; by 2030, the figure will be just 2.2. If benefits are cut and taxes are raised, then the standard of living of groups will decline....
Productive immigrants hold the key to solving all three problems, and at least one threat is being addressed with President Bush's intention to replace part of Social Security with private accounts, so that Americans own more of their own retirement assets, rather than counting on younger workers who may never show up.
The other two dangers, however, are mainly cultural and social -- the result of a decline in striving, a lack of striving, a softness that has afflicted every other great nation in history. Call it American decadence -- our own version of what happened to the Roman Empire.
Re: Socialist Thought & the Roe Effect Threat to Economy
To my mind, this article only got the science gap right. And Dubya is taking a structural problem and making it worse by cutting money to Pell grants and other necessary programs and also by discouraging smart foreigners from locating here with his policies.
The rest of what the article identifies as problems is full of baloney.
Starting toward the end, the American people are not "soft". What idiot thinks that?!? We are, if anything, hard-working, monomaniacal, workaholic nutjobs. The entepreneuerial spirit is very, very strong here, and there is an almost Nietzschean desire to overcome one's own limitations, the likes of which foreigners are often astounded by!
Consistently high immigration in low skill labor is one of our greatest weaknessess right now, not strengths. It is not only undermining wages for the poor and thereby, along with more regressive taxation policy, radically raising our national GINI ratio, but also inhibiting progress in automation and robotization. Indeed, both low skill immigration and rampant off-shoring are impeding this. This leads to our de-industrialization rather than our post-industrialization.
And most amazingly, Mr. Glassman too easily dismisses what is really going to kill us as "problems [that] are cyclical and transitory". Hello! Mr. Glassman, we are on a credit and overconsumption binge the likes of which the world has never seen. Of course our GDP is going to be high and growing!!! If a family with a net income of $75K was spending all of that income and slapping $25K on the credit cards every year as well, they'd look on the outside like they were doing pretty well too!
To tie this all together, Americans are not "soft". We are willing to work our butts off and run around like raving lunatics working, shopping, and "playing". But I think the problem comes in with what the last second turning and what the Boomers (with Silent mentoring) have done with America. As I've posted elsewhere, I think Strauss & Howe have hit on it pretty well:
People came to believe that the more they got in touch with their inner desires, the more creatively they would consume what they produced -- which would not only lend the cornucopia a higher purpose but also keep it going [p. 172, The Fourth Turning].
Now add "I'd like to teach the world to sing" and "We are the World" and you expand the horizons of what "products" we "consume" and move that cornucopia to China.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
I think that about covers it, Mr Gibbons. Well said.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
Thank you Messrs. Marx & Lennon.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
