Tag: villainy

photo essay: The National Clandestine Service

It was announced yesterday that the new National Clandestine Service, which will oversee our nation’s spying, will be headed by an unknown individual who will be known only as “José”. Immediately I heard flamenco music in my head, saw the shimmering heat of a Mexican town at the turn of the century, heard hoofbeats. A masked hero was racing to save us: ¡Zorro! However, given the track record of this administration, I doubt we’ll get Don Diego.

Here’s what we want:

Here’s what we more realistically should hope for:

And here’s what we’ll get:

Annals of Finance: Those Loan Checks in the Mail

You may have seen these things, I get a couple a month. A check arrives in the mail. Sometimes it’s an actual negotiable check, or if not it’s a binding voucher of some kind. It’s for a large sum of money, made out to me. If I cash it, it turns into an unsecured loan. I’ve always been curious why everyone wants to loan me $5000-$8000 without security.

I always shred these, since I don’t need any more debt. But I can imagine getting one of these and saying “Okay, I sure do need five grand right now” and cashing/redeeming the thing.

I looked at the latest one more carefully. The “check” is bilingual; they sent it to me Spanish side out. It’s for $6,000.95 (love the 95 cents). I can redeem it at any HSBC office. I have then taken out a loan for this amount at 29.980% APR. Because we still have some vestiges of government they have to tell me this in bold type, and also tell me my payments, how many payments there will be, and the total finance charges. This is a five year loan with monthly payments of $194.08 and:

The total finance charges are $5,643.85.

So that’s why they’re happy to loan that much.

GO GO GADGET 401(K)!!!

Your Personal Rate of Return from 01/01/2005 to 10/13/2005 is -5.6%

Your Personal Rate of Return is calculated with a time-weighted formula, widely used by financial analysts to calculate investment earnings. It reflects the result of your investment selections as well as any activity in the plan account(s) shown. There are other Personal Rate of Return formulas used that may yield different results. Remember that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

So ask yourself today: Could I have elm blight?

Eli Lilly & Company were kind enough to put this brochure in my doctor’s office. Actually, what they did was fund the University of Michigan who did it. It has things all over it saying how approved by all doctors it is, etc.

As you’ll see it consists of wan, blurry folk-art people wondering if they might have depression or if their medical problems might be getting worse due to depression. The message is “you quite likely have depression even if you think you don’t”. The best part, I think, is the series of scripts for convincing your doctor that you need treatment.

Faux naive iconography and suspect language behind the cut:

scans

Hellraiser: A Skin Creme for Men

The Guardian reports that the Chinese government is making cosmetic products out of the skin of executed prisoners.

After I finished retching and clawing at my face, I composed myself and thought “Hmm, there must be some way to get in on this one.” I figure there are going to be more executions here, mostly of younger people, and increasingly by lethal injection which leaves things looking good. One problem is that our Death Row population is mostly dark brown and our high-end cosmetics buyer tends to be light pink. I’m not sure whether we’re going to go with bleaching the convicts or just selling the products to tanning salons as Jared suggested.

Product name suggestions are Justice: Strong Supple Skin for Him and Lifeskin Recyclables Body Rejuvenator.

I move for a bad court thingy.

In the middle of the Gulf Coast remix of the Raft of the Medusa, we have the oddly synchronistic criminal “failure” of a hedge fund called Bayou, as beautifully reported by the Wall Street Journal. Entire latest article is behind the cut, because it’s sorta long. Here are the salient points for TL;DR purposes:

  1. $60 million “unaccounted for”!
  2. $101 million turned over to a gang of Arizona con artists who said they’d make up the shortfall for the fund manager!
  3. Fund manager’s attorneys have withdrawn from the case due to unspecified ethical considerations. Read: Oh shit we can’t defend this guy, oh shit he’s so fucking dirty, oh shit shit shit!
  4. Sham accounting firm! Sham accounting firm! Sham accounting firm!
  5. $3.5 million in Spongebob Squarepants checks!
  6. CFO writes suicide note, is checked into mental hospital!

I tell ya if we’re gonna fix this country, we have to run it like a business. That means into the ground after looting it, in case you’re curious.

story

Don’t believe the hype

Watch out for hysterical urban legends, unconfirmed reports, and exaggerated nightmare scenarios about looting in New Orleans. There’s looting and violence all right, and when all is told there are going to be some sad and frightening stories about it.

But who benefits from a lot of scare talk about masses of armed looters, snipers, and great crowds of the unwashed attacking rescue personnel? The people who want to blame the victims, that’s who.

All those officials who failed us are going to talk long and loud about the breakdown in civil order and the need for zero tolerance and lots of soldiers with guns. Don’t forget the real villains here: the people who didn’t give the evacuation order in time, the local agencies that left people on their own without transportion to leave, the federal agencies that pulled the funding for the levees, the President who couldn’t be bothered leaving his vacation until the corpses were floating already. They’d just love for you to concentrate on all those grimy underclass losers stealing beer and taking potshots at helicopters.

Keep your focus. The “grownups” in suits who were supposed to spend our tax money to save lives stood around while Americans died. If they try to look good later by shooting some pathetic losers for boosting a beer, it’s doubling their own crime.