News Flash! While shopping at WalMart Americans discover their nation has disappeared. Update after the game!

One the last day of 2008 I bring you cheery news!

America will collapse in the summer of 2010.

Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces...So says Russian academic Igor Panarin.

On a local note - for me at least - California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," which always feel just under the surface to me anyway. California, a nation-state, has a specific identity - that most residents ignore. Ignoring this identity is part of the identity. We would be upfront about it like Texans but to be like Texans would not be Californian.

Alas, Igor goes on to say: and will be part of China or under Chinese influence.

Uh,no, Igor. I think not. Like Obama, I am not an actual professor, but Igor clearly has no concept of the Californian-American identity. We might get in bed with Mexico if it were not a worse basket case, but not China. I don't care how many dollars they are holding.

Even the Mexico scenario is suspect. In the 25 years California was a part of Mexico (Yes, it was only 25 years.) Californios didn't much acknowledge or like their overlords in Mexico City. California was a backwater - which is why the Spanish built "missions" up the coast. The nation Cali most mimics is Australia. So the Risk Game scenario lends itself more to a California/Australia alliance. Crazed surfers and outback rednecks fighting off the Commie hordes. Communication will be difficult as Cali surfers and Aussies both speak an incomprehensible English - but we'll figure it out.

I am being silly.

However, the potential for large scale social disruption in this country in the short term is real. We are not prepared for another Great Depression. The societal glue of 1932 is not nearly as strong now. Entitled brats were confined to a few rich families on the Eastern Seaboard then. Now, it's the national disease up to and including the current and next President. And I do not see a unifying American leader on the horizon. As I said last night, I could be wrong. Mr. Obama looks more like Neville Chamberlain than FDR. His soaring rhetoric could morph into "Can't we all just get along?" pleading if the breadlines get long enough.

The answer, to him in particular, is going to be a resounding "No".

Obama still strikes me as "the other". An interloper. This sense I have has nothing to do with race. Colin Powell feels American. As does Jesse Jackson. Whatever one thinks of Jackson he emerged from here. His American bonefides are not in question. He exists in the part of the house most of us ignore - but he is still in the house. Regardless, Obama is a concoction, a creation (a confection to many) whose history has largely been blotted out, Soviet style.

Obama has alight here...there...and everywhere. He is a man of the world (or rather, he plays one on TV) coming to power at the precise moment globalization is cratering. The "America as lone superpower" Neo-Con project is snapping back. We are entering an inward looking time.

Diversity is only a strength if all agree to a final answer. If not - it's just a bunch of fraternities partying in a nice mansion - libel to disintegrate into a fracas when the Bud runs out. The great American ideals have been subsumed into a "consumer culture" now apparently on the verge of collapse. I consume, therefore I am does have an answer: Okay, then you're not.

To paraphrase James Howard Kunstler: An endless string of strip malls, Walmarts, and drive thru windows won't be fought for because they are not worth fighting for. Even the most TV addled American knows this. An eruption of regionalism that shoves aside nationalism is a real possibility in this mix, if not quite yet a probability. I can see people circling the wagons to protect actual places say Asheville, North Carolina, much of New England, or the California central and northern coast. In other words: places built with citizens in mind, not consumers, that are worth protecting.

Further, I can see people ditching those places thatrepresent the height of post war American civilization - like Plano, Texas or Peoria, Arizona - "towns" built for cars to easily shuttle consumers whose lone purpose is to ingest something at all times. Soulless Walmart horizons, with nothing in the middle distance except parking spaces.



BUT underneath the thick layer of post moon landing American lard there still lives a "Live Free or Die" attitude. Like the Japanese on December 6th 1941, Mr. Panarin neglects to add this into the equation. It remains to be seen if that impulse will unify the nation or result in a bunch of dudes with shotguns screaming "Get the hell out of New Hampshire"...or Texas... or Biloxi...

Lunch Break - Boxing day, Macondo, Cruise, Klaatu, Bad Gays, Bad Shoppers, Republic of California

The Photo is from beconfused.com.

Quote: At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.

From One Hundred Years of Solitude
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez


From the "Please stop hectoring us" department: Will someone tell Tom Cruise to GO AWAY. Has anyone else noticed that in all Tom Cruise vehicles he is always the worst element? Always. Imagine how much better War of the Worlds would have been with Johnny Depp or Will Smith (or a sock puppet, for that matter) saving his kid from the martians.

Speaking of martians.Klaatu from The Day the Earth Stood Still may be the role Keanu Reeves was born to play. Stiff. Emotionless. Robotic. I think we can safely say: Reeves IS Klaatu. The wikipedia entry on Reeves playing Klaatu contains this partial sentence-which makes me indescribably happy: After saving Jacob from Gort, Klaatu sacrifices himself to stop Gort by walking into the cloud of nanites and touches the sphere...

News of the Gays: Gay twins porn stars cat burglars by night....so much joke potential in one headline...so little time. But it is true. Plus they have very sweet faces. Check is out.
Also: Homo Highness Hoping for Hot Husband. The good news is having some openly gay royalty. The bad news is that blue bloods are now doing reality television...The well of souls is, indeed, empty. At this rate the apocalypse may be a step up.

Bad Santa: the number of shoppers declined by double digits this year, auguring a dismal holiday season for retailers.

Bankrupt: California to run out of cash in 2 months.
Sounds crazy now but I bet the movement for California to secede will pick up in the next decade. Counter pointed by the move to split California in two. (Logically, it should be east/west not north/south.) The nation-state that is California must either really become one or become smaller. Also - I know it sounds crazy now- but secession movements making a come back in general would not surprise me at all. Prez with an elite vibe who won a 2% majority. Tough economy, add some slow cooked racism (though this is an optional ingredient - in parts of the land it is still added to all "recipes").It's never far from the fantasies of Texans. The Pacific Northwest has a brewing "Cascadia" identity. The New South is connected to globalization in many ways - if the economy really tanks Old South identification could rise again. Ironically, I find this the least likely candidate for a renewed secession movement.
Food for thought.

Pop Song I never seem to get sick of - Number 1: Into Your Arms, The Lemonheads.

Bush and Arnold

Okay we all know Bush is a dangerous moron. He is probably going to send America over the edge with his stupidity. Until there are massive rallies in the streets of America against Bush's escalation of his "war for his EGO” the whole thing has become redundant. He will do what he wants. No one will stop him. Things will get worse. and on and on.

He is going to "apologize" for his lazy ass dumb ass, lethal, expensive, foolish policy so far. George, start with Cindy Sheehan, asshole.
It is too late, bud. You should have listend to the Liberals a long time ago. BUSH, YOUR JUDGEMENT IS FLAWED. WE CANNOT TRUST YOU - IT IS TOO DANGEROUS FOR US TO TRUST YOU. RESIGN NOW.

However all is not lost for us on the Left Coast: Arnold, as I predicted years ago, is governing to the Left of the man he ousted. Let the California secession movement begin! We, like Islam in the Dark Ages, will preserve all that was once great about Western Civilization that BGC (Bush, Greed, and Corporations) have destroyed.
But first we Californians must build a wall along our border with Nevada and Arizona to ensure that the hordes of Red Staters don't try to enter our homeland after the utter destruction of the U.S. is completed by Bush.

CALIFORNIA SECEDE!!!!