Facebook is Lame

This article explains that the more our parents get on social networking sites, the more our generation logs off. This years has seen, for the first time, a decline in the 15-24 user age group.

money quote:

The sites, once the virtual streetcorners, pubs and clubs for millions of 15- to 24-year-olds, have now been over-run by 25- to 34-year-olds whose presence is driving their younger peers away.

You're Gonna Have to Serve Somebody

Indeed. Honestly, there is nothing terribly wrong with getting a job. Its very much not--as it were--something I would, myself, do. But hey! Serving one's *snicker* community is quite the noble endeavor. Also: a motherfucking paycheck.

A few clerical notes:

• Spoken with our "to be" authorial edition. He plans to get off his ass and contribute quite soon.
• I've made some changes to this here blog page. You can now follow us via blogger or--if you can handle technology that I cannot--via RSS feed using the link down at the bottom.
• I should think that we need some interesting banner art of some kind at the top of the page. For suggestions, post a comment or two after this post.
• I am still trying to add a stat checker and establish a proper blog e-mail address. Thank you in advance for your patience. Also, any advice is more then welcome. Send it our way, but not via e-mail because we haven't done that yet (see previous sentence).

Ok. I will try and post later today about my thoughts your fearless authors attempting a regular update schedule now that we both have rather irksome tasks and weighty responsibilities fast approaching. That is, if I get around to it. OK for now.

HBM Out

the sun will sit in his jealous sky

PS- I am playing with different templates. I like this one, for the reason's obvious to our dear authors

And So Dies Bohemia...

What a little oddity… for the past year or so, your humble author has led a most bohemian and aristocratic existence. And now, he must submit once more to the dread world of employment. If examined properly, that is to say, examined in modern contexts, it has been simply a gap year following similar sorts of drifting through embarrassments and humiliations that are inevitably associated with collegiate studies. So on to bigger, better humiliations in some narrow office or some crowded department of the civil service!
Not that employment never has been sought out or held… to the contrary, this superfluous ghost of former persons and times has been employed from the tender age of eleven, though any sort of compensation was never seen until the legally appropriate age of fourteen. And of the numerous other superfluous men in modern contexts, the author has seen much more of a variety and less so of banality in the work place.
Thus it is left to question what purpose the past few years’ existential angst and other trivialities of decadent life have served? Ultimately, very little could be established as concrete and positive, other than to live out the nonsense that I attempted to make real – and some were realised, others not. Thus I slowly begin down the long road to normalisation and begrudgingly forget what it means and meant to be a former person.
However, some things will not be undone, nor could they ever. Beatings will continue until morale (or morality) improves!

Yours jokingly,

Kitaev
Former Former Person

This is what I lack

Above you will find a picture of my recent trip to various national parks (the one concerned is, indeed, Grand Teton. There is something about being away from a place like that and it eats at me. Its nothing fierce and I can't say that I would rather be there instead of here now because that would be a lie. Rather, its a simple gnawing. Difficult to describe.

Preparations for the rather large move out east begin this weekend. I finish my work in the midwest then and I'll fly home to pack, prepare, make extended animal sacrifices, play craps (which they have just legalized in CO), drink, and so on and so forth. I need to be in Philadelphia on the 15th, so I am thinking that leaving on August 10th should give me plenty of time on the road. I have plans to stop in Lexington, KY for a spell and catch up with some good people.

Lastly, I want to make note of the possibility of a new author joining us. He has recently left his homeland to come east and should be quite a welcome addition. I' sure he will introduce himself when the time presents itself.

HBM Out

he himself has said it and its greatly to his credit

Future Considerations

A return form exile is never easy. There are many ducks, as it were, one must line up. The first of which I have gloriously fucked up by purchasing two of the same casebooks by mistake. Now I am an extra $128 in the hole and hoping against hope that Amazon.com might regularly invoke the term "mercy" from their vast and commercial vernacular.

Being in the wilderness gives you calm. I have just returned from a weeks worth of backpacking/canoeing in the GRand Teton/Yellowstone National Park sector. You forget how nice it is to be outside, away from the various distractions modernity continues to provide. Also, you forget how fucking terrible instant coffee is. I will post pictures as soon as I am able.

Some thoughts moving forward: If this is to be more than a pure masturbatory exercise, then we ought consider expanding our reader base to whomever might stomach us. It is not a matter of understanding, as we ourselves claim absolutely none, but rather an attempt to scream against something more than simply darkness. Presently, our typeset diaherria drips into the river only to be whisked away. Tell me that you'd rather not have a vial of it for your very own, perhaps to be stored on shelves along with collectable NASACR and Bald Eagle plates?

OK for now...

HBM Out

it comes down to reality and thats fine with me cus I let it slide

Familial Honour and Weighty Etc...

I have discussed previously, and at that in brief, on my opinions of the current state of a "political" family... but my confederate has brought to mind a more important aspect of it all... the personal. It is difficult for me to fathom family, though I descend from a few notable, though superfluous and over-looked house-holds. I might think to cling to family history as I was deprived of any notions of a solidly family home at a very early age, so any conceptions of blood and kin exist for me merely on a few randomly collected scraps of paper and even fewer photographs. But I maintain that how ever little or how ever much there may exist, they are still fundamentally important to and for one's existence in this miserable world.
As to the weighty responsibilities mentioned below, yes there may be some. But family is the easiest thing with which to deal, as one is automatically part of one - usually. Whilst our Order's admonition carries with it significant personal implications, it is important to bear in mind that one's perceptions of family will never be the same as an other family member's... and further, in this sham of a nation, the constitution and the laws of the various states make it nearly impossible to inherit familial honours or legacy, as in this place a man is required to be his own. What utter stupidity - a supposedly Christian nation that does not embrace the legacies and traditions of the family (unless one would pay copiously for such comforts). All at the same time, this country encourages its chattel citizens to work hard for their families so that the subsequent generation might be more comfortable! And thus we arrive at what truly are irksome tasks and weighty responsibilities... the divide between loyalty to one's blood and the loyalty to one's secular State.

Internally exiled,

Kitaev

Job Thoughts

Ultimately, the task is truly one of doing your family honor. I have been blessed with the privilege of digitizing and categorizing boxes, upon boxes and boxes, of familial photographs. While many of my present responsibility are best characterized as "irksome tasks and weighty responsibilities," this project the latter descriptor far more than the former. Nonetheless, many miles before I sleep...

One is never sure.

Having slept through another day, I log on this evening to make myself feel valuable. Or, at least, used.

A new supreme court decision handed down today reversed Sotomayor's appellate count ruling; the fact that this decision was made 5-4 (Kennedy FTW) shows how mainstream the idea of government protection and proactive role in helping the underperforming truly is. I certainly am not about to enter a policy debate about such, but I will say this: I believe the SCOTUS has, in the past, rendered opinions vital to the equal rights of minorities in this country. Today's decision seemed, in my opinion, to be a logical prevention--or curbing--of a skill based society. Do I understand that many minorities are at a disadvantage via education, wealth, etc...? Sure. But the invalidation of these firefighters promotion tests for no other reason except fear of possible perception of racism strikes me as odd. It did the Court as well.

The point of the Court is to protect your ability to compete fairly, not to rectify any and all times in which you failed to compete as well as the others.

I'll leave you with another awesome video.

HBM Out

it's the gift, uh-huh

Awesome

Inevitable Return

Upon speaking with my esteemed colleague this evening--a discussion in which I was kindly reminded that this particular site still exists--we stumbled upon a rather primary understanding one should hold while digesting our writing: while from time to time we may foolishly wander into more serious discourse, never forget that our purpose here is anything but serious.

With a flourish of trumpets, we welcome the absurd.

This particular week finds me exhausted from a whirlwind of activity. I have found what I can only hope will be a rather humble abode for the next year. My transition from the West, I pray, will be easy enough. A new culture. A new city. Apprehension? Hardly. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. My colleague was sure to impart the following wisdom, however: Having lived in the West, I now know freedom.

To be certain, this can only make my return from exile that much more insufferable. Expect updates as warranted.

HBM Out

i'm a free-born man of the USA

The Inevitable Results of Political Divorce

There is a miserable tendency, especially in this nation, if one might call it such, to float the notion that we are the embodiment - and some how a rightful successor - to what is misleadingly labeled "Western Culture." Further, we in this twenty-first century are often lulled in to a false sense of accomplishment, thinking that what we do here and now is simply the "end all/be all" of the human condition. Fine enough, but if we should possess such magnificent and tremendous achievements and patterns of living, what need is left for progression? A very fond fool of the revolutionary 19th century once ignorantly muttered, that: "a house divided can not stand." True enough, but that same reckless monster sought to reunite, by force even, an apparent and inevitable divorce of two large families. And now, some time after, we all endure an expectedly miserable family life - an inevitable result of a household that should have divorced, but never did.

In that case, this is a nation whose family has now been, at least in modern terms, legally separated for nearly 150 years; its children are wildly out of control; family re-unions are interminable when they convene every four years; there is no agreement of the proper order of familial law - still more, we take pride in our own personal rebellions against it; many of our children and cousins are little more than naïve infants, who slowly and painfully discover day by day that summer camp and school-yard recess were never actually relevant or helpful allegories for life; and what is more, the natural result of inter-breeding and miscegenation has muggled and distorted our perceptions of family stories – after all, science has proven that all men are equal, so then all men should procreate equally.
But we have protections against our selves and our fellow family of citizens. We see legislation of health, living, smoking, food, the media… and the list includes which ever small insolent aspect of life might not be clearly defined. This has now entirely saturated family life, and the average American family appears thusly:

The parents are the only members of an American family. Great-grand-parents, or their parents, are dead – even if they still should be living, they are ignored by the present generation, and the parents are either innocently or purposefully ignorant of just how it was that their fore-bearers lived. The parents are naturally still uncomfortable for breaking the rules in the middle of the previous century – though their rebellion was neither political or social, but merely a unified whining of growing pains, and their insolence now causes tremendous grief. As with the mindlessness of the so-called “enlightenment” of the mid-eighteenth century, the parents’ generation felt justified, if but for a time, at breaking down that which they did not understand, all the while supposing they did. It is typical to find divorce within our larger families, and one is hard pressed to have a friend or acquaintance who does not suffer the nearly schizophrenic results of personal divorces; divorce was the inevitable result of this generation’s moronical belief that men and women of all races and creeds are able to live equally within the confines of American life.

The long celebrated and feared big brother, now in his prime, proves an even more divisive and undesirable invasion of our lives, and he is always more than willing to call us, inform us of our mistakes, recommend corrections of our inconveniences, or at times to beat us silly as a means of judicial correction.
Then, we begrudgingly shudder as we think to our sisters as various men come along to fuck them (courtship is dead, of course) while they are dressed ridiculously and as they slut them selves out to the world; dressed either as men in slimly cut business suits or out-right butch-ly rags in order to establish that a woman might be independently successful (or at least manly), or in charming sun dresses with alcohol in hand as they sneak away from the Baptist Church’s Sunday picnic – the results are the same: a woman too proud to admit a natural need for emotional attachment, or a woman too proud to admit she never found a man as good as her self.
But of course there is the inevitable younger brother or sister. The younger brother or sister is of course possibly more reasonable, though he is often ignored and only lashes out with extreme anger only infrequently. We have laws so that our younger siblings are not left behind, and that those siblings who need “special care” are lofted up to the highest level of human dignity whilst all along too mentally retarded to comprehend it. There is a divide between the younger siblings which do as they are told, which most do, and the ones who are loyal enough though by habitation fiercely independent. The younger ones want to be heard, and often have decent enough insight to warrant it, but are inevitably muted by the insolence of their elders.

But of course one hears the dying cries of the suburban bourgeoisie, crying out that theirs is a perfect Norman Rockwell home, and every holiday and vacation is a chance to wear their more outlandish popped-collars and embroidered khakis as they sip patio wine and laugh about what ever it might be that these allegedly normal people laugh about. Yes, there are indeed remnants of that already-murdered dream of raising one’s self to the gentry, and they hold on for dear life; they attend their social clubs, notable only in their microscopic neighbourhoods; they send their brat children to only the best schools, or the best schools which they might or might not be able to afford; they yacht and golf and play tennis, then talk about doing these tedious things endlessly; and they demand that their ugly children succeed in the same sorts of masturbatory success in life which they also have achieved. Yes, perfectly happy nests, who have no idea that their social clubs are not in fact chivalrous orders, and that their over-sized houses look nothing akin to the estates and houses of our European cousins that were confiscated or lost due to American interference by militant tourism. These families are to be pitied for their ignorance, as they do not comprehend that their way of life never existed at all and never will.

Bitterly yours,
Kitaev

Lords of Karma?

I apologise for my previous discourse below... not much in the way of a polite introduction. Either way, if this is to be a nonsensical collection of various etc... fine enough. But Karma is a bitch, and is often inconvenient.

The Middling Classes

The middle classes, ultimately, must be abolished. I would venture to suggest, and beyond that, I would heartily support, an abolition of all such distinction, but I am not as naïve as to think that should be possible. Yet, do not confuse my conviction, as it were, for a fanciful Bolshevistic idea. Pray let me continue, gentle reader...

It might be suggested, by many dubious and charlatan-minded pseudo-scientists, that, all things are compelled to a middle state. And again, one might conceive such idiotic notions of centrifugal balance; as if the state of affairs are determined proper by extreme physical force, in order that none may arise above the one, and that the one may never dominate the many, so that we as a people, in general, may achieve a common and uniformly wealthy or otherwise prosperous existence.

Such existence is tantamount to banality. For inevitably it is established, by such scientific means, that there is a quantifiable and 'falsifiable' rule of order, as it were. To that effect, a certain dictatorship, or which ever sort of authoritarian principle, or any variation of such similar guiding judgments, which inevitably necessitates categorised thought and action gives way to those who champion these ridiculous and tedious notions of behaviour. And to these wretched and painful truths, we the people cry amass 'up' and 'down' accordingly - regardless of the affects our vain and contrived opinions might have in public utterance!

Do not mistake my intent, gentle reader… I have not the slightest intent to attack one’s sense of propriety and accord with the World in which we have all awkwardly and suddenly encountered it – I would do you little credit and even less of a service. But merely to consider that you and I, as it were, face this unfortunate state with such propriety as is internally deemed fit, and to that extent, are perpetually tied. You stand irrevocably tied to your relations and affairs as I am continually bound by out-dated and, as modern times have shown, unnecessary consideration of respective needs and abilities. We are all now supposedly to be held accountable, yet we have forgotten the joys and inconveniences of the requisite responsibility. To be held accountable is, in fact, a delusion. It is a plague upon the conscience; accountability is a convenient phrase for the inevitable shift of responsibility, and at that, it is a temporary state of mind – more so, one which is easily removed. If one were ever to realise, on a rainy and otherwise unpleasant day, that one felt no further obligation to one’s employ, one might disregard all connections thereto; in such a light, one is held responsible only for that which one has hitherto accomplished, and subsequently – and fundamentally – not accountable for any success or failure which, as we so often see, befalls common interaction.

But then, as so many needless writers have often idly questioned on such days… what is to be done? As accountability has been dismissed, and responsibility has been established as conditionally asserted, where do the fearful reader and the frightful writer take refuge? What of our natural need to perpetuate internal order? What of our desire to maintain calm in the creation of the tempest? What of our desire to artfully describe otherwise trite and useless fears? What is to be done with our ever-loathed fascination with resolution and completion?

So at first there was a mention to the middling sorts, was there not? What of them and their relation to this line of non-conformity? A reasonable question, though it is that even such speculation is lost upon them! As they sit in their comfortable middling homes, in sprawling and identical neighbourhoods, and as they enjoy their sprawling, identical intentions, and even when they scoff at our sprawling, identical ideas, they too consider what it is that they might to do. They too sense, despite their well-programmed conceptions of normalcy and propriety, that some one thing stands incorrect. Some one thing is out of sorts in their labours; some one thing is incongruent with their social obligations; some one thing is amiss in their inter-personal relations (or for that matter, desires); and most painfully of all, some many things are inappropriate when they look in the proverbial mirror – as so many have asked of them and as so many have been beheaded by such suggestion. It is, in all practicality, best to not bother with them, as they can not be saved in their current state of route boredom. They, as we, have no inert desire to be saved from themselves! Thus, they must disappear – and thus they so desire, my considerate reader…

Yet they have no desire to be free, as it were. Whilst they must disappear, it is in such a subtle degree of disguise as to prove useless, as they find refuge in slight deviation from the previous generation’s success. The middle class was born as such:

And it was, that the great and mighty immigrant arrived in such and such a year, and, having great love and care for his immigrant family, took up a profitable situation in the most decrepit and unfortunate of employment; that the immigrant’s joys, pains, and sufferings were relayed in the first tongue and translated to the now ‘native’ child in an other regard; that this ‘heir’ inevitably cleverly conceived of a vague notion of perpetuity, so as to provide for his progeny; and within a century’s time (or less) the great-grandson might too rub elbows with those who had, in similar generational fashion, once enslaved and degraded the forbearer of the coal miner, or the tailor, or the wine merchant, or the dung-mongerer, or the convict in chains. And thus have they arrived in the Suburban dream World! At last they too can purchase the treasures of old at new, reduced prices!

I am the last to discourage or disapprove of a man who, for which ever reason or by what ever means, wishes to disappear… far from it. Yet, I am hard pressed to approve of an intent to recreate within plasticated lines, and I should do better than to condone careless accumulation in the name of achievement that ‘would have otherwise been denied to them, elsewhere.’ To assert that one would have been denied some thing some where else is a defense of inequity – and to that effect a plea for unworthy recognition.

Thus, the middle class is to be completely disregarded. For they seek to ignore their cousins who are tied to poverty, and they greedily assert claim to accumulate the wealth of their new-found friends. The middle class is a peculiar and unfortunate station in life, for it is a singular caste which is comfortable in social relativity supported by mediocre economic sustenance – all the while utterly dependant upon some foolish hope for better times and more advantageous means. As much as it pains me to think it, the lower classes have far too many practical burdens, while the so-called upper classes have no care for either of the two lesser categories other than might be found in a moderately interesting political essay. Indeed, it is only from the middle that it was conceived of lesser and greater, and it was only from the middle that political right could ever be established by these means.

Ultimately, this has been a poor and incomplete discussion. Those who are troubled to read such utterances will (and should) dismiss them, even if eventually. I fear that I have taken a middle ground in this vein, and that I run the risk of having become that which I seek to remedy. Then, if any one thing should be done, it would wisely be that such dialogue and nonsensical thought be continued, and then debated, and then defeated, until there is no longer a lesser, middle, and upper ground of perspective. It should be well desired that only one perspective should be necessary, though never could it be established that any perspective would in turn dominate such conversation. Thus, I leave you with my apologies for this exercise in banality, and pray your forgiveness for its lack of certainty, which I know you so warmly desire.

Yours, etc…

Kitaev

Free Trade and Columbia

The WSJ reports that President Obama might me more inclined towards free trade then either the left or right would like to believe. In this article, he appears committed to trading with Columbia. Money quote:

At the Summit of the Americas in Port-of-Spain, Mr. Obama asked to be seated next to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, and the pair discussed the deal, U.S. officials said. During his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama had voiced opposition to the pact, citing violence toward labor organizers in Colombia. The deal, which would allow free trade between the two nations, is awaiting ratification in the U.S. Senate and has already been approved by Colombia's congress.

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has struck a more-positive tone on free trade than he often did during the campaign. He and aides have spoken out against protectionism, and in Mexico last week he declined to raise the question of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, despite a pledge to do so last year.

Even so, the President's about-face on NAFTA (with I am pleased with) reminds us how much of a politician the man really is. I'm sure Columbia knows this.

100 Million = Bread Crumbs

Andrew Sullivan thinks that yesterday's request from President Obama is a fair response to the various tax/tea rallies from last week:

Yeah, it was pathetic in the grand scheme of things. But I thought it was a good sign that Obama understands totally valid concerns about future debt. If the tea-parties did nothing but remind Washington that many people out there do care about deficits and debt and spending - and rightly so - then you can almost forgive the opportunism and shrillness and amnesia about the last eight years that came with them. Still, it's only fair to give Obama some lee-way during his first year on long-term entitlement reform. He's pledged to tackle it, and better to keep him to that than to lob bombs and throw hissy fits right now.

I agree with Sullivan in a few ways, although I would be lying if I didn't scoff outright on the President's taking such spending cuts as serious. Andrew is also right is scoffing at the tea-parties sudden, blistering outrage over spending. Perhaps it is a good thing that Obama is at least acknowledging this outrage. It still seems, however, that his presidency remains a well run public relations operation. The fact of the matter is that this spending cut does little, if anything, for the American public.

Obama most likely understands that this anti-tax rhetoric is more than simple anti-left sentiment. People are scared--not only about the jobs they've lost, the mortgage they can no longer afford--that their government might start handing out money like tic-tacs with little if any real conception of how it might me utilized let alone restricted in the future. People don't hate entitlements. They hate entitlements that don't go away.

Harvard Economics Professor Greg Mankiw Provides this analogy:

To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had to be cut? By $3 over the course of the year--approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.

Welcome to the United Snakes...

Don't Tread on Me

This week, Texas declared (rather re-affirmed) its decision to from the union. I enjoy state's rights as much as the next fella, but need I remind Texas that the last group of state who decided to leave the union were forcibly "re-welcomed" back? Now the far-right Free Republic champions Oklahoma's recent resolution re-affirming their constitutional state sovereignty:

House Joint Resolution 1003 was authored by Republican Representative Charles Key of Oklahoma City and was championed in the Senate by Republican Senator Randy Brogdon of Owasso.

"The Tenth Amendment assures that we, the people of the United States of America and each sovereign state in the Union of States, now have, and have always had, rights the federal government may not usurp," the legislation reads.

"We now have an opportunity to be the first state to have it signed it into law," Key added. "Once the resolution is on the governor’s desk, I hope he will quickly sign House Joint Resolution 1003 into law. I also hope that when it is distributed to President Barack Obama and other elected officials of the federal government that they will recall the oaths to the United States Constitution that they all took and take heed.”

Can we possible be hopeful of any chance of Texas annexing Oklahoma? That would be awesome.

Earth Day

I am not sure how I might be able to explain my dislike for Earth Day; maybe I am skeptical that the sun's future implosion cannot be halted by recycling or perhaps I just really hate hemp. I suppose I just find it a little silly to take one day out of the year to celebrate the planet we live on every day of the year.

The environmentalist might say that is a perfect reason to keep one's mind anchored on conservation year-round. The skeptic-capitialist, however, rightly sees Earth Day as a means to simply sell t-shirts each year.

Beyond Introduction

Such a blog might only serve to keep one feeling as if his ideas are not know only to himself. That is all the introduction necessary I'd suppose. Key players will be introduced soon, once assembled and having given consent.