Wailing Into The Void

I think someone’s on to me.

Andrew Sullivan links to a fascinating interview  from the late 1980’s between Allen Ginsberg and John Lofton.  Lofton is a former Washington Times columnist and a current crazy right wing blogger.  Here’s a teaser:

LOFTON: Well, that’s certainly what S&M is all about—power.

GINSBERG: And you seem to like that don’t you? Have your sexual fantasies ever involved that kind of power relationship?

LOFTON: No, not to my knowledge, I’m a Christian. So I don’t fantasize.

GINSBERG: Do you ever have sexual fantasies?

LOFTON: No.

GINSBERG: None at all?

LOFTON: No, I said I am a Christian.

GINSBERG: You’ve never had any sexual fantasies!

LOFTON: Before I was a Christian, I had them, absolutely.

GINSBERG: And since you’re a Christian you don’t?

LOFTON: No.

GINSBERG: And when you had them, did they involve any dominance/submission fantasies!

LOFTON: Mine were pretty orthodox heterosexual kinds of fantasies. But there’s no doubt they were bad. And I am so glad that Jesus Christ delivered me from them.

GINSBERG: You have no erotic dreams now, at all, that you remember!

LOFTON: None that don’t feature my wife, no.

GINSBERG: Yeah.

LOFTON: It’s an amazing thing what Jesus can do for a person.

GINSBERG: Uh-huh.

I didn’t realize that more than one person read this blog.  I’ll start cranking out the posts again.

I’m too depressed to care, not that I ever cared all that much to begin with.

Governor Paterson is planning to hit me where it hurts:

Gov. David A. Paterson will propose a $4 billion package of taxes and fees on a range of items, from sugary soft drinks made by Coca-Cola and Pepsi to luxury items like furs and boats, when he unveils his plan to close a deficit that has ballooned to $15 billion, people with knowledge of the plan said on Sunday.

When you lay down with rattlesnakes you’re bound to get bit.

Making the most of my unemployment, I took a bike ride out to the half-destroyed Shea Stadium and nearly finished Citi Field earlier today.  Riding up 126th St. it’s impossible not to notice the odd juxtaposition of the sparkling, upscale entertainment complex that is Citi Field on one side of the street and the row of sundry auto repair shops on the other.  I was amazed that these businesses were still there, and can’t imagine they will remain there much longer.

A quick search of the internet indicates that they won’t.  The city has already bought up over 60% of businesses in the few blocks adjacent to Citi Field and the city council has voted to permit the use of eminent domain to seize property from any remaining holdouts.  This is all part of a $3 billion development plan that is supposed to revitalize the area, although these promises of revitalization from politicians smack of the same hooey that the city used to try to shove the Atlantic Yards down our throats here in Brooklyn.  They also talk about the new Yankee Stadium being the centerpiece of a plan to revitalize the South Bronx.  Don’t hold your breath on that one.

While my observations are admittedly casual and unscientific, it seems that any type of sports or entertainment complex serves as a poor centerpiece for an economic revitalization project.  The most reliable foundation of any economic revitalization is the availability of good-paying jobs, and these types of projects don’t provide that to the surrounding community.  People will come to Citi Field, yes.  They will drop a lot of money there and probably in whatever chichi bars, restaurants and shops spring up in the area immediately surrounding the stadium, but once you get beyond that tiny enclave the impact of this influx of cash will be negligible.

New jobless claims continue to beat expectations.  If only there were some jobless claims index or jobless claims derivative I could sink my cash into.

Here’s how Blago thinks he should pick a Senator:

Mr. Blagojevich, whose administration has for years been known to be the subject of a federal corruption investigation, also spoke of his family’s financial woes and said he had three criteria for selecting the new senator: “Our legal situation, our personal situation, my political situation — this decision, like every other one, needs to be based on that.”

Looks like the interests of the people of Illinois didn’t make the list.

I got laid off this past Friday as my former employer goes into deep hibernation.  While this gives me much more time to blog I feel less motivated than ever to do so.  But since I’m here now for whatever reason, I might as well write about something, right?  Well, here goes…

This guy is a major asshole.

This concludes my blogging day.