Do you love gambling? Even better— do you like gambling to lose? Wall Street sure as hell does! Obviously we all know this, because the system, as it is set up, is doomed to fail. This is old news, even to the laymen. Everybody, whether on the right or left, ran around all over the place holding signs high in the air and screaming loudly for no reason at all. At least we thought we had a reason though, as that is all that matters to our generally dim-witted way of life. No matter what we all believed to be true, the system didn’t change— and it deserves a little overview. Let’s explore, one and all! Make sure you break out the bourbon. This is a depressing picture.

Congratulations America! It seems our budget deficit officially passed the $1 trillion mark this past June, blowing away the previous deficit record of a fiscal year of $454.8 billion (2008). Wow, am I proud! Seriously, in the words of Ron Burgundy, “How’d you do that? Heck, I’m not even mad, that’s amazing.” I know I should probably be a little discouraged, but I figure, seeing as this recession has already made us all sad and jaded and even poor, we could make some lemonade from these 1 trillion lemons, spike it with some vodka (unless the recession has turned you into an alcoholic, which then I would suggest AA and maybe a sponsor) and woohoo PaRtY like it’s 1998!

And not one of them is Dick Cheney’s man-sized safe! Hello! As a Scottish person, I grew up in the knowledge that America was full of guns and sunshine and big hats and huge fucking cars that couldn’t hold the road well going around corners so they screeched and bounced like a helium-filled rhinoceros with relationship issues – and that was just the “Rockford Files”.

On the eve of Barack Obama’s big speech, I figured it was best to spin you a seafarer’s yarn on why the poor man is going to go gray and bend at the back before this thing is done. Everyone’s curious how this thing is going to start and what he’s going to say. I suggest, perhaps, that our speechifier-in-chief open with “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale.”

Why would I suggest such a tone? What deadly sea-creature must Hopey slay? The answer, landlubbers, is the Kraken.

I’m shocked. Shocked!

Back in the Golden Age™, when people
still had jobs and houses and the country
wasn’t being run by a muslin socialist…

Personally, I’m selling every electronic media player I’ve bought over the past ten years and trying to work a pencil into a Micro SD card so I can dump the contents onto a succession of C90 tapes that will run at a variable speed through the “tape deck” I’m hooking up to my listening horn amplified and powered by the alternating current of terror and all-pervading sense of doom.

Any other cost-saving tips in these tough times? Neo-hobo it up in the comments.

Image via http://blogs.sundaymercury.net

Making the internet rounds: an AIG executive accused of a 500m fraud was sentenced to 4 years. An eagle-eyed Reddit user found that the article describing the sentence was appearing just above an article showing that a homeless man had gotten 15 years for stealing 100 dollars from a bank. Finally! The perfect meme for the failings of our justice system! Uh, no:

It took Detroit authorities almost three days (and three phone calls) to extricate a body found encased in ice in an abandoned warehouse.

The first phone call to Detroit police took place Monday, Jan. 26th.

Fuck you, John Thain.

It’s not just a fuck you for blowing 1.2 mil on your office just as the firm tipped into oblivion.

In “Outsourced Chores Come Back Home” Sunday’s New York Times tells us that more and more people are back to doing things for themselves