Friday, August 31, 2007

Post Scriptum

Ending on Diana's anniversary might be the slightest bit poetic. We see clearly now how things should have happened. Taken a medical leave and gotten my wits back and my mental health. Then gone back to work. All I needed was a break to deal with the booze and gambling. Mr Booze! Trying to keep it at a pint a day but it can get up to a fifth. Some days even scare me--at least the day after. Vodka. Found a cheap Scotch whiskey I like--Highland Stag. Too much booze. But I also do love it in the morning. So messed up........

More Big Sur

We seem to be driving up and down the PCH in Big Sur. Went back down a few days ago. Drove back up last night. Discovered a Galaga/Ms Pacman 20th anniversary machine at Fernwood (Tonight?). Ah, we do love Galaga! Stayed just north of Monterey in Marina. Nice, older motel with a full cable offering. Motel 6 is just the pits. The expectations are the lowest and always fail to meet them. How about Senator Craig? Couldn't he have been Seinfeldian since the gig was up and he's history. Like, "I'm not gay--not that there's anything wrong with that!" If you're going down at least inject some humour. He and Tom Foley ought to go on tour together. But it fairness, Craig could be wrongly accused. From my own personal experience, I can't count the times I've been in an airport restroom and touched feet with someone in the next stall. Excuse me and that's it. Even tapping one's feet to some showtune. Been there and done that. And did you hear that Nike is now coming out with a new Mike Vick athletic turf shoe. It's got a reinforced steel toe to prevent "turf toe" injuries and also to make it easier to kick dogs and other animals with out injury. It's an odd thing to contemplate offing oneself. I seem to be putting it off. Life though is this meaningless quotidian struggle, at least from my perspective. I know I'm screwed up. But I've blown so much money and don't want to face the consequences. Certainly a coward. Not doing it "show" anyone anything. It's just about me and my personal blackhole. Money will run out soon. O, hey, I did eat at Da Vinci's in Beverly Hills (Santa Monica and Wilshire) at the Dean Martin booth. It was quite the experience. I got there early and was the only dinner patron in the place for over an hour. There's a picture of Dino hanging over the booth. At the Paley museum of TV on Beverly Drive I have seen all the old Dino they had that I hadn't yet seen. A couple complete variety shows. Some other stuff. So the Dino pilgrammage is complete. Guess we'll continue to mosey on up the PCH toward San Fran and see what happens. Sorry Grace and Mother (and others) that I've disappeared. In a strange sense though I've never been happier as I think about the end.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Big Sur

Drove north from LA through Big Sur last night. Stayed the night in Monterey. Had the road to myself for the most part. Hope to drive back south and catch the stunning views during suntime. Funny, I pulled off at an inn and, silly me, thought about getting a room. Only $850 and $1000. Lovely couple, though, taking a nude swim in the clothing-optional pool! I fear we are starting to stretch our supply lines (think Alexander the Great). Alexander never returned to home to Macedonia. Lead his army to the eastern Pakistan and then died in Babylon. Lucky to find a computer at a Holiday Inn Express just north of Monterey. Guess we'll head back south and take in some sights. San Francisco may not be in the cards. Some lovely departure points in Big Sur. Flying leap and all that, maybe even with the car. Several dreams about the old job. Funny that, the dream world. Would that we had planned a sabbatical and had something to come back to. But then that's the point: Maybe we didn't want anything to come back to! Just drift around a bit and then the old "Ave et Vale". Good for you Krissy. Good luck with Joe, or whoever follows. You deserve happiness and stability. Kate, thanks for everything.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Dino at Grauman's

We swung by Grauman's Chinese Theatre tonight to see if we could find Dean Martin's spot. After much searching we found him back from the sidewalk and towards the left side as you face the theatre. Jimmy Stewart is directly below him. Really quite a charming attraction. Dino's hands are almost as big as mine, just huge. Just signed his name and wrote "Thanks". We're guessing that Dino didn't really know or give two fucks about Sid Grauman. Peter Sellers is adjacent on the right.

Becoming a bit of a routine. Swinging out towards the beach--tonight it was Venice--then up PCH to Sunset. Re-stock booze at Von's. Then cruising up Sunset towards Hollywood. Venice was interesting. Found a good piece of barbeque chicken pizza just laying there on top of some trash. At first glance it looked like a plate of dog food. Very good, though.

Prospects still fairly dim in Tap City. But we did win about fifteen hundred today after getting almost the last of the money from checking and credit cards. Don't know what to do with the rental car. May keep it for a few more days......

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Dino Pilgrammage----To Live and Die In LA

We finally tracked down Dino's three stars on Hollywood Blvd. Did that tonight a few hours ago. Mixed and mingled with the locals. Found some very good pizza in a trash can as well as a little left-over chinese. Now that we are Tap City we better get used to the idea!

Dean Martin's walk of fame stars for television and motion pictures are on the north side of Hollywood going east from Cherokee. The star commemorating his recording career is on the west side of Vine a block south of Hollywood Blvd, just down the street from the famous Capitol Records building. There was also a delightful portrait of Dean on a roll-down gate on Hollywood Blvd. There are dozens of such portraits on both sides of Hollywood Blvd. Quite charming. And by the way, I found Hollywood Blvd. clean and civilized--more so than even the Mile High City's Sixteenth Street Mall, which is a disgrace.

We also ate at Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset on Friday night. Was that one or two nights ago. It's all becoming a fog. Dino was a regular there on Sunday nights for many years. I was sat at the table they said Dino sat at. Who knows, really, but it was quite an emotional experience.

The only thing really left is to find Dino's footprints at Grauman's. Maybe we'll do that tomorrow--later today. Then, what to do? We took the boat ride to Catalina a few days ago. One could just slip off and be lost at sea. Don't chat with the boat crew about such ideas--they put you a suicide watch. I still have a little money left--a few thousand. And another couple thou from the credit cards on Monday. Hard to see coming back. To live and die in LA......

Monday, August 6, 2007

Well, No Shit--The Bridge Collapse Was No Tradedy. Just Probabilistic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/us/06collapse.html?ex=1186977600&en=c274053ca9226b56&ei=5123&partner=BREITBART

It's not just about the steroids

Our prediction: Barry Bonds will break the homerun record and then sometime later be indicted for purjury. And it's all for naught since A-Rod will shatter the record in the middle of the next decade.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003621797

Why Are So Many Americans In Prison?

http://bostonreview.net/BR32.4/loury.html

A long piece worth reading. We read (or, at least, were assigned to read John Rawls "A Theory of Justice" in a law school class we attended before withdrawing and graduating. Our own theory has to do with something called Say's Law: All the prison building has created a demand to fill those prisons. A great tragedy and stain on American society.

Say's Law is the principle that supply constitutes demand. Or, in the words of economist Jean Baptiste Say, "...a product is no sooner created, than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value." (A TREATISE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY, Chapter 15). Or, "you must sell before you are able to buy".
J.B.Say (1767-1832) is the French economist who coined the word entrepreneur to describe an economic agent independent from the landlord, worker or even capitalist (since the entrepreneur may secure financing from others). Say wrote his TREATISE to counter the Mercantilist doctrine that money is the source of wealth. According to Say, goods buy goods, and money mediates the transaction: "It is not the abundance of money but the abundance of other products in general that facilitates sales."
James Mill expanded on Say's argument in his book COMMERCE DEFENDED to counter the belief that underconsumption is the cause of economic recession -- and to counter the belief that increased consumption is the remedy for recession. Say incorporated Mill's ideas in subsequent editions of his TREATISE. Say was emphatic that consumption destroys wealth and that only production creates wealth.
Thomas Malthus was the foremost classical economist who promoted the idea that underconsumption causes recession. Malthus blamed the wealthy for saving rather than spending. David Ricardo, in answering Malthus, invoked J.B.Say to write: "The shoemaker when he exchanges his shoes for bread has an effective demand for bread." Ricardo attributed post-war depression & unemployment to a mismatch of supply & demand, rather than to underconsumption.
Classical economics incorporated the ideas of Say, Mill and Ricardo rather than Malthus in its body of wisdom. These ideas were augmented by
John Stewart Mill who emphasized the role of savings rather than consumption in wealth-creation when he said: "...to consume less than is produced, is saving; and that is the process by which capital is increased."
The beliefs of Malthus were revived during the Great Depression of the 1930s by
John Maynard Keynes in his book THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST AND MONEY (1936). It may not be much of an exaggeration to state that the GENERAL THEORY is little more than a protracted attack on Say's Law -- a reversion to Malthus in claiming that underconsumption (low "aggregate demand") causes recession & unemployment -- and the claim that government spending (financed by deficits, taxes or inflation) and subsidized consumer spending can compensate for "demand deficiencies". In his preface to the French edition of THE GENERAL THEORY Keynes refers to Say's Law as a "fallacy" and describes his own book as "a final break-away from the doctrines of J.-B. Say".
In the first section of Chapter 3 of his GENERAL THEORY, Keynes states Say's Law to be "supply creates its own demand" and he interprets Say's Law to mean "that the aggregate demand price of output as a whole is equal to its aggregate supply price for all volumes of output". Both Keynes' statement and interpretation are erroneous. Say's Law states that a produced good represents demand for other goods, not for itself (as "its own" could imply). Say's Law does not equate supply & demand (Keynes' belief that Say's Law means that everything that is produced is sold), but makes supply a precondition for demand. Supply equals demand at the clearing price on a supply-demand curve (for particular goods and aggregates), but Keynes was wrong to equate supply/demand curves with Say's Law. Supply constitutes demand, but demand does not constitute supply -- one cannot have the means to buy without first having sold.
Keynes' recommendations for government spending were music to the ears of politicians and merchants eager to sell goods by any means. Keynesianism replaced what Keynes dismissed as "classical economics". And Keynes' misrepresentation of Say's Law as "supply creates its own demand" was accepted as if it were a quotation from J.B.Say.
Classical economists did not refer to the principle that "supply constitutes demand" as "Say's Law", but called it "the law of markets". The phrase "Say's Law" was probably coined by Fred Taylor, who wrote a widely used introductory textbook early in the 20th century (PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS, 1921). Although J.B.Say deserves credit for being the first word on the law of markets, he was neither the last word nor the most articulate exponent. Say's Law is not an obscure & insignificant economic tenent. I regard it as the most important issue in economics: how a society creates wealth.
This essay is an analysis of the idea that "supply constitutes demand", which I will call "Say's Law". It might seem appropriate to equate the phrase "
Supply-side Economics" with Say's Law were it not for the fact that this phrase has been associated with a policy of cutting taxes (without cutting government spending) to stimulate the economy. This essay is less concerned with historical analysis of Say's Law and of "who said what" than with grasping essential principles. For a thorough scholarly analysis of Say's Law, including its exponents & detractors, I highly recommend SAY'S LAW AND THE KEYNESIAN REVOLUTION by Steven Kates -- by far the best book on every aspect of Say's Law.
Knowledge of the laws of supply & demand from an Austrian perspective -- and familiarity with
The Austrian School of Economics -- would be very helpful for understanding my analysis. I therefore encourage readers to read my review of MAN, ECONOMY AND STATE to the end of the second chapter before proceeding with this essay.