That Raunchy Male Lit

Reading Chad Kultgen's The Average American Marriage. And it is pretty raunchy in a guy way. Not saying it' s not true but male lit has fallen to it's natural low point. Lets face it men have pretty much abandoned the field to women in the area of fiction. Sixty percent of all fiction is bought by women. So you had better have some cross gender appeal or go whole hog for the American males who really want the down and dirty and who will read anything with gratuitous sex. Bring on Chad.

Men generally don't write these type of protagonists. Hollywood messed around with it in the opposite with the Mel Gibson vehicle of what women really think about. How about Erica Jongs Fear of Flying. Women really do want to have sex. Well of course men want to have sex all the time anywhere anyplace. Ho Hum. No mileage there. What is left is the inside of the male mind. The down and dirty and I mean dirty of men.

And a lot of it is pretty over the top. I mean I had to stop eating my salad twice in several of Chads scenes. I mean I am very much a guy and they grossed me out. Even men want some pink glasses when it comes to sex. But Hultgens guy is all about sex all the time and that is pretty dead on for ninety nine percent of men. Having written a male based character in Rocket Man I have read my share of male lit. David Liss calls a lot of this fiction white mans angst fiction. And he is probably right.

Even Chads guy for all his balls out I want it all the time and will do anything any position with anyone devolves into white man angst's. This is the purview of college educated white males who found out Roxy Music and The Cure were subcultures not a way of life. And they are pissed all the good times ended and their wives became fat after having children. The problem with this basic approach is it doesn't really answer anything.

If you give us the down and dirty all the time...then what is left? More down and more dirtier I suppose. No real answers there.

Rocket Man...the novel of suburban hell

Why People Are So Mad

I was listening to a man talking about how the middle class has no one to blame but themselves. He pointed out that people should have saved and foregone luxuries and reaped the benefits of their frugality in retirement. It is a common charge. That the people who bought too much house and too much car and too much of everything have no one to blame but themselves for losing their homes, their jobs, their savings, and having no retirement. Basically they screwed themselves out of the American Dream.

But the reality is different. Marginalized by globalization, tech, downsizing, outsourcing, a devastating recession, a derivatives crash and a bank bailout...the people who did everything right also got screwed and this is the source of anger that manifests itself in anti government rants and basic disenchantment with anything smacking of the American Dream. The meritocracy we like to paint is in fact an oligarchy where the pie was stolen and not even a slice left behind. And so we have a huge segment of the population left at the alter.

And yet we persist in finger pointing as if we could have avoided all of this. I know lots of people who have  lost their homes. I know people who have moved back with their families. I know twenty somethings who cannot get going. And I know people literally teetering on their feet because they are exhausted after twenty years of unrelenting hard work. They did nothing wrong except belive in the precept that hard work will produce a benefit. But they are not reaping the benefits. A lot of them will die before they retire.

And people know it. They know that they have used up the best years of their lives and now have little to show. The I did everything right crowd is especially pumped with righteous anger. They feel like the bargain was violated and in a sense they are right. The rich has taken too large a bite and they were played by derivative traders that left them with devalued homes. And there is little anyone could do. The fact of the matter is the rich will get richer.

And the middle class will be played right up to the day they die.

www.billhazelgrove.com



http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Man-William-Elliott-Hazelgrove/dp/1938467582/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358702258&sr=1-2&keywords=william+hazelgrove+rocket+man

 

Unemployed in Summer or the Pro Leisure Tour

There is being unemployed and being unemployed in summer. I have been unemployed in winter, fall, spring, summer. But there is nothing as sweet as hearing those words in June, your fired, terminated, letgo, we are going to have to make a change, we have decided your services are no longer required, we making a reduction in staff, you have been  laid, off, canned, shitcanned, made redundant, parked, YOU ARE FIRED! I remember when I was writing my first novel I wanted to be fired and in June my boss called and said, well, you may or may not like to hear this, but...YOU"RE FIRED!

Alright! Pro Leisure Tour Baby! That's what we called it. A badge of honor to go sailing, drinking, hang out all summer long and take in the sunshine and the festivals and go swimming, sleep in, go to Wisconsin, pretend like college never ended. Here was the test. You are in your backyard in your recliner with shades on and suddenly it hits you: what is everyone else doing? They are WORKING! You are pulling unemployment and skating along while the rest of the world is stuck indoors. You are unemployed in summer and September is a long long way away.

I had just come back from biking the other day when my neighbor walked up. I usually didn't see Frank around too much, because he was always working. But I noticed he was around a lot more lately and so he walked up and we made neighbor talk and then he dropped the bomb. I got laid off. I nodded. Congratulations. Frank looked at me. I mean now you have the whole summer to yourself. Frank kind of smiled and said all the things men say when they get canned. Well enjoy your tour I said as he walked back to cut his lawn. Frank was bummed, but he had been canned at the perfect time.

So being unemployed in summer is a great thing. You can almost imagine it's like school and you are on summer break. That's the way we all grew up. I remember once when I had a corporate job I came out of an office and stared at the high summer heat in the trees and realized it was summer. What the hell was I doing in a suit in a dark office? They fired me the next month.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in summer

Amnesty for the Middle Class--Whats Good for the Goose...

We need amnesty for the middle class. We are going through the closest thing we have to the Great Depression and it has torched middle class credit. Forget the millions who have lost their homes or the people who have declared bankruptcy. They will be effectively shut out of the credit market for years. But you now have millions of people whose FICO scores have fallen below the magic number of 620 which is the minimum for a government loan--or FHA. These people have now been shut of the credit market as well.

What does this mean? It means that the recovery will not come. People have to be able to secure credit to buy homes again and if they can't then supply will outstrip demand and the values will continue to fall. Credit is the lifeblood of the economy. Because someone is late on a credit card payment or cannot pay a medical bill does not mean they should be denied credit for buying a home. If we go with the assumption that these are extraordinary times then there must be an extraordinary remedy--middle class amnesty.

We did it for the banks and the car companies and the insurance companies. The rational there was yes they made bonehead decisions but these are extraordinary times and for the common good they must be bailed out. So we did. We basically forgave their very bad creditworthy decisions and gave them billions to get their house in order. Isn't that what we should do now for the middle class? Forgive their bad decisions under the umbrella of extraordinary times?

Look at in a selfish way. We must have amnesty for the common good. We need to get the economic engine going again and you cannot have that if you are locking people out because they got behind. If people have to make a decision between paying a medical bill or their mortgage then they will pay their mortgage. Of course incomes are down. Of course people have been laid off. We are in a near Depression and there has been carnage across the board.

So we must have an amnesty for the middle class. This will get people back in the credit market. We cannot give the banks and corporations a bye and then stick it to the middle class. They have been victims too. What is good for the goose...is good for the gander as well.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Anytown USA--God and Realtors

A soggy Midwestern town among the cornfields. Heartland USA. The realtor's meet in the old Victorian home from a couple of centuries before. They eye the man who has no business being there. He is writing a book or something but I'm allowed to sit in their meeting. We are a cross section of old and new America born before and after the last big recession in 74. Just had a bypass the owner tells me and asks that I not where jeans at the meetings. No problem. Rain outside the windows and in the old furniture now musty.

"My husband and I promised God that we would go to church every Sunday if the recession would end."

I look at the woman who gives me a fist full of cards.

"Just in case you know anyone."

I ask that she not miss any Sundays and she laughs. The meeting centers around a man who gives PMA speeches at churches. Three basic tenants. Help someone else. Don't hang around people who are complainers. Change. The meeting is not unlike a sermon. A lot of Christian themes swirl around but then again we are in the heart of Illinois. Cows and cornfields just outside the window. Everyone agrees that times will get better.

The owner tells about his parents. They bought some land during the Great Depression but couldn't afford to build on it. So they built a one room shack and lived in it until after the War.

"My father dug the whole basement by hand...can you imagine that?"

No. But maybe I will one day. They were pay as you go people.

"No one here is starving and we should thank God for that."

The meeting then breaks up and I get back in my car and head for Chicago. It's raining hard and I drive past old farms now empty. Glad the banks are doing better.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Wolves will come--our invisible unemployed

We will forget them. How long were you there? Twenty five years. Just like that. You? Fifteen years. Just like that. Did you notice how fast the day goes when you are unemployed? I'm not good at this. I just want a job. They are here again. The coffee house lost days of the unemployed. Me and them. We are all invisible now. Writers are always invisible, but now all these men are invisible too. Many will never return. The recession will end and they will not find purchase in this new economy.

The dirty secret. In this culture if you become old then you are done. Passed over for the younger employee. They are wandering around in my domain now. I have always been the inverse of the working man, haunting the coffee houses of midday with a laptop and a book. But now they are here. I can hear them now. How long have you been off. A year. A year and a half. Who is your headhunter? Can you get a job anywhere now? For a lot of people this is a new sensation. For the first time highly educated people have been made redundant. The best and the brightest of other generations are pounding the pavement. Could it be there are just too many people now?

Like the housing market we are awash in too much inventory. There are too many people looking for work. Who will employ these millions. College students join the ranks every day and they are young. They can give sweat and effort. What can the older experienced worker give in the new economy? We don't' really know. All we know is that there are so many people looking for positions that have dried up or have been eliminated. We have seen this before in the blue collar industries. People replaced by robots or factories closed and jobs shipped overseas. But now the people who always assumed they would have a job have been put out to pasture years ahead of retirement. The old economy died under them and they have no place to go.

Will our new cyber based green economy snatch up these people. Will our new energy efficient Juggernaut need all this old economy talent. Or have we created a cyber world where people are pushed aside with the click of a mouse. Can we have an economy that needs all those people skills or does that belong to a brick and mortar world gone by?

I don't have an answer and neither does anyone else right now. But they are here. And we will ignore them when it all starts up again. They will become invisible, members of the permanent unemployed. The Indians used to leave their older members behind on the prairie with wood for a fire and a blanket. When the wood burned out they would freeze to death. Then the wolves would come.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Pragmatist

So he fired the CEO of GM. Don't look for him to cry over that one. Obama grew up the same time I did--in the heat of the sixties. We grade schoolers had only one question--what was everyone so upset about? We thought all that demonstrating and carrying on was ridiculous. For my part I wore a Nixon T shirt. You couldn't get more practical than that and I came from a family of privilege in Virginia. Imagine the pragmatist in a black man who bulls his way into Harvard then to the top of the law review.

Smart. You bet. You got to be smart to overcome those odds. You can't look to the main for anything. So don't look for him to cry over the Unions when he busts them in bankruptcy because GM is going bankrupt. Shareholders and workers be dammed there is a new sheriff in town and he will bring the new economy with him. What do you want him to do? Give the fat white guys another chance? They had many and blew it and one thing a pragmatist knows is no one really changes and no one gives up power. You really think GM is going to come up with great fuel efficient cars on their own? I don't think so. Why pay for the milk when you can get it for free? And they have been getting the milk for free for so long we are talking generations who were on the tit.

Political Pundits call it suicide. Hang the unions around the Democrats neck. The party that busted up GM. So what. Somebody has to do it. GM couldn't make the changes without concessions and the pragmatist knows nobody gives up power and money unless they have to. And the Unions will have to in a bankruptcy. So its bye bye Obama according to the talking heads. Maybe so. But if you are a black man running the free world you can't bet on the status quo. The only chance you have is to actually do the right thing. You have to bring in the new economy because it is the only chance you really have. In case you haven't heard, the old economy is DOA. Aint no one buying overpriced cars that eat gas anymore. So really, what's a smart man to do?

You get rid of the old wood. Start with the car companies and work your way down. Auto workers will be upset. Welcome to the displacement party. We have all been displaced. Publishing, real estate, brokering, banking...we are just warming up. If you think you are slipping through this transition doing business as usual then guess again. That would presuppose there is still some gas in the old economy tank and there really isn't. Even the quick fill ups by the government don't last because that world is gone. There are no buyers. So even if Obama was a different man and went along with all the goofy old white guys and gave GM ten more restructuring band aid the result would be the same. A desert of economic demand. There is none. Not for the old models anyway.

So here we are. Canned the CEO of GM and he is just warming up. Listen up bankers. You are next. Welcome to the new economy. Dreamers need not apply.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

They Were Expendable

As a stockholder of AIG I demand the money back from the twenty five people who threw AIG under the bus and then the company. CEO Liddy says these people were so important they gave them millions of dollars in retention bonuses after they left. THEY JUST DON'T GET IT. There are millions of people unemployed. As a stockholder I demand they go out and find people to replace the bozos who lost a billion dollars. Oh, they already left. Oh, they already got their money. As a stockholder I demand to know the names of the twenty five people who trashed the company and the economy. CEO Liddy says he cannot give those names for the harm that might befall them. You know what.. HES RIGHT. Simple solution. Give us back our money and no harm will come to these people. As a stockholder I demand an immediate cessation of all bonuses. Oh, well, we cant do that because there are millions more already promised in the insurance side of the business in RETENTION BONUS. So the irreplaceable insurance adjuster stands to get a million bucks just to stay in his job. Again, as a stockholder I demand management go out to the MILLIONS of people looking for work and find replacements for these people too. CEO Liddy says these people are the best and the brightest. Then lets go find the Worst and the Dumbest. In fact, as a stockholder, I demand we find the biggest morons to work at AIG and pay them no retention bonus. I'm sure they will be fine with that.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Domino Theory

When we were in Vietnam they said that if Vietnam fell then the rest of Indochina would go Communist. They invoked the Domino theory to say one thing will cause another. Ten years later we left and Vietnam became a Communist country and nothing else happened. Then they said that if we didn't go in and take over Iraq they would have a weapon of mass destruction and throw it our way. The domino theory again. If we don't act then certain doom. We went in and could not find a weapon of mass destruction. We are still there. Then they said that if we didn't reelect the President the evil doers would come over and attack us and by the way we are on high alert for another attack. The other candidate looked very wimpy after some well placed swiftboating and we added torture and wiretapping the entire population to our Bill of Rights. Then they said that if we did not immediately give seven hundred billion dollars to the banks all hell would break loose. We gave seven hundred billion and all hell broke loose anyway. Then they said that if we did not bail out AIG to the tune of one hundred and seventy billion then the entire financial system would disintegrate. We gave AIG the money and they gave it to foreign banks and brokers and other people who they won't even name. The financial system might fall apart anyway and AIG is probably going away. The domino theory only works on fear and it has worked well for forty years. When I was a kid I used to line up dominoes on the floor and push one down and watch them fall. It was pretty cool. But sometimes, for no reason at all, the dominoes just stopped on their own. Go figure.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

The Three Percent

What is really behind the AIG bonus rage is the suspicion that there is a group of people in this country who are laughing their way to the bank. It is that old idiom that ninety seven percent of the money is given to three percent of the people and the remaining ninety seven percent must split the remaining three percent. AIG bears this out. But what is really behind our collective outrage is that this group of people who seem to have it all don't work for their money. They don't. Ivy League schools dump out business graduates and they are snapped up by companies like AIG who put them in positions that require six figure retention bonuses. Normal people do not get hundreds of thousands of dollars for staying on the job. But once you are the three percent then the Christmas baubles rein down. You not only get the bonuses but outrageous salaries and stock options that set up people for life. For Life. The deck is surely stacked. Imagine what has gone on under the wire. We are getting a fraction of what really goes on in the land of three percent. Millions of dollars are paid out that we will never know about. And these people are not putting in brutal hours, making life and death decisions. These are derivative traders, glorified mortgage brokers who just have a much much more lucrative yield spread. Instead of making a few thousand on a loan they make a few million. America was founded on the precept that yes anyone can become anything but we also demand a level playing field. That was what the Revolution was all about. We should not be put in a position where others can take advantage of of us. So we have a representative form of government that says we all have the same rights under the law and the same opportunities. But it would seem that the three percent have an unfair advantage over the rest of us. The three percent get their money regardless. Why? Because they are entitled and entitlement goes beyond a bankrupt company or an economy teetering on a depression. Americans hate the thought that one group of people are somehow more deserving because of the accident of birth or an Ivy league school. Sure, give them their money, but lets see them earn it. That's what the rest of us have to do. We have to work and earn our money. Maybe the three percent should earn theirs now, because I don't think America can afford to have a slacker class anymore.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com

All The Sad Lonely Men of Starbucks

Market is up. Recession over. So who are all these men in Starbucks? I have been coming to coffee houses for many years to get a little release from writing. I usually shuffle in the afternoon to a Starbucks and flop down in an old wing chair and get lost in some Fitzgerald, Yates, Whitman...just anything to cool the brain cells. But lately, all the chairs are taken. And they aren't taking by women, they are taken by older men. Middle age dudes of the forty something fifty something variety. They sit in their comfort jeans trying to look inconspicuous. These men do not read fiction. They stare at newspapers or some jabber away at a laptop and some have the thirty yard death stare. They all have a deep look of shock and disbelief. When I first saw these men I thought maybe it was a fluke, but everyday they increased until yesterday the place was overrun. We might as well be sitting in a union hall. They look like they should all be in offices. You see the hands reaching for something to do, expressions trying to navigate the strange duplicity of sitting in a Starbucks in the middle of the afternoon when the rest of the world is working. They go to the bathrooms, order more coffee, sit with legs crossed staring intently at nothing. They just don't know what to do. In Britain they call them being made redundant. And there is that feeling that for a lot of these guys they are now redundant. They are of the middle management variety and that is something the new economy will not carry. The day passes and one by one they look at their watches and finally rise to put on their coats. The fact they have nowhere to go yells at you. I have lived a life of uncertainty as a writer, but you can tell these guys did not bargain for this. They are now redundant men, put out to pasture too early in a Starbucks in a small town: the sad lonely men of our time.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

A GD Insurance Salesman

The sky is falling. AIG COULD TANK! The government is tossing in another thirty billion but the chairman says that is a pittance. He reckons (folksy) that it would probably take about 300 billion to keep them afloat. Just a mere three hundred billion and even then he doesn't know if that is enough. So right now every man woman and child is on the hook for fourteen hundred bucks on the AIG Bailout. In other words we own AIG. My mother in law reeled in horror when I said I was going to earn some extra money by selling insurance: "A Goddamn insurance salesman," she fumed. Well that says it all doesn't it. You know those guys who bet against you. When you die they might pay off. When you get sick they don't pay off. When you get a ticket your rates go up. When you go to the doctor your rates go up or if something is wrong or they drop you. Or your kid goes to the doctor and they claim a preexisting condition from five years before and so we aren't going to pay for the treatment thank you very much. They are the same guys that debit your account every month for insurance that does NOTHING. If your house burns down, if your car crashes, if you get sick, if you die, if someone sues you, if lightning strikes...if, if, if, if, if...then they may or may not payoff. And if there is a loophole they will find it. I'm sorry that insurance only covered you if you the car hit you but you caused the accident. SORRY. Oh and by the way, we dropped you. Oh, you didn't go to traffic school and now you have a ticket. SORRY. We just doubled your rates and it doesn't matter that you had a perfect driving record--We need more money to insure your sorry ass OR ELSE! Else? That's right pal, you will be UNINSURED. Oh, you mean like the millions of people who can't get health insurance. Oh right. THOSE PEOPLE. By all means insure me, let's see, I'll take an umbrella policy, a life insurance policy, a health policy, a homeowners policy, a car insurance policy, and throw in a renter policy just to be on the safe side. THANK GOD I AM INSURED! Oh, by the way, you know all that money you have been giving us for twenty years--WE LOST IT! Whoops. Threw it away on derivatives. And here's the kicker. The CEO of forty years is now suing us! The nerve of this guy. He says we didn't tell him we were broke when he cashed out and became our biggest shareholder. Hey, you FD up pal...you TRUSTED US. Sucker. They say one is born every minute. But ..listen....ha ha...we need three hundred billion just to stay afloat because if you let us go baby then we all go! KABOOM. Game over! So don't even think about the way we have ripped you off for years because if we go then the economy is TOAST. So...now you are all stockholders. That's right. We are all in this boat together and we sink or swim. So there you have it, now whose the Goddamn insurance salesman? Huh?

Earth Wind and Fire

I dig Earth Wind and Fire. I dig disco. I discoed. Good times. Party on dude. Cheryl Crow not so much. Something about that California singing about the mellow party times...been there done that. I am not a golfer. Nope. Chasing the white ball with little carts forget about it. Besides a woman who used to live across the street from me died when her cart veered into a retention pond and she drowned. Ignominious. So I steer clear. It seems so...I don't know so mainstream. Golf, Sheryl Crow, Earth Wind and Fire, Pinacolodas, the nice Pacific breeze blowing in from the ocean. Shrimp anyone? I'll take two please and another drink for my friend there and how about a bottle of champagne? I wonder what all the poor people are doing? What is all the rancor about anyway? We are doing just fine thank you. We made money last year and then the government just kicked us a cool billion. A round for the house! Hey, you know what, screw it, have Earth Wind and Fire play all night, and Wan...money is no object. Oh, and if you have one of those fine Cuban cigars. So where was I...right...all this talk of nationalization. Rubbish. Look around you. What do you see? Prosperous people. People with tans and margarita smiles. C'mon, the losers are broke now...the suckers George. Take you and me. We saw the train coming and played it cool. Now we are a billion to the good and we are sitting our ass down here by seashore. Right...oh sure, lobster? Fine, bring us four. So...you know it's survival of the fittest baby. Darwinism. Let the bad banks go man. Let the auto companies go. It's the way capitalism works. All that stuff about goverment for the people and by the people...please. There will always be poor people and there will always be the middle class who will never get a clue. Ha! That's a drink. What did F. Scott Fitzgerald say? The rich are very different from you and me...you bet your ass we are! Oh...Hemingway said that...well, someone said it and it doesn't' really matter because you are either in or you are out and you know who you are. Ah yes...life doesn't' get much better than this...really it doesn't. What did you say your name was...George...you know you look familiar...were you ever in government?

The Pickel Barrel

When I was growing up my family was always in debt. We were like the United States is today, always running behind, one step ahead of the rent, the utilities, the milk bill. My dad did the best he could, but he was a traveling salesman and so we were subject to commission checks and the vagaries of an impersonal economy. Some times, when things were really bad and Christmas gifts were being shorted and hot dogs were served again or a vacation was cut then my dad would say to me in the car, "it's only money." He followed this one up with: you are not the sum of your liabilities and assets. We were Southerners with a healthy disregard for capitalism and so I didn't think too much of these epigrams. But now one can glean from those statements all sorts of things. We were all still healthy. No one had died. Somehow we would muddle through to the next check. We always did somehow muddle through and all my brothers and sisters went to college. We never did catch up and to this day my father pays a high price for living in debt. But I can't say I didn't have a happy childhood. Now we are in financial straits that are about as perilous as they can be. OK. So maybe we are in a depression. Maybe the auto companies will fail and the banks will be nationalized. Maybe we will all be eating Mac and Cheese and drinking canned beer again. I don't think there will be rioting in the streets. The government will keep the social programs going and the lights on and the water running. No one will invade us because our 401K's tanked. The military will still have enough missiles and guns and tanks and weapons of mass destruction to keep hostiles away. So what are we afraid of really? Losing our homes, our jobs, our position? Homes and jobs can all be replaced. If you have your health and your family is doing all right then you're Ok. What we really have to deal with is our relation to a currency that for two hundred years has given us our sense of self worth. The Puritans set the bar, if I am rich I am good and if I am poor I am bad. My dad had another phrase: everybody has their day in the pickle barrel. He pulled this one out when I lost a girl, didn't make the team, didn't get a job. The implication was that yes times are bad today, but they will get better. Everybody takes their turn. The pickle barrel is pretty crowded about now, but we'll get out. As my dad said many years ago...it's only money.

Carpe Diem Baby.

Seize the day. You bet. I am the lone shopper now in a thousand stores. I walk the aisles as a man from the old economy, holder of a house no one wants, a car that sucks gas, carrier of no spendable credit. The last hurrah of a party that ended but no one told us. I cruise the lanes of Home Depot and Target and Menards besieged by a thousand people with red vests and radios and badges. Do you want this? Can I get you that? No, I'm just looking. I am the lone shopper among the tons and tons of goods from a twenty year binge that ended overnight. Middle class families run by while daddy looks over his shoulder for the job he lost. They aren't buying. Hell, I'm not even buying. A man with Carpe Diem on his shoulder, making his way through the detritus of greed and billions of dollars in bonuses given to the few. One percent makes ninety nine percent of the money while the rest split the one percent. Something like that. Pillage and burn. Move on. No buyers here in the stores. What to do with all these malls and houses and cars and things we no longer need? What did the Russians feel like when it all fell apart? Hope the man in the White House is at the top of his form because we need it. Still, I need to buy something, do my part for our moribund economy. If only everyone would quit looting. Where did that first three hundred and fifty billion go? Search me? Somebody got it. Junkets and Las Vegas and Jets. Right on baby. Carpe Diem. Seize the Day. They seized the day and everything else. Brother can you spare a dime? No! I'm with you there. How about a little credit? Lost your mind. Move on no buyers here. Here they are...May I help you sir. Nope, I found it. Got my plunger, head for the register and head for the car and drive home with no gas in the tank. Carpe Diem Baby.

Our Herbert Hoover

In the waning days of his administration, it is said that Herbert Hoover sat in the White House and literally didn't know what to do. The nation had slipped into a depression and the best he could say was that the economy would have to take it's course. This was after the famous, Prosperity is right around the corner speech. Hoover was a rich man who didn't understand struggle and the nations woes just seemed like a distasteful mess that was beyond repair. He did not like Roosevelt. He did not understand a man who had become a cripple and seemed to exude a confidence and enthusiasm that should have been his. Riding to the inauguration, neither man looked at each other.
Now we have our Hoover. The automakers are closing. Interest rates are at zero. Credit is frozen, people are losing their jobs in a tidal wave of corporate panic. Yet our Hoover sits in the White House and does nothing. After the firecracker of the Great Bailout, we are left with a man who just wants to go back to his ranch. You can see it in his face. I didn't make this mess fairly screams out at you. He is busy giving oil companies their last shots at Federal Land out west and pardoning cronies and putting his boots by the door. Time to go back to Texas and live like a rich oil baron again. Maybe it is his due. But the truth is he doesn't know what to do. Like Hoover, Bush is a duck hit on the head with the concussive effects of nuclear force bad news. The waves just keep coming and he is not a man for this type of crisis. Like Hoover, Bush has always been a rich man comfortable with steering the ship, not charting new courses. Like Hoover, his best effort was to reassure the American public the economy was fundamentally strong before handing over the keys to the bankers to keep their own respective ships afloat.
Now the car manufacturers are dying. They are looking to Washington for help, but Hoover is not thinking about that anymore. He is thinking about that final ride into the sunset where the world is right and let's leave it to that new guy. While not a cripple, Obama climbed out of obscurity and he knows how to fight. The ride to the inauguration will be a repeat of two fundamentally different men sharing a common space. Then they will both be on their own.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Japanese Woman

"Oh you bought few items and still cost eighty dollars."

"That's Target," I murmured, watching her scan my few items.

"Very cold outside tonight...hope your car start."

I smiled. "I do too."

"American cars no good."

"Well they aren't worth much now."

The Japanese woman squinted.

"Japanese make cars differently."

"You mean better?'

"No...no...something else different...American car companies have something different."

"Lack of Research and Development?"

"No...no....something else...I can't think of word."

"Greed."

"No..."

"Myopic."

She stopped scanning my items.

"No...Japanese car companies no have this...this makes American car companies broke."

"Gas guzzlers?"

"No."

"They no fly jet when asking for money."

"Stupidity."

"No...I cant' think of the word.

She frowned at the computer and handed me my receipt.

"Something else...make all American car companies broke."

"Lack of foresight."

I shrugged. "I don't know..." I said, picking up my groceries.

"Oh...I know...I know.."

I turned around and stared at her. She smiled, stabbing the air with her fingers.

"Union....Japanese no have, union!"
I nodded slowly.

"So they don't."

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

CAR SALESMAN

It is a derogatory term. CAR SALESMAN. If you really wanted to sum up someone who was a conman or flimflam artist then you called him a car salesman. You remember those guys, they would promise you one thing and then suddenly you were in the struggle of your life not to get ripped off. These same guys are now in Washington--they drove--how middle class--and they are asking for billions to save their hides. Now where were they when those big cars of ours dropped by twenty five percent the moment we drove them off the lot? Or how about the second our warranty expired and the transmission went out? Or that strange noise our new car made and you brought it back to the dealer to find out it was kanooten valve or the brakes or the axle...oh and by the way, you know that bumper to bumper warranty you are paying fifteen hundred bucks for--ITS NOT COVERED UNDER THAT. Then we walk out a cool thousand bucks poorer, going to some garage guy to fix our problem because we can't afford to go back to the dealer. NOW WHY IS THAT? Or how come those foreign cars seem to be so much tighter in the steering and not break down and even cost less? Now why is that? Or the way we would watch our gas tanks get sucked dry by engines that are about as efficient as a steam locomotive while the rest of the world is working on hybrids and fuel efficient engines. Now our cars are worthless. If you own anything over a mid size car then good luck. Your blue book tells it all. And these same guys who gave us forty five thousand dollar price tags...who made so much money on the SUV's they made them like hotcakes--these same guys--these car salesman--now want to get billions of dollars because they priced themselves out the market and didn't bother to give America a decent car? You know what, let them walk back to Detroit. They probably wouldn't make it in their cars anyway.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/