singles – Page 11 – Hopeful Romantics

In The Future You Might Have To Drive The Car You Can Afford

I was reading in the Los Angeles Times where Chrysler would no longer be leasing cars through its in-house financial service. Wells Fargo, known for its auto leasing loans, among other things is also getting out of the auto leasing business. Ford took a write down on its auto leasing portfolio of over $2 Billion, which is a lot of money, even in this day and age.

The car makers who sell mostly trucks and SUV’s are being hit doubly hard as those that specialize in passenger cars, but with gas prices being what they are, coupled with the devaluation of leased cars, it is only a matter of time before other auto makers pick up their proverbial catcher’s mitts and trundle on out of the car leasing finance business. Tough break.

Once upon a time, the auto dealership could figure with some degree of accuracy the residual value of the car. That means at the inception of your lease the dealer would project the car would be worth a certain percentage of its initial value. Three year old cars in demand, Mercedes, BMW’s, Lexus, Hondas, Toyotas would be worth more, percentage wise, naturally, and the ones in less demand, Hyandai’s, Kias, stuff like that,would be worth less. This residual value was taken into consideration when they wrote up the terms of the lease. You would pay less per month for a car with more residual value, meaning it would be worth more at the end of the lease, and you would pay more per month for the car that nobody wanted.

Well, now every car dealership is getting killed on most lease returns. The Prius and a few others are the exceptions, but now the Blue Book Value, the estimated value of a car and the actual selling price are at odds. The car is worth less than the evaluation. Enough so that you see dealers who bought out the cars at lease closing now desperate to sell and offering the cars at thousands below Blue Book.

In fact, Santa Monica Lexus this weekend had its first ever “blow out” sale, offering its cars a thousands below the Blue Book value. I was struck by the number of Porsches listed in the ad. This is Southern California, after all, and at first glance one would think they were on the Autobahn what with all the German cars. A Porsche around here is like an entry level Lexus in a lot of other parts of the country. Nevertheless, there they were all models, all colors, just make an offer.

So what’s this all mean, besides the obvious? Well, have always been a country in love with its cars. We would joyride; we would watch movies in our cars, eat in them, have sex in them. They were an extension of our ego, a symbol of freedom and a measuring stick for our worth in society. Hundreds of sons were written about our cars and the things we did in our cars. We have auto shows, auto clubs, nostalgic reviews and television shows.

Once upon a time cars were affordable. Relatively speaking. You drove an American car and there were cool American cars and they didn’t empty your lungs just to buy one. And then as the world globalized we were introduced to the really sleek, cool, speedy, better handling foreign models. First they came from Europe, some vroomed and some sputtered, especially in the rain. Anyone who drove an English sports car in the sixties can tell you about his travails with the Jaguars and MG’s.

And then came the Japanese. First there were the cheap, tinny cars that no one wanted, unless you were too broke for the American car. But then the Japanese cars improved, and Toyota, Honda, Nissan, offered quality cars and premium vehicles with names like Infiniti, Accura and Lexus. As for the cheap part, well that went out the electric window.
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So…to have your symbol of freedom and the status and sex appeal it would bring you, you had to spend bucks. Bucks you couldn’t afford. Enter car leasing. For a lot less bucks you could drive the car you couldn’t afford for several years and then turn it in for its residual value. The auto maker would sell it off, make some more money on it, over your initial leasing fee, and the auto makers were happy as clams.

But now it looks like they will soon be getting out of the leasing business. That symbol of freedom will have to be something you can actually afford. Because you will have to actually buy it. Reality will need a radical adjustment. Your symbol of freedom may lack the sex appeal of the car you once leased. Or it may be a lot older than that shiny new car you drove for three years, put on thirty thousand miles, and then turned it.

Your friends may not envy you as much. Women may not swoon. Few men can ask a woman if you wants to go for a ride in a base priced Kia. Okay, then can ask, but who is accepting? So there you are, no longer in dream city but bogged down in the reality of the times. As for joy riding, forget that at $5 bucks a gallon. You ain’t even going to the movies, half the time. Pay per view and a pizza ordered from the shop where the delivery kid has to pay for his gasoline.

Online dating may end up being more “virtual” than first anticipated. Fashion companies could be offering attire and accessories for weekend phone sex. Pajama parties may again become the rage. Why? Because everyone will stay over for days, since they can’t afford the gas to go home. I suppose it is a good thing after all that drive-in theaters have long gone the way of the rumble seat.

If there is a silver lining, take stock of the car you will be buying and not leasing. The reason many expensive cars were expensive, besides their performance, sex appeal, and a mark of your status, is because they are made well. They weren’t made initially to be leased for three years and turned back in. They were made to be driven for years and years. They were made to go hundreds of thousands of miles, before dying an honorable death.

So if you buy one and drive it for the five or ten years, like the Europeans usually do, then the price of the luxury vehicle still makes sense. You can enjoy it, retain your symbol of freedom, sex appeal, and status symbol, albeit a little threadbare over time. You can enjoy the better cars for what they were made for–quality and performance. Or you can buy a car you can afford, get rid of it when the loan is paid and buy another, maybe an electric car. In the future.

In any event, your car, after being driven awhile, like quality clothes made from quality fabric, will develop the one thing it doesn’t have now. Character.

Happy motoring.

Johnny Edwards, We Hardly Knew Ya

Okay, so by now unless you were living in a cave in Mynamar you would have read or heard about how the National Enquirer, cornered former Presidential Hopeful and Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, John Edwards in the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Apparently, the media gang from the Enquirer chased poor Johnny around the hotel in some modern version of an old Marx Brothers movie. From the different reports, the very bemused hotel guests watched the impromptu floor show.

John Edwards ran for his life, or, rather, for his career, while the Enquirer gang gave chase. They cornered him in a bathroom, where reports are the ever intimidating hotel security guards–you have seen them–allegedly threatened to break heads and cameras. The Enquirer reporters are said to have filed a criminal complaint with the Beverly Hills Police.

I mean you have to admit this is pretty funny. No matter what side of the aisle you rest your laurels, if you don’t look at this with humor and irony, mixed with the usual disgust and admonition, then you are lulling on the ice floes with respect to the cultural and political zeitgeist of the early 21st Century. When you are worth hundreds of millions and your are a very public figure, in fact one that is being considered for the Vice Presidential role, again, or as a cabinet member, you have to feel pretty stupid when you are cornered in the hotel bathroom by a horde of reporters. The only thing worse would be that while you held the door against the narrow shoulders of the reporters, you discover Senator Larry Craig is tapping his lascivious foot at you from inside a bathroom stall.

You have to be an idiot. I’m sorry, but whether or not you want to wax moral on this, and there is plenty of wax on this one to make enough candles to light a sensual sex scene, the morality to me is not the major issue. The issues is whether you are smart enough to run this country. If you can’t take care of your extramarital affairs without getting caught by the media, then how are you going to outfox the Russians, the Iranians the the lineup of “evil doers” you will be dealing with on a daily basis? I mean, how cool can you be.

All right, so up comes the name of one William Clinton. But with Clinton it was different. The women in one form or another ratted him out. He wasn’t caught near in flagrante as was John Edwards. His girlfriend of the moment either talked to the press or talked to her girlfriend who talked to the press, depending on what girl of the moment we were talking about.
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Look, I’m sure there are good qualities about John Edwards. And I’m sure with his wife, Elizabeth, being so ill, there are pressures most of us can’t imagine. He has had his share of tragedy in his life. It is the kind of tragedy that no money nor political or social status will ever fully surmount. You can’t have a child die and a wife that is dying and not be in the need of some relief. Anywhere.

But not here. Not now. That is, if you really want to be considered for Vice President or a cabinet position. If Edwards is on a secret self-destructive bent for one reason or another, then he is certainly in the groove. But I don’t think that’s the case with Edwards. He is far too ambitious to dwell in the world of secret self-denial and self-destruction.

Look, he is definitely an intelligent man, although I don’t care all that much for his personal style. Between the newscaster’s haircut, circa 1980, and the ersatz folksy, populists jingo he spouts from time to time, He is hard to embrace. I see him more as the calculating “Goober Boy,” than as a viable Presidential candidate. I made up my mind on this when asked during one of the oh so scintillating presidential debates what he considers his personal flaw. In fairness, Barack Obama was the only one who gave an ingenuous answer. The rest decided to shuck and jive. But in Edward’s case he “aw shucks” it for a moment and then announced his flaw was that he cared about America “too much.”

I would rather he would have told us he was haunted by unseen and indeterminate demons who, despite what I believe is his genuine love and concern for his wife, he is forced to go seeking solace in the arms of a Santa Barbara MILF where, together they have produced a love child as a result of their passions. Then I would have thought, okay, it’s an imperfect world and it least he isn’t trying to feed me the kind of line you feed the last drunk at closing time.

It least he wouldn’t be living in denial and forcing us to do the same. He wouldn’t sound like Larry Craig.

Fuel Prices Send American Workers Below the Border

I noticed this article in the San Diego Union-Tribune about American drivers going down below the border to buy diesel fuel at half the price they can get it here.

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UNION-TRIBUNE

June 19, 2008

TIJUANA – Truck and bus drivers experienced a day of chaos in Tijuana yesterday, as they chased a dwindling supply of diesel fuel. Today was shaping up to be even worse.

DAVID MAUNG

Pemex gas station manager Claudia Torres placed a sign yesterday to block the entrance to the diesel pumps after the Tijuana station ran out of the fuel.

For weeks, drivers from the United States have snapped up Mexican diesel, which is selling for about 50 percent less than in California.

That has resulted in a shortage of the fuel, and gas stations nearest the border crossings started halting or limiting sales last weekend.

By yesterday, diesel had started to run out at outlying stations, provoking delays or cancellations in public and private transportation. New supplies might not arrive until Monday.

Long lines of trucks and buses, their drivers desperate to buy diesel, formed at those stations still selling the fuel.

Public transportation officials announced that if they could not refuel their buses they would halt service today, a decision that affects at least 750,000 daily riders.

For the entire article go to San Diego Union.

It’s pretty amazing. Once upon a time people went south of the border to Mexico for romantic reasons. They were escaping the reach of the American law. They were getting married or getting divorced. They were young and restless, looking for a good time in the Tijuana night spots, drinking and cavorting. Looking for the fabled donkey show, or for the more romantic sort that special girl or boy who amid all the drinking still cared enough not to throw up on their sandals.

Stories abounded about kids getting a little too frisky and getting thrown into jail. Their parents or whomever who would have to shell out some cash to get them out. There were stories about the nasty stays in jail, known by most as life changing experiences. The Kingston Trio wrote a song about it, titled appropriately enough, “Tijuana Jail.” If you survived it all, and usually you did, it was a right of passage.

Then, even today there are the short hops from the California Border to Rosarito Beach and Ensenada for beer fests, partying and the occasional lobster meal. You could ride horses on the beach, cheaply. You could buy great Mexican tile by the truckload and save money on your home renovation. You could buy leather goods and switchblade knives. Cheap ones, but it was a five minute thrill to flick it open and closed a few dozen times.

Now you go south of the border to buy gasoline. More specifically, it’s diesel fuel you buy at half the price. You venture to Mexico for diesel fuel, prescription drugs and dental and medical work. It’s cheaper. There are chartered buses for the dental and medical work. For the diesel fuel, you need your car or truck.

So the lines form. Orderly lines, I’m sure. All while the Mexican drug cartels duel it out on the border town streets, killing each other in record numbers. While you buy diesel fuel.

Some world. Eh, Ese`?

The Death of Satire…the New Yorker Obama Cover

It’s hard to miss all the controversy raging over the New Yorker Magazine cover, depicting Barack Obama as a flag burning Muslim and his wife, Michele, as an Ak-47 toting radical guerrilla. The media is apoplectic. Pundits and politicos are practically dripping with self-righteousness. As I sit and write this, Bill Bennett blunders about its bad taste while James Carville defends the cover in the name of the New Yorker’s time honored history of satire. At any moment peasants with pitchforks will gather before the New Yorker offices, demanding the head of its Editor-in-Chief, David Remnick.

Let me say at the top that is is far from my favorite New Yorker cover. In fact, this wouldn’t make the top twenty . Nothing will ever compare to the iconic and monocled snooty man in his high hat or the graphic depiction of a New Yorker’s perception of the fair island of Manhattan compared to the seemingly menial expanse of the the rest of the country. No, this cover doesn’t possess by half that kind of aesthetic quality. But it is selling magazines.

At a time when all print media is hurting, this cover has arguably more to stimulate interest in the New Yorker than just about anything else. Forget the fact that its covers for decades have established a benchmark for graphic quality in magazines. It’s cartoons are smart, incisive and actually funny. Historically speaking, some of the best writers in our nation have contributed to its pages. David Remnick defends the cover as satire. He claims the cover is to draw attention to all the misconceptions about Barack Obama and his alleged Muslim and anti-American past.

By animating public concern to a cartoon caricature, the cover , Remnick claims, is designed to put the lie to Michele Obama’s alleged dislike of America. While I believe the cover could have been better, I believe Remnick and the New Yorker has accomplished what they set out to do. Everyone is talking and light is being shed on the darker corners of a series of spurious allegations about Obama. That, overall, is a good thing. You can believe he is the best person for President, or you can think otherwise. The main thing is to understand who is really is and what he isn’t.

When ten to twenty percent of the nation still believes he is a Muslim, that he was sworn in to the Senate on the Koran, and all the other foolish allegations, we have a problem. More so, clearly the regular media, the sincere media, isn’t getting through with all if its soppy ingenuousness. Lord knows, we have seen enough and heard enough as the media has milked this campaign for all it is worth. But, still, a quarter of the population thinks he is a Muslim, has been a Muslin, may be a Muslim…what’s a Muslim?

So enter satire, doing service where it does it best. Going over the top to elucidate a murky discussion that no truckload of pundits with all their stiff necked sincerity can ever accomplish. Enter satire, although, sadly, most fail to recognize it for what it is. Most have been so programmed, so dumbed down by relentlessly bombastic media that they can’t differentiate ingenuousness from exaggeration. This is disturbing.

This could mean that that satire is all but dead. One of the great vehicles in history, one of the best means of shedding light on an issue by infusing it with humor and hyperbole is dying slowly in our very literal world. That and irony are, if not lost arts, are arts losing the battle of attrition against an increasingly closed minded and literal world.

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To support this rather horrific theory, unintentionally, of course, CNN’s commentators asked people on the street to interpret the cover. They didn’t get it. Not a clue. Maybe it was a bad survey sample, but everyone of them didn’t see it as satirical. They saw it as racial, offensive, threatening, and horror beyond horrors…negative. Oh, my, negative. We live in such a positive world, after all.

We are a nation that clamors for photos of our celebrities’ children. We are a media that will pay millions for photos of our celebrities’ babies, or for that matter any scrap of lurid knowledge about the most inconsequential people. And this is a nation that wants to kill off the satirical form and render irony to its marginal place among the twelve remaining people who can perceive it.

Why? Because we are literal. It is convenient to be such. We are intolerant. We are, culturally speaking, a bore. While we proclaim individual and social freedoms with our hair, tattoos, music, religious practices and personal hygiene or lack of it, we are increasingly a constrained and stultified nation that is on brink of being able to recognize an original thought. Or distinguish satire from reality. Somehow we got it in our heads, we have the right to not be offended. Nothing should impinge upon our social, political or religious sensibilities.

No contrarian should go over the top in making our point of view look ridiculous. Somehow we have garnered some convoluted interpretation of the First Amendment to where we believe that nothing offensive should pass through our ears or by our eyes. We do not want to our life perceptions threatened by another point of view. So whether we are politically correct or politically inept, we kill anything that challenges our senses. The worst thing is we don’t even know what we risk losing.

If we haven’t killed satire, we have dealt its tradition a terrible wound. We have stomped its relativity with our Crocs and Thongs. And tomorrow, we will probably feel better for it. We will feel safe and less threatened by that awful bugaboo, a magazine cover.

Perhaps sometime in the distant future a more enlightened population will find great works of satire under the rubble of our literal thoughts. They might even find the dreaded New Yorker Magazine cover of Barack and Michele Obama. I wonder what they will think of it.

The Soul of the Machine

Automated Content Will Unmake Existence

By Jason Lee Miller – Fri, 07/11/2008 – 12:53pm.

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Hug a writer today

Chess is one thing, but if we get to the point computers can best humans in the arts—those splendid, millennia-old expressions of the heart and soul of human existence—then why bother existing? For the entire article go to webpronews.com

I truly enjoyed reading Jason Lee Miller’s article. Not only does he explore some excellent points, but anyone who can cite Jorge Luis Borges in this day and age will always garner my respect and attention.

I am a writer. I have been a writer since my latter teen years when I was first paid by an Urban Weekly, Nightlife Magazine, to write short pieces on the various politicos and characters who frequented the night clubs and bars in North Philadelphia. It was there I found true affirmation of the power of the word among the semi-literate folk who read this politically oriented paper, published by a pair of brother-in-laws. Here in this modest publication, they were able to see what was written between the lines in the mainstream press, or not at all, with regard to local social and civil issues.

Since then I have written damn near everything. I have written for newspapers, have written ad copy, public relations pieces. I have published novels and non-fiction books and have had scripts produced for television and film. Along with the world of background checks and corporate investigation, I have immersed myself in the arts for more decades than I care to disclose.

And what does this mean, exactly? It means one thing. It means that in no time either in history, or in the future will the automated process every capture the heart and soul of the art created by a living human being. To do so, one most suffer, and if not suffer at least experience. Automated content has no experience, only the simulation of experience. And despite the multitude of stale novels and paint by numbers screenplays, there is no substitute for the expanded experience of life.

Experience builds soul. And from soul comes the heart of creation and the ring of truth and the insight conveyed by our better art. No algorithms or data banked sequence of events will ever capture the emanations of the human soul. That is to say, it may be possible to emulate sentimentality and perhaps even muster up a half decent action movie or predictable love story. But no algorithm will every explore the minute but significant differences Milan Kundera ventured forth in his “Unbearable Lightness of Being.” There will be no exploration the dark Southern History as evidenced in Faulkner. You can forget about experiencing the mad mix of mathematics, magic, passion and soul found in Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” And no set of algorithms will delve into the consciousness and subconsciousness like our good friend Borges.

“Shakespeare in Love.” It just ain’t happening. The list goes on. But by now you get the point. I do however caution that the machine, as with many archetypal science fiction work, may well take over the delivery of content. And how can that happen? When we no longer care about the quality of art. When art is so dumbed down it looks like another episode of the wonderful and predictive film “Idiocracy,” where the population has democratized to the point of abject stupidity and total acquiescence to branding and cliche`.

It could come at a time when the society as a whole proclaims as did Rhett Butler in “Gone with The Wind,” “Frankly my dear…I don’t give a damn.” When people, even the more discerning souls, can no longer qualify and distinguish good art from bad, then it really won’t matter whether content is generated by humans or by machines. We will subscribe to imprecise jargon and vague generalities. We will be colored coded people in a paint by numbers world. The quality of art we generate as a civilization will no longer serve to mark the richness of our culture. What we generate as art, simply won’t matter. And that would matter. In fact, that would be a crying shame.