I went to the state fair to take pictures, and I got some, by golly. I might share more later, but this one captures so much of the essence of all that a good state fair should be.



I didn't get a picture of the sign where some Romanians were selling deep fried Coca-Cola smothered in Cola syrup and whipped cream (with a cherry on top), but I did get other good pictures, mostly of performers, vendors, and other wonderful contributions to the tapestry that is Midwestern America. I even got a couple pictures inside the Democratic Party tent before I introduced myself as the Dark Wraith, who just wrote perhaps the most scathing of my attacks on President Obama and his lackeys. The lady in charge was not at all impressed by me.

Go figure.

I tried to talk to the Libertarians at their booth, but they were being too weird, and I forgot to take the lens cap off my camera. It's just as well; I'm not sure what would have shown up in the shots.

I didn't bother to go into the Republican Party tent because standing outside the entrance were what appeared to be some Teabaggers handing out stuff, and I was afraid of getting cooties on my Nikon.

I took lots of other pictures, though, and as I noted, above, I might eventually share some of the good ones here.

In the meantime, please think about the chocolate covered bacon. I was given a sample. It was actually pretty darned good... for about 15 minutes; then the effects of 98° heat with 60 percent humidity, mild dehydration, a previously consumed sample of home-made root beer (Lord! but that stuff was strong), and the walk by the farm animals exhibitions all kicked in.

Fortunately, I made it to the air-conditioned agriculture and crafts building before I ended up hosing my groceries. I saw many great displays in that building, but the greatest of all was the tribute to Spam.



Simply awesome: All things Spam in a display case.

It was a good day.

Especially now that I've carved some emotional distance between the flavor of chocolate covered bacon and my used food hurl trigger.

Below are some of my latest graphical contributions at the Cheezburger Network, home of LOLCats and FAILBlog.org, the latter of which protested the use by Meg Whitman's campaign of FAILBlog imagery and thereby became the subject of a still-ongoing firestorm of Right-wingers posting nasty, demeaning, insulting, degrading comments to the post where Whitman was called out for what she did. As I noted in comments on my post here at The Dark Wraith Forums about the dust-up, the Whitman campaign—instead of pulling the video at the request of the Cheezburger Network—is now broadcasting the offending ad in at least one major media market in Southern California. My first poster, below, specifically salutes the Teabaggers for some of their outlandishly over-the-top blather in comments at the Cheezburger Network, where they are doing their usual hatchet job of trying to shout down anyone and everyone who isn't as crazy as they are.

Enjoy my stuff, below. Some of the graphics are timely commentary, and some of them are less so. (If some of them don't make sense, it's probably because they are aimed at some specific group, like the "Call of Duty" motivational poster.) Be sure to click on a picture and vote for it if you like it, and definitely post anything that appeals to you at your own site. You can also see my complete set of Cheezburger Network graphics (some of which are of a slightly racier variety and thus not quite suitable for The Dark Wraith Forums) by clicking here.

I made a terrible, terrible mistake on a social networking site, and I must now find redemption—indeed, rectitude—in a public service message where the needful can see my earnest contrition and learned wisdom.

The incident to which I am referring was a comment I made to a post made by a woman. I took what in retrospect was a downright fresh, unsolicited attempt at humor, which is, even as I write this, swirling away from the wellhead and into the Cloud as yet further evidence that I am no less than an insensitive cad, a veritable dolt.

In a meager but honest effort to contain the spill of unintended indolence I displayed, I herewith offer a few gems of true and useful advice to men, that they may not tread the ground that I have found to be littered with the bodies of men who foolishly went before me. Without further ado, this is a compendium of some of my best advice:

• When women are joking about their weight, don't join in the fun. Just don't. Let it go. You have nothing to say.

• Never use synonyms when it comes to weight, either. "Husky" is a real no-go. Ditto for "healthy." Double-ditto for "ample" and anything that involves the word "pelvis."

• If you can't figure out what a woman's tattoo is, that probably means it has sagged a whole lot since she got it. Just drop-kick your questions over to the trash can and leave them there.

• If you don't know what something is in a woman's bathroom, don't ask. You probably don't need to know, anyway.

• Glance but do not look at a girl wearing ultra-short shorts. She's not wearing them for you. For every other man, possibly; but not for you.

• If you do more than a quick glance at the short-shorts, you're a pervert. If you're over the age of 25, you're a pervert, anyway. (But you're still not allowed to ogle.)

• Never use the word "cougar" to describe a woman over the age of 30. I don't care if she's walking on all fours and stalking deer. Women have words to degrade men that will make Viagra turn to dust before the dope clears your cake hole. Don't start a war where your BB gun is up against a nuclear arsenal.

• Whatever she wears, say, "You look great," even if she looks like upchuck after the all-you-can-eat fried Spam buffet at the Presbyterian Ladies' Relief Festival.

• Your body's out-gassings are not funny to her. Even if she secretly thinks they are, she's not going to let on for one second. You're a pig, and that's on your better days, especially the ones when you're dead.

• Yes, you really do have to belch and fart, and sometimes you have to do so when a woman is nearby. You do not have to turn your burps into the "Star-Spangled Banner," and you most certainly do not have to embellish your flatulence by whipping your hind leg off to the side.

• In a related vein, your body functions do not need your post-blast commentary and analysis. You do that, and someday you'll end up being one of those old geezers who tells people about every bowel movement he's just finished.

• If a lady is kind enough to give you a kiss, try your very best not to think it's an invitation to face lunch. Give the woman a few minutes to have her way before you go all cannibal.

• Look at yourself in the mirror. If you're like 95 percent of the men out there, you are not a couple of sit-ups away from having super-models peel their thongs out from between their supple cheeks for you. Consider that when you whine about out-of-shape women.

• Speaking of out-of-shape, do you have any idea what it takes to look like one of those guys in a men's health magazine? It hurts like Hell, you can never stop doing the workouts, and hardly anybody is going to care. Don't bother fantasizing that you'll look like that when you get around to it. As the direct corollary, why would you expect more out of most sane women, especially considering the complexity of their hormones, genetically predetermined adipose layers, and the fact that a lot of them have carried one or more giant chuck roasts around for nine months (and then pushed them out while the guys stand around wondering why they don't hear the sound of detonating ass)?

• Here's some personal advice (mostly for the noobs, but that's part of my penitence in this post). Take it or leave it, but be sure to take umbrage if I offend your sensibilities.

    • Wash. That makes you look good. You don't have to be a Greek god to be a fine prize.

    • Try a little cologne once in a while. Not buckets. Just a little. Put it on your shoulders and just below your neck, front and back. And don't dab some on your crotch, you oaf.

    • Wads of body hair have been going out of style since the Neanderthals. You don't have to wax, but it doesn't hurt to trim.

    • Wearing dumpy shorts and silly-ass T-shirts might make you all comfy, but it also makes you look like you don't care. Maybe you really don't, but I'll bet you actually do.

    • Look at details: nails, nose and ear hair, even navel hair. We're men; way too many of us are conditioned to ignore personal details, especially as we age and get too set in our ways. Does the thought of a gross, naked guy standing close by offend you? Think about why. Seriously, get past the homophobia and think about exactly why men are gross to other men.

    • Even if you already have a partner, never assume she or he will take you however you decide to be. Make as many days as you can the special occasion to look great. Even if you don't have money, you can still carry yourself with an air that makes you different from the average caveman.

Now, back to a few last main points.

• Don't complain about a woman's cooking. If you don't like it, go out to eat. If you can't afford that, learn how to cook food yourself. You might find out her cooking is pretty darned delicious compared to your own Barf Teaser Blue Plate Specials.

• Don't just look busy; be busy. If you're sitting in front of a television, you're wasting your life. Don't be surprised if you're not earning any respect living your life that way.

• And do responsible chores before someone has to bitch at you. Don't give a woman the chance to bring her nagging mother side out. You should hate it if she does that. (If nothing else will motivate you, think about how much it will piss her off if she can't find a good reason to play the role of mother superior to you.)

• You don't have to be a hero to be heroic. Practice the art of being the good guy. If a woman doesn't appreciate that, she's not worth your time, anyway. The same goes for your work life: if your company punishes the good guys who do the right thing instead of the most profitable or the most obedient, then your company is bad. You won't get any medals for doing what's right, but you live a good life long enough, and you'll get the most coveted honor of all, respect from yourself.

• Stop thinking about a piece of ass all the time. If you're stuck on porn, for cryin' out loud, get a life. You're living in a lie that doesn't really exist, and you're wasting that awesome life you could have. If you don't like to be used, manipulated, lied to, and demeaned, walk away from things that do exactly that to you. Trust me on this one, it isn't some conservative religious thing. Most of the girls who take off their clothes do so because they like attention. They don't like your attention, though. You don't matter. You know how I know this? No, you might be just be a little annoyed if you knew how I know this.

• That doesn't mean you can't like the thought of bare women (or men, if that's your thing). Some of the best times in life are with naked folks. Just don't let impossible fantasies on the other side of a magazine page or computer monitor turn you into a zombie.

Finally, a few parting words of wisdom. A while back, I wrote a few of these things to a friend on that social network, and I got a response from another friend accusing me of declaring that men were all wrong, and it's all our fault. I shot back a fairly sharp response (inappropriately defensive, in retrospect) to the effect that, no, it goes both ways. Regardless of my personal dedication to staying out of striking distance of women for the rest of my life, given the sustained, nearly unstoppable domestic violence that was visited upon me by a woman in our culture where the laws and the courts chivalrously have no quarter for men as victims, I most decidedly do not think there is any bias whatsoever in the oafishness department. What I know, however, is that the only behavior I can control is my own, both that which arises from my own personality and that which comes by way of my enculturation.

"Fight the system" and "rage against the machine" ring hollow if such clichés apply only to our political lives, which are nothing but the mirror of our society at large. To turn from the wrongful path of our harmed and hurting political culture, we simply must start with its foundations in a flawed way of seeing ourselves and the world around us.

The difference between the desirable and the desired is such a chasm. I am firmly convinced that the toughest, most important duty an honest person has is to close that gap as much as possible, knowing full well that it cannot be closed all the way and that it might not be the best idea to close it completely, anyway.

But we have to do our best. Fight extremism with strength; fight lies with honesty; and fight corruption with decency. If you're going to be a little judgmental, make sure to qualify your finger wagging with plenty of references to your own failures.

Avoid like the Plague ending up like those Christians who think they're "saved," which gives them license to judge others and kiss their own, precious backsides. On the other hand, avoid just as much ending up like the Muslims who think every generation since the first couple after the Prophet have been trash by comparison.

It's a weird, tough, scary world out there, and the one out there isn't even close to being as weird, tough, and scary as the one in our own heads.

Just don't forget my advice earlier in this article when it comes to what you say and do around women. Start by keeping your pie hole shut when the ladies are having a conversation about weight or maybe even sex; otherwise, you might find out the hard way that it's one thing to make it to the finish line of your life, but it's quite another to make it there with your head still attached.

Be sure to join me tonight for my Saturday edition of Dark Voices Radio at 9:00 p.m. EST. Note that the time has been changed to one hour earlier than before: air time is, again, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, not 10:00 p.m. as it used to be.

High on the agenda tonight is a speaker-melting rant about the arrest of a 12-year-old girl in New York City. Her crime? Making two little doodles on her desk expressing her love for her two best friends. She did it in erasable marker, no less.

Zero tolerance? You haven't heard about zero tolerance until you hear my flaming condemnation of this madness and the people ramming it down kids' throats like New York City Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and his buddy, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. God! but I'm looking forward to tearing into those fiends this evening.

In other minor matters, readers may recall my January 2 article, "Personal Journey and Red Velvet Cake," which I began with a rather long-winded exposition on my personal revelation that, if I am going to bitch about other people's moral hypocrisy — Sarah Palin and a whole bunch of other Republicans come to mind, but so do some of Obama's disgraceful appointees, as well — I had best start working on cleaning up my own slothful life, first. On the physical side, my personal journey has included putting my health in order by losing weight, eating better, and dispensing with the woe-is-my-sorry-life attitude. I am not at all sure how the reparation of my mortal soul is going. On the bright side, in the next few months I will be formally announcing that I have at least secured a deal with a mainstream publisher for my first book. On the health side, I feel better now than I have in many, many years. As far as weight is concerned, from 190-some pounds, I now weigh 138 pounds.

Does that sound too low? Click here to see for yourselves. No, that isn't a Photoshop job. Photoshop was used, but only to render the original photograph black and white and to add graininess and more light gradient for artistic effect. Getting to this point wasn't easy, and remaining here never will be.

I cannot change the world, but I do presume to offer some advice, if perhaps only to an unusual breed of progressives: Republicans on the modern political stage of theatre and folly will not change; they are wholly committed to hypocrisy in their own lives and madness in their public discourse. Trying to reason with them is no more productive than accommodating their core of meanness. Stop wasting time. Find their weaknesses and feed them to the dogs of mainstream media's obsession with drool and scandal. More Republicans of the same ilk will come; they are locusts. Just keep wrecking their leading lights. They'll make it pretty easy for you; but you must have the guts to take glee not only in watching their self-immolation, but also in finding the accelerants of their demise.

But as much as you should rightfully take no quarter in wrecking any and every Republican, even those who pretend to some form or other of moderation, you are wasting every bit as much time hoping most Democrats who pretend to the call of leadership are anything other than craven shills for one or another parochial interest. Stop wasting your time thinking the salvation of this once-promising Republic is in the hands of Barack Obama or virtually any Democrat now in Congress. It is not, and the sooner you understand that, the more quickly you will look to truly progressive leaders waiting to be heard, to be elected, and to be trusted.

Tell me I am wrong, and I will tell you exactly what I think of anyone who continues to support a party that wants health care "reform" that includes fining me and putting me in prison because I will not be forced to buy the defective products of market-distorting, failed oligopolists. Neither will I support a President who feigns to competence by appointing and retaining demonstrably failed men and women.

Contrary to what millions believed in November of 2008, change begins within. Once it takes hold there, a person starts losing his or her fear of bad leaders, no matter how big their fist, no matter how attractive their promises.

Trust me on this. No matter how much the world around us needs to be reformed, change starts inside. From there, the rest might not be easy, but the road ahead is fairly clear.

So, too, are the roads that will lead to nowhere.

It is very cold outside.

Oh, stop it with the "How cold is it?" comeback. I'll tell you how cold it is.

It's cold enough to make me grouse. Never mind that there's nothing unusual about something making me grouse. Today, I groused about a driver in front of me who spun her car 360 degrees or so. She looked pretty shaken when she came to a rather sudden stop on the road where there wasn't any ice, so I decided not to share my annoyance with her.

Normally—and this is especially true if it's a younger, male driver—I'd go around the person and yell out the window, "Is that yer momma's car?!" I cut this lady slack, though. She didn't look too well after rotating in a big metal object that, I'm pretty sure, had never before so utterly disobeyed her.

I was grousing about my fellow shoppers in Walmart, too, today. It was the people who were on cell phones, completely oblivious to their random, meandering paths and the fact that they were slowing down to almost a stop as they engaged in what were not crucial conversations with their phone raconteurs.

I want one of those air horns, the ones that make an unexpected and thoroughly rude honk that snaps the heads of unwary people within 50 feet.

And that reminds me: have I mentioned lately how annoying those Website ads have become? First, it was the blinking, jerking, twitching ads trying to get my attention; those were bad enough. Now, it's that whole thing with those Flash ads that have something race into the picture, then slowly float around, then race back out of the picture. There are all kinds of variations on this, and they're all just infuriating. I've taken to the habit of simply leaving a Website where these ads are posted.

I go to a Website for content, not to see some ad embedded in the code by a hard-up Webmaster who actually believes he or she will make some money distracting visitors from the real reason they went to the site in the first place.

Hardly anyone in the normal cyber-universe makes money off Web ads. The few who do generally start talking about porn ads. That's really irritating because I won't post porn ads. The closest I've come is having affiliate status with Playboy and its sister company, Playboy Bunny, which sells degradingly skimpy women's apparel. I don't want to sell thongs and bust-lifting bras. They make me hurt just thinking about what they do to tender parts.

See? I can't even bring myself to post barely naughty ads.

Maybe I should sell posters of myself. Yes, that's going to sell like hotcakes.

Not.

So what ads do I run? Amazon.com, for one. And I try not to think about why on Earth anyone would click through to Amazon.com from any of my Websites when just about everyone knows how to get to Amazon.com without going to my sorry sites to do so.

"Oh, I'd better go to The Dark Wraith Forums today so I can click through and buy what I need at Amazon.com." Sure. That's going to happen.

Grr.

Now I've forgotten why I even bothered to start this article because I'm fully out on the tangent about Websites, ads, and revenue therefrom. This is where I get to mention my supreme annoyance with the people who actually do monetize their Websites.

Did you ever wonder how the guy who's behind Wikipedia is so filthy rich, even though there seem to be no prominent ads on Wikipedia pages? Did it ever make you wonder how those first-tier bloggers have gotten rich, even though the ads they post aren't really all that different from the ads you'd see on some loser's site?

You know how those people get all their money? Well, I do, and if you ever figure it out, you might be pretty bothered. Unless, of course, you're a blind Republican or an equally blind Democrat, in which case reality is a thing of beauty crafted from the whole cloth of fevered opinion without the complication of noticing that far too many of the leaders of the Right and the Left are nothing but sell-outs to the very institutions and people you loathe.

Most of you aren't stupid, though. I'll bet you're just tired: tired of the liars who sucker you into voting for them only to find out that your lives aren't getting any better, your rights—especially your rights to be left alone and not to be watched like you're a criminal waiting to happen—aren't coming back, and, even worse, this country isn't going to get any better. The Right-wing mobs cry for policies that benefit the rich even though the members of these mobs are working-class stiffs who are considered nothing but trash to the elite; and the Leftists still cheer Barack Obama even though he has demonstrated his willingness to continue prosecuting unwinnable wars, even though he caves to corporate and Right-wing interests, and even though he retains the services of failed and venal men like Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Robert Gates, Arne Duncan, and Robert Mueller.

Look hard into that darkening twilight: the sun is setting behind you.

No, big city Main Street and corporate media newsrooms aren't the only places where the commerce starts with a wink and ends with a meeting of minds and parts south in the company of ugly strangers and their fat wallets.

I've been pretty sure it wasn't always this way, but I'm beginning to suspect I've been wrong about that.

Yes, I'm just being overly cynical, though. It's not like that at all.

The world is good. First-tier, liberal bloggers are straight shooters. The government isn't still spying on you, and it deleted of all the databases you were in that were created during the Bush II era. Conspiracy theories are nonsense. The Democrats care about you instead of K Street lobbyists. The courts side squarely with the rights of the citizens over the claims of police and the privileges of corporations, and that promise of health care reform is about to be realized beyond your wildest hopes.

It's all good.

It's the 21st Century, we have a progressive—nay, a veritable liberal—in the White House, and our nation is at peace.

Yes, it's all good.

I was in such decline.

I had become old before I should have, I was fat, and I was depressed. My health was poor. I was planning for my untimely death. Notwithstanding my defiant denials to the contrary, I was scared, scared of the world around me, scared of myself, what I had become, and where I was headed.

Not a person around me, even among those who might have cared, few as they are or should be, saw how bad off I was.

This is nothing new. It's been going on like this, off and on, back and forth, my whole adult life. With occasional bursts of vowed rectitude, I could always imagine that the side trips were the main road, but they weren't. The highway I was really traveling was big, wide, compelling, and most obvious if I hadn't been too blinded by self-excuses, fantastic voyages of delusion, and attempts at judgmentalism that didn't even fit my rather more live-and-let-live personality.

You've heard the terms, I am sure: "manic depression," "bipolar disorder," "obsessive-compulsive disorder."

I have a better one: "me."

How do I reach into the world of prominent people to make accusations of greed, hatefulness, and self-interest when I cannot bring my own house to persistent and self-evident order? The hypocrisy I see as others' glaring flaw parades in front of me as nothing other than the reflection of my own magnificently obvious defect.

I have lashed out in literary fury at people like George W. Bush; Richard Cheney; Sarah Palin; Al Gore; Paul Krugman; and now, with increasing frequency, Barack Obama. Their hypocrisy stuns me; yet, from what moral ground do I stand to cut through their false representations about themselves, their political positions, and their decisions?

This chasm between the desirable and the desired carves a broad scar through me every bit as much as it does them. We have our ideals that we wish for everybody, even for ourselves, but we cannot help but act out our lives at some lesser or greater difference from our expectations.

I am not sure of how much personal, emotional injury this causes any individual, although I suspect that I am not alone in suffering greatly inside for this hypocrisy; but I am most certain that the way we conduct our own lives at odds with our public expressions is of great harm to those who must suffer and fight their own battles in the shadow of social disapproval, laws, and other devices that project the desirable upon those acting for their own part on their desires.

Surrendering to license is no answer; I still have the call to a better nature in myself. Others do, too; but vows to be a better person, to live a cleaner, more genuine life are just so much talk in the few hours when the ill effects of living hedonistically become too obvious to ignore.

In some old languages, so-called "state of being" (or "copulative") verbs could be used in such a way that they became something like "action" verbs. In English, the classic state-of-being verb is "to be" since what comes after the verb is nothing but a description of what was put before the verb. "I am hungry," merely gives a description ("hungry") to the subject ("I"). Imagine how a verb like this could be made to convey a sense of action. It's not easy for speakers of languages that strongly distinguish what the subject is from what the subject does; but that's what could be done in some old languages. Translating into modern English what an ancient person had said when using this tense would be quite difficult and probably wouldn't be attempted at all. Most likely, the subtlety of that old sense of a copulative verb in active mood would be simplistically translated as some weakly related action verb.

Consider that when you hear the rather famous young rabbi from several millennia ago quoted as saying, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

"Go"? Try thinking of the quote instead using a state of being verb with the directive to action as that state. It helps bridge the chasm between the desirable and the desired. Whatever I intend to preach, the scar is first, foremost, and always in me, not in those whose hypocrisy is a parade that runs over my life.

The men and women who have inspired religions, sects, and cults have their moments, some more than others. Given that they have died, even they have passed the time of their actions, and only their lives matter much, if at all. State of being is, in itself and without even so much as the quality of animating life of the person, the entire action.

That's how it is with everyone, so I should get down to work. The world is becoming less free in the countries that preen themselves on their dedication to freedom. No matter what we do, this age of authoritarianism is pressing forward. From the Right, it wields the fist of ever-mounting, increasingly oppressive laws to replace individual choice with the fear of state violence through fines, imprisonment, and even death to ensure security against real, falsely magnified, and imagined enemies. From the Left, it wields that same fist of ever-mounting, increasingly oppressive laws to replace individual choice with the fear of state violence through fines, imprisonment, and even death to ensure compliance with group norms established beyond the counsel of individual conscience.

Nevertheless, my long walk to war with modernity must be from the inside out. That large highway of self-decline is so easy to use, but it leads — at least for me — to nowhere I need to go and to be.

A few months ago, I got rattled by several personal events that happened in short succession. I am hopeful that I am mature enough, now, to have seized those painful opportunities to put myself better and more permanently on a road that is good. What I know is that, with each cycle like this through which I have gone, I have stayed longer and found my way back more quickly when I drifted perilously away.

I have resolutely set aside my eating habits that had really been at the heart of some of the worst of my health problems. Instead of running to the medical establishment for promises wrapped in pills, procedures, and surgeries, I am eating well, in small portions, and without the obsessive glee of stuffing myself almost exclusively with meat until I am in sick pain.

I am still working on my addiction to nicotine, but in this cycle, I have brought it down to an allocation of nine ultra-light, short cigarettes a day. I will get it down further in the months ahead.

Instead of the random, miserable bursts of grueling exercise, I'm doing a moderate, 20-minute workout every day.

Within, rather than trying to will myself to stop obsessing about matters of loneliness, want for abiding and lasting love, greed for things, and want for expressed sexuality, I am thinking about creative ideas and the ways I can make them happen more consistently than I have in the past.

What is the payoff? As of today, I've lost 36 pounds. Gastrointestinal problems that had literally torn me up for years — for decades, in fact — have all but disappeared. Terrifying spells of what might be described as "silent heart attacks" that had been gripping me almost every day (at their worst, sometimes several in short succession) for the past three years have completely disappeared. My hair has gone from an old and elderly, lifeless look of almost gray to something much better, and my face looks noticeably better. You can see for yourself with this picture I took last week. (Those who know how my recipe posts work can click to see another at the end of this article.)

How long will all this last? Permanently, I hope. I'm sure I'll have setbacks, but it feels so good to feel better that I don't think the alternatives are all that attractive anymore. I still have so much work to do, though; but that's part of the journey, and this is the kind of road that is best because it is as long as the life lived traveling it.

It's almost time to start writing with fury, again. Readers will see that soon enough, but you will also see other kinds of writing, too. Only very rarely did I publish works of fiction, here, but I'll do more of that from now on. I like metaphorical narrative. I also like humor, and I will write more that is not so serious. I will also write more short articles, especially ones involving political and economic analysis. No normal person can frequently endure my detailed, gruelingly long-winded economic expositions, and I promise not to do those very often from now on.

I'll also be publishing some video work. Editorials, mostly, but I cannot promise that I won't try to get creative in a medium that is still quite new to me. Be patient; if the first couple aren't particularly good, that doesn't mean they won't get better as I master the craft and its technologies.

I've bleated long enough. It's time for the cake recipe.

Although I can usually remember all the details of how I make something, given that I had not made a red velvet cake in years, I had to go to one of my old recipe magazines to jog my memory. I have a nice little collection of recipe publications, mostly the ones you see on the shelves near checkout lines at grocery stores. I don't buy them there, though, because they used to show up all the time at flea markets, used bookstores, and places like that. They're not worth much to anyone else, but my collection is an invaluable resource, even though I have few opportunities to cook ambitiously.

This red velvet cake recipe, modified as I recalled from my version, comes from the November 30, 2004, magazine, Southern Living: Our Best Recipes (Birmingham, Alabama: Oxmoor House Special Editions). While the magazine version might take a little more than half-an-hour, rest assured that, unless you are a very efficient cook, the total preparation time will be more like an hour. In my case, the time is somewhat longer than that because I clean pans, dishes, and utensils as I go along so there's no big mess to clean up at the end of the food preparation phase of the project.

Here's what you'll need for this recipe.

Cake:

• 1 stick (½ cup) of softened butter
• 1½ cups of sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 2½ cups of cake flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• ½ of salt
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa
• 1 cup of buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar
• 1 ounce of red food coloring
• 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
• 2 greased, 9-inch round baking dishes

Frosting:

• 1 cup of milk
• 1/3 cup of regular flour
• 1 cup of softened butter
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract

For those of you who are not familiar with ingredients for making food from scratch, let me tell you a couple of things about the ingredients, above. First, cake flour is not the same as what is commonly called "all-purpose flour." In the first part of the recipe, notice that you'll be using cake flour; in the second part, for the frosting, you'll be using all-purpose flour. Your cake will be a little sorry if you use all-purpose flour in that part of the recipe.

Second, when I write "softened butter," that means you should take the butter out of the refrigerator and let it set for about an hour so it warms up and mixes well with the other ingredients. No, leaving butter out of the refrigerator for that long will not endanger your health as long as the butter was good when you put it in the fridge. When I was growing up, butter was left out for much longer, and I don't recall any of my people dying from gastrointestinal upset.

Third, you might have noticed the two greased, round baking dishes in the ingredients. Yes, you can grease the dishes with that spray-on stuff if you like, but I won't do it like that. For one thing, I like to use butter; for another, I have this thing against inhaling aerosolized, fake grease into my lungs, where it will form a nice seal against efficient transport of oxygen to my bloodstream. (But that's just me.) The way I do it is to take a stick of butter and run the end side of it back and forth all over the inside of the baking dish. I do this until I see the dish become somewhat opaque from the layer of butter laid down. Later, not only will the cake come out of the dish intact, but the surface of the cake will be smoother and easier to frost.

Fourth, when I tell you to use "pure vanilla extract," I mean don't go using imitation vanilla. Just don't, okay? You're making good food; avoid using phony chemicals unless you must.

Fifth, when you buy sugar, buy cane sugar. Make sure it says that on the package; otherwise, you might be buying beet sugar. That's right, sugar can come from beets, but that doesn't mean you have to abide the nonsense.

Sixth, "baking soda" is not the same as "baking powder." Baking soda comes in those yellow Arm & Hammer boxes that people used to put in the backs of their refrigerators to absorb bad smells. It's used in recipes, too, like the one here. Baking powder is used in recipes, as well, but not the one here. You will be most disappointed if you use baking powder when a recipe calls for baking soda.

Finally, a word about using salt in recipes. I have to avoid salt as much as possible, and I would love to encourage you to do the same. I cannot eat even small amounts of fast food anymore because the salt content is so high that I will become incapacitated from swilling water starting about an hour after I've eaten the fare at McDonald's, Wendy's, Arby's, Burger King, and any other fast food restaurant. Sometime in the past couple of years, some grocery stores started selling their "fresh meats" laced with salt. The salt is ostensibly being put in as a "natural" preservative, but it has the effect, at least on me, of making the meats inedible unless I soak out the salt before cooking the food. Again, my aversion to salt is far greater than most people's, but you might be surprised at how good food tastes once you've stopped using salt to burn microscopic fissures into your taste buds to cut through the desensitization caused by all the previous salt you've run through your mouth. Try it sometime.

This recipe calls for some salt, and that's not unusual in cakes and pastries. I use it quite sparingly. Although I don't think it's necessary, salt added to batters is old, old tradition, and I'm not the kind of person who dispenses with an ingredient when I don't understand exactly why the tradition of using it first came about and then endured so tenaciously. Hence, in this recipe, I add half-a-teaspoon of salt. Why? Obviously, it's because that's how it's always been done, alright? (That's why I shall never be a liberal, even though most of my readers are, and I love you all more than I care for just about any conservative. But me? a liberal? Never. Progressive? Sure. Liberal? No. Life is too random as it is. Mostly, I blame quantum mechanics.)

Where was I? Oh, yes: making a cake.

The Cake Batter

Cake Batter Step 0
Preheat the oven to 350°

Cake Batter Step 1
Once the stick of butter is nice and soft, combine it with that half-cup of sugar and beat at medium speed. When those two ingredients are blended together, add one of the three eggs and keep beating until that egg is blended in nicely. Add the second egg and beat until you again have a smooth mixture. Add the third egg and beat until what's in the bowl has a nice, creamy look to it. This whole process shouldn't take more than five minutes. Once this step is finished, set the mixture off to the side while you get Step 2 finished. You might as well leave this in the mixing bowl with the mixer because you'll be running it again in just a few minutes.



Cake Batter Step 2
Take the two-and-a-half cups of cake flour, the baking soda, salt, and cocoa, and stir these dry ingredients together in a bowl. Use a big spoon to do this; it works well to lift and gather the separate ingredients.



Cake Batter Step 3
In another bowl or pan, pour in that cup of buttermilk, along with the tablespoon of distilled white vinegar, the red food coloring, and the two teaspoons of vanilla extract.



Cake Batter Step 4
This is where we bring everything together. You'll start with that mixture in the mixing bowl from Step 1. Put in a portion (maybe a third or a fourth) of the dry ingredients from Step 2, then run the mixer at low speed just long enough to get the dry ingredients cut in. Stop the mixer, put in maybe a third of the wet ingredients from Step 3, and run the mixer again just long enough to cut these ingredients through. Stop the mixer, put in some more of the dry ingredients, and run the mixer again (always on low speed) just long enough to get what you've just put in cut through. Stop the mixer and put in some more of the wet ingredients and then run the mixer just long enough to get it blended through. You should do this alternating addition and blending until everything from Steps 1 and 2 has gone into the mixing bowl. Make sure you begin and end with the dry ingredients from Step 2. Four additions with the dry and three with the wet is plenty. You will notice with each addition that what's in the mixing bowl gets redder and redder, but the resulting mixture looks more and more like an actual cake batter. By the time you've gotten everything mixed together, the batter will be quite red and fairly thick.



Cake Batter Step 5
Pour the batter into the two greased baking dishes, making every effort possible to get equal amounts in each because you're about to put them in the oven, and the baking time will be dependent upon the volume of batter in the dish, and you want the two, separate dishes to be done at the same time.



Cake Batter Step 6
Put the batter-filled baking dishes in the oven. Give them 18 minutes before you start checking to see if they're done. Put a toothpick in each, and when it comes out clean (it can look greasy, but no batter and no sticky cake should be on it), take the dishes out. My experience is that they'll need about 23 minutes, but this is highly dependent upon the oven and somewhat dependent upon the type of baking dishes (clear or colored) that you're using. Overcooking will be as bad for your results as under-cooking, so be diligent in this step.



Cake Batter Step 7
Once out of the oven, put each dish on a cooling rack for ten to fifteen minutes. At that time, take a butter knife and run it around the inside edge of each dish several times, pushing slightly in at the bottom to detach the cake at the edges of the underside. Once you've done that, put each rack on top of its dish and flip the contraption over. Pat the cake until it lets go onto the rack. Allow the cakes to finish cooling bare on the racks like that.



The Frosting

Frosting Step 1
In a smallish sauce pan, put the one cup of milk and the third of a cup of all-purpose flour. Using a whisk, stir the flour thoroughly into the milk. With the pan on a stove burner set to medium, keep whisking the mixture until it gets quite thick. It will get to the consistency of mashed potatoes as it approaches boiling. Take it off the burner before it actually boils and put it in the refrigerator to cool. It should take maybe 45 minutes for it to get properly chilly. You don't want it cold, just chilled.



Frosting Step 2
When the mixture from Frosting Step 1, above, is getting to just about the right temperature, put the two sticks of softened butter into the mixing bowl with the cup of sugar and the teaspoon of vanilla extract, and run the mixer on high until the ingredients have a nice, creamy consistency. Stop the mixer and put in that cooled mixture from Frosting Step 1. Run the mixer on high, but only long enough to get the ingredients well mixed. Avoid over-beating.



Put the Cake All Together

Put one of the cake layers, both of which should now be cooled to room temperature, onto your cake dish. This layer should be flat side up (in other words, the side that was at the bottom of its baking dish should be up). Spread the top and sides of this layer with frosting from the mixing bowl.

Now, put the other layer, flat side down on top of the layer you've just frosted. Spread the top and sides of this layer with the rest of your frosting, making sure to generously cover the seam between the layers with frosting.



You have now finished your cake, and it is ready to serve.



Be sure to cover and refrigerate whatever is left over of this cake from the first helpings. You can warm it up to eat some later, but be aware that this cake won't keep very well, so you should eat it all within 48 hours or so of preparation.



It also tastes better if served by the cook; so, for those of you familiar with the tradition of these recipes offered here at The Dark Wraith Forums, you may click here to see the proper serving manner of the gentleman who has made this wonderful, colorful dessert for you.

Enjoy your cake, good readers.

After a week of writing, reviewing, revising, and finally printing final exams for my classes, the four days of administering the exams is now upon my students.

Grading exams is a lot like work, even though I've been doing it for almost 30 years, now, but the grading is not the part I dislike; it's the issuing of final grades. To some extent, I can make that part mechanical: just calculate final percentages, attach the grades, and be done with it. That's a little too easy for my taste, though.

I'll tell you a secret, but you cannot EVER tell anyone I told you this. In fact, I'm going to tell you more than one secret, tonight, and I expect you never to tell a living soul any of this.

Are we clear on that?

Okay, here goes, then.

I bump a grade every now and then.

That's right, a few times every semester, I'll edge a grade up a notch above where the numbers tell me. I do it if a student has been getting better and better grades as the course went along, and I'll do it if one test is way out of line from the rest.

I'll do it if I see past the foolish young person in front of me to the adult who will someday be more amazing than he or she knows. I've taught long enough to know how to see the future.

I see it every day. After all, I'm not just a writer; I'm a teacher.

I never cut slack because of a student's plea for a better grade, and those pleas are timeless, repetitive, and altogether tedious to me. Here's a sample, along with my thought-response to each, so you will first understand that I am most decidedly not a merciful professor:

"I just HAVE to get at LEAST a 'C' in this class."
(There's a way to do that: it's called studying, but by now it's too late. You cannot learn the body of an entire semester's coursework in a couple of all-nighters, especially considering you're not going to do that, anyway, are you?)

"I won't graduate unless I pass."
(You should have waited until you had graduated to slack off, then. That, or you shouldn't have waited until the last semester to take the course you knew was harder than anything in that fluff major of yours.)

"Can I meet with you to go over what I need to know to pass the final?"
(First, I reviewed for the final the last day of class. You weren't there. Second, I held a special review session. You weren't there. I have office hours. You've never been there. Now, you want extra special spoon-feeding through an entire course. I'm not there.)

"This is the ONLY class that's threatening my perfect GPA."
(Yes, I can see why many professors would be impressed with your intelligence, your go-to attitude, and your leadership qualities; unfortunately, none of those have worked in my class.)

"Do you have any extra-credit assignments I can do, like a paper or something?"
(I gave every student, including you, a syllabus on the first day, and I read the high points aloud in class. Recall that I emphatically noted both in that syllabus and orally that I do not give extra credit assignments. If I have a learning objective for you, it's the same learning objective I have for every student, and every student should have an equal chance of meeting it in the regular course of the class.)

"I study and study for your exams, but I still don't get good grades on your tests."
(In three decades of teaching, I have met only a handful of students who actually studied diligently but still couldn't do well on the exams. You are not one of those students. Either you aren't studying, which is most likely the case, or what you think qualifies as studying isn't even in the same universe with the real deal. This is college: we leave children behind.)

"I think you're a great teacher, and I just wish I could do better."
(Don't blow smoke up my butt and tell me it's a fancy barbecue you're hosting in my honor.)

"I need to know how many points I have to get on the final to pass this class."
(More points than are on the final.)

"What are you going to ask on the final?"
(Questions.)

"Does anyone, like, actually PASS your class?"
(Quite a few; you're just special. Perhaps you should change you name to Ed.)

Okay, that's enough. No, I don't actually say those things I wrote parenthetically. Yes, all of those quotes, though, are things I hear all the time.

Now, I'll bet some of you are wondering if I held back.

No, I mean it: a few of you men (a few, and it's the men who would be thinking this) are wondering if I have ever been offered sex for a grade.

Just once. She had aced every exam I threw at her. She came in to my office late the evening after her final. It was storming outside, and I thought I had the night all to myself to get grades finished up. She walked into my office. She was wearing a raincoat and patent leather, calf-high boots. As it turned out, that was all.

Before things got out of hand, I told her that she had gotten a near-perfect score on the final, and I had already posted an "A" for her in the course.

Thank God, the door at the end of the hallway opened. It was one of the night security guards. He came into my office and started chatting. The girl left.

Here's the truth of the matter: students trading sex for grades are extraordinarily rare. It happens, but it's wildly unusual, especially anymore. Back until maybe 10 or 15 years ago, the college environment was different; but these days, most professors avoid interacting with students as much as possible, and students are carrying into their early adult years a general aversion to older men, even when the men are teachers.

For my part, I don't hold office hours in an isolated office. I do my student contact in the coffee shop on the lower level, or I hit another open, public place.

I take the caution thing further than most male professors, but that's because they're a little on the dense side. Most seem to think they're above reproach, which they're not.

Are there professors who would like to get it on with a student or two every now and then? Sure. They've always been around. Some get by with their weirdness for years and years; others are quietly removed. The last one with whom I had the misfortune of sharing faculty status was a woman at an elite, private college. Her target was freshmen coeds taking her Women's Studies class. Every Fall Semester, she would select a couple of the slender, pretty girls and call them after they'd turned in their first assignment. She would berate them; then, once they were in tears, she would invite them to meet with her so she could mentor them to better performance in her class. Her routine was so well-worn that it was a running, sick joke among the sorority girls on campus. She was tenured, and no administrator in his or her right mind was going to deal with the problem. To my knowledge, she's still at that school, and she's still doing her schtick.

Before that fairly nauseating piece of work, I had run into other prof-predators, almost always male, during my career. They were quite rare, at least the ones who were aggressive enough to get a reputation.

Interestingly, many of them were activists with public reputations for outspoken views and works. Leaders, if you will.

But, again, they've been rare in my experience.

Girls wanting to have sex with professors are rare, too. Believe it or not, and notwithstanding the Girls Gone Wild for Old Dudes myth, the reality is that the females who would get an active, expressed crush on a prof are almost always among the smartest, if maybe the most unusual, students on campus.

That's what I've seen in my personal experience, anyway. They're not looking for a grade or anything like that; they're just strange.

The last one who ever bothered me — this was maybe four years ago — was my best student that semester. She sent me e-mail messages telling me when she was going to get into her shower at her apartment. I didn't respond to any of her messages; but one night, out of the blue, she sent me a message demanding to know who I had told about "us."

I thought about killing myself right there, but my computer is a laptop, and beating myself to death with a lightweight machine that's mostly made of plastic wasn't appealing.

Before that, all the young coeds who conveyed to me an interest in a relationship — every last one of them — were extraordinarily smart and extraordinarily not ordinary.

There was this first-quarter freshman. She looked like a little girl, complete with the most cherubic face I had every seen on an 18-year-old. That young lady was Hell-bent on losing her virginity to the male authority figure who was not "boring" and "distant" like her dad.

There was the bisexual girl with genius-level IQ and an obsession for older men. As she, herself, got a few years of college under her belt, she went from 30-something profs to 60-something near-retirees.

Want more?

You're not getting any more. You've read enough, and I've told you more than you needed to know.

Okay, one more story.

It's not just girls.

Back in the day, I'd meet with students at a local, somewhat up-scale bar after I'd submitted grades. I don't drink, but my students do, and I liked to have some kind of closure to a semester where everyone could loosen up a little.

At the end of the autumn semester (actually, they were on the quarter system at that big university), after a few nice hugs from students as they left the bar, one of my male students — a muscular, gorgeous Black man — came up to me to say he had to leave before the snow coming down got any worse.

I reached out to give him the manly-man hand shake. He took my hand firmly and pulled me right up to his face. As he shook my hand, in a low, rumbling voice he said into my ear, "Call me if you ever want a Black snowstorm to come right to your door."

Uncharacteristically, I was absolutely at a loss for verbosity. As I recall, I said, "K."

For hours after that, I ran the gamut of feelings. "Objectified" comes to mind as I think back. "Flattered" does, too. "Oh! Oh! JEEEZUS, I wasn't expecting anything like that tonight!" stands out in retrospect.

Life has been quiet for the past couple of years. Nothing unusual since the cute, skinny lady with the shower fetish and the voices in her head.

Okay, there was that leggy, beautiful blond coed with the South Beach tan from last semester who wanted to be my Facebook friend, but that was just random nonsense. She says the talk about her on Juicy Campus (now defunct for obvious reasons) all came from some bitch who doesn't like her.

I rarely accept friends on Facebook. It's just a thing of mine: I don't need friends. I have two cats.


That's enough writing. I have to grade final exams.

I'll bet you weren't expecting this article to take the turn it did. You promised to keep this a secret, and I'm holding you to that promise. I'm feeling fragile right now, so I'm sharing some pretty dark stuff with you.

I trust you. You're my friends.

Wait a minute. I don't have friends.

Forget what you read, above.


This is an open thread. Write what you want. Surely you have more interesting stuff than I do.

Rock on, fellow travelers. The Dark Wraith has pulled the night train out of the station.

Finally, on this last night of October, herewith is the second and final Hallowe'en graphic for 2009, following as it does my Hallowe'en 2009 Graphic #1, and continuing the tradition of my Hallowe'en graphics from years past, which include Hallowe'en Politics Graphic #1, Halloween Politics Graphic #2, and Hallowe'en Politics Graphic #3. In 2007, I created and published Hallowe'en 2007 Graphic #1, Halloween 2007 Graphic #2, and Hallowe'en 2007 Graphic #3. The 2008 round featured Hallowe'en 2008 Graphic #1 and Halloween 2008 Graphic #2.

And to complete this night of haunted horrors, readers might be wondering what would be something that would scare a person known on the Internet as the "Dark Wraith." That is a fair question, and I shall now share with you a partial list of things that give me, an economist, cause for nightmares.

Here we go: a list of things that go bump in the night, frustrating my fitfil bouts of unrestful slumber.

• The Federal Reserve announces in a press release that accommodative monetary policy will end immediately because of the looming threat of inflation. The notification explains that consumers and businesses should expect to see "aggressively" rising interest rates over the coming months. Cryptically, the communiqué from the Fed ends with the one-line paragraph, "All hail Cthulu."

• The U.S. Mint announces that the "In God We Trust" statement on the back of American currency will soon be replaced with "Pull my finger!"

• The entire staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers is arrested in a raid on an illegal off-track betting parlor on the south side of Toledo. The President's chief economic adviser, instead of keeping quiet during his arraignment, hollers to the judge, "Hey, we hadn't been paid in two months! What were we supposed to do?"

• In a strange twist on one of those conservative teabagger demonstrations, the entire crowd — including everyone in the liberal counter-demonstration — spontaneously, and all at once, starts singing Kumbaya, while they hold hands and sway in unison.

• The Chinese start importing bags of dollar bills to be sold at Walmart at low-low prices even the competition can't beat.

• Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, in an interview aired on 60 Minutes, appears to be inebriated and blurts out, "I want to have Sarah Palin's love child."

• In a bold move intended to stop antitrust actions being taken against Microsoft by the European Union, Bill Gates buys the European Union.

• After finalizing his purchase of the EU, Gates releases European Union 2.0. It immediately crashes all of Western Europe.

• Hackers crack into the central computers of the nation's largest banks; they then transfer all Tier 1 capital into start-up company Happy Weed Transgenics, Inc. (The company's IPO goes quite well the next day.)

• Congress taxes sex. When proceeds from the tax prove disappointing, Congress amends the legislation to tax only boring sex. Revenues skyrocket.

• On-the-scene security cameras at the New York Stock Exchange capture footage of Warren Buffet running across the floor of the Exchange screaming, "Sell! SELL! They're COMING!" The video goes viral on YouTube.

• The Treasury Dept. has increasing difficulties borrowing money, so it hires Hannah Montana to sell Treasury securities to kids in select, up-scale urban markets.

• Not to be outdone, the underwriting arm of Goldman Sachs hires Whitney Houston as the Featured Performer on digital versions of prospectuses.

• The Senate, in a desperate attempt to stave off bankruptcy, partners with a leading fast-food chain and renames the Senate chambers the "Taco Bell Senate Bowl."

• Not to be outdone, the House of Representatives partners with a well-known restaurant chain and renames its chambers the "Cracker Barrel House." Citizens across the country agree.

• Independent investigative reporters capture a grainy video of what appears to be President Barack Obama and executives of FOX News in a secret, late-night meeting at a Denny's on the outskirts of Peoria, where the audio seems to indicate details of their continuing operation of saying things that drive each other's followers bonkers, just so the apparent enemies can keep their respective ratings high. Rumors run rampant that the video also seems to show that the "waitress" serving them was none other than former Vice President Dick Cheney in drag, trying to figure out what the group was up to.

Okay, that's enough of my nightmares for one Halloween. I trust that you find these horror stories every bit as terrifying as I do.

Pleasant dreams, fellow lurkers in the night of Empire.

Tonight, I will broadcast a special episode of Dark Voices Radio from 10:30 to 11:30 p.m. It promises to be yet another evening of talk radio rants, political and economic analysis, and other fun content.

Okay, maybe it won't be fun; but who needs fun on talk radio when we have the on-going drama in Washington to amuse, annoy, and frustrate us?

Speaking of amusement, annoyance, and frustration, let's talk news here at The Dark Wraith Forums.

Pope Benedict XVI is encouraging Anglican congregations to join the Roman Catholic church to repudiate what conservative Anglicans view as the outrages of female clergy and the consecrations of gay bishops.

Rumors cannot be confirmed that the Pope is promising Anglican converts to Catholicism front-row seats at the next burning of female witches and men who dress like the Pope, himself.

Apparently, the health-care public option is back on the table, with the latest incarnation having an opt-out provision for states. That would, of course, make it an optional public option.

That's nice, but it seems that possibility of fines and jail terms for people who don't get health insurance is still on the table, with support coming from all kinds of places, including even a blog called "Economix" run by that bastion of all things institutionally liberal, The New York Times.

Obviously, dedicated readers here at The Dark Wraith Forums know very well that the only source for all things related to economics is right here. Unlike my fancy less-than-peers, many of whom could be featured in definitional FAIL, my economic forecasts and predictions are pretty much on target. My disdain for institutionally approved economists, by the way, includes 2008 Nobel Prize economics winner Paul Krugman, yet another lousy economist who's lousy because he takes money to be a shill instead of practicing his craft to be an economist. (That goes for his sycophantic peer, Brad Delong, too.)

Returning briefly to that mandatory health care insurance idea, let me mention here in writing what I said on last week's edition of Dark Voices Radio: If the health care reform bill that becomes law includes mandatory health insurance, I will blog every step of the way I take to prison.

I promise you that. You think I'm joking? Watch me.

Enough about the future; it's gotten to be such a downer ever since the Fall from Eden.

On a more up-beat note, the U.S. has now had 100 bank failures for the year. Yes, claiming that's good news is sarcasm. Many of these banks are failing because of bad management, but the underlying problem is not the banks, despite what you might have heard. The Federal Reserve failed massively in its role as the regulator and supervisor of banks; but more importantly, it failed in its most important long-term role as the sole authority over monetary policy; and for that failure, what has happened? The chief architect of that failure, Ben Bernanke, has been appointed by President Obama to a second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. As galling as that is, Bernanke's predecessor, Alan Greenspan, is treated as some sage old wise man despite having degenerated from a competent, if pale, shadow of his master, Paul Volker, into a man whose last decade as Chairman of the Fed was hallmarked by spiteful manipulation of the money supply against President Clinton's economic success, followed by lying to Congress in 2001 about the need for massive, irresponsibly long-term tax cuts for a "recession" that did not exist.

Why did Greenspan do that? Ah, yes, it's because a government running budget surpluses does not issue Treasury debt, which is the means by which the Federal Reserve has control over the money supply through what are called "open market operations," as I explained in Part One of my series, "The Federal Reserve under Fire." Those early Bush Administration tax cuts, rubber stamped by the tax-cut freak Republicans who ran the Congress, threw the federal budget back into the deficits that Clinton's era had overcome.

Criminally malfeasant men who should be in prison are honored.

But that's only because they are doing the public's business with criminal malfeasance.

Okay, I've groused enough. It's what I do when I get ready for a show. It's the ambience I'm after.

Enough. I need to get the intro ready.

Stay as long as you like. Get yourself something to eat out of the fridge, and don't forget to leave a tip in the jar.


It's almost showtime for the Dark Wraith.

The Dark Wraith Forums herewith continues what has become an annual Hallowe'en tradition of publishing frightfully scary digital graphics, each series a veritable festival of truly terrifying pictures that began during the Hallowe'en season of 2006, when I created and published Hallowe'en Politics Graphic #1, Halloween Politics Graphic #2, and Hallowe'en Politics Graphic #3. In 2007, I created and published Hallowe'en 2007 Graphic #1, Halloween 2007 Graphic #2, and Hallowe'en 2007 Graphic #3. The 2008 round featured Hallowe'en 2008 Graphic #1 and Halloween 2008 Graphic #2.

Submitted for your approval is the terrifying Hallowe'en 2009 Graphic #1, a vision of horror that should scare the living Hell out of just about any Right-wing lunatic.



The Hallowe'en festivities have now officially begun here at The Dark Wraith Forums.

Run for your lives, good people.

The Dark Wraith will bring more bad dreams to your bedside in the days to come.

Early today, Big Brass Blog contributing writer and good friend Anna Van Z published an article entitled, "Wait, Summer - Don't Go!" lamenting the passing of yet another season of warm weather, beaches, and flip-flop sandals.

The pleasantly balmy weather we are now having induced me to write the following comment just before my first class:

Good morning, Anna Van Z.

As I prepare for today's classes, I must assure you that my students are of a like mind: Summer was too short. Adding to the assault on their sensibilities, classes are too long, and the lectures are too grueling, especially when the weather outside is still nice, which it will be this week.

For me, that means ensuring that my lectures are sufficiently interesting to keep the students engaged.

Yes, I teach economics and finance.

The Dark Wraith has his work cut out this week.

As a follow-on, Anna asked me in a subsequent comment if my students wear flip-flops in the Winter, to which I replied in a rather long-winded, if somewhat off-point, manner:

[T]oday it has been a constant current of flip-flops everywhere on campus, along with tattered T-shirts worn by the boys and ridiculously short shorts on the girls.

I don't notice any of that nonsense, of course. I just stride across the quad like I own the place.

I'm teaching classes in one of the old buildings, which is known to be nice and warm all Winter but also not-so-nicely hot when the weather is still summer-like outside. Today, it was beastly. I almost removed my tie. I didn't, though. Students get to see enough professors dressed like slobs. Eventually, given that I am teaching business students, those kids will have to dress well and properly unless they want to be professors or truckers. Those kids — those prospective future leaders, movers, and shakers — may dress in one of three ways once they graduate: to their comfort, to their role, or to their potential. I tell them that.

Today, however, they get to dress in tattered T-shirts and ridiculously short shorts.

After all, they're still kids.

Soon enough, my students will be business people. I'll miss them.

Next year, I'll see new campus kids wearing tattered T-shirts and ridiculously short shorts; and I'll miss them, too, someday.

Adulthood has its downside: not only do you have to dress better, but you also have to say goodbye too often.

The Dark Wraith has homework to grade, now.

I must herewith stipulate that the repeated reference to "ridiculously short shorts" was intended to annoy — indeed, perhaps to incite — the older gentlemen, Father Tyme and Peter of Lone Tree, who are also contributing writers at Big Brass Blog. Sadly, neither of those two astute fellows took the bait, but my comment did lead to another follow-up comment by Anna:

DW, I can't recall even one of my professors ever showing up in a suit or a tie! I seem to remember that pretty much everyone on campus was schlepping around in the same kind of Salvation Army Drop-box clothing...

I am glad she wrote that; she has given me the rare opportunity to explain why I, of all people, would consistently wear a crisp shirt and tie in the classes I teach. Given that my hair is long, my economics lectures are at times hard-core conservative and at other times downright progressive, and my competencies in teaching range all the way from math and economics to English grammar and computer skills, one might think I would dress like some fossilized Hippie who had found storage space for my bones in the cloistered halls of academia.

My students have asked me why I wear a tie to class, and now the question has been posed by Anna, so I should put my answer in writing. That way, instead of growling to get people off my case, I can hand them a hyperlink, instead, and be done with the matter. That which follows is my answer.

Times have changed, and even I have, at least on the outside. In my first years of teaching, I dressed wildly: black, survivalist-type pants; large, puffy-sleeved shirts; chains on my Dingo boots; a calculator lashed to my belt; bushy, mangy, curly hair; and a thick beard across my whole face.

In that time, I fit right in at the academy, which was still stuck in the post-'60s thrall of victory over the fascists (even though Reagan had just been elected), victory over sexual hang-ups (even though AIDS was right over the horizon), and academic freedom as far as the eye could see (even though the conservative political and religious forces were already mustering a noticeable and sometimes intimidating presence on campuses like mine).

In that time, I was the hero for my alternative lifestyle of daring clothes, public romps with several hot girls at a time, and powerful, innovative delivery of lectures.

Times change. Once I was no longer the hero, anything I did was wrong. It mattered not one bit whether I was conservative or liberal, brilliant teacher or boring lecturer, genius of high-powered mathematics applied to finance and economics or dullard of arcane tripe.

I was finally on my own. It took me a long time — many years, in fact — to figure that out. I know when I did: it was a winter night when I broke into the apartment of an old friend who was out of town. I so desperately needed food and a warm place to sleep for a while. I'd had too many nights of getting knocked around by nasty cops, shoved for money by drug-addled Black guys, or chased by filthy White boys calling me "faggot." Save your Right-wing or Leftist holier-than-thou breath for someone else; I got in, got some dinner, a pack of cigarettes, and a hard night of sleep by a heater grate.

I became radicalized in the strangest ways, but the predicates to what I now am go way back, clear to the days of my late childhood in the time after my father died, when my mother and I were homeless and broken by the bills for his "treatment." Again, save your Right-wing or Leftist holier-than-thou breath for someone else; your cult of healthcare, as it is or with "reform" and some "public option" thrown in, can go straight to Hell.

I have finally chosen, in this act of my waning dinner theatre circuit, to mock the dominant, old-guard culture that gave purpose to the failed person I am of my choices, my past, and my blood.

The dinner that comes with the show is simply delicious in all its nuances of conservatism, progressivism, traditionalism, anarchism, false piety, frightful bravado, and unrelenting failure masquerading as unrealized potential.

The purpose is so worthy, though; and the effect, if there be one, is so richly iconoclastic.

In higher education, we still have quite a few professors who think that part of their "academic freedom" is the exercised right to look like the janitors (even though the janitors often dress better).

I am not impressed, even when the indignant response is that slovenly appearance is an expression of humility or some other noble but wholly disingenuous motive. To the very last one of my ostensible colleagues — to paraphrase the late, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir — they are not nearly valuable enough to the world to be humble.

Neither am I. I am nothing but a teacher. My very low pay as an untenurable professor reflects my value to the academy, and my value reflects my worth to the economy. Save the vapid bleatings to the contrary for someone else — remember: I am an economist, and a damned good one, at that. I haven't been right all along about what was going to happen to this economy by being maudlin, stupid, or prone to bias. (And, by the way, neither will I be wrong about where the current Administration's economic policies are going to take us.)

Here's how I teach. If I could carry a lake to class, I would, just so I could walk across it.

When I went to the bottom, I would resurface on the other shore and, with as much bearing as my soggy state could muster, I would say to the disturbed onlookers, "Let's see Jesus do that."

No, I am not quite that arrogant (almost, but not quite); but the point is that the world has many, many more followers than leaders. The leaders will find their own way, and morally rightful inspiration (no, not "ethical" this or that) helps them lead justly, smartly, and bravely.

The followers, for their part and role, will turn to the fiercest leaders, which is why the Left is completely baffled by the power of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Malkin, Robertson, Falwell, and hundreds of others of hateful hearts and ignorant rhetoric.

If the Left would stop dancing and chanting to a cacophony of self-written tunes and whiny, dumb wannabes, its legion would find that far greater power exists in the heart of good than in the gut of evil; but that power will never be enduring so long as leadership is the master craftman's tool of the Right.

I will let other professors dress as clowns, run PowerPoints instead of lecturing, and gladly sink into the good night, collecting their tenure, accepting their silly honors, and giving their students the latest pitch in the descent of higher education into nothing more than technical training on the latest fads of technology, pedagogy, and whorish corporate sponsorships.

I have work to do before I die.

It's important work, so I'll wear a tie while I do it.


The Dark Wraith has spoken.

Click the image to open the Flash slideshow player:



Once the gallery window opens, the slideshow will run automatically.

The pictures were all taken with an AF-S Nikkor DX 18-135mm ED-IS f/3.5-5.4 lens mounted on a Nikon D60. Scaling and minor touch-ups on the photographs were done in Adobe Photoshop CS4. The gallery you will see was created in Adobe Fireworks CS4. You can click on photos in the gallery to see somewhat larger images. For those wanting to see even larger pictures (although still not even close to the scale of the originals), click here and here for a couple of dramatic images.

These are photographs I took of a prairie "wind farm" in the Midwest. The wind farm is quite extensive: it takes about half an hour to pass the entire complex, which cost a considerable amount of money when it was built and still costs a fair amount in terms of maintenance and the opportunity cost of the land used for the purpose. Although it does not contribute a particularly notable amount of electricity to the grid, neither does a more traditional generator, in and of itself, and this wind farm does not represent a continuing source of pollution like a coal-fired plant would.

It is a start, and it shows what can be done when the will and means to change technology are combined with support from taxpayers and politicians.

Aesthetically, this way of generating electricity is most pleasing, too. The windmills individually and in their collective grandeur are almost enough to make a cynic like me optimistic about the future.

Almost.


The Dark Wraith hopes readers enjoy this photo gallery.