2009 Is Going to Be a Great Year (Part Three)

Thomas Pynchon and Bob Dylan seem to be working in concert lately, and picking up speed, as they continue their creative careers. I couldn't help thinking that it seems like just yesterday that Pynchon's Against the Day and Dylan's "Modern Times" were released, and now here we are (or at least here I am) anxiously awaiting their new creations.

But their parallel paths go back much further than 2006, or even 1997. In every year that Thomas Pynchon published a novel, Bob Dylan has given us a new studio album!

2009 -- TP's Inherent Vice // BD's "Together Through Life"
2006 -- TP's Against the Day // BD's "Modern Times"
1997 -- TP's Mason & Dixon // BD's "Time Out of Mind"
1990 -- TP's Vineland // BD's "Under the Red Sky"
1973 -- TP's Gravity's Rainbow // BD's "Dylan" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid"
1966 -- TP's The Crying of Lot 49 // BD's "Blonde on Blonde"
1963 -- TP's V. // BD's "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"

The only year that seems a little off is 1973, where even two Dylan albums weren't enough to balance the scales. The cover versions on "Dylan" and the extended single of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" that is "P.G. & B.t.K." are no match for the weight of Gravity's Rainbow (GR would have been balanced by "Blood on the Tracks" in a more perfect world), but all the other years seem to reach a sort of equilibrium. I'm surprised that I never noticed this coincidence between two of my favorite artists before, but I'm sure that someone else has.

(I had hoped that these magical creative years might give us some financial guidance as well in these turbulent economic times, but there's no such luck: 1963, 1997, and 2006 were up years for the Dow, but 1966, 1973, and 1990 saw declines.)

2009 Is Going to Be a Great Year (Part 2)

I'll be doing my bit for the economy in 2009, giving money to Penguin for a new book in August and to Columbia for a new record on April 28th. You can check BobDylan.com for details, read about it on RollingStone.com here, and read an interview by Bill Flanagan with Bob Dylan talking about "Together Through Life" by clicking here.

Here's a sample:

[...]Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up.

And if that's not clear, Bob explains his imagism better with the follow-up question:

In what way?
Well for instance, if there are shadows and flowers and swampy ledges in a composition, that’s what they are in their essence. There’s no mystification. That’s one way I can explain it.
Like a locomotive, a pair of boots, a kiss or the rain?
Right. All those things are what they are. Or pieces of what they are. It’s the way you move them around that makes it work.

Keep those images moving Bob!

2009 has already given us President Obama, and promises to give us a new studio album from Bob Dylan and a new novel from Thomas Pynchon. Quit your fucking whining America! These are the best years of our lives!

2009 is Going to Be a Great Year

So, by this August your 13-inch rabbit-eared television will be dead, your total 401K retirement account balance will be less than your average monthly grocery bill, your house will be worth less than your 15-year-old Jetta, and the Chinese will have bought the brand names "Chevrolet" and "Cadillac" for 200 euros each, but on August 4, 2009 we will also be given the opportunity to shell out a mere $27.95 for a relatively short (416-page) new novel by Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice.
Here's the tag line from the Penguin catalog:

" Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon—private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog "

The first descriptions and excerpts in the catalog sound like a cross between Vineland and The Crying of Lot 49 with a dash of Raymond Chandler's style, but I'm sure that Tom will have some surprises in store for us that are brand new.

What Sort of American Car Should One Buy?

I have an eight-year-old Volkswagen now that still feels brand new. My last VW GTI (a 1985)was still running well at fifteen when I traded it in at the turn of the century.

But if I want to help Obama and the economy (and I can't readily think of another reason to buy an American car), what sort of American cars should I be considering when I consider buying another new car in another few years?

Just Asking.

"Oh the Humanity!"

While not quite on the scale of the Nazi passenger aircraft that exploded in New Jersey and triggered the famous three words of our title, a quiet slow-motion financial catastrophe is beginning to affect the scum that floats at the top of New York's social pond. Anecdotal evidence about the current trials and tribulations of those with net worths from the mid-seven to low-ten figures is recounted in Christine Haughney's Fashion & Style article in The New York Times, "It's Not Easy Being Less Rich", where we find our quote of the day:

“A year ago, he would have only flown Gulfstreams. [...] Now it’s moving to the point where he’s flying Beech jets and Learjets.”

Give the poor guy another Republican tax cut! Stat!

True Blue Liberal celebrates high gas prices: “The era of the truck-based large S.U.V.’s is over”!!

The New York Times today had a great article celebrating the fact that gas prices are finally having some effect on the mix of new cars leaving America's showroom floors. For the first time in my life I spent over $40 to fill the empty tank of my Volkswagen Golf last week, but the negative shock to my wallet was overcome by the positive Schadenfreude when I thought of the effect on those driving Hummers and Escalades!

... with oil prices expected to remain high for years, auto industry executives are seeing a turning point.
“The era of the truck-based large S.U.V.’s is over,” said [not the] Michael Jackson, chief executive of AutoNation, the nation’s largest auto retailer.
Sales of traditional S.U.V.’s are down more than 25 percent this year. In April, for example, sales of G.M.’s Chevrolet Tahoe fell 35 percent.

More Evidence that America's Useless-Crap Bubble is Bursting

"Sixty-four percent of people intend to cut indulgent spending this year according to a new survey by HSBC Bank USA. Another survey by Discover Financial Services confirms that sentiment. This month, half of consumers plan to cut down on non-essential spending like eating out, going to the movies and remodeling, according to the report."

-- from "Consumers Pinching Their Pennies" on CNN.com today

It's an understandable error Tom. It's just too many zeroes.

We can understand why Tom Tomorrow left three of them off of his most recent cartoon.
For those of us for whom wealth will always be defined by a "six-figure income", the eight figures of Barack Obama's 55,000,000 monthly haul in February is already in the fantasy realm. The ten-figure net worths (1,000,000,000+) of the world's billionaires already require us to stop and count zeroes. Why would any of us even entertain the possibility of a 13-figure bill (3,000,000,000,000+) for the Iraq War?
The cartoon isn't out yet; maybe today's Tom Tomorrow blog entry is apologizing for something else that was missing three zeroes in the first draft of next week's cartoon - - the national debt since Bush II's inauguration maybe - - but our guess is that he's writing about our money (and the money of our children and grandchildren) that was thrown into the bottomless pit that is Operation Iraqi Liberation.
On Monday, you can check for the March 10th cartoon (with all its zeroes?) here.

Will the War Counter Hit $500 Billion Today?

Here's a screen capture of "The War in Iraq Costs" at National Priorities Project frozen at 7:45am on March 4, 2008. Less than five years after the invasion of Iraq, the cost of the war (not including, of course, the immeasurable human cost) will hit half-a-trillion dollars:
You can check the current cost by looking at the sidebar to your right, where I've been running this counter since this blog's birth in 2004, or by going to nationalpriorities.org, where you will find depressing comparisons of what could have been provided to the American people with those discarded dollars (like health care for 135 million people, scholarships for 70 million college students, or almost 10 million public safety officers).
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As soon as I posted this, I drifted over to the Times, where I see that Bob Herbert published a piece this morning called the "The $2 Trillion Nightmare" about how the national debt will increase by that amount just because of George Bush's war of choice, and that the overall costs will be more like $3 trillion, or six times the milestone (or is that millstone?) being achieved today.
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UPDATE 10:55am: The Huffington Post email I received this morning was headlined with Arianna Huffington's piece, "The $3,000,000,000,000 War is a Domestic Issue". This is obviously the issue of the day (but I hope not just an issue for today):

So will John McCain be called to account for the surge, and the rising costs of the continuing occupation the surge has enabled? Not likely. Getting the media to avoid a full accounting of the costs of the war -- both in terms of dollars spent and lives lost or ruined -- was one of the primary goals of the surge. And, in that respect, it has been sadly successful.

The thing about $3,000,000,000,000 is that, at a certain point, it becomes hard to ignore. As the red ink from the approaching recession continues to spill, you can bet the media will be all over the story -- the economy headlined as America's top domestic worry. The question is, will the media connect the dots between the war John McCain loves so much and the economic devastation it's helped cause? The answer could determine who is the next president of the United States.

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UPDATE 4:33pm: Or maybe $3,000,000,000,000 is a conservative estimate. Here's an Aida Edemariam article, "The True Cost of War," and a relevant Steve Bell cartoon, "The Six Trillion Dollar Chimp," from The Guardian.

Average Fictional Americans Chime in on the Bursting of America's Useless-Crap Bubble

The usual men-and-women-on-the-street over at The Onion* have spoken today about the Sharper Image bankruptcy as an early warning sign of the impending messy bursting of the useless-crap bubble upon which our entire economy floats.

"Never in a million years did I think the American consumer would lose its hunger for expensive, useless products."

--Jack Dimsdale, Systems Analyst

We may have to go back to floating the entire economy on expensive, useless weapons systems instead, though that task may be harder to accomplish if we replace a traditional fear presidency with a hope presidency.

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*Though masquerading as mere "jokesters," please remember that everything in The Onion eventually comes to pass, as proved by this masterpiece of divination published on January 17, 2001.

Forget the Dot.Com Bubble and the Housing Bubble, this is really serious

This just in:

Two Gift Retailers File for Bankruptcy

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 20, 2008
Filed at 12:21 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- A weak holiday season and a struggling economy led retailers Sharper Image Corp. and Lillian Vernon Corp. to file for bankruptcy this week, and analysts predict others could soon follow them as consumer spending worsens. [. . .]

If the USELESS-CRAP BUBBLE ever bursts, there won't be any US (or Chinese) economy! Only you can buy an Stretching Robotic Massage Recliner or Faux Chocolate Easter Bunny to save us from financial disaster!