A Geography of Hotness

It's hard for me to explain this endeavor as anything more than what some might see as utterly reprehensible objectification. Guilty!
For those who would say fetish is an immaturity to be transcended for the great things of life to come, I might agree, but with two caveats:
1. Fetish might be one of the Great Things in Life, at least for a while, and in addition,
2. The only way to get past it might be to explore it, thoroughly. In Baccus' Dance with Death all things are realized, said a Philosopher that I will decline to name now because it will make me look even more like an ass hole if you don't like the guy, but ponder his words for a second.
Going on from here, as I work to transcend, perhaps what motivates me in my weak animal moments is the smell and sight of a pretty girl, base as it may be... and to these usually idyl observations I have decided to try to add a little insigh, to understand in the mind what the loins only report.

Reasons for Hotness:
Endless refinement within one society (The Horn of Africa)
A fortunate coming together of two groups (French Polynesia)
Crisis Breeding, the loss of a large portion of one gender, leading to increased selectivity (Germany after World War II)
A New Start: a Place where people move to improive their life, the most confident and potentially hottest of a society, starting a new culture that leads to in improved pool of Selectivity (Calfornia)
A great Article by National Geogrpahic, which seems to be availible only in part, that laid out some of the science behind attraction. It touched on a few of these themes, notibly by saying that we are attracted in part to people who have the greatest genetic diversity from ours. This might be an explanation for Europeans propendency for Yellow Fever, and in New World: Native Love, or Squaw Fever.
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Places of Reputed Hotness:

California USA
The American South
Hawaii
Miami: The Capitol of Latin America
The West Coast of Florida: The Dumbest Hottest Women in America
Ivy League Colleges
Washington DC: Power is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac
Around any Important Person
Las Vegas, Nevada: Trashy Hotness Commoditized, although not quite like LA
Las Vegas, Montreal, and Miami Strip Clubs
Quebec
British Colombia
Sinaloa, Mexico
El Salvador
Cuba
Colombia
Cali, Colombia (Ful Bodied)
Medellin, Colombia (Full Personalitied)
Bogota, Colombia (Classy)
Armenia and Pereira, Colombia (Sweet)
Brazil
Argentina
Afrikaners
The Horn of Africa
Belfast, Ireland
Upper Class England
France
Italy
Spain
Greece, if you like em big!
Germany
Scandinavia
Iceland
Netherlands
Eastern Europe
Russia
Israel
Persia
Dubai
Baliwood
Thailand
Korea
Japan
Western Australia
The Gold Coast
Sydney
French Polynesia

Fun with Google Earth

The other night, I couldn't get Google Earth to focus so I could look at something during a bout of insomnia. Instead, i started spinning the globe like a basketball... I felt like God pretending to be the Harlem Globetrotters..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Aizz3C_7co
Give it a try!

The Latest Tyranny: MBA's and the New America

"Meet the new boss, same as the Old Boss.."   The Who

Every Country has it's frustrations, it's mentality or self impression that keeps it moving forward limply from where it keeps shooting itself in the foot. America's is the Corporatocracy. I marvel at the evil brilliance of it when I search all over a city for a hotel room where a window opens. Fresh air now has a price.. and when I ask about it, the staff, often with righteous indignation, tell me that opening windows are a safety risk, like they are running a pre school. Nothing ever made me want to jump out more...only in America it seems...
This idea that the logic of the business should be accepted as the logic of the nation, the brave new world ideas of the Koch Brothers and the evil bean counters who have way more influence in the banal Bauhaus postwar world of Shaumberg's and Irvine's and Atlanta's then we want to admit, the world of your sold out cousin, and the world you have to pass through ever time you take a plane, go to a gas station, or have to visit when you go to see that guy from high school you can't help but like even though he moved to some shit hole of big box commerce and those houses that really do, as much as you tried to imagine it couldn't be so, look all exactly the same, for the worst reason of all.. for the school district (where the schools yes, look like prisons or factories, all ready to pump out the next generation of ambitious fucks you can't even imagine could think that way, ready to sell quality of life under the bridge to make you live more like them, to shave one more penny for them at the sake of you), convenience, and some sad fantasy of safety and a back yard.
For those of you who got that the above is code for being racist, unadventurous, formulaic and sold out, I will admit now that the people I am casually blaming are the MBA's who, since WWII, have been calling the shots on what the average American life should be that about half of us seem to be falling for. The marketing fucks you sometimes blame work for the aforementioned... The simple notion of Rational Analysis and Cost/Benefit Analysis, when the don't include human factors, are the notions responsible for depriving us of the charms of a more random and natural life if it doesn't benefit them, like opening windows at a Hampton Inn. These mass decision making tools are taught at business schools, and tell me, do any of your friends go to business school without a greed motive.. is there a business school out there that is what U Michigan or Columbia are to Law, places that train for careers of selflessness (not that I put that on a higher pedestal per se..).. not really. That guy whose dad seemed to have a secret gay crush on him who worked out too much in high school and reminded you of Christian Bale in his grooming habits a little too much, he's got an MBA by now you can be certain.. he didn't get it to make your life better. He might have learned some notion of Enlightened Self Interest, might have taken an ethics class or two, learned to charge you even more to treat you the way a human should be treated anyways (I'm looking at you Ritz Carleton, you soulless robot!) but he is not doing all that math to give you anything he doesn't make the better half on, and that's just the beginning of the tricks he might be mastering. Think about all the shit this last election was about, what Mitt represented... sure freedom, and I am not arguing for more regulations here, but freedom to do all the shit that makes you want to hang yourself before calling your cell phone company, the airlines, or deal with your mortgage broker after he sold off your loan, or the company that laid off your brother or shafted his assumed retirement.. Who.. MBA's, that's who.. and they aren't a race or a class.. it's a way of thinking, kind of a code, it's a mentality that enshrines fiduciary responsibility or financial gain above all else that I am bitching about.. it's what makes life just a little less dignified and a little less livable in the mainstream every day, that extra ad at a sports venue, or the damn new monolith of a bar in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium that takes all the fun out of the ol' cheap seats.. it's the smaller and smaller peanuts on the flight, and the annoying conversation you have to have when you sleep late in a hotel and someone talks to you on the phone as if you abused a sacred right since check out time is right now.. who? MBA's got um by the twat... steer clear if you can...
a peek into enlightened self interest:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/topics/all-marketing.html
A peek into a sadder more conventional form of it, the kind we are most likely to face:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis
after reading this, think of millions of examples, from environmental disasters to the famous alleged case in the 60's of the RAND corporation coming up with a value for the life of a soldier to help make decisions on purchasing safety equipment under Robert MacNamara, who was a business school professor at first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation
This makes me realize that perhaps some of my mistrust, though well founded in the present day by the nuisances stated above, leads back to an animosity for what might have been the successful but awful logic that those of us who remember the Cold War called Brinkmanship, the game of chess that seemed to be played at the expense of our peace of mind by those in Government, Business and Politics, the famed Military Industrial Complex of Eisenhower fame. It was at that moment more than perhaps any other in America and maybe the world, that even if it worked on some fucked up level, the game seemed to get out of hand, or if you were from any number of third world countries that got shoved into some awful war due to geopolitical forces like Guatemala or Ethiopia, or places that got contaminated by NBC production and deployment (Nuclear Biological and Chemical), like Hanford WA or the South Pacific, it sure as fuck got out of hand, and it all seemed to go back to paper sense overcoming common sense.. the MacNamaras of the world leading us down a road that the average guy can only scratch his head as to how he really benefits from it, or agrees that it saves him a few bucks and thinks no more, as that must be good, and the closest equivalent today would likely be seen in the conflict of practicality of inertia of how we do things now over action to change that is the battleground of the Global Warming Debate, another mess that, yup, I can kind of blame on the MBA's..it's almost fun...

American Berlin: Detroit Rock City

If Chicago is the guy masturbating in his basement to porn, then telling his wife he was working and that everything is ok. In Detroit, the guys wife is down there with him enjoying it just as much, smoking a cigarette and laughing a horse laugh from the futon they dragged down there.. it's an honest city... it doesn't have much choice, but it gives an honest product, for better or for worse..
It's the biggest victim of the luxury it allowed by creating the age of the personal automobile, white flight, but it also seems to enjoy the rewards of it's freedom, convenience, and easy access to out of the way places, broad boulevards, and the weird safety you feel in a big hunk of steel as your cruise around and get to watch the worst of urban blight America has to offer from the safety of your car like a kid at the aquarium checking out the invasive species exhibit. Hell, it even has America's first aquarium of all things.
Anyone who knows my interests would know that I love the urban 'archeology' that abounds in a place like this, the relics of a bygone greatness, like an Indiana Jones adventure.. the museum like quality of a bunch of hulking old structures mutely telling you something great happened here, something explosive, and it was so intense there could be no follow up, the big bang led to a similarly big contraction, which burned out all the oxygen, soaked up by the lungs of the Motown Greats. Detroit is defiant to simple urban planning fixes, the Disney-fication option. It´s as if it's saying:You can't put a Jimmy Johns sandwich in my bottom floor, some lofts and call me good, I fucking changed the lifestyle of the world, perhaps for the worse, but you wanted it. It's like a drug dealer doing a long stretch, his consolation being that he gave people what they wanted, gave em a thrill, and no one else inside has much of an issue with it besides the damn prosecutor and the pissed off victims.. He gets left alone or even lauded in the joint.. crazy fucker with the long hair and the placid calm was big before the 70's, when life caught up with him.. fucking prosecutor named Nader! (Half of me kids... and I don't always put on my seat belt.. oh yeah.. I'm wild Nader, watch me dance.. oh and by the way, did you know that Ralph Nader grew up like 4 miles from where John Brown was born I believe it was, Winchester CT. Always thought that was interesting. Anyhow..). Detroit then functions with a clean conscience of someone who just bet big on the wrong horse, took a risk in life he has no regrets about, but knows it's luck will change.. sure there is a sad side to it all, but like Florida, it's so bad it's good. If you can't have a sense of humor about it you wouldn't last there anyways.
But what's funny is that it ain't about saving Detroit for Detroiters. They are long past that. People kept telling me they got everything they need, it just ain't where you expect it to be, and as a local showed me around, it proved to be true. They don't pity or pooh over what happened, a city of 3 million or so shrunk down to 700k.... they know where they all went, just the other side of 8 mile, a whole gaggle of honkeys hanging out living the way honkeys live.. that's OK, they might be the ones missing out is the feeling you get if you hit some of the towns haunts like in Corktown or Midtown or West Village. Motown ain't got to apologize.. if it ain't for you, it ain't for you. You can go someplace warm, go to the Burbs and never come back, or just give up, but you might be missing out, and if you don´t realize that, who needs you anyways...

The High to Our Proclaimed Low: Subcultures in America, As Good As It Get's...

For all the talk of how mass culture is destroying America, and why not, let's go so far as to say the world, since the appetites of the Post War culture and lifestyle we unleashed on this world seems to have been a huge factor in our current massive environmental dilemmas, although it didn't seem so bad when you were listening to Buck Rogers on the radio, car's had fins to go with the show, and Jet Planes really did go that much faster.. there is one glimmering but apparently unrecognized high side to the all consuming consumer Home From Nowhere lost in the burbs culture that we all kind of bitch about or ignore as the elephant in the room: It has created what might be the most fascinating set of subcultures in the world.. truly.. for all the talk of Bowling Alone, as a whole, we join a hell of a lot of odd stuff..
http://www.vaillawnchairteam.com/carnes/index.html
Just start with the Sci Fi and Fantasy worlds.. think of all those geeky little clubs you know guys belong to in places like Madison, Wisconsin and Cleveland, Ohio.. you know the guy, educated but casual, goatie and a shaved head and black rimmed glasses, thinks his job is easy, likes craft beer, steady girlfriend.. he goes to Trek Conventions (see the documentary Trekkies if you haven't).. sure he makes fun of it, but he goes.. all sorts of weird games he plays, intellectual pursuits he engages in to keep his mind lucid as he struggles to keep life going... how he wears a kilt in summer and goes on these medieval weekend retreats.. you make fun of it, but oh the fantasy of it all.. he might belong to a club that surrounds his sexual fetish to go to on Saturday night(One of the Cable Networks has a whole show dedicated to exploring this.. Real Sex.. there are women who make a living popping balloons with their clothes on in this country..) and there's the red state pursuits.. Civil War reenactment, 4x4 clubs, start with white tail deer, the rat's of the hunting world, and work up to groups that focus on wild ibex's in Kurdistan.. they have groups for it.. I am just guessing that there is some American group that if you google it they focus on wild Ibex's in Kurdistan... we are rife with odd pursuits, and stumbling upon them is such a thrill because we feel we have set the bar so low because we have come to see the norm in our country, through advertising and criticism, as one of a McMansion in the burbs, when in fact I bet only 30% of us live that way, but growing up there even, are these weird subcultures... endless amounts of them... Thanks to the 5 day work week (although we voluntarily work a lot more, so much more that I believe that despite all the claims of decadence, american' work the longest hours of anyone one earth, which might be due to the corporate slavery that goes hand in hand with the Suburban criticism, but could also be people who have these unique subculture/recreational obs and just love what they do, get obsessed with making the coolest new gun like on some discovery channel show, or work long hours to get people ready for the Nathans Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest (where else but in, you said it, America..2012, Chesnut´s 6th Victory.. GO USA!) 
Fact's may not support all this completely,  I almost don't want to look, it may be a happy fiction I tell myself to deal with the banality I encounter,  but with leisure, which reads as full bellies, safety and free time, comes intellectual exploration, and that leads us to what we have today, the Garden Club on speed, 5000 permutations into an endless experiment in new shades of ways to kill time.. and it's hard not to find it cool for all the Edward Scissorhands hate we see for what spawned it..

Cliche as Conversation in New America

I have observed, so as to stick with ' Grumpy Sociology' theme of this 'blog', that American's don't seem to speak to one another anymore with anything approaching original thought. They instead seem to have whole conversations that are almost exclusively regurgitations of Conventional Wisdom and Cliche's, the kind of stuff an active brain hears once, processes, but doesn't feel the need to ever say again. It might just be a drunk white guy thing to do, but it's also a drunk white girl thing to do, and a sober white guy thing to do, and a sober white girl thing to do, and a sober red neck thing to do, and a drunk red neck thing to do, and on and on...
Sometime in the 1970's I feel as if movies became pervasive enough that there was no hiding from the stereotypes it would observe, examine, and display, and the news media did the same thing. After a while, instead of endeavoring to be unique, the vast majority of people seemed to just give up, join one or another stereotype, and just parrot it's mantras all day long.. it went from being somehow complex prior to our overexposure, to just being this hollow parroting.. This might be a nostalgic view, that somehow there was more substance behind the cliche's a harder life for the NYC stock World War Two character or cop or stock pickup driving southern boy back in the day, when the world was less depicted, and a little less glossy and smooth; that it somehow had more texture, but was still driven by group dynamics, we just follow these hollow roles more than ever because the individual texture is gone, we don't know how to get it back, so now we are just mouthfuls of affirmation of that hollow role we picked out... almost daily in the contiguous 48 I feel like that is exactly what I see... 12 Angry Men fades to Dog Day Afternoon, which fades to Heat 2, which fades in turn to a crack on Friends or How I Met Your Mother about a headier past, by some nostalgic writer, and conversation devolves into some endless blather of group opinion affirmation as we wait for our wing dings to heat up in the national sports bar from hell.. and any deviation from this is an abdication, and leads to some endlessly rehashed sharing of more cliched and regurgitated opinions with nary a new fact or idea submitted or entertained.. and the status quo lives on, and we get to keep doing what we think we should be unabated, until the next round of wings arrives...

LA in a nutshell

To spend time in LA it so learn the true bizarre complexity of humanity, the imagination of God, however you want to describe it.. what a place.. so wrong yet so right, but so much to hate:

I Hate LA clip

but yet....

Los Angeles is horrible place to have a normal life, but somehow, a great place to while away free time..

Life...

life is short for the indecisive, and long for those of us forced to tolerate them..

'Second' City may be Ambitious...

Chicago, you are mediocre.... sure you're friendly,... gracelessly, but that's how so many people describe their first wife... for all your pretend edge, we can see right through to the fact that you compromised because you were pretty sure you couldn't make it anywhere else.. we can see that you have ambition but really no taste, that you like big and bold but are only comfortable with commoditized.. you wouldn't know good for real if it hit you like a winter wave from your crappy little fresh water pond which connects you to the happening trading empires of Sheboygan and Michigan City, oh joy, the cosmopolitan fervor of it all, like a modern Venice no doubt..
Your river running the wrong way is somehow a perfect symbol of what's happening to progress here..
Your cowed white men, shorn and shiny, shunned out of displaying even the slightest hint on sexual imagination or savagery in such an oddly feminine city, eager just to pretend to be everything a Disney shaped female imagination would want.

All your bleach blonds (Polish Chic, or Dump Truck Chic, as I keep thinking that they would do anything they can to not let you figure out their dad made his cash running dump trucks in the burbs somewhere) with their prized matter of fact-ness, the practicality that led them to this flat tomb of derivative and borrowed culture they so value (smells like fear, but sold as 'sensibility'), their accessibility a sad byproduct of the subconscious self loathing that goes with a life of compromise, and your old school tough guys, hanging their hat on the clubby-ness of presumed old school suffering Upton Sinclair style, while the union hall rocks fat full of no show cash, the defibrillators ready to try to keep another one on your rolls a few days longer, while the rest of your 'hip young crowd' tries to rebel without noise while still cherishing this sad basis as an origin. And lest ye forget your banal suburbanites, so proud of their flight from the south side or whatever pseudo urbanity they confuse with a sweltering Calcutta, or step up to the big burbs from someplace even more logical and less romantic (if possible, but beware it exists all through the Midwest!) but so eager to show not a lick of pretension (never thought you would miss it until now) as the bore you with banter born of an empty soul.. the Ned Reyerson of our Groundhogs Day in the Windy City...

The Scourge of the Angry White Man

Did you ever notice how the more insecure the dude, the bigger the truck or the louder the bike... what is it with that?
The claim of the misunderstood white man, unable to provide in the simple formula he craves, so that he would rather change the rules to suit himself than adapt to the demands of value, who feels so threatened by the outside forces, finds himself clinging to fantasies of simple virtues while the collaterals of his life clog up the world for 7 billion others, and he all the time plays victim, plays the woodsman encroached upon by medicracy, the fascist myth embodied, his fantasy of himself as virtuous and the truth of what it is like to deal with him so distant from one another. It's always the sell out who pretends the hardest to be the outsider, the least principaled that gripes about how the nation has abandoned it's principles.. and don't get me wrong, I believe in a libertarian outlook, but I don't want to drown the baby with the bathwater like so many of these guys do, and the funny thing is, the closer I get to people with real struggles, or people of real frontiers like Alaska and the Desert Southeast, or places of real Foment like Mexico or Memphis, the kinder you actually find them to be, the more willing to help, the less partial to a fantasy of themselves since the reality forges a greater more complex self awareness... it is in this mollycoddled bizzarro world of white America that the fear of chaos brings so many feints of victimhood, like the never ending chats of victimhood by the endlessly self righteous muslim enemies these honkeys take on, their diesels blaring, too heavy to take the curves of life they demand their tax dollars bulldoze into a straight line with a lane for them only..