Ape Mind Transcripts

The New York Times has an article exploring the tensions wrapped up in Harvey Pekar’s last days and final work. It seems fitting, even in its frustration.

“He said we’re a commodity like soybeans and oil, and the price of commodities go up and down,” Mr. Budd recalled. “He said there are thousands of people in this area out of jobs, and they could hire any one of them for $14 an hour. It made me sick to have someone sit across the table and say I’m not worth the money I make.”

With their article, “In Mott’s Strike, More Than Pay at Stake,” the New York Times details the efforts of Dr Pepper Snapple Group to squeeze its workers to increase already-rising corporate profits.

The workers are doing the right thing in organizing for their own self-interest. I think it’s crucial for consumers to pressure manufacturers and stores to favor workers. I’m not sure what the best path for action is, though. I try to patronize local businesses, but maybe they just apply the same squeeze, with a friendly face.

Atual Gawande has an excellent article in the New Yorker about end-of-life decisions. “Letting Go” explores how medicine should engage people who are going to die. It explores the successes of hospice care, which, surprisingly, is shown to extend lifespan even as it reduces suffering. It also highlights the changing role of doctors, who are being encouraged to extend a more realistic view of the time that remains instead of fighting a series of scorched-earth battles against new, compounding ailments.

Most importantly, the article is a strong prompt to consider and share your own end-of-life plans. Toward that end, I publicly plead: please don’t have me stuffed or place my brain in a monkey.

The Phil Nugent Blog is one of my favorite reads at the moment, offering excellent analysis of movies and triple toe loop–triple axel caliber takedowns of political blatherers. Today’s piece, “Ugh! or, What Do You Mean ‘We,’ Straight Man” is dedicated to eviscerating New York Times columnist Ross Douthat for his recent column arguing that allowing gays to marry would, like, totally degrade the privileged status of heterosexual marriage.

But as the heterosexual possessor of a working penis, I have to tell you, I really, really hate it when guys cite the supposedly Darwinian inevitability that men can’t control their libidos and their dicks as a reason to fuck over women and gays. I hated it during the great “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” circle jerk of the early ’90s, when a conga line of military hacks took the position that, if gay men were allowed to serve alongside “regular” men, every barracks would turn into a bar scene from Cruising. And I didn’t like it any better a few years later, when there were a string of scandals related to women in the military being harassed and worse by some of those clean straight male servicemen, and the conga line started up again, this time with the hacks insisting that this is what just happens when men are forced to be in the same vicinity as women–it’s not as if their superiors could ever get them to control themselves.

Michael Snyder has a Yahoo Finance article detailing the many ways the fortunes of the American middle class are crumbling.

It’s depressing to learn that “66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans” while “As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.” At the same time, Snyder doesn’t offer much in policy prescriptions; he seems to conclude the middle class has been doomed by cheaper overseas competition.

Of course, I think people will find the most fault with the statement that “In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.” In Chicago, at least, we like to blame our budget issues on those blasted public servants who have the temerity to earn a living wage.

It’s easier to complain about the bus driver getting paid vacation than it is to figure out a way to leverage some of those top-1% gains for the greater good of our shared society.

To follow up my earlier post about debt collectors turning to law enforcement to criminalize debt…apparently they can’t even be bothered to personalize their lawsuits. As the New York Times reports, they’re using database mining to spam the court system.