Archive for September, 2008

Yet again have the markets tumbled into the abyss and the poor bastards which cop it the hardest, are the small time investors trying to make a quid for retirement. It beggars belief that leading banking institutions can so readily fall to the wayside and it certainly doesn’t instill confidence in a system that idolises money as the all powerful arbiter of social adhesion.

What I find extraordinarily peculiar is that a government would be willing to bail out the very institutions that are at fault. With corrupt and greedy practices abound, the gun toting financial gurus leading the banking sector who undoubtedly pay homage to the whiz-kids on Wall Street are seemingly the cause for this collapse in fiscal bliss. A clear message is sent, that is; if you’re just some poor arsehole on the street then you mean diddley squat, but if you are a large corporation then you receive all sorts of concessions for being a loser. Like give us a break! These dickheads give themselves multi-million dollar bonuses for fucking things up! Howz that figure?

I’m left here wondering what in the hell am I doing wrong. Give me hold of the reigns, I’ll show you how to fuck things up? “Show me the money!”…and I’ll drag the whole economy into the ether of self centeredness and give myself a little pat on the greenback for doing it properly, wryly smiling as the US Government funds my departure into financial certainty.

You’ve gotta hand it to these guys though, they take the cake when it comes to scamming. Forget about Nigerian scams they’re for petty criminals, the ultimate in phishing scams is just a bank manager away. The pure genius of it –

Slick wall street guy: “lets lend money to the economically disadvantaged”

Mr Fat Cat Banker: “What! How they gonna repay their mortgage?”

Slick wall street guy: “Don’t worry. By the time the shit hits the fan we’ll be sailing the Caribbean with our new yachts…They won’t know what hit em. It’s worth a hefty bonus – soon we’ll be swimming in it. We’ll create some fancy bullshit plan…call it something like sub-prime lending- none will be the wiser. It’ll just be like printing money and everybody will lap it up as the sale of the century…We can’t lose”

Mr Fat Cat Banker: (Eyes glistening. The joy as he thinks of the new bentley he’s had his eye. Clasping his hands) “Ok I’ll get my people to draw up some drafts. Gee, Slick, you might just be onto something.” (Putting his arm around Slicks’ shoulder as they walk off together, almost like lovers walking hand in hand) “Have you ever thought about joining the banking sector…I think an opening has just become available at Bank X Corp. Why don’t you drop by Monday and we’ll talk about it some more….”

The irony of it all…how often do we envisage organised crime as underworld syndicates plotting the corruption of youth with drugs, illegal gambling dens and crack houses with two bit whores waiting for their next hit on the pipe or junkies eying off grandma’s handbag. We’ve all been duped, the real crimes are being committed above board – indeed in the board room, with power brokers edging off the best scam to hit the masses with, all the while knowing “they’re too big to fail” and that their “friends” in Parliament or the White House are only a phone call away when the fall out of last years board meeting hits main street.

Now where’s those stock quotes on Gold….

I’m not sure what to think. I purchased the new Metallica album Death Magnetic on the weekend, along with 500 thousand others but was somewhat appalled by the sound quality, it just sounded wrong. I initially thought that there was something wrong with the MP3’s I had bought from 7digital but a quick internet search confirmed that the so called “Loudness Wars” was the culprit for the heavily distorted sound I was experiencing. The drums became even more irritating when I was listening to the album on my Creative Zen Vision M – the rattly squashy sound of the drums made me squirm and I honestly wanted to smash whoever was near with my fist to their head and I’m generally a fairly passive nondescript character.

Death Magnetic Cover Art

It’s hard to imagine that the sound wasn’t intentional and in some weird way it grows on you the more you listen to it. Perhaps the only reconciliation one can gather from the listening experience is to regard it as a distinct sound that will most certainly not be forgotten. Maybe it is a process – to become accustomed to this new “improved” style in loud sound. Musically the album is fast and furious and it has taken me a few listens to become acclimatised to the speed and intricate tempo shifts – I’m still in the process of finding this album and as with most new albums I listen to, there is sometimes a slow shift in adoring that something new.

The added distortion is the biggest hurdle in truly accepting this as Metallica’s come back to thrash. It isn’t to say that I have anything really against distortion as Skepticism’s Stormcrowfleet is testament to and I particularly like that album even though it took some time in appreciating the crushing lowly, distorted melancholy but there is something about having a distortion that is designed instrumentally as opposed to an added effect by manipulating the loudness dial in a mix.

It’ll be interesting to follow the Death Magnetic loudness war over the coming weeks. I did sign a petition for Metallica to release a remastered or remixed version of DM to the public. The petition can be found here ! I’ll keep the MP3’s running and see how accustomed my ears become to this new distorted hyperbole.

The mystery of World Trade Centre Building No. 7 has officially been resolved and the conclusion is, that WTC7 is the first steel high rise structure to collapse due to fire. So we can all rest easy and lay to waste our fascination with conspiracy theories concerning September 11. But all the same, it is still more interesting and compelling to believe WTC7 and the WTC North and South towers collapsed due to controlled demolition, rather than the official story of fire. It enables the imagination to dissemble sense from the absurdity that so often is thrown at us during the mediocre hypnosis that is fed us through mainstream media. Although a great deal of investigative analysis has been performed, I’m still not 100 percent convinced that the official story is the truth. Having three buildings collapse in perfect symmetry, is something astonishing and for it to be happening within hours of one another is stretching the imagination in my opinion; although it is not without possibility, it is nevertheless odd.

If one is to accept that fire has weakened a structure to the point of collapse, does it then follow that the structure would weaken in such a symmetry so the point of failure would enable a vertical drop? That is what strikes me as the most suspicious and strange occurrence that wiggles and niggles at rationality, I’m not entirely convinced that fire would actually do that but I cannot without doubt say it isn’t possible. If fire is the agent for failure, the question is; why does it collapse straight down rather than on a skew? One would imagine that the connections affected by fire to be weakened and be cause for the structural member to fail, however, wouldn’t the other connections which weren’t affected still retain strength, delaying and perhaps guiding the collapse so it would look staggered or angled? Is it likely that a central failure would pull or drag the outer structure with it in a free fall arrangement? Who knows, but having the owner of WTC7 and the WTC towers, Larry Silverstein state that they made a decision to “pull” WTC7 is seemingly strange language to be using. Then there is the footage of firemen warning of the imminent collapse, so ostensibly some extraneous circumstances are in the periphery that may or may not be valid.

But having a conspiracy of such magnitude is mind boggling and will doubtless draw the conclusion that the official story is the true one. Who wants or could even believe that men are able to conceive and conspire of such tragedy for their own gain? And that such a conspiracy could be maintained in secrecy? But isn’t the grandeur of such a conspiracy something that ought be weighed with interest. The possibility of the “Big Lie” propaganda technique is one which is at least worth considering momentarily if not seriously.

Ultimately the end result is that the World Trade Centre buildings collapsed due to fire and although there are some interesting points in entertaining a conspiracy theory, it makes little difference in the end. No one is going to confess to aiding and abetting the crime of the century and admit the whole event was staged for some heinous purpose. We have no option but to accept the official story, because even if the conspiracy is factual, what can be done about it and what would happen if it did transpire that such a monumental crime was exposed? Wouldn’t it unravel societal harmony or whatever thin fibres are meshing society together, if it was revealed as an “inside job” wouldn’t it unleash anarchy?

Out of all the conspiracies that I have ever entertained, the possibility of controlled demolition of WTC7 and the WTC Towers has really given cause to reflect in seriousness, the truth of it. It is in vain though, because either way, the only conclusion is greater cyncism in hummanity. The official story or conspiracy matters little, both subscribe to the view that we as a species are fucked! On the one hand we have religious fundementalists flying planes into buildings and on the other we have at least a person or group of people on the same side reeking destruction and death. Both achieve the same result, people dying for no good reason.