nothing you can touch

Find a gap in the market and fill it, preferably in a more efficient manner than your competitors can manage.

That axiom might seem straightforward enough, but it can be highly problematic when applied to industrial capitalism's economies of scale. While you might make terrific profits upon unleashing a new must-have commodity, there comes a point where sales stagnate in the face of market saturation, and demand based on consumption and attrition falls well short of your corporate target.

If you have a stove in your home, you're not going to buy another unless it stops working somewhere down the line. Perfectly logical....until you consider that economy is driven by consumption, or more accurately the assumption of ever-escalating rates of consumption. Zero sum is a heretical concept and plateaus are where the losers go to die from falling share prices.

This is why there is such a thing as marketing. Not marketing in the simple sense of letting potential customers know what you're offering and where to obtain it, but marketing in the high-powered, arm-twisting sense of creating urgent demands where they wouldn't otherwise exist. There are many tools in the overarching arsenal -- such planned obsolescence (which has worked so well for the automotive industry and -- hahahaha -- BluRay), presenting minor tweaks as essential features (Hello, consumer electronics biz!), and broadening the perceived functionality of a product in a way that will convince folks to buy even more of it.

That last one is an especially favored tactic of the fine folks in the food industry. These purveyors of processed palate pleasers have never passed up a chance to turn an iffy medical study into a full court "this shit essential for your health" press or an opportunity to present some product-intensive nightmare as the cutting edge of suburban ranch home cuisine...

...which brings us to this ad from the late 1970's:

Yep, that's right. Miracle Whip Popsicles.

I am a man who likes his mayonnaise (with which Miracle Whip has a tenuous and contentious familial relationship). That mix of egg white, oil, and vinegar adds just the right tangy zing to a chicken or turkey sandwich, and when I was a wee lad, my favorite snack was mayo smeared on a slice of Wonder Bread. (Don't judge until you've walked a mile in my boots, 'kay?) I also know people who use mayo or Miracle Whip in less orthodox culinary ways, like as a dessert garnish.

That said, I can't imagine what it would be like to snack on a frozen block of mayo substitute crammed with frozen strawberries and mini marshmallows. I definitely do not want to imagine how such an unintuitive concoction would handle the long (or maybe not so long) trip through one's gastrointestinal tract.

I want to assume the strawberries would mellow the oil-vinegar melange, but given that someone thought that faux mayo-sicles would appeal to the masses, I can't assume anything. To paraphrase Bruno Bettelheim, "the cultural history of the 1970's is a nightmare from which we have just begun to awaken."

Psychedelic Furs - Pretty in Pink (from Talk Talk Talk, 1981) - The 80's, however, were pretty cool once you got past the rise of Big Conservatism and the constant fear of nuclear armageddon. The music was certainly better, at least during the first half of the decade.

(Note: I must confess a certain nervousness about composing today's post, as there is evidence that making fun of misguided foodstuffs from previous decades can turn a person into an unfunny, self-righteous, batshit foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing ideologue. I'm trusting that you, my dear readers, will hold an intervention should I start to succumb to that malady.)

Halloween Countdown: October 27 - derivatives of the damned

The events leading up to the recent economic meltdown, as depicted in The Witching Hour #51 (February 1975):

It sounds like a sweet deal...until you realize that you've leveraged your immortal soul for far more than it is actually worth. When the spiritual commodities market crashes, it crashes hard, and no amount of intervention, government or divine, can stem the karmic tide.

(Satan, being the wily devil he is, was able to finagle a seven figure bonus for himself from the executive board just prior to the collapse -- and government takeover -- of the Beelzebub Brothers brokerage house.)

The Misfits - Horror Business (from the Horror Business EP; collected on The Misfits, 1986) - No Halloween Countdown would be complete without something from the Garden State's unparalled masters of horrorpunk, so here is the band's loving tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, Sid Vicious, and Nancy Spungen.

Patterson's People - Shake Hands with the Devil (from a 1966 single) - Here's a dandy little slice of 60's freakbeat that proudly wears its infernal raunchiness on its sleeve.

drill baby drill

Tom Smirch is a typical American...

"Fuck you, nanny state jerks! This is the land of the FREE!"
...with a typically American sense of moral obligation.

"Oh, well. If anyone asks, I'll say it was started by illegal immigrants."
Tom's ecological conscience makes him perfectly suited for work in the oil industry, where he can work to generate windfall profits while despoiling virgin landscape to make America independent from foreign oil.

You just know his truck is sporting a "Ron Paul '08" bumpersticker...
Tom is just trying to live the American Dream, but try explaining that to those pointed-headed liberal elitists bent on wrecking our cherished way of life...

Captain Marvel's flagrant disregard for IOKIYAR is appalling.
Because Marvel was too busy saving townspeople from the tar flood instead of rescuing Tom's excavation equipment, the drilling venture goes belly up and Tom is ruined....

...OR IS HE?

You're doing a heckuva job, Smirchy!
(From Captain Marvel Adventures #126; November 1951)

I was watching the fallout from the collapse of Bush's grand corporate welfare plan on the morning news. The network gave a considerable amount of screen time to various stockbrokers and speculators, who were universally unrelenting in expressing their contempt of Congress's lack of action.

I'm not convinced the bailout plan will work, and I'm certain that it won't help those folks who have suffered most from the market meltdown, but the last thing I need to see are the same motherfuckers who lined their pockets during the late smash-and-grab-a-thon bitching that the government isn't riding to their rescue fast enough. To quote Comrade Highlander, "my heart bleeds pish" for them. Let them pray to the trinity of Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman for succor...or is that "suckers?"

Transvision Vamp - Baby, I Don't Care (from Velveteen, 1989) - Schadenfreude loses much of its luster when innocents are caught in the vortex of comeuppance. Transvision Vamp loses much of its indie bubblegum luster when you realize that every song on every album sounds virtually identical.

Future Sound of London - It's Not My Problem (from Accelerator, 1991) - It's not my problem unless it affects me directly, in which case it's the WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED EVER AND SOMEONE NEEDS TO FIX IT RIGHT NOW.

coming home to roost

The present financial crisis, as explained and resolved in six panels of a Golden Age comic book:

(from Captain Marvel Adventures #112; September 1950)
A fundamental weakness in the underpinnings of market capitalism? Pshaw! It's all about telepathic waterfowl seeking to undermine our entirely sound and totally rational system of unrestrained greed, long since freed from the petty shackles of effective oversight. Thankfully, we have a government that is compassionate enough to insulate the titans of finance from their own self-destructive tendencies and is willing to commit as much of the taxpayers' money as is required to cover the speculators' losses.

Hey, it's an emergency. We can discuss accountability and regulatory issues later, after the the wheelbarrows full of cash and lines of low-interest credit have been dispensed to the poor, poor plutocrats who have already suffered so much. Please, pay no mind to the restructuring of the banking regulations that were created to prevent commercial banks from dabbling willy-nilly in the investment banking sphere. We need to be grateful that these entities were willing to buy out their failing cousins in a time of crisis, so just put aside any worries that this will pose an even greater economic risk down the line.

When the worrybird cackles, a quick response is required. As for those of you who will ultimately foot the bill for the bailout, and who have been suffering the most from the turmoil....well, you should have been more responsible with your financial affairs. Next time, don't take out a subprime mortgage to buy a home -- buy the firm that uses such mortages as security to game the markets. Then the government might be willing to slip you a share of that sweet $700 billion.

The Rare Breed - Beg, Borrow, and Steal (from a 1966 single; collected on the Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era box set, 1998) - This single was re-released in 1967 and credited to the Ohio Express, one of the many faceless bubblegum proxy groups used by songwriters and studio wizards of the period, though the actual touring line-up of the "band" hadn't yet been assembled. So don't expect to hear any similarities between this respectable slice of garage rock and "Yummy Yummy Yummy."

Action Pact! - Who's to Blame (from Survival of the Fattest, 1984) - It's a shame the 80's Britpunk scene imploded when it did, as there were a number of bands that were on the verge of breaking away from the formula (while not falling into the standard hard rock/metal/grindcore career trajectory) before it all came crashing down. You can hear it in the studio side of The Partisans' The Time Was Right LP, which sounds like nothing else recorded before or since, and you can hear it to a milder extent in Action Pact's second album, from which the above track was taken.

Wire - Let's Panic Later (from an EP included with, and later appended to 154, 1979) - It is impossible to calculate the creative debt indie rock owes to Wire....unless you're talking about Elastica, in which case the exact sum has been recorded in an out-of-court settlement.

Note: My other project, pronounced WOO-BIN, celebrates its second week of existence with a recital of the most sublime verses ever penned by human hands.

you are the big one

While it may have been perfectly fine in 1950 to create a gag strip featuring an aspiring hammy actor named "Whitey Way" (as in "The Great White Way"), the name carries a whole truckload of non-Broadway connotations for present-day readers...

The Heart Throbs - Kiss Me When I'm Starving (from Cleopatra Grip, 1990) - The pillars of the speculation-based economy may be crumbling around us, but my love for melancholic indie pop remains forever solvent...especially when the piece in question sounds like a jam session between The Banshees and The Primitives.

dispatches from the front

Yahoo may currently be a corporation under siege, but that hasn't prevented its ever-sagacious staff from addressing the burning questions of the now...

Remember: It's not a bailout. The current administration doesn't believe in bailouts. It's a gentlemen's agreement that uses taxpayer money and a minimum of accountability in regards to the mismanagement that caused the failure in the first place, okay?

Should you lack access to the circles of crony capitalism's largess, or if you or someone else in the financial services supply chain chose to forgo the FDIC's safety net because the program smacked of dirty Bolshevism, here are some other potential courses of action to take after your assets have evaporated:

- Take a drive up to the mountains with a loaded shotgun and a bottle of whiskey in order to "meditate" upon the situation.

- Check the various blood banks to get the best quotes per pint on sales of plasma.

- Learn to appreciate the taste of uncooked ramen noodles washed down with store-brand mouthwash.

- Cash out the tattered remnants of your 401k and invest in ten-dollar scratch tickets.

- Read up on the insulative properties of newspaper and which large appliance boxes are most resistant to rain damage.

- Explain to your children that college is for effete snobs, and that "true blue Americans" sign up for unbenefitted minimum wage service jobs as soon as they drop out of high school.

Rubella Ballet - It'll Never Happen to Me (from At the End of the Rainbow, 1990) - The playful, day-glo side of anarchopunk, bouncing out with some very danceable beats and a song title that effectively serves as the mantra of the American theory of disaster capitalism.

...and when all else fails, perhaps a change of career is in order:

While the world lurches toward economic, social, and environmental collapse, it's gratifying to know that science is doing its damnedest to answer the hard questions...like whether or not it would be feasible for man to dress up as a flying rodent and throw explosive boomerangs at petty criminals.

Fuck clean drinking water or ecologically sustainable fuel sources, this is the shit that really matters -- taking discussions usually reserved for the dank stinky basement of fandom (i.e. the CBR and Newsarama forums) and elevating them to the level of infotainment in service to the current overhyped blockbuster movie of the moment.

The Selecter - Three Minute Hero (from Too Much Pressure, 1980) - Though often overlooked (in favor of The Specials or The Beat) when I'm looking for a quick fix of second-wave ska, The Selecter's Too Much Pressure and Celebrate the Bullet never fail to impress me when I do make the effort to give them a spin. That's the problem with having an extensive music collection and not a lot of free time -- I tend to gravitate to that handful of perennial favorites within arm's reach instead of keeping a representatively diverse playlist.

the root of all evil

The above lesson on the nuances of mythological avarice is the reader's introduction into "Captain Marvel Fights the Menace of Greed" from Captain Marvel Adventures #111 (August 1950). The story is a quaint piece of agitprop crafted to evangelize on behalf of the post-WW2 "enlightened" variety of capitalism while dispelling any lingering spectres of Depression Era socialist agitation.

While popular mythology might lead one to think that the national consensus of the World War II period continued unbroken though the mid-1960's, the truth is that the immediate post-war years were a time of rampant labor unrest. There were a significant number of Americans who remembered the hardship of the Great Depression and who had given of themselves, overseas and on the homefront, during the war years who were determined not to be cut out of loop when it came to sharing the economic spoils of victory. The government's response to such agitation took the form of such draconian measures as President Truman's threat to draft striking transport workers in 1946 and the Taft-Hartley Act, which drastically curbed the power of organized labor.

The mythical and much cited prosperity of the 1950's was an artificial construct built on a foundation of Keynesian economic policies, government subsidized defense spending, a labor shortage, and the efficient application of planned obsolescence to the field of consumer goods -- a short-term balancing act which turned out to be unsustainable in the long run. To get to that point of hothoused (and unequal) prosperity, some socio-economic panel-beating had to be done, most notably through the cynically directed hysteria of the Red Scare and Cold War brinksmanship, but on a less shrill note in the pages of this comic story, as well.

When Mr. Morris, the very FDR-like owner of radio station WHIZ, embarks on a tour of Europe, he leaves the management of his business in the hands of Jason Cox, a individual whose hook nose and pencil-thin mustache came straight from central casting's "shifty character" drawer. Armed with the power of attorney, Cox implements a whole raft of workplace changes. Wages are rolled back, infrastructure and maintenance budgets are slashed, and payrolls moved to a biweekly schedule.

While the business press lauds Cox's "visionary leadership," boy reporter Bill Batson suspects something fishy behind his behavior. Hoping to get to the bottom of things, Billy transforms himself into Captain Marvel, the World's Mightiest Shop Steward, and confronts Cox...

"It's simple capitalism, Captain. You don't have anything against capitalism do you? Your costume does have a lot of red in it..."
Fear of being labeled a godless pinko who hates America and Baby Jesus forces Marvel to stay his hand, so he zips off to Pyramid Investment Corporation's various holdings to see if there really are resources to exploit, virgin wilderness to despoil, and rightfully elected governments to overthrow.

The diamonds, uranium, and oil are present at the sites though the portfoilo had the locations mixed up. A chastened Marvel returns to apologize to Cox for his lack of faith, only to be met by a hail of bullets from two of Cox's business associates. As it turns out, Cox had been moonlighting as the manager of Pyramid even as he diverted funds to the firm as financial manager of WHIZ. (Thank you, financial industry deregulation!)

Not realizing that the mineral investments were actually on the level, Cox's plan was to fleece the station for all it was worth before fleeing with his suitcase full of ill-gotten (but entirely legal, according to revised SEC rules) gains. Marvel wastes no time in giving Fortune Magazine's "Outstanding Executive of 1950" a good thrashing and a stern, yet confusing, lecture...

"'Mixed message?' Whatever do you mean?"
With Cox sent up the river (to a minimum security country club) and Mr. Morris back from Europe, WHIZ returns to its harmonious state as an ideal example of "social contract" capitalism in action...

...until the firm's stocks are downgraded due to Morris's largesse, causing the investors to depose Morris as CEO and sell the station to a national media conglomerate, who promptly lay off most of the workforce and switch the format from local programming to nationally syndicated fare. Michael Savage's show now runs in Billy's old time slot.

Heartbreaking, I know, but you have to stay competitive in today's global economy. Plutus demands it.

The O'Jays - For the Love of Money (from Ship Ahoy, 1973) - Money and I have an open relationship. It comes and goes as it pleases and I enjoy it while it's around.

Lord Sitar - If I Were a Rich Man (from Lord Sitar, 1968) - Hey! There's a sitarist on the roof! (He'd better climb down before the wife sees him. She despises sitar music.)

The Flying Lizards - Money (That's What I Want) (from The Flying Lizards, 1980) - It's a means, not an end unto itself.

never once gave it away

From a bulk flyer that arrived in yesterday's mail:

I know the economy is going through a rough patch at the moment, but if it has started turning tricks for tenners then things are far worse than I previously thought. I suppose it had to find some way to pay for its nasty and destructive addiction to neoliberal policies.

"Hey, mister, are you looking for some free market action?"

"For real? How low are your interest rates, really?"

"As low as you want them to be."

"Uh, I'll pass. You look like you're about to collapse."

"Wait, mister! Don't go! I'll throw in some offshoring and privatization for free! Please! The World Bank will cut me if I don't bring him back some cash!"

Lou Reed - Walk on the Wild Side (from Transformer, 1972) - "Then I guess the subprime market had to crash/effective regulation would have helped that dash...."

spit on your grave

From Yahoo's featured stories box:

Awwwww... Such a shame. I feel so broken up about the news, honest. In fact, let me dig out an appropriate funeral dirge for this somber occasion...

Dave "Baby" Cortez - The Happy Organ (from The Happy Organ, 1959) - The #1 hit that helped convince scores of musicians to start twiddling with their organs.

(Seriously, though, my sense of schadenfreude doesn't extend to the poor souls getting shafted due to plant closures because the captains of fucking industry couldn't figure out the simple calculus that "economic downturn + soaring gas prices = retool the production lines towards smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles." Then again, the suits never feel the pain, so there's no motivation to think proactively.)

jam or butter

Behold the apex of human technological achievement...

THE MEAT TOASTER
I did briefly consider writing a longer piece dealing with this wonder of the modern (meaning "1971") world, and its significance in terms of consumer capitalism's twin tenets of planned obsolescence and creating demand for unnecessary products, but what more could I really add that isn't right there in the advertisement?

It's a toaster, only instead of cooking bread-related items, it cooks meat. Not Pop Tarts, but porterhouses. Not bagels, but bacon. Not scones, but sirloin. To reiterate, it is a toaster designed to cook animal flesh -- in short, a meat toaster.

That the shell-shocked consumers of the early 1970's failed to embrace the manifest greatness of a device that utilized the costly inefficiency of electric heating coils to perform in three hours what would otherwise be a twenty minute task with a conventional oven does not surprise me. Very rarely (no pun intended) is a prophet appreciated by his contemporaries, especially when he seems likely to cause accidental household fires (or is fundamentally incapable of accommodating sliced onions, mushrooms, or peppers within his sizzling, juicy message).

The Toasters - Fire in My Soul (from Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down, 1997) - Sadly, a cool blast of ska is no substitute for a CO2-based flame suppression device.

The Meteors - Meat Is Meat (from Monkey's Breath, 1985) - From the musical meat locker comes this raw slab of 100% USDA certified psychobilly. Remember: The OTMAPP seal is a guarantee of eternal freshness.

Richard and Robert Sherman - Music To Buy Toasters By (from Retro Shopping Vol. 1, 2006) - How they rocked it out in Caldor's home appliance aisle back in the day. Muzak version of "Mahogany" not included.