The Roman Empire of the 21st Century

I have this theory about America and Americans.

Watch how Americans behave. Just stop and watch people come and go during a typical weekday. You'll see a few meandering on by, a few stopping and chatting with one another. Even a few stopping to smell the roses, so to speak.

But the vast majority -kids included- 90% or more, I bet, are rushing around, frantically trying to get from one place to the next. Trying to beat the other people rushing around. And most Americans are doing this.

So what, you say? So here's my theory, I say.

America is going to burn itself out. There is such an intense level of competition and trying to beat the other guy, trying to take more of the other guy's money than he can take from you, that we are going to get more and more and more intense about it. Business are going to get more ruthless and get rid of more employees faster and faster. We've already given away to other countries most of the things we used to take such pride in making. We make almost nothing of our own now; China does most of it now. Its going to become even more important to cut corners to save money, to do whatever it takes to beat the other company, to beat the other guy.

And then we're going to explode into tiny, ineffectual, barely noticed scraps on the floor of history. We have no culture to be remembered for in history. Our art and literature has not existed long enough to be remembered.

Then what?

See, I think Europe has a better idea of things. They are more measured in their pace. They haven't let business take control of everything, like it has here. Money is important, but it isn't everything. And they have lasted. While America the Beautiful has become less significant because a global economy is more important, Great Britain is still Great Britain, Germany still builds great things, like Germans always have.

Until America decides that there are more important things than beating the guy next to you senseless just to get a few more of his dollars, we're going to destroy ourselves.

IF by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

The United Person of Herb Dimbulb

This blurb appeared in the Washington Post:

Gregory Ignatius Armstrong, 42, was indicted for bankruptcy fraud in Greenbelt, Md., in December for claiming in all seriousness that he is a sovereign nation with unlimited contract powers and is thus owed $500,000 in copyright royalties by anyone who uses his name (in one case, by his Postal Service supervisor who wrote him concerning absences from work).

Doesn't this just open up a staggering number of possibilities? What if you were some unwashed, half-witted dumbass out of the boonies with a worse outlook for the future than Iraq. Barely enough brain to keep your skull from caving in. But then G. Iggy Armstrong comes along and now you see a way out of the pit your poorly equipped cranium has dug for yourself:

"I am now hereby to be addressed as 'The United Person of Herb Dimbulb, c/o Elksbrain, Arkansas'".

Herb could seek foreign aid, he could allow workers to be paid next to nothing to make sneakers, he could even attack Branson, Missouri (not far from Arkansas) and absorb it into his growing U.P.H.D. empire. He might need some help from neighbors and cousins and so forth, you know, to create a proper bureacracy, corrupt political system, and money-sucking military-industrial complex, but otherwise the upside is tremendous. Jailing and interrogating the Osmonds on charges like, say, noise pollution or killing innocent wildlife with teeth-glare, and deporting Roy Clark would be the first things on my agenda if I ruled Branson, MO. Okay, maybe that's a little harsh on the Osmonds, but I'm sorry, Roy has just got to go.

Not only that, but Herb would get political payoffs from Microsoft and Coca-Cola and General Motors and General Electric and...whoa! The dollar signs are just making my head spin. He could send himself to the Olympics. He could go on fact-finding missions to Hawaii and entertain visiting dignitaries and movie actresses at his imperial shack in the Ozark Mountains.

Herb could even, dare I say it, build a space program and launch himself at Saturn or something.

One wonders whether he will construct his Presidential Library (does he know how to write?) or who will take over when Herb retires from being a country, but, hey, that's a long time from now. Until then, he can sit back and enjoy the fruits of being The Man, impound a few Branson Dancing Girls (if 'impound' is the word I'm looking for), expand his nuclear energy/weapons cache, and add that wing to the imperial shack once more loot comes in from Exxon and Philip Morris.


I pledge allegiance to the overalls of the United Person of Herb. And to the Herb for which it stands, one Herb, under Herb, indivisible, with liberty, and justice, and premium imported beer, for Herb.

Executives' Best Work in the washroom

I read in the paper today about a new conference room being used by corporate executives: the men's room. Apparently they hang out -not literally, I presume- in there plotting environmental pollution, massive layoffs, executive payoffs and so forth. You know, pissing away their time dumping on the little people. Still, isn't it inspiring to know our revered business leaders are always willing to try something new?

But I am troubled, as I'm sure you are, by the complicated dynamics (business-speak for...well, I have no idea; it just sounds coldly business-like and suggests that I know what I'm talking about, which I don't) this must surely create.

What happens if there are ladies invited to the meeting as well? Do they shout through the walls into the ladies room, or maybe tap out a code on the tiles? I understand the ladies room has sofas, a snack bar and large screen TVs for each stall, plus valet parking and they smell a whole lot better. Maybe they should all meet there. I'd go if they invited me.

What if someone comes in there actually needing to use the facilities? I mean, when you gotta go, you gotta go. Do the execs just sit on their respective cans (I'm assuming they aren't all sharing the larger handicapped stall), waiting for the rude swine to leave? Maybe the fool didn't know this is the new wave of the future. Next, there'll be meetings in closets and in basements, maybe out in the alley behind the building, or better still, in the trash bins. The possibilities are endless. Frankly I think the world would be a better place if corporate executives would throw themselves in the trash.

P.S. It was not my intent to make bathroom jokes. Just working with the material, don't you know. Count your lucky stars; at least I didn't say anything about farting.

...

Ok, I did just then, but you didn't see "poo-poo" anywhere, did you?

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Damn!

A Revolutionary Idea for Television

Sitting here, unemployed, waiting for the phone to ring or an email from someone saying that they wondered where I'd been all their lives and wouldn't I come work for them doing trifling tasks for a monumental salary...where was I going with that?

Ah, yes, now I remember. Sitting here, I find myself watching too much television. Nothing in particular, and maybe that's the problem. Does anyone else notice how ridiculous it is that a herculean life-issue can be resolved in fifteen minutes, plus fifteen minutes of commercials?

They shouldn't get off so easy. There should be some kind of countdown, where the actors, seeing that they won't resolve the herculean life-issue in time, should start acting faster, saying their lines more swiftly and punching out the thugs with an extra zing in their step. As the time winds down, they should be cursing that next commercial break, which will require them to go still faster. With thirty seconds to go and no chance of resolving all the plot contradictions and ill-considered wardrobe choices, they should do as most athletes do and blame their fellow actors, the director, and the writers.

With any luck, as the credits blur up the screen, we'd get to see some heated calls to agents and maybe even some sissy shoving and girly shrieks. From the women too.