The same video kept appearing on the music channels. It looked like Slipknot, but as my regular viewing companion has about the same tolerance for Zeros metal as I do for Celine Dion, I couldn't be sure. Also, I don't recall anyone from Slipknot wearing a mask that looks like a cross between a dissected lizard and Frankenstein's monster.
Now, it's hard for a band to get on MTV, and you have to be pretty popular to make it into heavy rotation. Light rotation on Spanish MTV was as far as my band ever got – ole! What is the significance of this? Perhaps nothing, although it is interesting in light of the Dow's laborious struggle to get back to the 11,000 mark.
For Bob Prechter's theory of socionomics declares that music, like the Dow, is an important measure of social mood. Of course, there's no shortage of pop princesses to be found, but as we move into what Prechter's Elliott Wave theorists posit is the start of a downward intermediate wave (1) of primary wave 3, it's intriguing to see that the little darlings of the 1999 top are now getting Dirrty, Naughty and Toxic.
I've been wrong about the markets before, so I'm not going to offer any specific entrail-readings, but it's important to note the implications go far beyond your 401k. First, despite all the economic good news that is being reported, the fact that the Federal Reserve is still keeping rates at 1 percent is not a healthy sign. When you factor in that the fractional reserves of our banking system are now 1/109 – that is to say, $1 is now loaned out 109 times – it begins to look as if The Powers That Be are deeply worried about something wicked this way coming.
Wars have long been known to accompany bear markets. For historical and military reasons, I have previously asserted that the present conflict in Iraq is a Phony War of sorts, a prelude to the real show that is basically invisible to the nation at quasi-war. Socionomics dictates that as the 2004-2006 primary wave 3 will be to the 2000-2002 primary wave 1, so the coming conflict will be to the present one. Not a particularly nice thought, so here's hoping a series of cheerful boy bands begins topping the charts soon.
Speaking of crashes, thoughts of Air America insensibly enter my mind. It looks as if the employment rate will be rising soon by the 100 or so employees of the ill-fated leftist talk-radio network, which was doomed from the start. Considering that Alice Franken – who still hasn't been so good as to answer my call to fisticuffs, hence the appellation – was not offering anything you couldn't hear on NPR, read in the New York Times, or watch on the ABCNNBCBS cabal, the network never had a chance.
Of course, one hardly expects a group composed entirely of fluff-head leftists to understand the complexities of the law of supply and demand.
I'd like to luxuriate in the joys of what Jonah Goldberg calls Frankenfreude as Air America loses executives and misses payrolls. But that's not possible now that Alice is bruiting about the idea of running for the Senate. In any other state, that might be laughable, but not in Minnesota. It's the one state where he could actually win. Do the words "Gov. Jesse Ventura" ring a bell?
First, Minnesota is one of the most reliably leftist states in the country. Second, the Star & Sickle, otherwise known as the Star Tribune, already loves Alice to distraction. Third, never underestimate the desperate Minneapolitan appetite for celebrity. You can't appreciate the meaning of trying too hard until you've read a local columnist hyperventilating over Minneapolis being compared to Des Moines instead of Paris. Fourth, Paul Wellstone. It could happen.
And frankly, socionomics appears to predict it. I can't think of anyone, short of the Lizard Queen herself, better suited to help that grand supercycle wave get rolling.