Foresight Needed to Create Viable Future Tourist Industry for Failed American Civilization

Recent improvements in building technology have made it necessary for America to start planning for its decline now, if it is not to wake up in a few hundred years unable to compete as a tourist attraction for visitors from China and other emerging powers. That is the harsh message that is coming out of the recent International Conference on Planning for Urban Decay and Tourism (ICPUDT) held this week in Detroit, MI.

Although buildings made of stone have a good chance of surviving the time scales required to create a good future tourist industry, even that is in doubt because of the use of substandard, standard concrete in modern America.   But now the Japanese have invented ways to create concrete, essentially a form of liquid stone if you will, that lasts almost half as long as the classic Roman concrete.  "We are still not as good as the ancient Romans, damn them, but this is good enough for us to build structures that will last long enough to be viable tourist attractions.  I call on the patriotism of all true American construction firms to start using this new concrete in their work so that we can leave a legacy for our impoverished descendants."

The conference attendees were inspired by this announcements and also the breakthrough ideas in monument protection technologies and designs for future ruins that have the potential of enhancing tourist appeal.  The conference attendees also voted to approve and issue a report describing the threat to future tourism dominance in a collapsing civilization and to propose possible countermeasures that have the promise of creating an important tourism industry for the failed and otherwise shamed former superpower.

To see the danger most clearly, the conference report discussed the situation in Egypt and Rome, both of which have extremely important tourism industries which live off the extensive remnants of their glorious past. In both cases, what tourists see are not actually the ancient buildings and tombs, but what is left of them after their greedy and lazy descendants demolished  those buildings in the search for cheap building materials.

Was the passage of time the cause of this decay or was the building stripped for parts?

Although there was no consensus on what techniques should be used to protect our future tourist investments, there was general agreement that we have to start now. “It takes time and its hideously expensive to build these buildings that will represent us to future tourists. We have to start now and build in the protective techniques that will keep our children's children from destroying these buildings in order to make a fast dollar, or yuan, as the case may be”.

Three experimental techniques proposed in the final report of the conference include:

-- developing new materials that bond the facade with the underlying concrete so one can not remove one without removing the other,

-- making the windows out of transparent and incorruptable metal,

-- long-lasting explosive designs that kill anyone who tries to loot the building by dropping a wall or a roof on them (this is a revision of the classic booby-traps designed by ancient Egyptian architects to stop the looting of their ancient tombs), 

-- micro-encapsulated poison gas incorporated into the building materials that shatter and instantly kill the looters.

The conference report concluded that if America was going to fail to show the slightest planning in their economy, infrastructure and foreign affairs, but always go for the most stupid policies that make the fastest buck for the rich, then it is all the more important that we take care today to create a viable tourist industry for our impoverished and degraded descendants or the people who conquer them and live here now.

Already abandoned in Detroit, does this building have what it takes to survive 500 years and become a tourist attraction?

Article on recent work on reverse engineering Roman concrete
http://www.globalconreview.com/innovation/rome-gives-her-concrete-secrets/

Wikipedia page on Roman concrete
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete

The End of the VFX Community in Los Angeles?

As all historians know, when the final knife goes in and the body slumps to the ground in a pool of blood, the murder victim has in fact been threatened and dying for a very long time.   The final event, the slugs of hot metal that rip through the body, so to speak, are just the final acts of a much more involved process.

For example, the nominal date of the end of the Roman Empire in the west, 476 CE, was in no way the end of the Roman Empire, east or west.  It is just a convenient date used by historians who need to pick a date for the history books and chose one when the city was occupied briefly by a Germanic warlord for failing to pay a ransom.   The empire had certainly ceased to be very effective in the west  long before this, and the senate continued to meet for long after.

So when we review the end of the Los Angeles visual effects community, we may as well pick an arbitrary date, but one that is at least symbolic, just as with the nominal date of the end of the Western Roman Empire.

I propose that this date is last week when Sony Imageworks announced that it was moving its headquarters to Vancouver, Canada.  In fact, there is still going to be some people working at Imageworks in Los Angeles, including Ken Ralston, ASC.  And there are other visual effects companies such as Digital Domain that seem to linger on as well as many of the smaller shops.

In fact, the Sony's announcement, which can be read here in the Hollywood Reporter, is confusing.  Are they moving people from LA to Vancouver? Or are they just not hiring more people in LA and hiring in Vancouver?  It isn't clear.  What I hear indirectly is that they are moving people up north, however, or maybe perhaps they are just expecting people to move up north on their own.   Like I say, it isnt altogether clear.

But we can certainly say that the Los Angeles visual effects community which used to be several thousands of people, is a remnant of itself, never again to be the avant garde of a form of filmmaking that it helped to invent.

Rest in Peace.

Janie Fitzgerald in the LimeLight

It happens, now and then, that someone I know and like, keeps coming into my life, but only briefly, and then disappears. But as time goes by the person, who I think the world of, with hard work and talent, becomes a successful working artist. I am just in awe of this, to do this in this changing economy and with the wild technology changes is completely exceptional.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I met a woman named Janie Fitzgerald. I don't remember the first time we met, but it might have been at Limelight. Ah, LimeLight. One of the most glamourous and successful of the music video production companies, with headquarters in London, and an office in LA.

The year must have been 1988 and Brad and I were just starting deGraf/Wahrman and had been invited to present our reel to them. They were casting for a music video, were thinking of using computer animation, which was a completely new and somewhat trendy art form, and somehow we had been recommended to them. So Brad and I showed up and sat in the most amazing waiting room in the world. No adolescent male in his wildest dreams could have imagined the situation. We were surrounded, literally surrounded, by an uncountable number of some of the most beautiful young women in Los Angeles. I would guess that they were all roughly 18-24 in age, dressed to kill, and that there were not less than 20 of them packed into this little room while Brad and I sat and waited for our turn and tried not to notice the potent pheremones that surrounded us. Packed like sardines in a can, literally sitting on a bench squeezed between not less than 10 or 15 of these archetypal objects of teenage lust, candidates no doubt for some insanely exploitative music video, we were completely immune to any distraction from our devotion to 3D animation.

And lording over it all was the receptionist, Janie Fitzgerald, who seemed to think that Brad and I waiting in this room with these actresses was very entertaining.

She seemed familiar somehow. Had I met her at a party recently? Maybe.

The next thing I knew, Janie was working at Homer and Associates, a semi-competitor of ours and owned by our good friend Peter Conn. Now Peter at the time was married to Coco Conn, who was acting social director for the huge computer animation community in Los Angeles which must have numbered at least 50 people, if not more. For those who do not know my sarcastic style, the point is the community was tiny and a few years later there would be a tsunami of people, 2,000 at least, which essentially crushed and destroyed our little community the way an elephant crushes a bug. This was before that tsunami, when we all liked or at least knew each other and would go to parties at Coco Conn's house, or Jeff and Diana Kleiser's house, or at Chris Casady's place with Lynda Weinman, or at Gorky's downtown. (1)

This was in the days when computer animation was considered unproven and risky and before it was accepted by the entertainment industry.  This was back when an experimental computer artist could stand shoulder to shoulder with an animator for a Budweiser commercial and discuss the semiotics of digital production or the failure of the cultural myth.  This was before the fall from grace.   Janie was part of our community. I would see her now and then at these parties and it was always a pleasure.

Janie was working at becoming a professional still photographer. And so after about 5 years with Homer, perhaps 1994 or so, Janie went independent as a photographer, one of the most difficult fields that I know of to succeed in and yet Janie has been successful. She has never had a normal job since she left Homer and has been able to buy a house in Burbank, in other words she is a working professional photographer.

For some reason the Limelight incident, and Janie, was always in my mind. I am not sure why exactly, but she was.

Many, many years later when I was living in New York and had an office at the NYU Media Research Lab, perhaps the year was 2000, one night, perhaps 9 pm or so, I came to the lab and was walking down the hall, when I saw a woman walking towards me who looked amazingly like Janie. Not possible I thought. But yes, the lattice of causality that underlies the apparent coincidences of the material world was acting up again, and it was Janie, attending some special event as part of an Apple conference ongoing in Manhattan, I think.

Sill later, I found her on Facebook, and I have found Facebook to be very useful to keep in touch and see the progress of some of my friends.

So there it is, a successful professional photographer, and a really lovely person, working in this down economy and doing what she loves.

Yes, of course, it is obvious. I have had a crush on her since I first saw her at Limelight. In a room literally packed with actresses, starlets and ingenues I only noticed Janie, and it is only Janie that I remember.

But none of that matters.

Janie's personal web site is www.janiefitzgerald.com

Her professional web site is www.axisimages.com

___________________________________________

1. Gorky's completely disappeared when I was in NY in some sort of hideous scandal. But by that time the scene that I knew in computer animation had been destroyed by its success and so it really did not matter.

Gary Goddard and Succes de Scandale

This post may not be suitable for children of any age.

I have met a number of interesting people during the course of my so-called career. And many of them are in the news now and then. But recently someone I know has been in the news in a very awkward way and I have been debating what to say, if anything, about it.

A long time ago, deGraf/Wahrman did two very long, involved theme park productions for Harper Films and Landmark Entertainment. Landmark was founded by two partners, Tony Christopher and Gary Goddard and we worked mostly with Gary.   These two 70mm, stereo ridefilms for Harper and Landmark were among the last projects we did at deGraf/Wahrman.  It wasn't a happy time for anyone, the client or us.  By no means did these projects put us out of business, but it was certainly part of the bad feelings that seemed to be everywhere.   The projects got done, they are beautiful.  I do not have copies of either of them.   But in spite of the awkwardness I can tell you that I enjoyed working with Landmark and Gary.

Gary is a complete character. He is larger than life and filled with that sort of self esteem that can be measured by the ton. He directed Masters of the Universe (1987) which was arguably ahead of its time and plunged into creating a mammoth company called Landmark Entertainment to provide design and production services to the themed entertainment boom of the 1980s and 1990s. I know that something happened such that Gary was no longer associated but the company still seems to be there and doing well, at least as far as you can tell from an internet web page. I had and have confidence that Gary would transcend whatever problems he might be experiencing and be back on the scene.

He has, he believes, the common touch. The ability to conceive of and design and to understand what the average man and woman, boy and girl, expects and needs to see and experience in a themed environment. 

Anyway, Gary seems to be in the news these days in a big way. Unfortunately, it is not the best news. There seems to be some accusations about sleeping with ... well I dont know. It makes no sense to me. I just hope that none of it is true, and that he goes on to use this unplanned publicity to his advantage and achieve his creative destiny, whatever that may be.

Gary Godard (left) and Bryan Singer out on the town

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/new-sex-abuse-lawsuit-targets-701110

Doctors and Pharmacies, Please Hold Hands and Share

Everyone who reads this blog knows I see a variety of doctors and do a variety of interesting medications. I continue to maintain that I am lucky because the problems I have are mostly addressed by the medications and this is more than a lot of people can say.

The new policy is that I keep a good sense of humor no matter what happens.  I do the same thing when I am flying on airplanes, which is to cultivate a state of Zen-like calmness.  I just look puzzled and smile and try to get what I want.  No stamping of feet.  No snarling permitted. Absolutely no heads are to be ripped off no matter how much they may deserve it and no matter how much they might benefit from having their heads ripped off because it would build character.

But what amazes me, simply amazes me, is that the doctors and the pharmacies are on completely different pages as to what the DEA says the rules are.   Everyone has a different idea of what the rules are and anyone who has not dealt with the pharmacies seems to not realize what is going on.  Its not crazy exactly but it is at best annoying and can have results that waste a lot of time and often results in patients who do not get their medication for 72 hours or so if ever.

Do you think they could bother to learn what the rules are so that the patient does not have to always appear to be correcting their doctor and be in the middle between the doctor and the pharmacy?

But it will never get better.

It is my karma to deal with this for the rest of my so-called life.

Curse you, Drug Enforcement Administration, you have truly succeeded in your goal to make my life more miserable!

http://www.justice.gov/dea/index.shtml

Underbidding in Visual Effects: Coercion, Communication and Trust

In our previous two discussions of “underbidding in visual effects” (here and here) we discussed the reasons why a facility might intentionally underbid (for example, to drive a competitor out of business) and we discussed why a facility might underbid by mistake. But we have only scratched the surface of what the glamourous and rewarding motion picture industry means by underbidding in visual effects.

The first thing to realize is that most of the time the label of underbidding is applied retrospectively to a job. Oh, something went wrong, it must have been underbid. For example, suppose the client turns out to be an asshole who says one thing but wants another but doesn't want to pay for it. Then if you are in a big fight with this client, it can be said that you underbid the project, because frankly it wasnt worth the trouble to deal with that asshole at the rate you are charging. In that circumstance, you may say that you underbid the project, it is a judgment by the facility after the fact.

But lets take another scenario. Lets say that the client is being unreasonable, doesn't know what they want, change their mind constantly, yet wants more and more but doesnt want to pay for it and wants you to pay for it. Then the client will want to pin the blame on the facility and will say that ha, you were incompetent, you underbid the project and therefore it is your responsibility to bend over and do whatever the client wants.

There are also a number of types of underbidding by coercion.

Here are two case studies from the 1990s in which the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

In scenario #1, a large motion picture studio has built a very expensive visual effects studio on their lot in order to keep all that big money spent on visual effects internally. A large special effects project is scheduled and the director, who is known to be insanely difficult, wants a deal on the visual effects in order to use the on-lot facility. He refuses to do the picture unless he gets a deal, and the facility, therefore does make a deal, they agree to do a certain number of shots for a fixed amount. That was a big mistake because the director had every intention of packing as much into that limited number of shots as he could in order to ream the effects studio a new asshole and basically help finance his film by making the vfx studio lose money. And thats what happened, after a lot of screaming, the vfx studio did as they were told and lost their shirt on it. But since it was a part of this larger studio, that financed the film, it was really the studio that got fucked but blamed the vfx studio. This project was “underbid”.

Keep in mind, the last thing a producer or director wants to do is to use an in-house effects facility.  As long as the vfx is outside the studio, then the director and producer have complete control.  But when it is in-house, then studio politics come into play, on both sides.   You get to complain if the facility is too expensive or too slow or not doing the quality of work that you want, but they get to complain too.  That you change your mind, that you want them to work for free and so forth.  They are inside the kimono, inside the sacred square, they know where some of the skeletons are buried and they can fight back.  So you would much prefer to work with an established reliable off-lot facility that you have relations with, that you have worked with before.   And from the facility point of view, working with an in-house film means that they have to navigate all the forces that are applied to them from the studio to lower prices, etc, that is outside of your judgment of how much time and money it should cost.  In other words, you are being coerced. 

In scenario #2, a director has a limited amount of money for their film, and awards it to a very competent smaller effects studio, very little money very little time. This was basically a favor by the vfx studio for the director, but they also wanted to do this movie, so it was mutual.  In other words, the director did not have enough money but the vfx studio offered to do what they could for the money available and the director promised to work with them to get it all done.  But the director had every intention of demanding the most expensive work no matter how long it took, and fucked the effects facility as hard as he could. Then the studio pulled the job and gave it to ILM, forcing ILM to manage the director because they, the studio, did not have the balls to do so. The movie did come out and was a big success. The original vfx studio was no doubt damaged by this bullshit, none of which was their fault. When ILM did the work, they charged an arm and a leg, why not? And the studio that made a huge amount of money on the film, it was a big hit, had not forgiven ILM 10 years later. 10 years later they were still complaining that ILM had charged them real money for a movie that was in trouble because of the choices that the director and the studio had made. Oh yes, it goes without saying, that when ILM was involved, the studio found the time and the money needed, the time and money that was not available when the little vfx studio was involved.

So what is the real problem here? Is it underbidding by the VFX studio? No, I dont think so. Sure thats part of the problem. But maybe the real problem is incredibly difficult clients who want the world for nothing combined with asshole visual effects studios who are always trying to undercut each other and put each other out of business, in a business that is fundamentally a work-for-hire production service one the facility can not be profitable most of the time anyway.

And why can't visual effects be profitable? That is a topic for another time.

A Story from World War 2 for Memorial Day

revised

In honor of Memorial Day, here is a story that my father told us, my brother and I, about his time in the Solomon Islands as a writer for the US Marine Corps in World War 2.

Part of the charm of studying history is to figure out what you need to know to understand the events described.   People are people at some fundamental level, of course, but many other things are different and people at the time had strong opinions on topics we may have never even heard of.   And things are different in subtle ways that can lead to misunderstandings when we try to understand them today.

In the little story that follows, to really appreciate the story you have to know something about the people and personalities not just during World War 2, but after the war as well, in the 1960s in America.   And so while I think the significance of the story below was obvious to someone like my brother and myself, it would be less so to someone who was born in 1980 and did not know much about their own history, which is to say, most people in America.

Another part of the appeal of this little story, at least to me, is that it is possible, if one pays attention, to figure out the punchline of the story by little clues dropped along the way.   

My father was what we used to call in this country a “newspaperman” who was someone who made his living as a journalist for one of the daily or weekly newspapers. Many well known writers of fiction from the 20th century were newspapermen, including Damon Runyan and Ernest Hemingway. Many of these newspapermen knew each other personally as it was a small and incestuous community.

When World War 2 happened, quite a few of these patriotic newspapermen volunteered for the Armed Services and many went to war, often as what was called a “Combat Correspondent”, which is to say that they were professional writers in uniform for the newspapers that the military used for internal communications. In this case, my father volunteered for the US Marine Corps, hoping to get a cushy job in Washington but instead being sent to to the humid, disease ridden, dangerous and annoying Solomon Islands, famous for being the location of Guadalcanal. They gave him a cute little portable typewriter which we still have.

It is a truism of military life that most of the time is spent enduring incredible boredom and usually in uncomfortable circumstances. That was certainly the case for my father who was normally bored out of his mind, at least until he got malaria like nearly everyone else and got sent home within the year weighing about 80 lbs.

One day, while being bored, a friend of his came by that he had known before the war. This man was from Boston, also a newspaperman, and was Irish which of course is an important ethnic group in the history and politics of Boston. I think his name was Joe Flaherty, but I am not totally sure. Anyway, he said that he had received a letter from one of the leading society ladies (doyens) of Boston who had asked him to do a favor for her.

She was writing because she was worried about her son, who had been thought to have been killed when his ship went down a few months ago but had survived the wreck of his ship and had been hiding from the japanese on a nearby deserted island.  Her son had damaged his back and he was laid up in a Naval hospital.

This woman had recently lost her eldest son in the war in Europe and did not believe anything she was told. What she wanted Joe to do was to go visit her son in the hospital and report back to her.

So Joe was on his way to the island where the hospital was located and he invited my father to go along with him. Having nothing better to do, my father said sure, and they took a shuttle to the other island where they spent the day with a nice young man and future President of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy who had damaged his back when his ship went down and was also bored, flat on his back, in this hospital.

Of course the woman who had written the letter was Rose Kennedy, daughter of Mayor John Fitzgerald of Boston and married to the US Ambassador to England, Joseph P Kennedy, Sr. The disaster that had nearly killed her son was the sinking of PT 109 by a Japanese destroyer on August 2, 1943.

Is the Giant Pangolin Evidence of Evolutionary Convergence in Cartoon Villains?

We are all aware of the controversies around the issue of whether or not evolution should be taught in our public schools and/or whether this "theory" should be augmented with other theories that may explain the world we see around us.  One theory in particular, the so-called "intelligent design" theory calls upon a particular hypothetical cosmic energy source that although invisible has caused the design of all the millions of existing types of creatures, not to mention the billions that no longer exist.  

I have recently come across a strange relationship between one of these existing creatures, the Giant Pangolin of central Africa, and a certain classic cartoon character archetype: the weasel. This relationship has the potential to break open the entire discussion of evolution vs intelligent design and extend it to the role that this potential cosmic energy source has had in the creation of genres of the cinema.   I think you will see from the discussion below that "intelligent design" may very well need to be added to the "auteur theory" in our film schools, except perhaps instead of "intelligent" this type of cosmic design might more properly be called "whimsical".  Yes, I propose that it is "whimsical design" that may need to be added to the discussion of theory in our centers of film education.

I was having a discussion with Professor Ken Perlin of NYU about how one properly categorizes an animal as a biped (which most humans are, at least after the age of about two except when very drunk) versus other animals with or without backbones that have legs, flippers and wings.   It turns out that this issue is more subtle than it might at first appear with criteria based on such things as how often and for what purpose a creature is believed to walk, hop, shuffle or otherwise proceed on two legs.   For example, birds on the ground stand and ambulate on two legs, but they can be said to more properly hop than walk.   Are they then bipeds?  

In researching this topic, I came across a type of animal I had never even heard of before, let alone had ever seen: the giant spiny anteater of central Africa, aka the Giant Pangolin.   This improbable creature is known to spend quite a bit of time walking on its two hind legs as it proceeds to terrorize the locals of Africa with its large size (over a meter) and its amazing and intimidating profile as it goes about its business decimating unlucky ant colonies in its ravenous path.

You dont see one of these every day in America, thank goodness.

Although the Giant Pangolin were entirely new to me, yet they seemed strangely familiar somehow.   It took me over a day to realize where I had seen something like this before.  The Pangolin reminded me of an important type of villain in the classic cartoon, the Weasel.    Most prominently known as the evil sidekicks in Roger Rabbit (1988), they have been around cartoons for many years before that.

Here is an example from 1955 called Poop Goes the Weasel.

Is this resemblance an accident?   An example of evolutionary convergence?  Or is it something else, something more important, proof of a divine and loving God who causes bizarre semi-bipeds in Central Africa to be styled after cartoon archetypes in a medium barely a hundred years old?   We may never know the answer to this burning question but it seems to me that this issue needs to be fairly and impartially presented to students in our public film institutions in order to give a balanced account of what we know about where our character archetypes used in film come from. This is a vital issue I think.   And how ironic if it turns out that Whimsical Design is accepted not in the science community but in the elite film communities. Its not very likely to happen, but it might, and we will just have to see.

For a discussion of whether or not an animal is biped or not, see this paper by Alexander.

Scientific Breakthrough in Visualizing 3D Blood Leads to Bidding Frenzy

All Hollywood has been abuzz with rumors of a new technology which shows blood in 3D in a much better way. “This is what we have been waiting for”, said an anonymous studio executive, “what we have been begging scientists for all these years”.

The technology, created by a team at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brasil, is said to be able to solve problems in visualizing blood. And not just any blood, blood in 3D in particular.

“Don't expect me to be able to understand scientific mumbo jumbo”, said one executive who was part of a studio bidding team, “I don't know and I don't want to know. What I know is that the audience wants blood and more of it”.

“For years we have been waiting for computer animation to come up with something better than Technicolor Blood #1 and #2, but they have let us down”, said the executive. “Now we don't need to wait for those four-eyed geeks any more, we have the blood we have always wanted and they can go back to their workstations and rot for all we care.”

Is a remake of Fantastic Voyage in 3D in development?

Rumors of the new technology leaked out Monday via the various creative agencies who reported a strong, new interest from the studios for properties that can exploit the new technology. According to Creative Artists, they are seeking all spec scripts with “blood” in the title. “Bloody Monday, Bordello of Blood, Blood in Her Eyes, Oceans of Blood, Tsunami of Blood.... all of these are possible, anything is possible today. We are talking 6 and 7 figure deals as long as people can act fast and write bloody”.

Global Wahrman was able to reach lead author of the paper, Dr. Paula Rosas, in Brasil and asked her what she thought about the excitement that her paper had created. “We have no idea what these Yanqui morons are talking about,” she said, “but if they want to give us a bunch of US Dollars, we are happy to take them. These people seem to be totally crazy!” she laughed.

The paper, entitled Total 3D imaging of phase objects using defocusing microscopy: application

to red blood cells by Rosas, et alia, can be read at the following links:

Abstract:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.2968

Paper:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.2968v1.pdf

The Hills Illuminated by Fire and the Esoteric Prophecy of Human Resources

draft/in progress

At 2AM last night, I walked out onto my patio to check on my garden, where to my surprise I saw that the nearby hills were on fire. A layer of smoke lay over the valley. “Is this the time, Oh Lord”, I thought to myself, “Is now when the world will be cleansed of the sins of the wicked biped mammals who have turned away from the path of righteousness and wallow in the filth of self-aggrandizement and narcissism?”

As I watched a fire seemed to explode on a hill to my left. When I ran to get my camera and returned it had diminished to nothing much. So will the wicked explode, I thought with grim satisfaction, when they are touched by the vengeance of the Lord. A burst of flame and then nothing much.

Is this a sign that the End is near?

As I watched the hills burn down around me, my thoughts turned to happier times, years ago, when I consulted for Viacom in New York. There I made friends with a beautiful woman who was consulting for Human Resources on a special project.  Although we did not know it, Cindy and I were working on different pieces of a much larger, more important,  project than the one we were nominally working on.

We both thought we were on very different aspects of the Interactive Television AT&T Castro Valley Test but in fact those differences were irrelevant.  There was a real project that underlay the apparent project, and this was the project that was truly driving events.  You see, Viacom is a cable company, it exists and profits in a beautiful monopoly ordained by the Lord and granted by Our Government to those who are Worthy.  And in the interests of the Public, these monopolies are reviewed from time to time by the specific agencies of our government that hand out these monopolies to the rich.   Viacom's monopoly was up for review and as part of that review we demonstrated advanced technology in the public's interest, we had Sumner Redstone speaking at the Washington Press Club, I even contributed to the signage of a third party industrial press firm who was working on the publicity for this event.

But soon this very long process that the three of us, Cindy, Sumner and myself, had been involved in would be over and the monopolies given by certain agencies of our government would have been reaffirmed, the little theatre of interactive television having played its part, the forms having been observed, the lobbyists paid.   Then the blessed bloodletting could begin to sacrifice those who would through their wretched jobs stand in the way of the profits that rightfully belonged to the shareholders. 

Some might think that because these types of companies are in fact government created monopolies in their region and sector, that there might be some rules such that some of the money extracted from the consumer might also trickle down to the workers, perhaps in the form of employment.  But such a thing would be anathema in America.  The poor can go fuck themselves for all the government cares as long as they pay the taxes on their pathetic wages.  That is the way it has always been, that is the way it must always be. Anything else would be to turn away from the values that have made this country great.

Because Cindy liked me, she let me see the real Human Resource manuals, not the ones that they let the uninitiated see, but the secret one, the one reserved for the Elect.  She turned to the section on Layoffs and told me that it foretold the future and talked about the end times. She asked me to read it to her out loud.

I turned to the first page and read

The fire of God's vengeance will burn away the corrupt flesh from the body.

“Hallelujah!”, she said, and laughed.

____________________________________________