It's Friday! Friday! Gotta get down on Friday!

So this has gotten so amazing, phenomenal, coincidental, and downright scary that I can't NOT write about it.

It's "Friday," the song by awkward 13 year-old middleschooler Rebecca Black of Orange County, CA. If you've seen it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't, I've got three things to say to you:

1) it's 2011 now - welcome.
2) what rock have you been under for the past three weeks?
3) what the fuck are you waiting for? Click on the video for godsakes!



This is failure approaching epicness of Odyssean proportions. Just a Brunswick stew of epic fail. I'm truly shocked at how bad this is.

And yet I listened the whole way thought, as I'm sure many have, because I simply couldn't turn away from such a disaster. It's the sonic version of rubbernecking at the scene of a wicked car crash. It's like watching a slightly less funny Charlie Sheen interview, only a tad more pathetic yet somehow not quite as sad.

But at least the new media -- Web 2.0 or "You" or whatever it's called -- has lived up to its billing as a game-changing technology, and in more ways than just delivering copious amounts of every type of porn imaginable.

When I first saw this thing it was forwarded to me by a buddy who's a middleschool teacher in LA county. His description accompanying the link? "Watch this guys. See, teachers should be paid ten fold what they make. Teenagers are so unbelievably goddamned annoying."

That was over two weeks ago, and the video had "just" 4 million hits at that point.

But things happen fast in viral world. As of April 1, this trainwreck of a song has since garnered over 70 million views on YouTube in less than three weeks (it also has over 1.4 million "dislikes," making it the most hated YouTube video ever by quite some margin).

The sheer velocity with which this pile of garbage has spread around the digital globe is remarkable. She's already been on Leno, for godsakes.

At no other time in human history would it be possible to something so utterly worthless to be viewed by nearly 1 in 4 Americans. Hell, for the vast majority of our species' time here on this rock, there haven't even been 70 million of us around at any one given time. Scary when you think of it like that, isn't it?

Take a moment to contemplate the incredible flow of information here: Andrew Jackson killed 2,000 British soldiers at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812 when the war had actually been over for two weeks; the news hadn't made it to either side.

So yep, it's here: we truly live in the information age now. A brave new world. Just remember: nobody ever said all that "information" wouldn't be worthless, or crappy, or both.

Nothing good can come of this. Trust me, this little girl isn't going to make nearly enough money from this to offset the fact that her life is officially ruined (public ridicule on this scale and intensity never really goes away -- I'm guessing pill overdose in five, ten years tops). The only positive thing about this whole mess is that it's bred some AMAZING parody videos.

Here are some of the best:







Is it just me, or does this actually sound like Andrew W. K.?




Yikes.

And finally, this wouldn't be complete without an epic Dylan cover treatment. Nobody does a better job of actually sounding confused while they're signing something that doesn't really make sense than Dylan:




But even with those great parodies putting a momentary smile on my face, I still couldn't put my finger on what was bothering me about the whole situation. Then I felt the stars align in the form of Satan's Pentagram and saw this:

Rebecca Black's Not To Blame: Meet The Man Who Wrote “Friday”

"You see, little 13-year-old Rebecca actually had very little to do with the notorious song or video. Patrice Wilson, the founder of Ark Music Factory and seemingly random rapper in Rebecca's video, is taking responsibility for this dubious phenomenon…He studied…at Whitman College in Washington state"

NOOOOOOO!!!! CAN'T YOU SEE?!?! THE DEVIL HIMSELF IS FOLLOWING ME, AND HE INTENDS TO COLLECT!!!! RUN!!!! RUN FOR YOUR MISERABLE LIVES!!!! I CAN'T SAVE YOU!!!! RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Well, now that I've got that out of the way: don't worry all you wonkish El Monstro readers, I'll have a nice piece on the societal value of public stock markets in the next couple days.

More Cyclical Compensation Models - A Cure For 'Divide & Conquer' Anti-Labor Strategies?

I know there's been a ton of crazy shit in the news in the past couple weeks (including my accurate prediction of a massive earthquake on the Pacific plate just two days before the Japan tragedy - yikes) but I wanted to address the Wisconsin labor situation for a minute. I am very passionate about the subject, and I have a thought on how to improve the unions' bargaining situation:

It's been well established for quite sometime in the field of behavioral economics that as long as someone's standard of living is improving -- i.e., they're making more money and/or have more buying power -- they tend to not give a shit about how everybody else is doing financially. A rising tide may lift all boats, but even when it lifts some more than others nobody tends to complain (at least not in substantial numbers).

This is part of the rationale behind Reaganomics being a socially-stable economic policy position: yes, the rich may become fantastically fucking richer, but as long as it spurs enough economic growth that even the people at the bottom get a little richer there won't be riots or other forms of unrest.

China's leaders have played this tendency beautifully, papering a 9% annualized growth rate over an incredible rise in income disparity since the market reforms of Deng Xiao Ping began in 1978.

[quick trivia fact] Deng is the source of my favorite quote from a modern Chinese leader (the ancient ones were decidedly more badass, for the record). Once, Deng agreed to take a foreign reporter's questions -- the first example of such government openness since Mao's revolution triumphed in 1949. When asked if moving to a market system represented an acknowledgment that communism had indeed failed, Deng said the following (paraphrased): "No, that is not what is happening at all. You Westerners use too many labels that we do not have use for in China. Command economy? Market economy? Black cat, white cat -- what is the difference so long as it catches mice?" SO EPICALLY CHINESE!!![/quick trivia fact]

But bad shit happens when you don't have economic growth. When the proverbial 'pie' stops growing in total size, people use extra-market means -- i.e., political upheaval, riots, violence, etc. -- of squabbling over who gets what from the newly-set size of the pie. So if you want to avoid civil/political strife and unrest, you better have a growing economy more often than not.



I think this effect may help explain why unions are not supported 100% by the public.

Unions in general -- and public employee unions in particular -- have spend much of their energy and political capital over the past ~30 years fighting for more job security rather than better pay and benefits. As a result unionized government jobs on average pay less than their private-sector counterparts given constant levels of education, but they have a lot more job security when the economy goes through a cyclical downturn (or goes down the fucking toilet like in the Great Recession).

This is why people are upset at unionized public employees. They see themselves hitting hard times -- losing jobs, taking hits on their pay, working extra hours for no additional compensation, benefits freezes, etc. -- but not the unionized public employees.

The proverbial 'pie' has stopped growing, and people are resorting to extra-market means -- in this case, electoral politics -- of squabbling over who gets what from the set size of the pie.

And so we face the following reality: a whole shitload of people who make $40k a year and are sliding backwards are angry at the unionized public employees who are making $45k a year, and a majority of them just got convinced by a couple of billionaire Koch brothers to vote in the interests of the fabulously wealthy because of the more-visible perceived unfairness of the public employees' compensation being shielded from the negative effects of the recession.

Napoleon first termed this strategy "Divide & Conquer." Historically, it's been brutally effective. It's just what we did to the Native Americans: pitting tribe against tribe over comparably petty differences and old rivalries while we were fucking genociding the 'winner.' Dark, but effective. And the corporate anti-labor people are playing it really well.



He's my idea.

The unions need to focus on improving overall pay and benefits for their members, not just on shielding them from the trials and tribulations of the business cycle.

When Joe Six-Pack sees that Joe Gov't-Employee is also hurting, they'll likely feel solidarity rather than rivalry, even Joe G-E is making more money in absolute terms. They won't get taken for a ride by a socioeconomic class that has absorbed nearly all of the economic gains of the past 30 years and now faces no campaign donation restrictions, amplifying their power well beyond their meager numbers. They'll stop this anti-labor charade that actually hurts their own interests and focus on the real problems of economic inequality in a country where the richest 400 citizens have as much wealth as the entire bottom half -- 155 million people -- of the country does.

Just a thought.

All in a name

Let me just say that even though I'm American and speak English and therefore dominate the world in a heretofore unheard of imperialistic way there are some things that will never make sense to me in their authentic form.

Asian languages are a good starting point, although to me they're almost too far gone to be within the realm of reasonable discussion. They seem to me, so different than the Latin-based English and Spanish to which I can exist in that I have immense respect for anyone who is bilingual from an Asian language to a Latin-rooted one.

However, within much closer social proximity to me are some mind-bending languages and words that I have discovered that make me think that I am but dust and ashes upon the world of possibilities.

Borussia Moenchengladbach- This is a name of a German soccer team. Can you say it? I tried, I doubt I succeeded though. Apparently German has lots of long words because they just combine things we in English would normally separate (Dan- confirm?). So maybe this team just means "Near Russia a group of men good with their feet."

Additionally, here is a list of team names in the Ukrainian premier league. Which one of those would most closely associate with "Oakland A's"? I would become a fan of that team but I just can't figure it out.

Let's move to Iceland. Last year a huge volcano erupted and seriously messed up global air travel. However it was only known as "Icelandic Volcano" because it's real name, "Eyjafjallajokull" is COMPLETELY UNPRONOUNCEABLE to English speakers. Wikipedia offers some help by giving the pronunciation guide here.

Still not getting it?

Why not let a real viking motherfucker from Iceland take a crack at telling us. Seriously you must watch this video for two reasons.

1. I'm convinced this guy speaks better English than his own Icelandic.
2. The comically dark ending of the video where he cheerfully announces, "in other news, nothing."

And now that you know what's up here are some other Icelandic volcanoes so you can impress girls at a party the next time one blows.

With my own two hands

I can change the world with my own two hands/make a better place with my own two hands/
-Ben Harper

I'm not sure this angry mob of Indian workers really got Ben Harper's message when, after getting laid off, they trapped the culpable executive in his car and burned him to death. Holy shit, people need, to quote Harper again, to burn one down and chill.