I’m sitting at the Starbucks in the mall where I work on the outdoor chairs under the pole heater daydreaming all by myself. There’s usually a gang there but nobody has showed up yet. I look across the outdoor coffee, (and smoking), area, and stuck to the back of one of the stainless steel chairs is a sticker with the Victoria flag and the words, “I voted” on it. There was an election held in Victoria last week. I can’t give you an accurate list of the candidates who ran, (though there IS one from 2009 online), but I read in the newspaper there were over 200 candidates. 212 I think it was. I saw pictures of some of the candidates in the newspaper the week before, (because it’s important for us to elect people who LOOK like they know what they’re doing), and was surprised to see a girl I KNOW running for the school board rep. But then with 212 candidates odds are even a newcomer to Victoria will know one of them.
I also read in the newspaper and saw plastered on buses and buildings, heard on the radio, and couldn’t escape for a while the desperate pleas of those running for office to those of us who have within our power the ability to NOT vote and cost them ALL their jobs to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE enable our seriously ineffective and outdated behaviour for a little while longer. There were articles written by newspapermen and women upholding the traditional habit of glorification of the vote as a responsibility we should all cherish and yada yada yada. The inexplicable voter apathy. So hard to understand! Well not for me, a confirmed NON-voter. I’ll explain why I don’t vote and I am sure some or maybe ALL of the same reasons apply to the rest of the folks who choose to exercise our supposed democratic powers by not voting for those intent on taking them away.
First of all, if you want to see true apathy try going to any of our government agencies. Better yet, try calling them up. First you have to find the name of the agency you are looking for. The names all change regularly as it becomes easier for voters to locate our government representatives and bother them with our little problems. If you need a passport, driver’s license, or even some social assistance you need to know the name of the agency that provides it. Internet? Try it. It ain’t so easy. Phone book? There used to be handy listings in the white pages like, “Driver’s licence – see Access Centre.” Or even in the blue pages. Nowadays, not so much. And for the love of God, ACCESS CENTRE? For welfare I think it’s “Cool Aid.” Could they possibly find lamer, less recognizable titles for such important services?
THEN, if you are lucky enough to stumble upon the correct name for the agency you are trying to locate, we ALL know what happens when we try to call them up. At LEAST a 15-minute session of telephone gymnastics. “If you want endless telephone runaround, press one. If you want some useless recording that does nothing to assist you, press two. If you want to talk to a human being, stay on the line until your problem solves itself, until your start worrying about your phone bill, or until you die. If you want information about taxes you must pay for dying in Canada, press three.”
I wanted to get my driver’s license and had to call an insurance company. They transferred me to the correct office, whatever the name of it was, and whatever their number and only after half an hour of the answering machine labyrinth for BOTH places did I get through to a human being. Then when I wanted to call them back and cancel was faced with the prospect of doing it all over again. Didn’t bother, and will be charged the 75 bucks for not cancelling when I finally DO show up for my driving test. Minimal person-to-person contact with the electorate and 75 bucks for doing NOTHING. The perfect government agency!
Let’s see what our government has been up to recently so we can more fully illustrate my point. The big news in government is Pat Martin’s “industrial language” on Twitter. This is “inappropriate.” It’s “unnecessary.” He said, “This is a fucking disgrace… closure again. And on the budget! No democracy in the world would tolerate this jackboot shit!” Oh how terrible! Disgusting! Those expletives are so harsh!
Oh the endless entertainment one can derive from watching the histrionics and machinations of the leaders within a society trying its best to balance its diametrically opposed commitments to puritanical morality and salacious greed! While I support fully the people out there who try to be profound without being profane, I don’t believe in Santa Claus, I know pro wrestling is staged and I am well aware that people FUCKING swear! Even politicians and athletes! Actually Mr. Martin has pointed out for us all the same thing I’m going for in this post. You see, the REAL issue, the one that’s being almost ignored behind the more pressing issue of Twitter f-bombs, is that the government budget, which, (let’s give our politicians a little credit), is a veritable work of art every year, is being pushed through parliament without enough debate. That is, POLITICIANS, not just the people they are supposed to be representing, are being ignored by federal conservative Harper government and those guys and gals we elected are just doing what they want without listening to anyone in parliament. Hey all you politicians not in the majority government, now you know how we the people, (voting OR non-voting), feel! The government never does what WE want either.
Voting for people makes things LESS democratic in Canada because, (fake well), they’re people! Don’t kid yourself, regardless of party or platform, most, if not all of the important stuff they do is done at the behest of the rich, the corporate and the banks who are the hands up the arses of all our government puppets. It’s for the benefit of our “owners.” And that is almost always exactly what WE don’t want.
The main issue in the budget I must admit I have mixed feelings about. It’s the C-10 or “Crime Omnibus Bill.” This bill will create more minimum sentences on lots of crimes that will land an awful lot MORE people in the clink. Jails are already a huge waste of our tax money to begin with. Hence, politicians like them and want more so their budgets will grow every year. For years in Canada we’ve had very safe streets and very high numbers of people in jail. And it’s mostly poor folks who can’t afford lawyers or don’t have enough money to pay their fines. Fines that are probably just unfair or STUPID fines designed by our apathetic government agencies as ways to avoid dealing with these less appealing citizens in the first place. And in our country where, like many, the money is being more and more efficiently funneled straight to the top, what do you know – there are more poor people! So we need more jails or they might, I dunno, march on major cities across the country or something.
Then again, being a security guard I’m not saying I’d refuse a 20-buck-an-hour job at one of these poverty palaces either. That is if I don’t end up IN one!
It’s similar to another issue our government is trying to sneak past us. Again there is no distinction between the parties and we, the people, could not vote for anyone based on this issue. We just have to settle for what they decide. It’s the oil pipelines. I don’t know a lot about them but I DO read stories in the papers about shipyards in Victoria and Vancouver proposed to DOUBLE in size and pipeline construction and maintenance creating many new jobs mostly to serve the traditional role that Canada has taken on in the world, that of a primary resource provider. It’s mostly about America and China lusting after our oil sands. And the amount of money that could earn for our “owners.” And rather than build refineries here in Canada that would create WAY more jobs than the pipelines and transporting of CRUDE oil would, we are going to be nice to our more powerful neighbours as always. And at irresponsible risk to our planet. If there’s one thing we should know by now it’s that the transfer of crude oil is absolute hell on the Earth. It should be illegal no matter how “safe” a method we devise. Any oil that is transported should be in environmentally safer refined forms. PERIOD! And if people knew the issues I think most Canadians would feel the same.
But then again they wouldn’t turn down an 18-dollar-an-hour job on a pipeline or at a shipyard either.
Which brings up an obvious point: Why don’t people in office do what the whole country wants them to do? The main issues NEVER change! More jobs, less taxes, better wages. Believe it or not this would make our politicians jobs easier. It’s what they probably want to do. More jobs with decent wages would make the citizens of Canada happy and gov’t agencies wouldn’t have to constantly devise new methods of HIDING from us. In fact why not hire about 50,000 people to work FOR the government, (and earn good government wages), answering the FUCKING PHONES! See? Sometimes the f-bombs are warranted. I don’t think “darn” would have been as effective there.
More jobs with higher wages is a nightmare for the government workers though because they’re all Brewsters. Like Richard Pryor in that movie Brewster’s Millions. He had to spend a whole bunch of money and have nothing to show for it. That’s most of our government’s job. And with everyone in Canada working and earning MORE money, that would mean more taxes to somehow waste. So the obvious solution would be to lower taxes. It’s so simple!
Problem is this is NOT what the REAL rulers of our country, (and owners of us), want for Canada. So the government will continue to go about its duty deciding things like corporations no longer have to pay tax on the money they make in Canada. We didn’t vote for that! No candidates even brought that up! Yet somehow it got passed! Do some research. Keep your eyes open. Taxes going up; prices going up; minimum wage going up at a fraction of the rate; major changes to education; cuts in social programs… has anything GOOD happened in Canada in recent memory? More to the point, anything that we voted for? We the people, in our supposedly democratic country get to vote once in a while whether or not to separate from Quebec and whether we want GST or HST. That’s like choosing between lethal injection or firing squad.
I think the voter turn-out numbers are exaggerated in Canada. I don’t think that many people vote any more. It’s a system dying a death. A long overdue death but that’s how we do things in Canada. My government sees me as a numbered consumer and any time they do anything major to change my country, it's something none of us voted for. These are the reasons I don’t vote and probably most voter apathy is caused by the same issues. The only time my government seems to really notice me is when they want me to legitimize their jobs by giving them my vote. Well, as Pat Martin might tweet, fuck that jackboot shit!
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Super Dave's Save the Earth From Billion Blindness Fund
Okay, with all the recent marches on Wall Street and all over the cities of the world, (which I think are really great, btw), I thought it was about time somebody came up with the plan that all the MWS detractors are criticizing them for not having. So here goes...
I read an article lately written by one such detractor stating that one of the things that led to the marches and the anger worldwide is lack of financial and fiscal education. It's a very good point! How many of us can honestly say we have a firm mental grasp of the numbers thrown around by governments nowadays when talking about taxes, federal budgets, Paris Hilton's champagne bill, election price tags, deficits, bank bail-outs, Warren Buffet pocket change, military expenses etc. etc.? Do any of us even know what a million is when it comes to dollars? Or when it comes to anything really. If there were a jar with a million jelly beans in it how big would it be? And would the ones at the bottom just be crushed so badly you wouldn't be able to count them anyway? I bet the stuff on the bottom would taste like the black ones. They're my favourite anyway so that'd be okay. I digress.
This is one of the beauties of being a politician. It makes us all easier to lie to. We just can't wrap our heads around a million bucks because we've never come close to having it. We'll never GET it cuz we'll never get it. A BILLION? Forget it!
Ever seen that movie "The Social Network"? There's a scene where the Napster dude, (played by Justin Timberlake), says, "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars." The audience goes silent. The main character, Mark Zuckerberg, who, let's remember, wanted to avoid the money, goes silent and gets this far off look in his eye. The seeds of money lust were planted. Money played a very small role in his life. In fact he had said earlier in the movie, and I'm guessing in real life, that the second facebook becomes about the money it's no longer cool. Sean Parker almost contradicted that verbatim but with that mysterious word, "billion" in there and the greed-enabling culture Zuckerberg grew up in, it worked! Blinded by the billion. I think that happens to a lot of folks.
Now people can make a billion in a year. George Soros made 2 billion in one day. I'm sure I read that Bill Gates made 48 billion in a year. I used the magazine article as an ESL lesson for years before I lost it. Now I suppose the Forbes 500 have learned: It's not very good to let the rest of the world know how much you are making. It could lead to unrest and possibly marching in the streets. Incidentally, Gates is reportedly worth something like 56 billion bucks now. I'm pretty sure he's made more than 6 bil. since I read that article and he's not giving THAT much to charity.
The corporations, rich, banks and the governments they run are inflating the numbers they bombard us with regarding government and business expenses and they are massively DEflating the numbers that accidentally on purpose leak out that are supposed to represent their earnings. That's what I believe anyways. But let's work with these flawed numbers and see what we come up with, shall we?
First of all a billion. In an average work year allowing for 8 hours a day, a 5-day week and a 2-week vacation you would work 2000 hours. If your salary were exactly a billion dollars you would be """"EARNING"""" half a million dollars an hour. But that number is still too big for our brains - that's $8333.00 a MINUTE! $139.00 every SECOND for crying out loud! In one second you are making more money than most of the world earns in a day. This is why the word "earning" above is surounded Custer-like, by quotation marks. I didn't think just one set would suffice. If I were saying this out loud I don't think the finger quotes would do the mega-sarcasm justice either. I think if I could somehow bend a couple of football goalposts and use them to make my air quotes it still wouldn't be sarcastic enough when talking about someone "earning" a billion a year. Come ON! NObody is worth that!
If you could think of the person who deserves the highest pay in the world who would it be? A soldier fighting on the front lines? A firefighter saving cute orphan children from a blaze? The janitor who cleans the frat house toilets? If I had a girl who was a dead ringer for Jessica Alba, naked, pleasuring me now while feeding me pizza and expensive Chianti AND playing bagpipes for "It's a Long Way to the Top" with the real LIVE AC DC backing her up even SHE's not close to 139 bucks a second! Just that one song would come to a total of $43,924.00. No way I'd have the money, (or the prowess), to ask for "Downpayment Blues" as an encore!
But what are these folks who make a billion a year actually doing? Well if you look at what Vancouver's own Kevin Ham does in a day you'd laugh your arse all the way to the bank. He buys internet domains. Somebody says the domain name, he air-types it, then lays down a few hundred grand for it. I'm not making this up. Guys like David Tepper just move imaginary money from place to place. There are filthy rich people known as corporate hawks or international speculators who essentially buy pieces of COUNTRIES and hope that they default on their debts, which adds to destabilization and usually the selling off of the country's resources at bargain basement prices.
A lot of the jobs people do for their billion dollar annual paychecks are so simple any of us could do them IF we had the start-up capital, they're not back-breaking or stressful, or they're just completely immoral. You just can't convince me anyone earns a billion a year.
SO... here's what we're gonna do: There are, (reportedly), 1210 people in the world who have the equivalent of a billion American dollars according to a March 2011 Forbes Magazine article. Between them they have 4.5 trillion, that's $4,500,000,000,000.00! I know, THAT means even LESS than nothing to me too! But that averages out to 3.72 billion each. Some of these people are evil, or have such bad cases of billion blindness to believe they not only EARN their money but that they MUST earn more every year. The rest of them like Gates who says he will leave his fortune to charity, Soros who gave 8 bill. to charity since '79, and I recently read about the heiress of the Tupperware fortune secretly giving to all kinds of charities. These are fairly normal, yet rich people who have made more than enough and it's time to let someone else play. Forced retirement for all of them, (some are damned lucky they won't be thrown in jail), and they will be made international heroes by their mandatory donation to Super Dave's Save the Earth Fund of a billion U$ each.
As of Oct. 2011 there were reported to be 6.97 billion people on earth, 4.4 billion of whom are between the ages of 15 and 64. So I'm just spitballing here but I'm guessing that between the ages of 19 and 60 there'd be less than 4 bill. Through the generous donations from the world's 1210 billionaires every one of the people on Earth between 19 and 60 could be given over $1125.00 U.S. Now that doesn't mean a whole lot to a person like me here in Canada but the changes made in each country would be more revolutionary in direct proportion to how poor the country is. Let's take The Sudan as an example. I like that example because I dig countries with "The" before their names. According to this article, it would cost a person about 843 SDG, (Sudanese Pounds), to start a business. That's $315.50. He/she's gonna have lots left over for supplies, employees, overhead, you name it. $1125 bucks could change the third world so much that it might even be safe to say it was eliminated!
But wait, there's more. I don't know why but I couldn't find up-to-date stats on millionaires in the world. However, a 2010 study by Boston Consulting Group figured that there were 12.5 million millionaires in the world. (The equivalent of a million U$ dollars). If they all had exactly one million dollars, which, don't be silly, they DON'T, that would be another 5.2 trillion dollars. I know, I know, the billionaires are included in there. Well those 1210 people don't even amount to a percent so it doesn't affect the stats at all. What we do is we give these people, the luckiest people on the face of the Earth, the privelege of contributing half a million dollars each to Super Dave's Save the Earth Fund. That's another $650.00 to everybody on the planet who isn't too old or young to need some dough. So we're now up to $1875.00 U$ each! Don't feel sorry for the millionaires. Who do you think will be taking over the vacated posts of the billionaires? And with a newly created, oh I would guess 2 BILLION consumers worldwide, they'd have to be morons to lose money no matter what they did.
The weakness in my plan is admittedly logistics. How do I get money to 4 billion individuals? Furthermore, certain people like recidivist criminals, drug addicts, people with terminal diseases and plain old lazy assed sluggards won't qualify for Super Dave benefits. So how will I know who's who? Simplicity itself! They'll have to pay for their money by filling out some forms and donating blood. That way their blood can be tested, their backgrounds checked and the blood banks of the world would be overflowing! Not to mention the new varieties of viruses we might detect and eliminate, (possibly Billion Blindness ITSELF!), or antibodies we might discover and use to heal people!
After disqualifying some people, and allowing for larger donations from the GOOD rich people of the world, I'm going to say we could give 3000 bucks to everyone. Imagine every citizen in your country getting a lump sum of 3 grand. What would that do to consumer confidence? What if it was given out December 1st so you'd have time to go Christmas shopping with it? So many people would buy so many things and the money would almost ALL go straight into the pockets of those nice millionaire contributors. Their money would return to them probably a million fold! Then they would become BILLIONAIRES at which point they'd be forced into massive contributions and retirement and their places would be filled with the huge number of newly created millionaires and we could start all over again! Perpetual world enrichment. Perfect, right?
I can only see one problem. Kryptonite! The fact that it wouldn't take too long before everybody was not just not starving, but very comfortable. Then very happy. Then very wealthy. Then very rich. When that happens who the hell will work? Aye, there's the rub! Who will put little umbrellas in the marguerita of the hot babe sitting beside me in my golf cart in Thailand? What hot babe will be poor and desperate enough to golf with me? Who will sell that marguerita to us? Who will cut the greens? Do you suppose this might have something to do with why the 3rd world is KEPT the 3rd world? Did the filthy rich think of this already and plan to maintain poverty so that there would always be someone desperate enough in some country to MAKE those little umbrellas for a buck a day? To sew footballs in sweatshops? To dance half naked for and date ugly old guys with big bulges in their jeans where their wallets are?
GAAARRGGGHHH! Feeling weak. Ex-ray vision failing. Ability to use articles and verb "to be" getting difficult. So cold. Humidity a bit high. Vision failing... faaiiliinggg...
Oh well I took a stab at it anyway.
I read an article lately written by one such detractor stating that one of the things that led to the marches and the anger worldwide is lack of financial and fiscal education. It's a very good point! How many of us can honestly say we have a firm mental grasp of the numbers thrown around by governments nowadays when talking about taxes, federal budgets, Paris Hilton's champagne bill, election price tags, deficits, bank bail-outs, Warren Buffet pocket change, military expenses etc. etc.? Do any of us even know what a million is when it comes to dollars? Or when it comes to anything really. If there were a jar with a million jelly beans in it how big would it be? And would the ones at the bottom just be crushed so badly you wouldn't be able to count them anyway? I bet the stuff on the bottom would taste like the black ones. They're my favourite anyway so that'd be okay. I digress.
This is one of the beauties of being a politician. It makes us all easier to lie to. We just can't wrap our heads around a million bucks because we've never come close to having it. We'll never GET it cuz we'll never get it. A BILLION? Forget it!
Ever seen that movie "The Social Network"? There's a scene where the Napster dude, (played by Justin Timberlake), says, "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars." The audience goes silent. The main character, Mark Zuckerberg, who, let's remember, wanted to avoid the money, goes silent and gets this far off look in his eye. The seeds of money lust were planted. Money played a very small role in his life. In fact he had said earlier in the movie, and I'm guessing in real life, that the second facebook becomes about the money it's no longer cool. Sean Parker almost contradicted that verbatim but with that mysterious word, "billion" in there and the greed-enabling culture Zuckerberg grew up in, it worked! Blinded by the billion. I think that happens to a lot of folks.
Now people can make a billion in a year. George Soros made 2 billion in one day. I'm sure I read that Bill Gates made 48 billion in a year. I used the magazine article as an ESL lesson for years before I lost it. Now I suppose the Forbes 500 have learned: It's not very good to let the rest of the world know how much you are making. It could lead to unrest and possibly marching in the streets. Incidentally, Gates is reportedly worth something like 56 billion bucks now. I'm pretty sure he's made more than 6 bil. since I read that article and he's not giving THAT much to charity.
The corporations, rich, banks and the governments they run are inflating the numbers they bombard us with regarding government and business expenses and they are massively DEflating the numbers that accidentally on purpose leak out that are supposed to represent their earnings. That's what I believe anyways. But let's work with these flawed numbers and see what we come up with, shall we?
First of all a billion. In an average work year allowing for 8 hours a day, a 5-day week and a 2-week vacation you would work 2000 hours. If your salary were exactly a billion dollars you would be """"EARNING"""" half a million dollars an hour. But that number is still too big for our brains - that's $8333.00 a MINUTE! $139.00 every SECOND for crying out loud! In one second you are making more money than most of the world earns in a day. This is why the word "earning" above is surounded Custer-like, by quotation marks. I didn't think just one set would suffice. If I were saying this out loud I don't think the finger quotes would do the mega-sarcasm justice either. I think if I could somehow bend a couple of football goalposts and use them to make my air quotes it still wouldn't be sarcastic enough when talking about someone "earning" a billion a year. Come ON! NObody is worth that!
If you could think of the person who deserves the highest pay in the world who would it be? A soldier fighting on the front lines? A firefighter saving cute orphan children from a blaze? The janitor who cleans the frat house toilets? If I had a girl who was a dead ringer for Jessica Alba, naked, pleasuring me now while feeding me pizza and expensive Chianti AND playing bagpipes for "It's a Long Way to the Top" with the real LIVE AC DC backing her up even SHE's not close to 139 bucks a second! Just that one song would come to a total of $43,924.00. No way I'd have the money, (or the prowess), to ask for "Downpayment Blues" as an encore!
But what are these folks who make a billion a year actually doing? Well if you look at what Vancouver's own Kevin Ham does in a day you'd laugh your arse all the way to the bank. He buys internet domains. Somebody says the domain name, he air-types it, then lays down a few hundred grand for it. I'm not making this up. Guys like David Tepper just move imaginary money from place to place. There are filthy rich people known as corporate hawks or international speculators who essentially buy pieces of COUNTRIES and hope that they default on their debts, which adds to destabilization and usually the selling off of the country's resources at bargain basement prices.
A lot of the jobs people do for their billion dollar annual paychecks are so simple any of us could do them IF we had the start-up capital, they're not back-breaking or stressful, or they're just completely immoral. You just can't convince me anyone earns a billion a year.
SO... here's what we're gonna do: There are, (reportedly), 1210 people in the world who have the equivalent of a billion American dollars according to a March 2011 Forbes Magazine article. Between them they have 4.5 trillion, that's $4,500,000,000,000.00! I know, THAT means even LESS than nothing to me too! But that averages out to 3.72 billion each. Some of these people are evil, or have such bad cases of billion blindness to believe they not only EARN their money but that they MUST earn more every year. The rest of them like Gates who says he will leave his fortune to charity, Soros who gave 8 bill. to charity since '79, and I recently read about the heiress of the Tupperware fortune secretly giving to all kinds of charities. These are fairly normal, yet rich people who have made more than enough and it's time to let someone else play. Forced retirement for all of them, (some are damned lucky they won't be thrown in jail), and they will be made international heroes by their mandatory donation to Super Dave's Save the Earth Fund of a billion U$ each.
As of Oct. 2011 there were reported to be 6.97 billion people on earth, 4.4 billion of whom are between the ages of 15 and 64. So I'm just spitballing here but I'm guessing that between the ages of 19 and 60 there'd be less than 4 bill. Through the generous donations from the world's 1210 billionaires every one of the people on Earth between 19 and 60 could be given over $1125.00 U.S. Now that doesn't mean a whole lot to a person like me here in Canada but the changes made in each country would be more revolutionary in direct proportion to how poor the country is. Let's take The Sudan as an example. I like that example because I dig countries with "The" before their names. According to this article, it would cost a person about 843 SDG, (Sudanese Pounds), to start a business. That's $315.50. He/she's gonna have lots left over for supplies, employees, overhead, you name it. $1125 bucks could change the third world so much that it might even be safe to say it was eliminated!
But wait, there's more. I don't know why but I couldn't find up-to-date stats on millionaires in the world. However, a 2010 study by Boston Consulting Group figured that there were 12.5 million millionaires in the world. (The equivalent of a million U$ dollars). If they all had exactly one million dollars, which, don't be silly, they DON'T, that would be another 5.2 trillion dollars. I know, I know, the billionaires are included in there. Well those 1210 people don't even amount to a percent so it doesn't affect the stats at all. What we do is we give these people, the luckiest people on the face of the Earth, the privelege of contributing half a million dollars each to Super Dave's Save the Earth Fund. That's another $650.00 to everybody on the planet who isn't too old or young to need some dough. So we're now up to $1875.00 U$ each! Don't feel sorry for the millionaires. Who do you think will be taking over the vacated posts of the billionaires? And with a newly created, oh I would guess 2 BILLION consumers worldwide, they'd have to be morons to lose money no matter what they did.
The weakness in my plan is admittedly logistics. How do I get money to 4 billion individuals? Furthermore, certain people like recidivist criminals, drug addicts, people with terminal diseases and plain old lazy assed sluggards won't qualify for Super Dave benefits. So how will I know who's who? Simplicity itself! They'll have to pay for their money by filling out some forms and donating blood. That way their blood can be tested, their backgrounds checked and the blood banks of the world would be overflowing! Not to mention the new varieties of viruses we might detect and eliminate, (possibly Billion Blindness ITSELF!), or antibodies we might discover and use to heal people!
After disqualifying some people, and allowing for larger donations from the GOOD rich people of the world, I'm going to say we could give 3000 bucks to everyone. Imagine every citizen in your country getting a lump sum of 3 grand. What would that do to consumer confidence? What if it was given out December 1st so you'd have time to go Christmas shopping with it? So many people would buy so many things and the money would almost ALL go straight into the pockets of those nice millionaire contributors. Their money would return to them probably a million fold! Then they would become BILLIONAIRES at which point they'd be forced into massive contributions and retirement and their places would be filled with the huge number of newly created millionaires and we could start all over again! Perpetual world enrichment. Perfect, right?
I can only see one problem. Kryptonite! The fact that it wouldn't take too long before everybody was not just not starving, but very comfortable. Then very happy. Then very wealthy. Then very rich. When that happens who the hell will work? Aye, there's the rub! Who will put little umbrellas in the marguerita of the hot babe sitting beside me in my golf cart in Thailand? What hot babe will be poor and desperate enough to golf with me? Who will sell that marguerita to us? Who will cut the greens? Do you suppose this might have something to do with why the 3rd world is KEPT the 3rd world? Did the filthy rich think of this already and plan to maintain poverty so that there would always be someone desperate enough in some country to MAKE those little umbrellas for a buck a day? To sew footballs in sweatshops? To dance half naked for and date ugly old guys with big bulges in their jeans where their wallets are?
GAAARRGGGHHH! Feeling weak. Ex-ray vision failing. Ability to use articles and verb "to be" getting difficult. So cold. Humidity a bit high. Vision failing... faaiiliinggg...
Oh well I took a stab at it anyway.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Every Day Is A Pair Of Socks
The first noble truth: Life is suffering. Or at least that's what it boils down to. In the first teaching of the Gautama Buddha after attaining Nirvana, (not going to one of their concerts), there were four noble truths, the first of which was that life ultimately leads to or IS suffereing, (dukkha), in one way or another.
The other three noble truths are about the causes of and solution to this suffering. Basically life is full of "Maya" which is a delusional clinging to attachments and worldly pleasures of all kinds. Even our ideas of self, existence and reality might be maya.
When you find a way to eliminate all this delusion, FIND THE TRUTH, by eliminating craving and desire, you reach a state called "bodhi" or what is called "enlightenment."
In short, don't worry, be happy. You have stumbled upon the path to enlightenment, the "way", the truth, the Light, the Tao, the secret of life or whatever you wanna call it, when you figure out a way to find joy in your suffering. This is not just a Buddhist idea but I think their way of explaining it is the clearest. No pain, no gain. Wisdom comes through suffering. I could go on and on...
This is one of the prevailing philosophies that contributes to my blogging. One might read these pages and wonder why I am such a negative person. Scan through. When was the last column with a little positivity to it? Quite a while ago. So one might be drawn into the trap of believing I am not finding joy in my suffering. But one would be a little bit off the mark in thinking so.
I think of one of the wisest old guys I briefly met and a saying he related to me and my good buddy Gil, (his nephew), under the influence of copius imbibement was, "With all the good in the worst of us, and all the bad in the best, it behoves us all to find fault with the rest." I heard that MANY years ago and it has always struck me as something I needed to remember, yet something I didn't fully understand. Probably because of the use of the word "behove." Be honest with me, YOU had to dive for a dictionary too didn't you? I didn't know what it meant back then either, but I do now. If you didn't, hey good for you! I'm serious. We all should learn at least a word a day.
However, I would like to make an amendment, if I may, and change that old saying to, "With all the good in the worst of us and all the bad in the best, it behoves us all to find some joy in all the rest." I don't think this is much of a change at all since the original words of wisdom are shared with tongue firmly implanted in cheek and that irony all but implies my amended version. I think it was the irony, the purposeful sarcasm with which it was said that created the confusion in me. But I got it. Finally. I think...
Another sage piece of wisdom that steers me down the path to enlightenment was gleaned from an episode of the Sopranos. I'm not kidding. Tony was talking with his therapist after being shot and almost dying and he was just a little past the days when he is grateful for absolutely everything because he nearly lost it. In probably my favourite line from my second favourite TV show, he says, "Every day is a gift. But does it have to be a pair of socks?"
In Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" there's a scene in which Tyler Durden, (Brad Pitt for those Phillistines who haven't read the book), holds a gun to the head of a guy and threatens to kill him. Here is a pretty good remake of the scene from the movie. Gee, I wonder why the REAL scene isn't on youtube. I wonder why this isn't the most popular clip on youtube. The key is in the last line of the clip. Don't just watch the beginning. Watch it to the end. "The ability to let that which does not matter slide."
Why will Raymond K.K.K.K.K.K. Hessel's breakfast taste so good the next day? Because unlike all of us the night before he had nothing. He was dead. Today he appreciates every single thing he has. If we could remind ourselves daily that we have all we need and THEN some we'd be on our way.
I just got back from years away from my home country. I've been here for about 6 months and I STILL have to force myself to savour the taste of the Canadian beer I'm drinking right now that I couldn't get in Korea. I have to remind myself that the smell of dead leaves I love so much was pretty hard to come by unless you went up to the mountains in Korea. I have to constantly force myself to appreciate my life here or I start to take it for granted and WORST of all DESIRE more. CRAVE more money; a better house; a bigger TV; a car; a faster computer; a hot girlfriend; there is no end to the shit that I crave that I DO NOT NEED! That which I crave is that which does not matter.
In a nutshell, this is the problem with the world. And it's a spiritual problem. To borrow and amend a common phrase from Alcoholics Anonymous, There is no political or economic solution to a spiritual problem.
Every day is a pair of socks. A pair of socks to US in the priveleged countries of the world means exactly nothing. We were really hoping for a lot more. But you give that same pair of socks to someone in a third world country and there will be rejoicing! I think the third world countries are MUCH closer to true happiness, (and I've been in some and people are generally WAY happier in their abject poverty than we are in our abundance), because, whether they want to be or not, they are closer to that state of abandoning all that can lead to craving and desire. Do we have to be forced to be happy? Do we have to have someone take away everything we have to make us appreciate it? Do we need to have someone GIVE us everything we want to make us understand that we don't need it?
These are all mind-bending, bong-filling questions that could be contemplated, ruminated and extrapolated upon for as long as the party goes on. At last we come to the point of this whole blog entry: this is the point of this whole blog entry. I write because I have to. I have to write because it allows me to vent. Allowing me to vent gets all the negativity out so I am able, (or at least more likely to), see the positive side of things and appreciate the veritable goldmine of life's gifts that I have happened into. When I went to the Philippines during Christmas not so long ago my friend Wallace and I bought up a bunch of cheap crap for Christmas gifts for my friend Wallace's family. Junk like liquid watches called "slotches"; yo-yos that lit up as they spun; puzzles; word games; dolls; you get the idear. Nothing over 5 bucks. Wallace dressed up in a Santa suit, rode a trike to the house in Diamond Subdivision, Angeles City, Phils. where we were all gathered for the Christmas festivities. He had a sack full of all the presents and he gave them out to kids who, unlike Canadian kids, actually APPRECIATED them! They all freaked out and said, "WOW! A yo-yo that glows!" And they played and played with their small gifts never losing the joy that they brought. I don't think I have ever spent a better 50 or 100 bucks. Whatever it was. See? I don't remember. If they had all been like Canadian kids and opened them up and immediately said, "Oh. Ho hum. Nice. NEXT!" I would know exactly how much I wasted on those little bastards. But it wasn't like that.
Here is the problem we all have that leads to Prozac and illegal drugs and what have you: it takes a HELLUVA lot to give us joy! And here is the mathematical algorhythm or however you spell that: the amount of joy you have is directly DISproportionate to the amount of money you have. Very complicated eh? It's because the more money you have the LESS impressed you are with everything.
It works on the same principal as "Ignorance is bliss." People who don't know many things and haven't experienced much are far more likely to be easy to please. It's just a fact. We live in societies that are constantly moving from thing to thing thinking the exact opposite: that all this new knowledge and experience will somehow lead AWAY from boredom. But how's that been workin'?
So should we just avoid new things? Should we hide from reality? Or at least what we perceive that reality might be? NO! We just need to develop a kind of spiritual consciousness that allows us to appreciate the all singing all dancing performance of life that is being constantly soft-shoed and belted out before us, FOR FREE, for our own personal enjoyment. If that takes meditation, go for it! If you need to seek psychiatric treatment, you go! If it just requires a few alcoholic beverages or some other form of mental inhibition, I think that's good. If you think you get it from belonging to a club or organized religion, fill yer boots! But if there is some way you can just get it on your own by forcing yourself to OPEN YOUR EYES, I think that's probably the best method. Just, not the easiest thing to do...
See, there IS some reason we're all here. Least that's what I reckon...
The other three noble truths are about the causes of and solution to this suffering. Basically life is full of "Maya" which is a delusional clinging to attachments and worldly pleasures of all kinds. Even our ideas of self, existence and reality might be maya.
When you find a way to eliminate all this delusion, FIND THE TRUTH, by eliminating craving and desire, you reach a state called "bodhi" or what is called "enlightenment."
In short, don't worry, be happy. You have stumbled upon the path to enlightenment, the "way", the truth, the Light, the Tao, the secret of life or whatever you wanna call it, when you figure out a way to find joy in your suffering. This is not just a Buddhist idea but I think their way of explaining it is the clearest. No pain, no gain. Wisdom comes through suffering. I could go on and on...
This is one of the prevailing philosophies that contributes to my blogging. One might read these pages and wonder why I am such a negative person. Scan through. When was the last column with a little positivity to it? Quite a while ago. So one might be drawn into the trap of believing I am not finding joy in my suffering. But one would be a little bit off the mark in thinking so.
I think of one of the wisest old guys I briefly met and a saying he related to me and my good buddy Gil, (his nephew), under the influence of copius imbibement was, "With all the good in the worst of us, and all the bad in the best, it behoves us all to find fault with the rest." I heard that MANY years ago and it has always struck me as something I needed to remember, yet something I didn't fully understand. Probably because of the use of the word "behove." Be honest with me, YOU had to dive for a dictionary too didn't you? I didn't know what it meant back then either, but I do now. If you didn't, hey good for you! I'm serious. We all should learn at least a word a day.
However, I would like to make an amendment, if I may, and change that old saying to, "With all the good in the worst of us and all the bad in the best, it behoves us all to find some joy in all the rest." I don't think this is much of a change at all since the original words of wisdom are shared with tongue firmly implanted in cheek and that irony all but implies my amended version. I think it was the irony, the purposeful sarcasm with which it was said that created the confusion in me. But I got it. Finally. I think...
Another sage piece of wisdom that steers me down the path to enlightenment was gleaned from an episode of the Sopranos. I'm not kidding. Tony was talking with his therapist after being shot and almost dying and he was just a little past the days when he is grateful for absolutely everything because he nearly lost it. In probably my favourite line from my second favourite TV show, he says, "Every day is a gift. But does it have to be a pair of socks?"
In Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" there's a scene in which Tyler Durden, (Brad Pitt for those Phillistines who haven't read the book), holds a gun to the head of a guy and threatens to kill him. Here is a pretty good remake of the scene from the movie. Gee, I wonder why the REAL scene isn't on youtube. I wonder why this isn't the most popular clip on youtube. The key is in the last line of the clip. Don't just watch the beginning. Watch it to the end. "The ability to let that which does not matter slide."
Why will Raymond K.K.K.K.K.K. Hessel's breakfast taste so good the next day? Because unlike all of us the night before he had nothing. He was dead. Today he appreciates every single thing he has. If we could remind ourselves daily that we have all we need and THEN some we'd be on our way.
I just got back from years away from my home country. I've been here for about 6 months and I STILL have to force myself to savour the taste of the Canadian beer I'm drinking right now that I couldn't get in Korea. I have to remind myself that the smell of dead leaves I love so much was pretty hard to come by unless you went up to the mountains in Korea. I have to constantly force myself to appreciate my life here or I start to take it for granted and WORST of all DESIRE more. CRAVE more money; a better house; a bigger TV; a car; a faster computer; a hot girlfriend; there is no end to the shit that I crave that I DO NOT NEED! That which I crave is that which does not matter.
In a nutshell, this is the problem with the world. And it's a spiritual problem. To borrow and amend a common phrase from Alcoholics Anonymous, There is no political or economic solution to a spiritual problem.
Every day is a pair of socks. A pair of socks to US in the priveleged countries of the world means exactly nothing. We were really hoping for a lot more. But you give that same pair of socks to someone in a third world country and there will be rejoicing! I think the third world countries are MUCH closer to true happiness, (and I've been in some and people are generally WAY happier in their abject poverty than we are in our abundance), because, whether they want to be or not, they are closer to that state of abandoning all that can lead to craving and desire. Do we have to be forced to be happy? Do we have to have someone take away everything we have to make us appreciate it? Do we need to have someone GIVE us everything we want to make us understand that we don't need it?
These are all mind-bending, bong-filling questions that could be contemplated, ruminated and extrapolated upon for as long as the party goes on. At last we come to the point of this whole blog entry: this is the point of this whole blog entry. I write because I have to. I have to write because it allows me to vent. Allowing me to vent gets all the negativity out so I am able, (or at least more likely to), see the positive side of things and appreciate the veritable goldmine of life's gifts that I have happened into. When I went to the Philippines during Christmas not so long ago my friend Wallace and I bought up a bunch of cheap crap for Christmas gifts for my friend Wallace's family. Junk like liquid watches called "slotches"; yo-yos that lit up as they spun; puzzles; word games; dolls; you get the idear. Nothing over 5 bucks. Wallace dressed up in a Santa suit, rode a trike to the house in Diamond Subdivision, Angeles City, Phils. where we were all gathered for the Christmas festivities. He had a sack full of all the presents and he gave them out to kids who, unlike Canadian kids, actually APPRECIATED them! They all freaked out and said, "WOW! A yo-yo that glows!" And they played and played with their small gifts never losing the joy that they brought. I don't think I have ever spent a better 50 or 100 bucks. Whatever it was. See? I don't remember. If they had all been like Canadian kids and opened them up and immediately said, "Oh. Ho hum. Nice. NEXT!" I would know exactly how much I wasted on those little bastards. But it wasn't like that.
Here is the problem we all have that leads to Prozac and illegal drugs and what have you: it takes a HELLUVA lot to give us joy! And here is the mathematical algorhythm or however you spell that: the amount of joy you have is directly DISproportionate to the amount of money you have. Very complicated eh? It's because the more money you have the LESS impressed you are with everything.
It works on the same principal as "Ignorance is bliss." People who don't know many things and haven't experienced much are far more likely to be easy to please. It's just a fact. We live in societies that are constantly moving from thing to thing thinking the exact opposite: that all this new knowledge and experience will somehow lead AWAY from boredom. But how's that been workin'?
So should we just avoid new things? Should we hide from reality? Or at least what we perceive that reality might be? NO! We just need to develop a kind of spiritual consciousness that allows us to appreciate the all singing all dancing performance of life that is being constantly soft-shoed and belted out before us, FOR FREE, for our own personal enjoyment. If that takes meditation, go for it! If you need to seek psychiatric treatment, you go! If it just requires a few alcoholic beverages or some other form of mental inhibition, I think that's good. If you think you get it from belonging to a club or organized religion, fill yer boots! But if there is some way you can just get it on your own by forcing yourself to OPEN YOUR EYES, I think that's probably the best method. Just, not the easiest thing to do...
See, there IS some reason we're all here. Least that's what I reckon...
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Bradley, Assange and Santiago: Conduct BECOMING!
Nicholson: You want answers?
Cruise: I think I'm entitled to them.
Nicholson: You want ANSWERS?
Cruise: I want the TRUTH!
Nicholson: YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!
...
Nicholson: I have neither the time, nor the inclination to explain myself to someone who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the 'freedom' I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it... Either way I don't give a DAMN about what YOU think you are entitled to!
That was directly from memory folks! Thank you very much.
Ah the movies... If only things were really like they are in the movies. In "A Few Good Men" Jack Nicholson's character, Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, goes to jail for ordering a "code red" on a soldier, private Santiago, who turned out to be sub-standard because of heart problems. These heart problems, which the military medics showed some negligence in diagnosing, eventually lead to his death while receiving the "code red" binding, gagging and beating by his peers. Two soldiers who participated in the code red, Dawson and Downey, were cleared of murder charges, but dishonourably discharged for NOT helping Santiago, i.e. not disobeying orders and reporting, thus exposing this dirty military secret. This is called "conduct unbecoming a United States Marine." So the point is that NOT reporting military misconduct is conduct unbecoming a US soldier and people can get punished for it.
"In no case shall information be classified... in order to: conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error; prevent embarrassment of a person, organization or agency... or prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security."
This is executive order 13526 made by Barack Obama on Dec. 29, 2009 and seems to support the same point. However, before you start waving your "Yes We Can" flags, there were a stack of documents scheduled to be automatically declassified on Dec. 31, 2009 that were suddenly in need of review after the order, which effectively re-classified the soon-to-be de-classified documents for another couple years thereby BREAKING the e.o. by its issuance. Don't ya just LOVE politics?
Have you heard of Julian Assange or Bradley Manning?
If not it's pretty surprising. I'm not saying come out from under your rock because I hadn't really heard much about them either. What's surprising is the fairly successful sweeping under the carpet they are receiving when their story is WAY better than the above movie, which was nominated for 4 Oscars. I liked Unforgiven and LOVE Gene Hackman but come on! Jack shoulda won. Hackman shoulda won the evil lawman Oscar for The Quick and the Dead. It was the same character only a better performance of it I think. If not for that scene in Unforgiven where he hands that reporter the gun and tells him to shoot him, I'd say it was no contest. "Pretty HOT idn't it?" ha ha ha. Come to think of it, Gene Hackman as Colonel Nathan Jessep! Could that have even been BETTER? Ah the movies...
Anyhoo, here is a pbs vid. about the supposedly "troubled" life of Bradley Manning including the 911 phone call made while he allegedly assaulted his stepmother with a knife. He aparently STRUCK a fellow soldier and threw some chairs. Even YELLED at superiors while in the military. Gasp! Back to Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, "My existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives!" Soldiers are BETTER if they're violent. Don't forget, their job is to shoot people.
Why does the reporter keep asking questions to Brian Manning inviting him to embellish how "troubled" and "erratic" Bradley Manning's upbringing was? Why is his sexual status important? Why does the music in the video portend something ominous? The cops didn't even charge Bradley after the 911 call, why is it getting publicized now? I think people in high places want very badly for Bradley to be thought of as a bit unstable. Now, immediately I'm gonna take a hit for this but some people believe that being gay is a choice made by mentally unstable people. His father says in the video that his reaction to finding out Bradley was gay was, "That's YOUR decision." I'm gonna take the military position on this one: Don't ask/don't tell. Boy does the military wish Bradley Manning hadn't asked and hadn't told!
You see, he is responsible for leaking over half a million classified government documents to Assange's organization, Wikileaks. Now maybe the military members who are party to this classified information, like Colonel Jessep, "...have a greater responsibility than we can possibly fathom." But it's pretty hard to imagine what kind of "responsibilities" require the ignorant and innocent public to be kept from fathoming stuff like why it's necessary to ignore torture in Iraq; cover up child trafficking in Afghanistan; throw people in Guantanamo prison for fashion or fashion accessory choices; classify the killing of journalists and the rate of innocents killed to combatants in Iraq, (2 non-combatants for every combatant btw); keep the huge 3rd world slave labour market desperately poor for our corporations' picking, (like 5 bucks a day was TOO MUCH money for financially strapped American corporations to pay their Haitian workers!); the list goes on. For the complete list and a well organized and researched site about all this, (better than mine), go to the "Free Bradley Manning" site here.
It would appear that like the doctored log books, phony transfer order, and coerced doctors of "A Few Good Men", there is some character assassination and covering up going on here. And it isn't limited to Bradley Manning. Julian Assange is now fighting a rape charge made by some women in Sweden. Now, I am not going to say it's impossible that he committed this crime, but if he's extradited to Sweden, it would make his extradition to America possible where he could be tried and found guilty of conduct that SHOULD be considered becoming. He COULD end up in that place that links all three of these stories together: Guantanamo prison. As I type Bradley Manning is in the brig where I'm sure he isn't being treated very nicely and he may soon be joined by Assange. All the while, BOTH are up for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. And maybe for good measure sombody'll throw Lady Gaga in there with them for suspected complicity in the events arising from the fact that the data was transfered to Wikileaks via a Lady Gaga CD.
Ever hear about something that made you say, "They oughta make a movie!"? Folks there is GONNA be a movie made! Directed by Steven Spielberg. I'm guessing Leo as Bradley Manning though he could play Assange. Daniel Craig looks like the best Assange although I'd like to see Sting given some consideration. Or as a long shot Jason Isaacs, (Malfoy's Dad).
And Steve, Mr. Speilberg, if you're reading, please give Gene Hackman a part. He's probably my favourite actor.
Ahh the movies...
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