Isn't it getting to be about that time?

For the past 24 hours or so I've desperately tried to wrap my brain around the whole idea that the perpetually bailed out with taxpayer money AIG, the very corporate body that wouldn't exist today had it not been for the hundred or so billions of dollars of bailout money infused into their coffers, is essentially telling the American people to go fuck themselves by paying out $450 million dollars in bonuses, much of which to its top executives, many of whom run the very department that created the financial clusterfuck they became mired in to begin with. They claim that the bonuses are needed to retain these employees, and that the company is contractually obligated to pay them out.

In what other world would something like this happen?

Probably the most basic thing about all of this that I've been simply unable to grasp mentally is this...why the fuck would you want to hold onto any of these people in the first place? Why not use this money to attract better employees? I could maybe even understand using some of the bailout money for severance pay and telling them to hit the road because they're a bunch of fuckups. But to reward them so greatly for such colossal incompetence? What gives?

I mean, throughout the history of commerce, I suspect that the most prevalent reason for termination of employment is incompetence. Millions, perhaps even billions, have been fired from jobs that they were simply unqualified to perform up to an adequate level of performance expected by their employer, with far less collateral damage accumulated upon others within the company or outside of the company due to their incompetence.

Let's say the captain of an oil tanker gets hammered behind the wheel of the ship and runs it aground, slashing one of its sides on a bed of jagged rocks in the process, spilling millions of barrels of oil out into the environment. Wouldn't it be a reasonable expectation for that captain to be fired?

Now, what would you think if the company employing that captain then stepped forward to say that not only were they not firing him, but that they were giving the guy who wrecked the ship a raise because he was the only person within the company who knew how to steer this particular type of vessel, rather than find someone outside of the company who did? Wouldn't that just seem, oh, I don't know, fucking retarded?!?!

Yes? Good, because that's what all of this is...FUCKING RETARDED!

From everything that I've read and been told there are two main reasons this is happening, the first being that these people had some sort of employment contracts that specified these bonuses be paid to them.

Fuck the contracts!

Since when is a contract worth anything these days anyway? If professional sports teams can get out of paying multi-million dollar contracts to dumbass athletes for morality slip-ups like running illegal dog-fighting rings, surely these pricks can hire lawyers crafty enough to figure out a way to avoid paying bonuses, FUCKING BONUSES, not even their actual salaries for the love of God, to the very fucksticks whose actions on the job contributed mightily to the collapse of the world economy. So take these contracts and tell them to go wipe their asses with them. Fuck that. The government of the United States of America is now involved because they took an shitload of money from it to save their asses. Hell, if it wouldn't be for the United States government, THEY WOULDN'T HAVE JOBS! And since when does the United States government let contracts interfere with imposing their will? Just saying. And was their not any sort of "you don't get paid if the company bleeds cash out of its asshole" clause written into these contracts? Were the lawyers who wrote them THAT stupid?! Give me a break. Fuck you and your contracts!

Now, the second most prevalent reason for retaining these people and paying them enormous bonuses is a bit of a dirty little secret, but an equally retarded one nonetheless...That AIG has to hold on to these people because the financial instruments that they created which led to this whole clusterfuck are so complex, so mindbogglingly labyrinthine, that they're the only ones who have a prayer of figuring out the whole mess and fixing it.

Let's think about this for a second, and pardon me while I use another analogy in the process of us all contemplating this collectively. Imagine if you will that you've got a huge fucking nose. I mean, this thing is a lifeform of its own, and it makes you uncomfortable socially and you can't even get hookers to have sex with you and all that, so you decide one day that you're going to have some plastic surgery, a nose job, rhinoplasty I think is the appropriate medical terminology. So you prospect around and find a plastic surgeon to perform the operation for, let's say $5000, and on the specified day of the surgery, you go under the knife.

Later in the day, a few hours after the procedure's completion, you wake up, walk over to a mirror and discover that your flaccid cock is now where your nose was, one of your ears is now attached to your asshole, and in the place of your dick you now have what appears to be make-shift vagina whose lips have been created with thick slices of honey-baked ham from a nearby deli.

You're in complete shock. "What the fuck happened to me? Somebody has got to fix this!," you plead to a nurse walking by.

"I'm sorry son, but this all looks too complicated for anyone to handle except for the person responsible for it...I suggest you go see the surgeon who did this and see if he can fix it," she says.

So you go back to the guy who originally performed the procedure and he says, "well yes, I can fix it, but it's going to cost you another $5000."

Would you do it? Would you trust this assclown to correct the once in a lifetime botching he did previously? FUCK and NO. Nobody's that fucking stupid!

That's essentially what we're doing here. It should be criminal. And what kind of person would even accept one of these bonuses to begin with? Where is the conscience within this person's mind and soul? Does such a thing even exist?

So what are we to do? Are we to sit idly by and just let all of this play out? Or is this the tipping point, the point where we all grab torches and pitchforks and storm the buildings?

No, I don't think it's time for that just yet, but Goddamn if it isn't getting close. What I would implore anyone reading this to do is to take a couple of minutes and make a few phone calls. Call your representatives in the House and the Senate. Call the White House switchboard. AND CALL AIG! Fuck emailing anyone...email can be put off or totally ignored. But the phone rings. They hear it. It disturbs them when they're trying to work. It's the most effective non-violent tool we have for getting a message across. I'm telling you, it works. And it's much more time efficient than composing emails.

I don't think that I've ever used this forum to advocate doing such a thing, but all of this just flips my lid to the extreme. I guess I'm having a Howard Beale "I'm mad as hell" moment here.

If you don't know know how to contact your representatives, here's a link to a website that makes it easy. Just put in your zip code and all the necessary info will pop up. The White House phone number is as follows...202.456.1414. AIG's main line is as follows...877.638.4244. Make these calls. Pass the info to your friends and ask them to call as well. Make a point of calling the offices of the biggest blowhards in Congress even if you hate them, because at least you know for sure that these people will speak up when the cameras and microphones show up. It all helps to create a tide.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.