Advertising You Can Get Behind

If you can't read it, the insert card for the seamless briefs says:

"This is the only time when we are getting into your ass"
I don't think the vampire is making any such promises.

Open to Interpretation

The results of the tests are in
I hardly even know you
But you can see right through me
What are these powers in you?

Take yourself to the shoe maker
I hardly even know him
Craftsmen are hard to find
But you’ll know him
When he puts a boot up your ass

These reflections contain themselves
I hardly even know where to begin
Proclaim yourself to be the Sun in the Moon
Where these powers in you be psychic
------------------------------

Credits: Poem and Illustration/Collage by Jay Larsen

(meaning I drew the sun dude and hovered him over other pictures)

Psychic powers possessed by Steve

Email interuptions via the IT Dept (you know who you are...and Steve knows (see previous credit (he even knew I would write this (and that all these parenthesis would stack up like trophey ears on a canibal's necklace (although I don't know why I wrote this (Steve?))))))

Released on a Friday 1999

CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS

By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: Friday, November 5, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/congress-passes-wide-ranging-bill-easing-bank-laws.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1&emc=eta1
Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses. The measure, considered by many the most important banking legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said. It would become one of the most significant achievements this year by the White House and the Republicans leading the 106th Congress.

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses.

The measure, considered by many the most important banking legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said. It would become one of the most significant achievements this year by the White House and the Republicans leading the 106th Congress.

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression.

Today's action followed a rich Congressional debate about the history of finance in America in this century, the causes of the banking crisis of the 1930's, the globalization of banking and the future of the nation's economy.

Administration officials and many Republicans and Democrats said the measure would save consumers billions of dollars and was necessary to keep up with trends in both domestic and international banking. Some institutions, like Citigroup, already have banking, insurance and securities arms but could have been forced to divest their insurance underwriting under existing law. Many foreign banks already enjoy the ability to enter the securities and insurance industries.

''The world changes, and we have to change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. ''We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.''

In the House debate, Mr. Leach said, ''This is a historic day. The landscape for delivery of financial services will now surely shift.''

But consumer groups and civil rights advocates criticized the legislation for being a sop to the nation's biggest financial institutions. They say that it fails to protect the privacy interests of consumers and community lending standards for the disadvantaged and that it will create more problems than it solves.

The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had ''seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.''

Authenticity vs. Originality

Accept (Except)

Physical Things Don’t Matter
(Except when they do)

Sister Virgin Mary
(Sung to the tune of any glam rock anthem)

You Know What I’m Talking About
(Except when you don’t)

Milk & Honey
(Presented by the people at Consumer Inc)

We Stand Alone
(Except when we don’t)

Sting Scorpion Sting
(Performed by the cast of that TV sitcom)

The Subtext Says it All
(Except when it doesn’t)

------------------------------

Credits: Poetry and Collage by Jay Larsen

Composed to the sounds of Ultravox

(Except when it wasn't)

Spinning and Grinning

Spinning colorful patterns
Building up a tempo
Hot with swinging hips
And glimpsed nipple
But always spinning
The drummer grins
Across the dance floor
Offering only another song

Spinning narratives intriguing
And philosophy astounding
Cold with logical argument
And empty of solid truth
But ready to test my mettle
The teacher grins
Across the schoolyard
Offering only another lesson

Spinning to avoid fear
Spiraling into my own head
Still the questions fuel
My continued motion
After lifting veil after veil
Mortality still grins
Across the void
Offering no new terms

Dance with me
Talk with me
Spin with me
Grin with me
Share a spark of Crazy Wisdom
Across the infinite gap between us
Offering only this…
--------------------------

Credits: How many people read credits?

Or the witty comments that follow?

At least one person does!

Poem and Collage by Jay Larsen

Open Wide

You know
Only get one chance at heaven
I’ve found
Only get one chance
But it keeps going round and round
She said
Only gotta get out of this town
I cried
Only gotta buy that ticket once
But that train goes round and round
I know
Only have that one dream
You sighed
Only have to have just the one
But that dream keeps going round and round

Still standing
On that corner
Watching lights grow in the sky
Still standing
Open wide

-------------------------

Credits: Poetry and Collage by Jay Larsen

Making a difference just to make it different

Celtic Woman Blue

Salty taste blown on ocean foam
Warm musk grown in forest loam
I can see chalk hills in your skin
Tribal bonfires flicker in your hair
What do you see with those eyes?
Dance with me tonight
Teach me your ancient rites
Celtic woman blue

------------------------------
Credits: Original Illustration and poem by Jay Larsen

Dog Bowl Wavelength

Peninsular formations
Thrust out into the sea
The waves pound the shore
Tellin’ me to turn on my radio
You put a bone in my doggy bowl
Singin’ Come back Van Man
Come back

You hit me at 650 nanometers
Your love tips into infrared
My heart pounds in my chest
Tellin’ me to turn on my radio
You and your doggy callin’ me home
Singin’ Come back Van Man
Come back

All right…
-----------------------------
Credits: Poetry and collage by Jay LarsenSamuel Pierpont Langley put light through a prism.Pink Floyd put the prism through meVan Morrison put us on a wavelengthYou never let me down.

Moon Lambing

All systems are go, you say
Why won’t I take this trip?

I tried to walk a mile
In your silver running shoes
Head over heels
I took an awful spill
Your shoes run too fast
Impossible for me to fill

So focused on the finish line
Training for an unscheduled event
Mission commands so shrill
You never took a clean start
Your shoes run too fast
Impossible for you to fill

Goodbye green hills of earth
Next stop, you say, the moon

-----------------------------

Credits: poetry and collage by Jay Larsen
Holding my questions steadfastly
and my answers lightly.

Good News Makes the Abstract Tangible

Here is a story (LINK) about how one man made a distant and abstract business decision into a vivid and tangible reality for the man making that decision.

Rex Ziak didn’t want the ancient trees near his home to be cut down because they were real and beautiful parts of his life. But the man in charge of the logging, Bill Gordon, was managing the process from 3,000 miles away. Ziak took pictures of the trees to send to Gordon, but Ziak did not know how to make sure that Gordon really got a personal feel for the majesty of what was about to be cut down. Ziak wanted Gordon to personally experience the massive trees. So Ziak measured one of the trees with a rope—38 feet of rope, and sent the rope to Bill Gordon in Boston.

Gordon was so impressed by the size of the rope, especially when it would go all the way around his car that he reconsidered the logging project and sold the grove of trees to the nature conservancy.

This is what good journalism should be doing: making distant and abstract things real and tangible for us, so that we can make healthy decisions about real issues. News shouldn’t just be the same talking heads throwing abstract numbers and opinion back and forth. Good News should bring the far away and the hard to understand into our lives in a way that makes things real. Like Ziak’s rope did.

NBC has the story and there is video on their news page.

S-LAUGHTER

Laughter
Slaughter
What comes between?

American Glue

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Narrow Margin

Thank You Mrs. Peel
Riding to my rescue in your Lotus Elan
Genius in a mini skirt
There is a narrow margin
Between witty banter
And sexual tension
But I’m sure we can work it out

-------------------

What do you want, Credits?

Think You Can Win a War in Afghanistan?

Old Soldiers know better

I believed as sincerely as American officers do now that we were fighting there to help make our country safer. After the war, as a politician, I could see this war had been pointless.
- Retired Russian Gen. Pavel Grachev, who later became defense minister, recently interviewed about the parallels he sees betweent the Soviet war in Afghanistan and current U.S. and NATO involvement there. Grachev also advised: Post soldiers to guard road projects and irrigation systems, and send in an army of engineers, doctors, mining experts, and construction advisers. According to him, pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure would be a lot more productive than firefights in far-flung villages. (Source: McClatchy)

Odd Disco Company

Odd Disco Company

Imagination is not a weapon against reality
Her hold on things is tenuous
And reality comes with strings attached
Immolation is no weapon against reality
Space is vast and cold
The sun appealing but she burns too hot
Indignation is no weapon against reality
I am a meek warrior
But I have taken a stand
If not here, then where?

I don’t hear a single
Just Poe’s
“Troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king”
--------------------------------

Credits: Poetry and Collage by Jay Larsen

Except the quote from Edgar Allen Poe's The Haunted Palace

Fall House of Usher, Fall!

Today’s News Metaphor for the Economy

Tanning bed bursts into flames; man escapes
LAKE WYLIE, S.C. -- A man escaped from a tanning bed as it burst into flames, sparking a fire that evacuated a Lake Wylie shopping center and damaged several stores Monday, authorities said.
No one, including the man in the bed, was hurt. But several stores in the Bethel Commons strip mall off S.C. 274 and S.C. 49 suffered smoke damage that will likely keep them closed most of the week, said Bethel Fire Chief Don Love.
Authorities are investigating what ignited the bed at Ultratan.
The man who escaped declined to give his name but said he was working on his tan when he heard a popping noise, then saw a flame at the corner of the tanning bed near his foot. He threw open the lid and jumped out, he said.

From: http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/1436088.html

Zero History

Hanging there
As if to say: Nothing is concealed
Hanging there
Like a tear drop with no eye
Hanging there
A sacred script to be revealed
Hanging there
Like a long kiss goodbye

The salty sweetness of it
Almost makes it worth
The frosty cold amnesia
When you breathe it in

Breathe out
As if to say: Zero History

-------------------------

Credits: Poetry and Collage by Jay Larsen

Some Days It Doesn't Pay

Some days it doesn't pay

To have the corner office

Or to shop at those boutiques

Worth a Thousand Words

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

In the Shadow of Ashurbanipal

Who could have predicted the end of the Assyrian Empire?
Early settlers naturally chose elevated ground
And dreamed of a golden age of economic and social reform
Stamp your identity on the stone walls
Make your mark in the mud where the bricks are made

Who would have foreseen the scattering of initiatives?
The merchants wove the fabric, gold and silver
Which adorned the liturgical vestments of proud birds
Kneel and receive the aftermath of power my son
Rise and slump obediently to the pew of poverty

Who might dare to follow in the shadow of Ashurbanipal?
Most drift aimlessly in these warm swift currents
Cyclones and gyres both accuse the same sea of contribution
Plant your flag in the sand for one island is like the next
Discover diseases civilization’s immune system cannot repel
---------------------------

Credits: Cut, Copy and Pasta by Jay Larsen

Punishment and Reward by Systems of Neurology

Daylight Savings Time by Congress (don't forget)

Tight But Not Touching

Your radio is missing some frequencies
Your pop is all dressed up
But has nowhere to go

Your eyes are skipping the spectrum
Your fireworks explode
But lack force

Never ever again in this lifetime
Will our band be this tight
But not touching
-----------------------------

Credits: Don't get that water into your lungs, it will make you sick.
No, I don't know.
Helicopters drown out the sounds of unapproved thought.
These aren't really credits are they?
Just put that thing down and step away slowly.

Question for the GOP

Q: Which of the following best describes the relationship between Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party?

Hint: Rush is not a super hero, but even if he was the GOP is being taken for a ride.

A:

Gray day - Warm anyway

It's been a while since I was new
But I can say I have been well used
Sometimes I try to wear too many hats
Take a walk with me
We'll let the river run
Warm soup - Cold beer
And a smile from my best friend
Make my world feel like spring again

Jay Larsen

Sent from my Windows Mobile phone

On the way home

Realised I did not blog today.
Oh well

Sent from my Windows Mobile phone

Sushi Time

This is too much fun. Watch as a video camera travels around a sushi restaurant on the conveyor belt.



Here is a link for those who can't see the video: Link

And another sign of our troubled economic times?