erich von broheim

elston @ 2008-11-24T18:29:00

2008-11-24T23:34:05Z

I knew the economy was struggling, but this excerpt of an interview with pessimistic economist Nouriel Roubini has taken me aback.

Interviewer: Your predictions of the current economic crisis have been startlingly accurate. What do you foresee in the first quarter of 2009?

Roubini: Continuing tightening of global credit markets...a decrease in global industrial production due to declines in first world consumption...rivers of blood...grown men openly weeping in horror...a weaker dollar in the world's currency exchange...

Interviewer: So your outlook continues to be pessimistic -

Roubini: ...an elderly woman who attempts to cry, but her eyes have been torn from her sockets...

Interviewer: Why have your economic forecasts been more accurate than your more bullish counterparts?

Roubini: The visions, they never cease. When I sleep, when I close my eyes, they are torn into the very fabric of my being. I cannot unwitness the future no matter how I try. Also, economists historically discount the effects of bubble speculation.

Interviewer: When will this market cease to be a bear market -

Roubini: I would take issue with the idea that this is a "bear" market. At least a bear throws you down, kills you and leaves you for dead. I would liken this market to a bear with a time machine who goes back and ruins all of your life's happiest moments before finally terminating you. Or a bear with some sort of multi-dimensional travel device who destroys every possible permutation of your existence.

Interviewer: What advice would you give concerned investors?

Roubini: I advise investors to diversify their holdings. For instance, I would recommend that a portfolio include both sheep and small livestock in case we revert to a pre-industrial agrarian economy. But investors should also start to hold the ears of slaughtered foes, in case the outlook worsens to a lawless post-apocalyptic dystopia where savage cruelty and bloodlust reign untrammelled.

30

2008-09-12T18:21:12Z

I'm actually glad that my twenties, which have by and large sucked, are officially over at 10:35 this evening. I've celebrated so far by taking the day off of work, sleeping 10 hours and getting Five Guys for lunch. This evening I do have plans with actual other human beings. Then I'll drag this thing out through the weekend, seeing how much free booze and food I can score because my year of birth has a zero at the end.

Workin' two shifts, eatin' bologna

2008-09-03T00:31:47Z

RIP to Jerry Reed, a great picker and icon of 70's redneck cinema. In tribute, please enjoy these two Youtube videos with Mr. Reed: with Chet Atkins circa 1975, and accompanying Glen Campbell (who's wearing ridiculously constrictive short shorts and sporting a Brian-Wilson-cokehead-era beard) on "Southern Nights."

The worst thing that ever happened to anyone

2008-07-10T02:26:52Z

I somehow lost my Black Sabbath t-shirt. Since that was the only piece of clothing I owned that I liked (well, besides my Ash Ra Tempel t-shirt), I'm rather distraught. Maybe this is nature's way of telling me I'm too old to be wearing band t-shirts.

elston @ 2008-06-25T23:54:00

2008-06-26T04:00:24Z

They started blocking Livejournal at my job this week. While I've been running too low on the ol' inspirado to update mine recently, and most of you on my friends list are pikers who don't update (or else you all went to wherever the cool kids on the internet^ are these days), I still miss it. Oh, I still read when I get home, but since LJ is generally an at-work time killer it's generally too late to comment. So this is just to say that I hope you crazy kids in LJ-land are doing OK.

*funny because there are no cool kids on the internet

GREEN CALLS FOR "ANOTHER LITTLE BOY" TO COMBAT JAPANESE COMPETITORS

2008-06-19T19:13:13Z

I just got a wrong number at work from a writer from the Japanese Nikkei paper asking for a "Mr. Green." Now I'm kicking myself over missing a chance to ruin someone's reputation on an international scale.

Muse Sick and Our Memage

2008-06-09T14:46:57Z

"List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to."

ludickid did this one, and although I wasn't tagged, I'll do it anyway because it combines two of my favorite things - bleating about the music I love and procrastinating at work.

1. "Language City," Wolf Parade. Everyone I know seems to categorize these guys as typical Modest Mouse-sounding second tier indie rock. I'll admit they're not reinventing the wheel, but what makes them stand out to me is the quality of their craftsmanship - great instrumental hooks and a command of dynamics. This track builds gradually, with Dan Boeckner's catch-in-the-voice denunciation of city life and Spencer Krug's keyboard hook, rising to a desperate coda of "we are not at home / hang on the telephone." I am a sucker for frenetic finishes to midtempo songs, what can I tell you.

2. "Rolling Down the Hills (Spring Demo)," Glass Candy. One of my too-late-to-the-party discoveries this year was the slick nuevo-disco of the Italians Do it Better label.  This track is sleek and ominous, with that sumptuous horn line and Ida No's vocals providing just enough warmth to add pathos to the chilly aural atmosphere.

3. "Our Mother the Mountain," Townes van Zandt. I always filed this guy under "rootsy singer-songwriters," a genre I've never really gotten into, but I realized how wrong I was after actually listening to his records recently. Not just a great songwriter, but arranger as well; the hollow, lonesome flute that haunts this song like the ghost of the title makes this song. The "tu-ler-a-ly-oh" of the chorus with van Zandt's weary catch of the voice speaks volumes.

4. "90% of Me is You," Gwen McRae. From the Soul Jazz compilation Miami Sound, a collection of early 70s funk and soul. A slow burning crawl, with McRae's vocal alternating between insistance and vulnerability.

5. "I Spit on Your Grave," The Gaslamp Killer. This isn't so much a "song" as an hourlong mix of obscuro funk beats, old horror movie soundtracks and late 60s psych records from Asia and the Middle East.  This was a random blog find, I don't know much about this dude besides the fact that he's from San Diego, but it's killer (yeah, real clever -ed), cinematic in a low-budget slasher film sort of way.

6. "I Saw an Angel Die," Bobbie Gentry. Everyone knows "Ode to Billie Joe," but Bobbie Gentry's records are way underrated.  She was a hell of a songwriter who penned vivid short stories of Southern gothic love and death that would've made Flannery O'Connor proud. This song from the Ode to Billie Joe album makes "Ode to Billie Joe" seem positively opaque; it's obstensibly about a lost love, but is he real? How does he die? Is the whole thing just a shine-fueled hallucination? The effect is haunting, like briefly entering a time-slip into some lost Delta swamp scene.

7. "Prisencolinensinainciusol," Adriano Celentano. Just watch the video. I guarantee it will make your day, or at least your hour.

I'm supposed to tag 7 people, but I doubt 7 people read this. If you read this, I'd love to read yours, but it's cool if you don't wanna.

Someday, I will write an entry here that doesn't involve me complaining about something.

2008-05-28T12:15:26Z

I was awakened for the second time in a week by my apartment building's fire alarm. False alarm, again. This time it was at 5 am, the exact worst possible time - too late for me to be able to go back to sleep, just early enough to fuck up the rest of my day. At least the temperature wasn't in the 40s with heavy rain like last time. Also, my allergies are killing me and the Metro's starting to get that humid, fermented summery piss smell.

Good morning, everyone!

elston @ 2008-05-14T20:33:00

2008-05-15T00:39:12Z

I made another muxtape, an assortment of airy, zippy pop songs designed for warm and sunny springtime weather. Dig, if you will.

elston @ 2008-04-24T11:05:00

2008-04-24T15:34:56Z

So, anyone else disturbed by the news that we might be running out of fucking rice? Like any overprivileged Westerner, I think of rice as one of those omnipresent staples that never runs out. I foresee a dystopian rice-free future where Chinese food delivery men are our post-apocalyptic warriors and street gangs battle for supremacy in the husk of long-since-abandoned P.F. Chang's.

I've always hoped that the collapse of society wouldn't happen until after my death, but that dream isn't looking too good right now. Between food shortages, the worldwide financial crisis, global warming and peak oil, it looks like I'll be spending my middle age years in a shotgun shack tirelessly defending my supply of potted meat and canned peas.

elston @ 2008-03-28T10:03:00

2008-03-28T14:06:14Z

Muxtape is my new favorite web discovery - it's a web based music player that allows you to make 12 song playlists. Here's mine, a 40 minute sampling of some prime 80 proof rock and roll. Check the site out before it inevitably gets shut down due to copyright violations.

RIP to the guy in this icon

2008-03-26T17:15:25Z

Richard Widmark died at age 93. He was great in two of my favorite noirs of all time: Kiss of Death (as the cackling, old-lady-pushing heavy) and Night and the City (as the small time hustler whose big schemes go horribly awry, as they always do in film noir). One of my favorite character actors of that era, and I'm embarrassed to say that I thought he had died a long time ago. (Admittedly, I tend to assume that anyone famous before 1950 or so has long since died.)

Number of women in their 20s wearing black frame glasses that I saw at Whole Foods this evening

2008-03-25T03:48:24Z

elston @ 2008-03-21T10:32:00

2008-03-21T14:38:16Z

Forget the free accounts/advertising business. There are many, many more reasons to picket against Livejournal that the Man doesn't want you to blog about. For example:

- All coding outsourced to Guatemalan natives making 15 cents a day
- The illegal dumping of 23 tons of Harry Potter fan fiction in the Schuykill River
- Pinkertons hired to smash strikers' skulls, force them to fill out "Which cast member of Night Court are you?" quizzes on strike day
- Company employs creepy older dude who totally reads all teenage girls' locked entries
- Ask.com pinball banner stating "Just click to start the fun!" not actually fun
- Editorial bias clearly anti-geek, pro-dork

elston @ 2008-03-03T16:27:00

2008-03-03T21:58:42Z

I've been working the past few weeks at a research institute in Georgetown. I'm not enjoying it for many reasons (not metro-accessible, the commute is hell, the work is dull and tedious), but there is one redeeming factor - the deli across the street sells Boylan's Cane Cola. I had one of these when I was in New York a while back and became immediately hooked, and this is the first place in the DC area I've found that sells it. It's just cola that's made with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, but drinking this stuff makes you realize how cloyingly sweet and cheap tasting regular HFCS Coke is in comparison to the real thing. Now I can't drink HFCS sodas without noticing how smooth Boylan's goes down in comparison, or that disgusting HFCS after effect that makes you feel like your teeth are coated in river slime, or how a 12 ounce of real sugar cola is all you need while HFCS soda just makes you thirstier and thirstier. It's probably a blessing in disguise that I can't get this stuff often because I would probably drink it all the time instead of useful things like water or booze.

BREAKING, MUST CREDIT ELSTON.LIVEJOURNAL.COM

2008-02-12T03:05:04Z

MIKE HUCKABEE TO QUIT PRESIDENTIAL RACE, TOUR NATION IN FLIPPER COVER BAND WITH TYRA BANKS

Farewell, sweet prince.

2008-02-08T00:13:32Z

And I'll take with me the memories
To be my sunshine after the rain
It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday

elston @ 2008-01-27T23:23:00

2008-01-28T04:40:55Z

- I was trying to do my laundry today in my apartment building's laundry room when I walked in on one of the neighbor kids and her boyfriend in flagrante delicto. (Well, pretty close to it, at least - not in the act, but clearly working their way towards it.) I didn't really know what to do, so I just laughed nervously and put my laundry into the washer. They sorta laughed but the dude did flip me off. (Half-jokingly - I'm sure he was really pissed about my inadvertant cockblocking, but what do you expect in an apartment laundry room? I should also mention that the room is also filled with trash because they're painting the trash room, so the whole room stank of wet garbage. Kids these days, man; haven't they ever heard of car backseats? Bus station bathrooms? The small clearance behind the dumpster of a Wendy's?)

I guess the point of this story is this: if anyone reading this is casting a French bedroom farce, I can play the role of the naive young bellhop who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

- In other news, I'm trying to figure out what I purchased that put me on the mailing list for The Scooter Store.

elston @ 2008-01-24T18:35:00

2008-01-24T23:40:34Z

New job - it's ok, so far. It's less of a meat grinder than a larger firm and so far, everyone I've worked under has been at least tolerable. The roughest part has been adjusting to working on a regular basis. I took a three week sabbatical (two of those paid - ah, severance pay, I love you so) before starting here, spent a lot of time sitting around at the six months of the old gig, and honestly I was mailing it in for the last few months at the job prior to that. So, frankly, I haven't really worked that hard in almost a year. You get used to not doing anything and having the freedom to heavily procrastinate for what little you're given to do. So even though I've only been working a normal 40 hour week so far, I'm constantly tired and mentally drained. All I really ask of my day job is that it not envelop all of my free time or hasten my inevitable middle age heart attack. I'm taking it as a positive sign that so far this job isn't giving me constant low level nausea or making me injure my jaw from constantly clenching my teeth from anxiety.

elston @ 2008-01-13T23:12:00

2008-01-14T04:21:08Z

From the "personal of the day" web ad thing on the Onion: Fill in the blanks: "Giving in is sexy; resisting is sexier." Now, I don't know much about the whole online dating thing, but isn't one of the first rules of writing a dating profile "try not to say things a sexual predator would say"?

elston @ 2008-01-07T19:26:00

2008-01-08T00:28:20Z

In honor of tomorrow's New Hampshire primary, please enjoy this golden classic from the old blog: a transcription of the concession speech from my failed 2004 presidential bid. This time around, I'm throwing all of my support behind Claire Cruise.

elston @ 2008-01-01T18:56:00

2008-01-02T00:02:06Z

Be more social. Enough of the avoidance, already. Exercise consistently. I'm in the habit of exercising regularly for a couple of months here and there until I remember how much I enjoy not exercising. Of course, crush all enemies, but also revise enemies' list first (c'mon man, Mobutu Sese Seko has been dead for almost 10 years now). Get back into habit of consistent reading. Hopefully I'll do better than last year's resolutions; the only one I stuck to was the Wikipedia one and, let's face it, that was only because of the court order.

elston @ 2007-12-17T13:58:00

2007-12-17T19:13:19Z

I got a new job. More auditing, this time government contractors and non-profit organizations. I quit my old job last week, and I think everyone involved agreed that it was for the best. Gave notice on Thursday, was out the door on Friday, and aside from a couple of people who were nice about it no one noticed. Just as well, I suppose. So until I start in January, I have three weeks of sweet, sweet unemployment to enjoy. I have many various personal projects that I'd like to work on, but I don't work well in a unstructured environment so I'll probably end up sleeping a lot and keep busy doin' nothin'. I'm fucking exhausted after a couple of weeks involving 10+ job interviews, which is the worst career-related thing I can think of that doesn't involve being Phineas Gaged.

I'm hopeful that this will sort out the job situation for now, at least, and the kid will keep plugging away elsewhere. I can't guarantee that I'll cut down on referring to myself in the third person as "the kid," but it's on the list of future improvements.

elston @ 2007-11-27T10:21:00

2007-11-27T15:30:37Z

It's time someone came out and said it: "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band is based upon a false premise. Namely, the wager at the center of the song's conflict rests upon the idea that the devil is required to obtain a certain amount of human souls in a certain time period. ("He was in a bind 'cause he was way behind / and he was willin' to make a deal.") Are we really supposed to believe that the great ruler of the netherworld, the ultimate personification of all evil, the almighty bringer of fire and destruction, our dark master Satan, has a boss at the home office who's really riding him to make quota for the third quarter? That hell has to receive a certain amount of souls or else the stock price is going to drop out and massive layoffs will ensue? That Satan needs to up his commissions or else he's going to have to trade in the Mercedes for a Honda Accord? I think not, Mr. Daniels.

Glad I could help

2007-10-22T14:53:33Z

Phone conversation I just had:
me: Hello?
guy: Kevin?
me: Sorry, you've got the wrong number.
guy: I'm looking for Kevin Sterling.
me: I don't know him, sorry.
guy: Uh, OK.