Well it’s a good thing I had very kind and courteous Larry Ullman’s book by my side, or I would have been scared off the playground by that bully Julie Meloni and her condescending tripe.  Case in point - after installing MySQL, Apache, and PHP on a machine, in order to test phpinfo() Julie omits some header stuff that would be required to see the output in a browser.   If I had picked up her book first, I would be pulling my hair out still.  Luckily, I had seen the same chapter in Larry’s book - and got the goods.  Chalk it up Larry 1, Julie zip. 

In a startling paradigm shift, the Fed on Wednesday lowered interest rate targets 4.0 percentage points to minus 1%, creating a negative short term interest rate for the first time in world financial history. 

“We were sick of paying interest while the dollar continues to drop around the globe,” commented Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake-  “It’s time they started paying us for our money.”

The implications were still unclear in overnight trading, as debt-laden homeowners scurried to ring up their mortgage brokers demanding payment on ARMs tied to Fed targets, and delinquent credit card holders jammed call center IVRs with questions about how this affects accounts tied to their “stolen” cards.  Indeed, no one is quite sure who owes what to whom, as Chinese traders rushed to cancel orders on their now-debt-laden short term t-bills, and auto manufacturers rushed to swap out interest rate tags on local television ads touting “0.0% APR”. 

Stocks actually surged ahead in early morning trading when a typographical error during CNBC’s ”Mad Money” indicated a 0.4 % decrease had been passed, which would have dropped target rates to 2.6%, in line with analyst expectations.   Despite lurid rants coming from show host Jim Cramer in response to the actual news, traders and individual investors alike seemed oblivious to the story, perhaps confirming the longheld suspicion that no one actually listens to CNBC, they just sort of stare at it.

It is now official - due to advances in medical technology, nearly all citizens of the industrialized world die young.  This unintended consequence of successfully transitioning through the great Epidemiological transition of the late 19th century caught many observers off guard. 

“If you do not reach 105, you have failed,” comments Dr. Geoffrey Steinberg of the U.S. Population Studies Institute, in Bloomington, Indiana.  “We’ve seen a remarkable extinction of all good excuses for not making it that far”, he adds, referring to contemporary understanding of healthy living and the abundance of exotic technologies used to treat everything from diabetes to a bulbous nose, as well as the eradication of most communicable diseases.  

Implicit in the findings are that depressed sentiment concerning one’s longevity are well-founded.   “We thought we had this tragedy in death thing licked..” said Dr. Morris Abernathy, acting Director of the Jonas Salk Institute, referring to the historical links between premature death and sadness.  “.. what with most folks making it into old age, they’d be happy just being there. But we were wrong.”

What the courageous doctors of past centuries did not foresee, according to Dr. Steinberg, was the navel-gazing tendency of humans to never be satisfied with what they have and succumb to obsessive self-pity. “We’ve really seen this spike with the baby boomer generation”, he notes, with expected rates of Dying Young expected to exceed 95%.   

Challenging traditional epxectations on life paths, Steinberg also points to the advent of E.D. treatment, which has effectively postponed adolescence by 50-60 years in men who are treated.   “I feel like a kid again”, comments Dan Burns of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Eastern South Dakota Chapter President of the Bob Dole Society, Mr. Burns is wont to recite that organization’s motto in public gatherings - “Just cause you’re old doesn’t mean you can’t be stupid.” 

When asked to elaborate on the target date of 105, Dr. Steinberg of the Population Studies Insitute admits a fascination for recently-deceased Lady Astor, who according to him, “was our last shot at American royalty -those damn Kennedys drink themselves to death or get shot”. 

The cocoon has been chilled, like an excised, dry-iced kidney in an ambulance stuck in crosstown traffic, dying recipient waiting sedated, lumbering SUVs ahead cautioning on yellow.

The airiness of the neocolonial cottage- such a dear friend in stuffy October afternoons- has now become our worst enemy, surrendering malignant breezes through its countless apertures. Ramshackle is no longer quaint. Hardwood floors don’t seem so sophisticated now. I can only imagine that the defiant Victorian-dwellers have it much worse. Sweaters must be flying off the shelves at Mervyns. I’m trying to figure out how to up my stake in Carpeteria.

I can hear the PG&E executives over on Market Street planning their April spot bonus getaways to Cabo now - the financial analyst secretly pleased to report the good news up the ladder: previously-forecast Expense for the February consumer incentive program, in which customers get a discount for underconsuming compared to the year previous- has been revised downward, profits revised upwards, and he can almost feel the sand between his toes already…

They actually tried to sell me on the cold in Burlington, back in October 1990, when I was considering the University of Vermont- “It’s actually more cozy. People bond more closely.” Interior windows were fogged- stale odor of wool socks and LL Bean rubber overpowering. My cheap Structure (or was it Britches?) driving coat was no match for the gales off Lake Champlain. The stealthy flask shots couldn’t abate my chattering. UVM was scratched off the list, no matter how curious I was to explore the intellectual freedom and power which birthed my favorite band at the time (Phish).

Fast forward 18 years and 20 pounds, thin the blood a little, and grow an arrogant forgetfullness concerning temperature. 55 degrees, for one whose thermal regulation was carved in Nor’easters and swampy summer humidity, is Paradise anytime. But below the indoor routine and thirtysomething insulation there lurks an insidious inflection point- when I too get Cold. And like a Linebacker whimpering with the flu, the harder they come… or in this case… the more winterized they are naturally… the louder they whine when the extremities blue.

Though abusive, the Cold is also an invitation to generate one’s own energy. It is a frantic laser focus on distributing energy and heat through the corpse, as opposed to the bloated rotten fleshy feel of swamps, or the defective scratching electric blanket of desert. I guess, I’d rather be cold than hot.

So we’re finally getting around to taking those free docent-led museum tours at the places where we’ve paid membership dues for the past several years. You know, the tours where an earnest senior citizen flexes a little coffee-table art book wisdom about brush stroke techniques, and spouts off an anecdote or two about patronage miraculously ridding the wealthy elites of their facial blemishes in portraits. Museum-goers crowding around, craning their necks to hear, squinting wildly through the display case, nose wrinkling to push spectacles back onto the nose bridge, almost seeing it…

As much as Rick Steves would have us shun organized travel in any form, I must say that in fact I quite enjoy these tours. It’s pleasant to be able to actually look at the paintings and stare, instead of eyes darting back and forth between guidebook, wall-mounted caption, and painting. Sans docent, a manic appetite for facts has me dwelling far too long at each painting such that those nearest the entrance enjoy undeserved attention, while the gems beyond are lost into a demi-haze of boredom and anxiety which creeps in after a few minutes. Boredom at lack of context and relative importance, anxiety that I’m not getting the message - understanding the value or meaning of the collection. Audio tours are a step above caption hunting, but the tours lack enthusiasm and the experience becomes more isolated. In fact a good docent is a masterful keeper of the “velvet rope”, to borrow a marketing term (the idea is that a beefy bouncer, a guest list, and a velvet rope can make any nightclub or community gathering place feel exclusive, and thus desirable, regardless of how dreary the ghetto back alley you happen to be strolling). The docents have us hanging on to their every word- we are sure that their favorites are the most important, the most emblematic. We trust that their narrative is a compelling and accurate interpretation of the stories being told on canvas. Their love is infectious- we get goosebumps when their verbal stanzas come to their natural climactic moments…

“Does anyone know why this girl’s little red shoes were called ’straights’?” the master teases.

“Because they make her stand up straight?” bravely ventures a guest.

“No, but that’s not a bad guess” the master lets her down gracefully.

“They are called straights because…” hearing aids craning… breath stopping, hearts pounding…

“…because they can be worn on either foot…”

“AHHHHH,” the collective sigh is deafening.

High drama and intrigue on the Docent tour. Who knew?

Put those shoes on yourself, Letitia…

[Letitia Grace McCurdy, circa 1800 - 1802, by Joshua Johnson, generally regarded as first famous African American painter]

The neighbors comment: “you’ve gone to the dark side”. They clearly don’t realize that the Grand Marquis was a thirsty beast (so we were already there), and that their own globetrotting via airplane in the name of saving the environment jams the carbon footprint way more than 4-wheelin it down to the mall. Just like Al Gore and his Escalade, Carl Rowan’s .22, Rush’s oxycontin, or Larry Craig and the MSP washroom, the hypocrisy drips.

Picking the 3-row 4wd was a tough call - I liked the Honda Pilot, and even wanted to buy American (Saturn Outlook) - but the missus was sold on Toyota. When the Saturn guy told me “we have to pass on Union contract adjustments to the customer”, raising the delta to 10k between the Outlook and what we ended up with, I realized that no matter what Mitt or Barack say, Detroit needs more than a paradigm shift, it needs an attitude adjustment.

.. is an elitist quote actually mis-attributed to Marie Antoinette, as we learned on a recent visit to the Petit Trianon exhibition at the Legion of Honor. The textbooks scapegoat France’s last true queen- blaming the guillotined victim for material excess, moral degradation, and cruel disdain for the huddling proles. Even Thomas Jefferson famously uttered that had Marie Antoinette not been the queen, the Bastille would not have been stormed, and “fraternite, egalite, &tc” nought but a pipe dream.

In reality she eschewed the tapestries depicting Classical themes (rife with nudity) in favor of Chinoiserie and statues of her husband (the meek Louis XVI) and brother (Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II- the guy who yawned at Mozart and asked him to remove a few notes from his opera in “Amadeus”). She liked wearing dungarees and hanging out in the Hameau (fake village) outside the Petit Trianon, itself a getaway cottage on the grounds of Versailles. She hardly drank, and was considered a dedicated mother. Her relationship with Madame duBarry, her father in law’s mistress, for whom the Petit Trianon was intended - was very cold. Romantically we interpret this as a protest against the moral degradation lived out by Louis XV- the very degradation projected onto her 20 years later.

It will come as no surprise to contemporary feminists that she, a powerful woman, was popularly demonized as morally loose and corrupt by a male press projecting its own desires and fears of political instability- largely the result of Louis XVI’s incompetence- onto this foreign-born meretrix.

But for a woman who buried two of her four children, was shipped away at 18 to marry the dunderheaded heir to Europe’s largest yet fragile kingdom, vehemently targeted by starving serfs and jingoistic “natural philosophers” alike, she didn’t do such a bad job keeping it together, and by all means, would never had suggested that the peasants eat cake!

For a couple of months now, Miley Cyrus has held her Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus Concert Tour all around the country. Now, she’s making it into a movie!!

Ken Lewis is one of those power execs who proves the inverse speaking ability rule- you’re a either brilliant orator, or strong 1-on-1, but never both. Listening to him speak to a group of soon-t0-be-demoted Bank of America middle managers at the AMC Van Ness Theater in San Francisco back in 1999, I understood that Ken didn’t think much of Toastmasters, Intl. Or public speaking in general. His style, which I dubbed “stuttering Elvis”, had his uppity PR handlers atwitter, faces darting across the audience’s eyes. Their discomfort was matched by the audience’s discomfort at having to pay attention to the meaningless awkward pabulum emanating from the then-President of the Consumer Bank’s lips. A veritable blush-fest ensued. Ken’s earnestness was like Steve Martin’s Elvis epiphany at the end of “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” (5 minutes into the video below), except it was neither funny nor eloquent, nor for that matter, uplifting.

So fast-forward 8 years and we have Angelo Mozillo laughing his way into retirement, dusting off the golf clubs, and happy to pass the mic over to Ken, who will be singing the subprime blues in 6 months. I can hear it now, to the tune of “Heartbreak Hotel”:

Well when my client defaulted…

They had to find a new place to dwell..

We kicked em out on the street, classed em a Status Z, now we’re in Neg-Am Countrywide Hell…

Well, when my client defaulted, I felt so hoodwinked,

I felt so hoodwinked,

I could cry…

Three cheers for BofA (which we of the old school still pronouce “Bow-Fah”, much to the deep chagrin of Hugh McColl).

I’ll start with the premise that we pay too much for gas on a macro-economic level in order to get it cheap at the point of purchase. But it is cheap! Cheaper than bottled water.

I’ll add another premise that “environmentally aware paradigm shifting consciousness” (we’ll call it GREEN) requires a longer view on investment and a more holistic market-making strategy than has ever before been seen in human history. GREEN is the “tragedy of the commons” on prednisone. Agonizing over who will pay for the lighthouse (answer- insurance companies), is childs’ play compared to this.

Since governments are so slow, let’s take a Libertarian litmus test and see what corporations can do for us in this struggle. How about Toyota, the #1 automobile manufacturer in the world. They get mad props for GREEN (even sold the technology to Honda and GM, according to the unkempt, expectorating, off-the-rack-suit-wearing salesman I encountered today). I hear there are more Pri-i than tax attorneys inside the D.C. beltway, and I have to confess a certain awed inspiration from the modest yet sleek “Synergy” decal on their GREEN sleds.

Let’s just mosey on over to the sticker and salivate over that City MPG for a moment…

… whoa there- hang on a sec– did I read that right?

$41,450 ??

Let’s not be cynical, for a second, and suggest that Toyota isn’t actually profiteering from GREEN and taking advantage of black turtleneck-wearing, retro-horn-rimmed bespectacled, proto-Betty-Boop coiffed hipster industrial designers working South of market. Let’s assume they had a deal with the U.S. government which guaranteed passage of the National Health Care Plan largely funded by a $2/gallon tax on gas at the pump- let’s assume that Toyota’s taking the long view and selling these vehicles below cost to really push GREEN into the mainstream and get to “GAME OVER” on the 90 year battle of automotive brand loyalty.

Alas, my naivete gets the better of me. Anyway, here are some numbers to prove it– Hybrid is pretty weak