Manufactured Excess

Okay, so I was wrong, Arnie is running for governor after all. Yes, I'm probably the last to report this, so late in fact it doesn't even qualify as news. Like many people who are running for governor he's citing some laudible goals: improve education and bring back companies to California to create jobs. Who could argue with that? After all no one ever runs for election on the basis of running down schools, putting people out of work, removing services from the undocumented workers who prop up the economy, increase pollution, and incidentally take a tons of bribes for doing it all.

Unfortunately there's this little problem of our huge deficit and a requirement to get a 75% majority to do anything with the budget. Anyone who doesn't fix those will get crucified in the press. Which pretty much means anyone who comes to power will get crucified. The only thing tha would save them would be another 9/11 and a few more "military actions" to take the presses and peoples minds off complaining about how awful life is.

Arnie is also saying he can't be bought because he's too rich. Well that sounds good too, how honest of him to admit it up front. However it would be nice if he could declare he couldn't be bought because he was morally opposed to bribery and corruption, and it has no place in our government and those that try it had better make an appointment with the attorney general. Period. Because when it comes down to it special interests will find ways to break him down but without money, as they say "everyone has their price". They'll find a way to get him stuck between a rock and a hard place and get a compromise out of him without ever paying a dime. For that, no doubt, he'll eventually get crucified too.

But deep down my main objection with Arnold, given the little we know about his plans for California, and given that he's a card carrying Republican; are basically that he was the first kid on the block to rest a Humvee from the hands of the military and say "Das ist kool!", and proceed to drive one around Hollywood for fun (after they removed the .50 caliber from the roof). The rest, as they say, is history. Many years later I'm taking a walk in my neighbourhood and parked right there in front of me is a brand new Hummer H2 all decked out in... wait for it.... CHROME. Chrome for chrissakes! And get this, it has LOW PROFILE TIRES! Low profile tires?

Fortunately for them hey had thought to leave the parking break on, or it might just have rolled back onto the railroad tracks and gone for a little spin down to the dock yards as a hood ornament of a 1000 ton frieght train. Well, in my dreams. There was no way you could have budge that monster an inch without a hundred friends to help you push, and in any case the low profile tires would probably have exploded as it rolled over the curb.

In the end I know there is little to be done about the onslaught of these monster obscenities. Its not them that is the problem, its the people who have no qualms at all about driving one and think its a fine way to spend their money. As someone once told me, when you see someone driving a $150,000 car down the street, its like a big FUCK-YOU to all the people who could never afford such a thing and who's minimum wage labours at the gas station, at the toll booth, at the burger joint, at the Wal-Mart, make it all possible. It is purchased purely because it can be, and it is status value is purely because of its price tag. This is no one of a kind work of art, this is no rare treasure from the bowels of the earth, this is a manufactured excess, an excuse for the bored to squander our resources in a most obscene fashion.

I only hope I live long enough to bore my friends kids with tales of when monster trucks roamed the streets and to have to explain to them the concept of a stretch Hummer (yeah, that was parked near the chrome monster) a half a block long with only four people riding in the back. I can hear it now: "you tell it to kids these days and they wont believe yer!".