Irony

Two dominant news stories:

1) Barack Obama is drawing heavy criticism for suggesting that during difficult times, some Americans may become frightened, disillusioned or even "bitter"and that they may "cling to religion" as a way of coping with these feelings.

2) The Pope is here! The Pope is here!

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Why I Hate The United Arab Emirates, #29,648




What is that building, above? It's Ski Dubai, an enormous indoor winter recreational park containing five ski slopes, a tobaggon course, a snowboard trail and a cross-country trail simulator.
It, of course, is located in Dubai, one of the seven theocorporate CityStates that comprise the United Arab Emirates.

The interior ( below) is kept at a constant 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Dubai is a desert nation and it's outdoor temperatures reach as high as 135 degrees F, so I don't think it's a real stretch to say that it takes an enormous amount of energy to operate this facility.


This winter playground opened in 2005. Something important happened in 2004 that made it much easier to build this enormous, frigid abomination.
From the CIA World Factbook:

In April 2004, the UAE signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement with Washington and in November 2004 agreed to undertake negotiations toward a Free Trade Agreement with the US. The country's Free Trade Zones - offering 100% foreign ownership and zero taxes - are helping to attract foreign investors.

Foreign investors such as Dick Cheney's good friends at Halliburton. Halliburton execs vehemently deny that they opened a new corporate HQ in Dubai in order to avoid U.S. sanctions that prevent U.S. companies from trading with Iran.

The Dubai move sparked controversy among US politicians last March. Senator Frank Lautenberg at the time accused Halliburton of going "to extraordinary lengths in the past to do business with the terrorist government in Iran".

Not only does Halliburton get to use Dubai as a middleman to establish and maintain a profitable trade relationship with our alleged enemies in Iran, they get to do so without paying any taxes!
With this in mind, it's very easy to see why the Neo-Cons and other BushCo thralls are so dead-set against opening any sort of diplomatic dialogue with Iran- an end to or modification of the current US sanctions against Iran could make the carefully constructed and hugely profitable loophole in the 2004 TIFA irrelevant.

Mind you, I'm not getting this information from a left-wing conspiracy site...I'm simply connecting information provided by our own Central Intelligence Agency.

Interesting facts from the CIA:

-The per capita GDP, U.A.E. : $55,200 (2007)

-The per capita GDP in the U.S.A. : $46,000. (2007)

- 81% of the the U.A.E. population is comprised of foreign workers

-78% of jobs in the UAE are in the service sector...this, presumably, includes the Pakistanis who operate the lifts at Ski Dubai.

What does the average UAE national do for a living?
Nothing.
They don't need jobs. The UAE 'government' gives the native-born citizens welfare checks drawn from the national oil revenue and the citizens, in turn, use the money to employ foreign-born dishwashers, valets, busboys, prostitutes and lift-operators.

An unemployed native of the UAE can afford to go skiing.
Indoors.
Downtown.

This is what an unemployed native of the USA can afford:


Did I mention prostitutes when I listed the job opportunities open to foreign labor in the UAE? I'm sorry.

I meant to say sex slaves.

From the CIA World Factbook:

current situation: the United Arab Emirates is a destination country for men, women, and children trafficked from South and East Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East for involuntary servitude and for sexual exploitation; an estimated 10,000 women from sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, South and East Asia, Iraq, Iran, and Morocco may be victims of sex trafficking in the UAE; women also migrate from Africa, and South and Southeast Asia to work as domestic servants, but may have their passports confiscated, be denied permission to leave the place of employment in the home, or face sexual or physical abuse by their employers...victims of child camel jockey trafficking may still remain in the UAE, despite a July 2005 law banning the practice...

That's just a snippet of the egregious human rights violations committed in the UAE ...certainly there must be some repercussions to such flagrant abuse.

The total number of trade sanctions imposed on the UAE by the USA?

None.

Instead of sanctions, Dubai was rewarded with the 2004 TIFA and now they have ski resorts in the middle of the desert... during the hotter portions of the coming summer there is a good chance that you will be forced with a tough decision- can you afford to turn on the air-conditioning?

While you sweat, think of our good friends in the UAE and the gigantic indoor freezers that we bought for them. Think about how the money to pay for these indoor snowparks got from here to there. It drove.


Hot enough for you?

Can't See the Forest

Cool. A NYT travelogue of Flannery O'Connor landmarks. I love her stories but I don't think I've read her correspondence - for instance , I didn't know she was nearly incapacitated with illness, or that she wrote for three hours each day...interesting stuff.

This is a good description of notable O'Connor characters ( I have helpfully added the story titles w/ links) :

O’Connor’s characters shimmer between heaven and hell, acting out allegorical dramas of sin and redemption. There’s Hazel Motes('Wiseblood'), the sunken-eyed Army veteran who tries to reject God by preaching “the Church of Christ Without Christ, where the blind don’t see, the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way.” Hulga Hopewell ('Good Country People'), the deluded intellectual who loses her wooden leg to a thieving Bible salesman she had assumed was as dumb as a stump. The pious Mrs. Turpin('Revelation'), whose heart pours out thank-yous to Jesus for not having made her black or white trash or ugly. Mrs. Freeman, the universal busybody: “Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings.”
( Also GCP, here's the entire short story-ed.)

The writer of the article lacks O'Connor's eye. The next paragraph continues with this:

People like these can’t be real, and yet they breathe on the page.

Later, the writer is describing his own travels through the 'modern' American South-(emphasis mine):

Strip malls have long since filled the gap between town and farm, and you now find Andalusia by driving past a Wal-Mart, a Chik-fil-A and a Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, where a man shot his wife and killed himself a few days before I arrived. You pass a billboard for Sister Nina, a fortune teller who reads palms in a home office cluttered with votive candles and pictures of Catholic saints. (To judge from one consultation, she is capable of divining that a visitor is a bearer of dark sorrows, but not exactly skilled at pinpointing what those sorrows might be.)

These are the kind of characters and stories that O'Connor wrote about- the author of the travelogue denies their existence in one paragraph and describes them in the next.
He's surrounded by the modern version of O'Connor's world and he doesn't recognize it.

People like that can be real- they are real- and they are all around you: at work; in stores; at school; in mirrors- they are everywhere- if you know how to look.

Get Paid To Blog - Updated

My newer blogpals probably do not realize that I spent a lot of time (but no money) during 2005-2006 exploring various internet scams I investigated everything from Google Ads to Porno Sites and nothing really panned out- I once got paid twelve bucks by this outfit for a story about Whalanol...that article has since been used (as actual news) without attribution, permission or basic fact-checking.

I did figure out how to get as much Free Web Porn (any kind) as I wanted, but it turned out I didn't really want as much Free Porn as I thought- it was a Pyhrric victory at best.
Email me and I'll tell you how I did it-for free.
Trust me, you'll be dissappointed that you did.

Anyway, the only reliable source of blogger income I've ever found is to land a slack job where you can get away with blogging on the clock. Not hard, in my experience. In fact, I started this very blog from a boring temp job nearly three years ago.

This was a fairly typical exchange at my last job:

Boss: " What are you doing?"

Me: "Blogging."

"About what?"

"How much I hate my job."

Now, one might think that such behavior and remarks would be cause for dismissal, but in my case I quit first. I thought I had a better job, but it didn't work out and after a couple of fruitless months of job searching I wound up going back to the old Law Firm where I made those snippy comments.
Same job.
Same desk.
Same table.
Slight raise.

It took me a couple hours to catch up on the work from the last two months, and guess what I found when I finally cleared the new mess-yep- underneath the piles were my unfinished projects from November!- it was literally like I never left.

I was wrong about the other job and it cost me a lot of money but I feel a lot better about life after having a couple months off to sort some personal things out; I've also taken on a lot of new responsibilities at the radio station- which is not a complaint.

I love the station- it's really nice to be an integral part of something that is good.

When the drudgery of my day job becomes too much, I can always remind myself that the weekend brings radio- I get plenty of personal gratification and happiness from my volunteer work, so I should be able to get through my nine-to-five without needing any validation other than a paycheck and insurance.

At least that is my goal, to maintain the attitude of "I don't need happiness from work", just cash.
The pay isn't great but it's OK for a bachelor, got bennies, in a 40 hour week I probably only do real "work" 20 or less hours...it's not demanding , the boss is funny and well-read, free coffee and nice bathrooms, it's not so bad.

Did I just say my job was not so bad?

Stay tuned.

Filler

Child safety seats sure have come a long way since 1967...not that it really mattered when you were in the back of a VW Bug - the 1960's was an era of Big American Cars and a VW was unlikely to survive even a minor collision with one of the popular behemoths of the period...

I am not sure which Volkswagen this is- I remember one that had a large hole completely rusted through the rear floor and every once in a while we would lose a favorite toy on the highway.
Don't get attached to material goods was the lesson...

The space in the back of the car is where the beer cooler was kept. By the time I was six I could use a can opener ( you needed one back then) to punch two holes in a Schlitz can and hand it forward to the adult at the wheel.

After the adult had a few Schlitzes and the VW began weaving between lanes, my brother and I would watch the painted highway stripes appear and disappear through the gap in the car's floor. It was less frightening than looking out of the windows.

If we saw gravel or grass through the floor it was time to brace for impact.

In hindsight , it wasn't the safest childhood but at least we could go to school without getting shot (unless you went to Kent State) and almost nobody had to worry about getting gunned down in a shopping mall, as there were almost no shopping malls to be gunned down at.

Of course, if you were a young adult male , you stood the risk of being conscripted by the military and sent to Southeast Asia to stop the Communists from playing theoretical dominoes...eventually the Communists won- Communist Vietnam now makes cheap consumer goods that are exported to stores in American malls- malls which were just coming into fashion towards the end of the 'Nam war.

Ironic, isn't it?