Olympic Hockey Records Will Fall

 This just in: Breaking news on the Olympic hockey front as the Chinese roster has added three new players. Connor MacPing, Austen Majang and Andrei Vasilev-ching have been given the go-ahead by an unbiased panel of IOC mediators to sign lucrative contracts with the Kunlun Red Star of the KHL just in time to facilitate their participation in the upcoming Olympic hockey tournament. To make room for the three recent converts to Chinese nationality, Peng Fei Hang, Ruin In Yang and Zes Un Zhang, the only three actual Chinese players on the Kunlun Red Star team, have been cut. 

When asked about their eligibility and the existing rule that a player must have played two full seasons for a team located in the country for which they are competing, it was confirmed that Edmonton and Toronto have Chinatowns and Tampa Bay has lots of fine Chinese dining. This is Dave MacCannell reporting for Fox Sports.

In actuality, if the Beijing Olympics are not rightfully boycotted and if the hockey tournament includes the superstars from the NHL, the Chinese Olympic Hockey Team is likely to be an even bigger joke than the above sports report. Some of the info in the above "report" is actually true! The Kunlun Red Star of the Russian KHL will be the team that represents China in the Olympic hockey tournament. The three Chinese players that were "cut" are actual players on Kunlun, though I'm not sure of the spellings of their names, and they ARE the only three fully Chinese players on the roster. If you want all the details, just watch this vid:

The squad in the video above rank as the 32nd best hockey team in the world somehow. By country rankings, China ranks 32nd and these guys are their team. As silly as that sounds, Australia, yes Australia ranks 33rd! Spain is number 31 so BETTER than the Chinese. Here are the world rankings if you're curious. Remember Korea? You know, the host of the last winter Olympics in 2018? They're 19th on the list. They were given the privilege of participating in the hockey tourney by virtue of their position as hosts. How did they do? Well first of all, it is important to note that in 2018, an unbiased panel of NHL mediators agreed that hockey was not popular enough in Korea to be viable, so did not allow the NHL professionals to participate in the tournament. Korean played three games and lost them all. Their first was against the Czech Republic and they lost 2-1. Their second was an 8-0 lost to Switzerland and their third was a surprisingly competitive 4-0 loss to Canada. 

Korea would absolutely destroy China in a hockey game. I don't think there's much argument. The difference between rank 19 and rank 32 is huge! But there is a much bigger difference: despite the fact that hockey is much more popular in Korea than China, the 2022 Beijing Olympic Hockey Tournament will feature the NHL professionals. The greatest players in hockey are going to be playing the 32nd ranked team in the world. The only thing stopping a 100-0 game will be pity. 

Speaking of Korea, they might have the record for the biggest hockey blowout ever. In 1998 the Korean under 18 men's team played Thailand IN Harbin, China. They won 92-0. Song Dong Hwan, an actual Korean, scored 30 goals in that game. That's TEN hattricks my friends. What would you call that, a decatrick? 

In Olympic hockey, Canada beat Switzerland 33-0 in 1924. The US beat Italy 31-1 in 1948. Don't be surprised to see both of those records fall. For that matter, the most goals in a tournament, 36, could easily be shattered with a severely outclassed team like this competing as well. Most assists, 21, most points, 36, all are records likely to be broken against the Chinese in this year's tourney. It's actually a good thing most of the players aren't actually Chinese because when Xi Jin Ping sees them getting routed every game, they're likely to end up picking cotton with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. 

Here's the kind of thing you can see in the NHL:

This happened just last week. And I doubt Zegras or Milano will be going to the Olympics. They won't make their country's (USA) team. They are both the best player by a helluva long shot on Team China if they were on it. The Kunlin Red Star are not even a good team IN THE KHL! Their record right now is 9 wins, 23 losses and 4 OT decisions. So they win once every three games in the KHL. They have NO chance of winning a game in the Olympics. But will they be competitive? Let's check out the roster, shall we?

There ARE some names on the team I recognize. Spencer and Parker Foo, the Foo brothers, are pretty good. I remember Spencer having a cup of coffee with the Calgary Flames and scoring 2 goals in 4 games. I wondered why they dropped him, but the Flames are doing just fine this year without him. 

Chris Chelios' son Jake will be sporting his old man's number 7. It doesn't appear that he is as good as his Dad, but... Brandon Yip, the team captain played 174 NHL games and I remember his name. Victor Bartley played 121 NHL games, but I don't remember him. That's almost 300 of the 354 total NHL games between the players on the team. There will be teams, such as Canada, Russia, America, probably Finland and Sweden, who have most or ALL of their team members who have played more NHL games than that. 

You can check the first vid if you want the whole roster. It's not full of household names. As you know I'm cheering for a boycott, but if the Olympics happen in 2022, and if the pros all go, I'm expecting something like this:

I love that video! lol 

It's just another illustration in a sketchpad full of them, of how everybody is bending over backwards to ass-smooch the Chinese. The results of this example are likely to be as ugly as the results of all the others. But it'll be fun to watch in a sad, sad way. 

For the Love of GOD Boycott Beijing!

 The highly quotable Mark Twain said, "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and success is assured." 

 I'm not going to the bountiful Her Donald S. Shtrumpfian geyser on this one although parallels will be reached, I'm sure. Today, and most likely tomorrow, and for a while longer, I'll be blogging about two other guys who personify the above quotation, but before we abandon the ever-rich Trumpian vein of confident ignorance, can you imagine if, while president, he had had the total control he desperately sought and still seeks? If his every word were taken as gospel and acted upon by sycophantic underlings who were happy in their sworn duties to do whatever the fuck he said? We'd have been drinking bleach and shooting tanning rays down our throats, probably. And to name only a few more of his many foibles we may have forgotten in the comparatively foible-free 10 months of the Biden presidency, staring at eclipses; testing for Covid less in order to ingeniously get lower numbers of positive test results; talking to boy scouts about sex on boats; grabbing women by their pussies; altering disappointingly accurate charts and graphs with our Sharpies; Quixotically opposing bird-killing, cancer-causing, strange noise-making windmills; pretending to write and sign things to look professional; raking forests; nuking hurricanes; and, to facilitate a segue, saluting totalitarian dick-taters. 

 Mao Zedong was a totalitarian dictator. He was less a leader than an emperor. And he HAD the sycophantic lackeys Trump fantasizes about. He WAS Big Brother. You read "1984" and, like me, you can't help but get a clear idea that Orwell was either describing Maoist China, or using it as a blueprint. Go ahead. I challenge you. See if you can re-read "1984" and not think of China. It's not easy. You could practically open it to any page you like. Start at the beginning and Orwell is writing about pig iron and "The Party." Pig iron, as we know from the "Great Leap Forward" is pretty much useless metal made when citizens are forced into a frenzy of fearful fake fanaticism and start cooking anything made of metal to try to help with a metal drive manufactured by a government that wants its citizens working at "overmax capacity" as they might say in "Newspeak." "The Party" is what the ruling class was called in "1984" and a short form for the Chinese Communist Party used for fearful fake fanatical statements like, "Living in the light of The Party." 

I'm not going to get into the details or the politics of Mao. Did the Not So Great Leap Forward kill 40 million? 80 million? A couple million more killed in the "cultural revolution?" Do we count the half million Chinese soldiers who died in the Korean War? It's impossible to get details of anything bad the Chinese Culling Party is responsible for even today, so it's a practically futile exercise to speculate on whether Mao was as bad as Hitler or Stalin or whatever. I'm not going to condemn Marxism, communism, or socialism, as so many are wont to do, by isolating two facts: Mao was communist and his term as the leader of the Chinese Carnage Party led to lots of death, then jump to the insanely reductivist conclusion that communism is bad and further fan the raging flames of fear well stoked by greedy capitalists already. I refuse to bring up Venezuela or mealy mouth about how the Scandinavian examples of socialism are not accurate because they have free markets. I don't like using fairy tale terms like "free market" that are created to add to the overwhelming ignorance that already exists. 

What I'd like to zone in on is confidence, and Mao had that in spades, not just personal confidence but the confidence of the people, and ignorance, again personal and of the people. There are so few examples that better illustrate the Twainian wisdom about which I began this entry that it would come as no surprise if the context of the quote were revealed to have been a conversation about China. And let's get back to the quote while it's been brought up. The idea of "success" is so highly subjective that sometimes confidence and ignorance are helpful components in the ease of its acquisition. If at first you don't succeed, act like you have and get rid of everyone who doesn't act along with you. Beats the shit out of trying and trying again, doesn't it?

Again, accuracy has its own definition in China, but there are stories of Mao's health and hygiene that I think are believable that when contrasted with his sexual proclivities, which are, as you can imagine, unimaginable, just scream massive overconfidence. But Chinese emperors being the demigods they are (not were) it's pretty easy to understand, and I dare say, hard to blame the guy. If I had the most beautiful, young girls in all of China falling all over themselves to service me sexually, several at a time, as an overweight, old, unattractive and hygienically apathetic - dirty, old man - what would I do? Hmmmm... lemme think on that...

We'll get to the history later, but let's look at the personal, not to say private stuff first. Let me drop this bomb: Mao never bathed! We know this from the personal records of his private physician otherwise this ordinance of information would be buried like so many other things in the dark shadows of Chinese history until someone fabricated an old-looking document that said Mao took regular baths and because it had a date on it, everybody believed it. He did wipe himself with a warm towel periodically, but he was regularly plagued by body lice. He had unhealthy skin that almost killed him. A mistreated chest pustule turned into an abscess and eventually septicemia. Not sexy.

He never brushed his teeth and had chronic dental problems. If that didn't already preclude oral engagement, he was a heavy smoker. Gonorrhoea, genital herpes, baldness, obesity... not exactly a catch. But since he believed regular sex ensured long life, he didn't let his unsexiness stop him. 4 wives, at least 9 kids and countless mistresses, he enjoyed 3-5 sexual partners at a time, not always necessarily of the female variety so the story goes. (I'll just squeeze in here parenthetically that until 1997, homosexuality was punishable by death in China) I'm a guy who feels bad if I get lucky and bring a girl home and realize I haven't worn my GOOD underwear. I almost envy this dude's confidence! 

I know all this seems a bit voyeuristic, but it comes to bear. While strict sexual morality, almost puritanism was preached to the public, Mao wanted to give an impression that he was a sexual dynamo! To further illustrate the do-as-I-command-not-as-I-do attitude of Mao, there is a story of a guard who once touched one of his mistresses on the bottom. He was sent to prison and never heard from again. Ostensibly, Mao's Little Red Book thoughts on communal mentality did not extend to HIS property. And it seems that "disappearing" people is not a new thing in the Chinese Cancelling Party. At any rate, despite his desire to present a strong, virile persona to his close confidants, semen analysis revealed that he was impotent by 1955. He was 62 in 1955. More than half of men over 60 have problems in that department. But being a demigod... So for the next 21 years until his death in 1976, this was one area where Mao was more down to earth than his adoring public were probably lead to believe. 

In a similar way, the soft, kind, panda perception that is sold to the people of China, and the world, Mao's official personality, so to speak, is bullshit. He was a brutal, narcissistic dictator. While it remains a matter of opinion whether or not he knew, and just didn't care, that so many people would die because of his policies, it's pretty clear that he consciously brought about the deaths of many people. "Let 100 flowers bloom," was a line of a poem he quoted to encourage criticism of his policies. It was shortly followed by statements about separating weeds from flowers as he rounded up all the people who fell into the flower trap and expressed discord and did the usual: prison, torture, work camps and execution. This was 1957, years after his 1951 campaign against "corruption" that doubled as an excuse to remove all political opponents with extreme prejudice. Is it any wonder then that the number of portraits of Mao always exceeded the number of people in China; everybody got a copy of his Little Red Book, students studied and memorized it and everyone had to carry it with them and quote if commanded; media was controlled so nothing negative about him or the Chinese Coercion Party would spread to the ignorant masses; and religion was banned so there would be no gods before Mao? When I was young and went to church, I never understood when people said we should "fear" God. Mao gave clear meaning to the fear of a god. 

Because of this fear, statements of Mao's achievements are greatly exaggerated as well. We won't go too far back for the history, and I'm going to paraphrase it and vastly over-simplify it. Basically, there were two Chinas in civil war in the 1930's, Mao's Chinese Corruption Party and the GMD or KMT (I prefer KMT or Kuomintang). The KMT were kicking ass. Because of this, Mao retreated to northern China. But as he tells it, and therefore, the ignorant, misinformed Chinese populous have been lead to believe, Mao triumphantly lead a Great March of 10,000 km. to the northern part of the country. Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Shek, the leaders of the second China, the Kuomintang, which was the dominant China of the time, had to deal with an invading Japan, which they did without the help of the retreating Chinese Cowardice Party. In 1937 the Japanese escalated their efforts and this vastly diminished the power and numbers of the KMT. But as Chinese history records, and as all the misinformed people will quote to you, the Chinese Cock-and-Bull Party lead by an heroic Mao Zedong, repelled the Japanese triumphantly!

During WWII the two Chinas were forced to unite (by Russia) so from 1939-1945 they were briefly one China. But, as you might expect, Mao gets all the credit for that too. After WWII, the Chinese Chicanery Party managed to gain public support and the diminished KMT retreated to Taiwan in 1949. In my opinion, the Truman government really shit the bed on this one. If they had committed fully to supporting the KMT, all of China might be like Taiwan is today. No way of knowing, but it's a glorious thought, isn't it? Anyhoo, Mao immediately declared the People's Republic of China in a speech in Tiananmen Square. First thing he did was visit Stalin in Russia (who was still pretty much controlling China) to shore up some power. Mao's style of communism deviated from what was perceived as standard Marxism and that irritated Stalin. He treated Mao as an inferior. But in China, Mao had never been more popular. He wanted to capitalize and Russia wanted to test America's post-war commitments, so invade Korea. Popularity of a communist leader is high and that leads to invasion. This is a pattern I will now present.

If you've never seen the documentary called "Icarus," please watch it now. China and Russia: cheating at sports for decades! Why? Olympic success increases political popularity and strengthens resolve and support for bold political moves like invasions other countries. Russia invaded Afghanistan before the 1980 Moscow Olympics (for which a lot of countries rightfully boycotted them), and learning from their mistake, they invaded Crimea/Ukraine AFTER the Sochi Olympics. If you think Xi Jin Ping and the Chinese Coup Party haven't studied the Russians' playbooks, you might be one of the "ignorant" referred to in the Twain quote at the outset of this post. They've been threatening Taiwan for a long time and that threat grows every day. And if you think the Olympics are only "politicized" by boycotting, you just haven't been paying attention, have you? 

I recently wrote this: Well, the world won't call the new Covid strain Xi; we have all but ignored the CCP "disappearing" Peng Shuai (and a long list of others); we call the free and independent country of Taiwan "Chinese Taipei" lest we offend; we gloss over human rights violations in Hong Kong, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, India and their own country (I'm sure I've missed some); the Chinese Communist Party is actively trying to erase the Uyghurs (and other foreign Muslims) in Xin Jiang; they're cutting WAY back on all kinds of foreign influence; they have been doping and cheating at Olympics since the 1980's and likely before; the CCP will probably take advantage of popularity gained by successfully cheating their way to lots of gold medals in Beijing 2022 by attacking Taiwan (the number one semiconductor producer in the world, semiconductors being what China and the world might value more than anything at the moment)(kinda like Russia invading Crimea after Sochi); they refuse to honor agreements, especially those about environment, and are expanding their coal industry as we speak... the world has bent over backwards to kiss China's ass because they have a huge market and cheap (not to say FREE) labor, so, sure, why not literally stop the world for China?

About this: https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/olympics-un-urges-truce-1.6271937?fbclid=IwAR1lauEOthoVBalvHYyc_S4ZrP7Y6POxqjAP2Mn9uUS0yWxbP-4khq4ki-g

You see, the second guy I want to talk about in this post is Xi Jin Ping. I believe he is trying his best to emulate Mao and the results may have already been as bad. There's not doubt in my mind they will get worse. That's right, Xi will surpass the douchebaggery of The Chairman. If he hasn't already. It is gobsmackingly offensive and a comparable level of unconscionable to see the favouritism almost every country in the world shows to China because of the corporate virtue of unhinged greed! 

At this current time, Major League Baseball is considering a lockout. Why? Just a few players wanting a bigger cut of the profits. There have been strikes and lockouts in all the major sports, ALL because of money. Entire seasons of MUCH more popular sports have been erased over money. But boycott one Olympics over issues like the above, (and for Canada, you can add kidnapping citizens and threatening to kill them) HELL NO! That would be politicizing the Olympics and we don't want to do that. Spavor and Kovrig were innocent. Meng was guilty. She violated international sanctions. Spavor and Kovrig were held in Chinese prison for nearly 3 years! During that time, Meng was lounging in luxurious comfort free to do almost anything but leave the country. Meng was freed when a US extradition request against her was discharged in a Canadian court. The possible death penalty of two kidnapped Canadian citizens who had done nothing wrong may have factored into that judgment. Then immediately after Meng got her way, the two Canadians were released. Just like that. After allegedly committing capital offences! This absolutely proves the charges were bogus. Canada and all Canadians should be fucking pissed off! But what did our leader say? "We're happy they are coming home." What should have been a "fuck you" to China was basically a "thank you." I wonder if you can guess why...

Here are the latest statistics on Canada/China trade. The above situation hasn't seemed to hurt it any, has it? Yes, Canada is on the "preferred trading partners" list of China. All that means is we have our tongues so far up Xi Jin Ping's arse that we can go so far as looking the other way when international crimes are committed. They kidnapped and falsely imprisoned two of our citizens! Only two? Actually no. This was not even the first time this has happened!!! Most Canadians don't even know about the Garratts. It has been suppressed pretty effectively to facilitate economic relations with China. How many more of these cases were there? How many more will there be? I'm sure with the recent crackdowns on ESL teaching, one of the examples of heavy anti-foreigner sentiment that is the latest whim of Xi's Chinese Chauvinism Party, there are Canadians having their rights cavalierly violated by the untouchable Chinese at this very moment. 

And that's just one country. What other countries has China mistreated? Other than China itself. How many major sporting leagues around the world have fallen victim to strikes or lock outs over money? Yet we can't, as a WORLD, as a brotherhood of sporting nations, agree to boycott a country guilty of actual crimes? We shut down hockey seasons for what amounts to aggressive negotiation tactics. We can't shut down the Olympics over genocide? 

I am just ashamed! I'm ashamed of my country and I'm ashamed of all the other countries who haven't yet boycotted. I'm ashamed of the I.O.C. for selling out to China. They shouldn't have had ONE Olympics let alone two. You know who I'm NOT ashamed of? Australia. Australia is about the only country I can see that has wizened up and gotten tough with China. They oppose the islands China is building for military purposes. Like Canada should, and all the countries of the world should. What? Didn't know about those? That's yet another example of the kowtowing kid gloves with which the world's media handle China. Read all about it. Australia stood up to China even though it cost them a lot of money... as the rest of the countries of the world should. It's mostly coal China wanted from them anyway. So win win! Fuck you, China and let's take a bite out of global pollution at the same time! Well done, Australia!

Know who else I'm not ashamed of? The WTA who have suspended tournaments in China. Me Too is not really a thing in China. It has been banned from all their social media sites by the very efficient Great Firewall of China. The Chinese have a habit of getting around censorship, for example, in this case they just say "mi" which means "rice" in Chinese and "tu" which means rabbit. So it's the rice bunny movement. But I'm sure that's been blocked by the censors too by now. Peng Shuai is not the first person to be "disappeared" by the Chinese Censorship Party either. Far from it! For me, the Chinese Confiscation Party brought that verb into my personal parlance. They are notoriously good at it. 

Does ANY of this sound like a country that is a suitable host for international friendship, peace and cooperation expressed in brotherly sporting competition? Or is it just the huge market and labour force? Come off it! NO country NEEDS China! It's not better business, just lazier. 

I hope the world does something to crawl out of the cellar of shame they have created by allowing China to become the spoiled emperor of the world. China needs a spanking. Not tariffs or embargos or sanctions. They scoff at those. We need to employ all out boycotts starting, but not finishing, with the 2022 Beijing Olympics. I don't mean to sound alarmist, but the alternative might be war. We may have already crossed that Rubicon. Whether we boycott them or not, China is poised to attack the China they would be if they had done things RIGHT: Taiwan. With the popularity a thoroughly corrupted Beijing Olympics would gain them, the Chinese Cheating Party would have the CONFIDENCE in themselves and of the IGNORANT people, to believe an invasion of Taiwan would end in SUCCESS. "All you need is ignorance and confidence and success is assured." 

This blog entry took me two months to create. I started and got emotional and quit about five times. I STILL didn't get into the details of Xi Jin Ping's strikingly parallel life to that of Mao Zedong. I don't feel I wrote this with professional detachment either. But it's the closest I can get. This might be the most important blog post of my blogging life so I want to get it up as soon as I can. I still believe China could be Hong Kong or Taiwan. The Chinese word for China translates to "middle country" or, with a ruler like Xi in control, more accurately "middle kingdom." China needs to look at the center of itself and remove the cancer. That cancer is the Chinese Cancer Party. 

Let's get busy boycotting!

Addendum: A little bit of good news on this front!   Here's hoping these countries (US, UK, India, Canada, Japan) and others sack up and talk general boycott instead of meaningless political boycott.

Addendum II: As I said, China scoffs at meaningless political boycotts. But they WILL still punish them. Get with the real boycotts and quit the chicken diplomacy!

Happy (?) Climate Week

 It's Climate Week everybody! Checking in on my home country and former home province of Alberta, or as I like to call it, "Albertabama," (thanks Heather) and this is what I see. Both hockey teams, the Calgary Flames and the Edmonton OILERS, have been cleared for NHL games at full capacity. Look a little more and THIS is what I see. Alberta has asked neighbouring BC to take some of its Covid patients. BC said they can't handle them. They're not as bad, but pretty bad. Meanwhile Ontario, where they are taking a more serious and cautious approach to Covid, and where it hasn't yet been determined whether fans will be able to attend Toronto Maple Leaf or Ottawa Senators games, is doing better than Alberta or BC. 

 So let's recap: 42 cases per 100,000 people in Ontario where they are most careful about Covid and may not allow fans at hockey games to start the 21/22 season; 121 cases per 100,000 in BC where they will be allowing limited capacity; and 423 cases per 100,000 people in Albertabama where I guess they reckon hockey to be more important than health. Well, it's oil country, they're the Edmonton Oilers, not the Edmonton Solar Panels.

 Covid 19 has become so politicized and partisan that, forget about ignoring the scientists and medical professionals, (which is happening) people are ignoring the obvious. The same goes for climate issues. During climate week, one of my friends who is always posting about what a jerk Trudeau is and how he's cost Canada jobs by battling fossil fuel companies and opposing pipelines and such, posted this:

I commented, "I guess even an objectivist clock is right twice a day." Not sure that will be understood by my friend, but in case he reads this, I'll explain that a bit further. Ayn Rand is a person who believes that man's sole moral purpose is his own happiness and that productive achievement is his most noble pursuit. "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" are the novels in which objectivism is fleshed out. The character Dominique in The Fountainhead is raped by the main character, Roark, but realizes that it was just what she had needed, then later she marries a guy named Keating who SELLS her to another guy named Wynand, but eventually falls for the "greed is good" philosophy of Roark and they marry. You don't need to know much more about the book. Its message seems to be that the epitome of the above description, Roark, (and oh yeah, he's also a rapist) just might be the perfect, objectivist human being. 

 Or is it John Galt? Who is John Galt? heh heh heh. A little literary humour there. John Galt IS the perfect objectivist human being. He invented a motor that runs on static electricity, but kept it from a "horrific," egalitarian world that would have used it to help everyone, not just himself. In "Atlas Shrugged," Galt makes a speech that Ayn Rand considers to be a massive mike drop that everyone should be able to suspend their disbelief completely enough to buy into. In reality, we hear John Galts all the fucking time and have since over 350 years before Christ (probably the exact opposite of John Galt) when Aristotle taught us how to debunk their rhetoric. Aristotle could pick apart John Galt's speech and expose it for the (ar ar) train wreck it actually was. You can read the whole thing for yourself here, but I'll just summarize it because it relates directly to the current mentality that enables the powers that be in our fucked up world to completely ignore climate change and other things like Covid 19.

 To begin with, you need an audience of the previously convinced to get away with a speech like John Galt's. Like in my last post when I said everybody wants to be happy, so it makes the "happiness is your responsibility" argument easier to sell, in this case, the speech can only be successful if the audience possesses the selfishness and greed necessary to want to become super rich and powerful. That, John Galt, Ayn Rand, Gordon Gecko, Ronald Reagan, and every trickle-down bullshit artist we've heard in politics, religion, economics or any other arena BELIEVES... HAS FAITH IN... WORSHIPS like their religion, but claims to be atheist. Most of these brain damaged people believe their dysfunction is universal. They believe we are all greedy scumbags and that it's human nature to fuck everyone else for personal gain. A massively tragic flaw that has to be accepted before the speech even begins, but let's continue, shall we?

 Another massive flaw that we need to suspend our disbelief in before the speech can even begin is Ayn Rand's personal creation of a dystopian world in moral crisis that would exist if society embraced only virtues that demand self-sacrifice and not those "virtues" that demand selfishness. John Galt lists them at the beginning of his sermon. "You have sacrificed independence to unity, reason to faith, justice to mercy, wealth to need, self-esteem to self-denial, happiness to duty..." and then proves his incredible arrogance by saying that HE has allowed them to do that. 

 I don't want to get too caught up in the book, but I'm sure any of my readers can pick apart most of that quotation without too much trouble. Unity is not an ugly word, nor does it necessarily sacrifice independence. Indeed, in a world such as our REAL world where capitalist greed is firmly in control, independence is necessary to achieve unity. Just ask a protestor in Hong Kong how their independence was squashed. Now you might be drawn into believing that China is communist and Hong Kong's capitalism and desire for self-improvement was being punished by a government similar to that of Ayn Rand's novel. Or is it the pure greed and selfishness run amok of the Chinese Communist Party requiring mindless unity and devotion to the party trying to beat protestors into lockstep? You will often find the "I know you are, but what am I" syllogism in the lies and rhetoric of those trying to subvert you and control you. The bad guys almost always accuse the good guys of their own worst evils.

 Reason to faith, well, as I said, there is an awful lot of faith (the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen) required to believe a world fully controlled by greedy, objectivist people won't achieve full on Armageddon as fast as intellectuals who act on reason and not faith can say, "We told you so."  

 Justice to mercy, as though the two are mutually exclusive. The person who stole bread to feed her family - give her the chair! The person who works two shitty jobs at prosperous businesses, but doesn't earn enough to feed herself - let her starve! The writer who uses female pronouns to represent all of humanity - execute HER!

 Wealth to need? I mean, this is what I just mentioned. Only a fucking prick would think it's good to prefer wealth to need! You need that money, but I want it. I don't need it, but I'll kill you for it and convince myself it's a virtue because I'm just chasing happiness. Give me a break! This is unnatural and requires heavy brainfuckery to achieve even in those who want to believe it.

 Self-esteem to self-denial? There are those of us who feel self-esteem by committing acts of self-denial. In fact, we are the majority. What better way to feel good about yourself than by helping others? Those who can only feel self-esteem by helping themselves are sick human beings. Helping myself past the point of need is only acceptable to a point. That point, to a normal person exists somewhere in relation to other people. There exists NO point of guilt or shame at helping ones self in the mind of the sociopath who cares only of him/her self. To a normal person, if helping myself causes others to suffer, I feel natural, and proper negative feelings of regret, shame and guilt.

 Later in the speech, John Galt says, "Do not cry that you need us or beg us to return, we are on strike, the men of the mind. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil and we should feel guilty about it." The irony! The I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I!!! The world would not be a dystopian disaster that Rand outlines in the book without these greedy parasites! They, the morally reprehensible minority, are the ones responsible for the chaotic suffering in the world. Nobody would cry at their loss. Galt even goes so far as to say, "We do not need you" later in the speech. Again, the mirror syllogism. It is the majority who doesn't need those jagovs. Where would their wealth come from without the workers? But they are too brain damaged to realize this.

 Finally, Galt says that the people sacrificed happiness to duty. Isn't this the spoiled rotten little man children (or women children) saying they don't wanna accept responsibility? Why not? Cuz I don't like it! Doesn't make me happy! You have to be pretty fucking rich and entitled to think that duty is the opposite of happiness. The world had 4 years of the most obvious example from politics, so I'll give you one from literature, since we're on that road today. BETTER literature than the books of Ayn Rand. Take Holden Caulfield as an example. And I'm not the first to draw this parallel...

 Throughout "The Catcher in the Rye," Holden is a 16-year-old child who seems to have quite a privileged position in life attending a private (and undoubtedly expensive) American school like Pencey Prep. It's fictional, but it's in the book for a purpose. We know he's probably upper-middle to upper class. I'd say upper-middle. He seems to have a lot of money to throw around on dates, taxis, and older ladies he's just met. He is trying to find the problem in his life and everybody seems to be telling him it's his inability to apply himself. Take responsibility for his studies, his relationships, his family. Holden, beneath all the impetuous fighting and declarations of phoniness, is a good guy. He'd like to stop every kid from running through the rye field and off the cliff they can't see. He wishes people could maintain the adorable innocence of childhood, including himself. But when he sees his young sister Pheobe at the end of the book riding the carousel and grabbing for the golden ring, (as a perfect allusion to our Ayn Rand books) he realizes that "a body" can't "catch" all the kids running through the rye. They need to be allowed to make their own mistakes and learn from them. If they are never allowed to grow up and become responsible, they will become assholes. Probably unhappy assholes. So, at the risk of contradicting the topic of my recent post, without responsibility, we never grow up and we can't, therefore, experience fulfilling and happy lives. So, in short, duty is a requirement of happiness. Again, it takes a pretty antisocial, privileged, sick in the head individual to consider a life without responsibility as happy. But that's what John Galt's speech implies.

 You can agree or disagree with what I've written, but it has to be impossible, even for a proponent of ALL John Galt's erroneous points, to believe that EVERYBODY shares these ideas. Are there people like that? Really? Well, no one can say. There certainly are people who ACT like that for their own selfish purposes. The vlogger who cried when she saw a Chinese bank in France, then got enraged at the "scummy" people of Taiwan for criticizing her love of Chinese capitalism and economic imperialism. Again, China is NOT the egalitarian society that is considered so evil in Rand's novel, but the screw-your-fellow-person society that is prophesied by Galt to be a Utopia. Check her out when you get the chance. Here's what a citizen of the perfect Randian, objectivist society looks like:

 We've seen her before, haven't we? Not just in China, North Korea, Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot era, but this is what Trump Nation is beginning to look like too. I don't want to give Trump more credit than he deserves cuz it's not hard to sell a philosophy of childish irresponsibility. What's hard is being born rich enough to pull it off and although he doubtlessly believes he had something to do with this, he didn't. 

 I see the same thing in people who are still refusing to admit they should get vaccinated against Covid. I see the same thing in people who still deny climate change. Objectivism is a socially irresponsible philosophy that many people, like willful children, continue to cling to at the peril of the entire planet. But let me show that in a less dire, preachy, doom and gloom way. All the major late night talk shows did their Climate Week episodes and they were awesome! Kimmel told us that there is no planet B. 

Seth Meyers did his always hilarious Bernie Sanders impression and told us, "News flash: climate change is real!" "We DID Start The Fire!"

And Emmy winner, Stephen Colbert told us we need to do the one thing that no industrialized nation has done before to end the climate crisis: anything.

 See if you can apply some Aristotelian bullshit cutting and spot the John Galt, Randian, Objectivist, selfish, anti-social thinking at the heart of world control that is the reason that our world bears a real resemblance to the dystopian situation in "Atlas Shrugged," which Ayn Rand created as the result of the exact opposite. 

 Ayn Rand's books made her money. There's no way of knowing if she believed any of that crap. If she didn't, she was pretty shrewd. If she did, she was an ignorant whore. Either way, she was wrong, and so are we. Our world, that is.

So we know the problem, it's just time to do something about it. It's our responsibility. It's our duty. And, as I've said before, it needn't hurt our self-enrichment. Converting to green energy will actually save the world while MAKING money. It's actually cheaper to change.

 It's my suspicion that there is good news. Well, as good as a world like ours can allow. We'll get past this global climate crisis. But we'll do it without getting past the global moral crisis. All we need to do is be patient while the greedy, anti-social scumbags of the world figure out how to take over the green energy market. And that'll probably happen. They're nothing if not industrious. It's easier for them to be since they don't give a hunk of shit about anyone but themselves, which makes cheating second nature. So we'll probably avert the climate crisis. But the moral crisis will lead to something just as disastrous or even moreso. Nukes? Another pandemic? Aliens? Who can say?

 There actually is a chance I'm being too skeptical here. There is an alternative. All the John Galts of the world might simultaneously reveal all the static electricity engines, all the globally advantageous technology they've been selfishly withholding and realize that they can get rich AND help the world. Yes, riches just might not have to come through selfishness. They might have a J.D. Salingeresque epiphany. All at the same time! 

 Eat your hearts out talk show hosts! That was funnier than all YOUR material!

Has it been 4 years already?

 

I'm starting to see a lotta the above stuff on friends' Facebook pages. Not very much of the below.

It makes me feel like Mr. Nike in the following video:

Who Is Responsible For Happy?

Chuseok is upon us here in South Korea. The biggest holiday of the year when Koreans have the responsibility of subjecting themselves to nightmarish traffic jams to meet in agreed upon rural locations to tend ancestral graves, and practice many other traditional traditions. It's always seemed a bit ironic, at least to me, that the modern problem of traffic precedes the old, not to say antiquated Chuseok responsibilities. Like the charye or tea ceremony or the seongmyo or the cleaning of the grave sites and offering of food, wine and bows, two forms of ancestor worship lots of Koreans engage in. I bring this up for a couple of reasons. To give the reader an idea of what is happening now, and my future self when I feel nostalgic and look back on this blog, and because this post is going to be partially about "responsibility." 

It may not be in the way you think. I've written before about how I have no truck with the hyperpositive and I've written about how I loathe even more those con artists, life coaches and snake oil salespeople who seem to be multiplying almost as fast as their slick, well-oiled B.S. holes can regurgitate slogans like, "Your happiness is your responsibility." If I were vulnerable to their cereal box psychology, I suppose I could take "responsibility" for the massive irritant in my life that they represent and just force myself to ignore them and refuse to let them steal my joy. Problem is, constant positivity is a form of escape and I prefer to live in a world where I acknowledge the "metric" of reality, not depend on the "metric" of fantasy or make believe. I refuse to accept toxic positivity as a panacea for all life's ills. I feel more and more outnumbered in that life choice. Am I wrong?

I guess I'm seeing it a lot in the job market right now in which businesses are trying to slowly get back to work as people receive their Covid vaccines. Businesses never want to lose, and usually don't if they can pass the losses on to customers and/or workers. Customers post-Covid are going to have to do some very toxically positive self-placating to pay the prices we'll be charged to "help business recover from Covid." And workers are going to have to delude themselves into believing that shittier jobs than ever are acceptable for the same reason. I think people might be willing to accept these inevitable results of a pandemic in a capitalist world IF there weren't so many jackholes saying that emergency Covid relief benefits have made people lazy. "People have lost their work ethic." "There are plenty of jobs out there, people just won't take them." Despite a million articles like this one. 

Stories like the above represent, or at least they should, a wake-up call to the necessity, nay, the urgency to do something about one of the worst symptoms of capitalism whereby prices and profits skyrocket while wages stagnate. The only person upon whom this gradual slide into wage slavery can be perpetrated is one well trained in explaining it away with a smile. 

I guess this sort of thing wouldn't be able to rot my socks so efficiently if I weren't so well trained in recognizing the sophistry, rhetoric and bullshittery that is used when trying to foist this crap upon us, the general public. We are in an instant position of weakness because we all WANT to be happy, so we actually make it easier for people to convince us that we have the power to make ourselves happy. It's all just in the way we perceive our lots in life. The fact that my lot in life is better than many, but not nearly as good as it could or should be, is one reason I am here to tell you that this type of reasoning is only valid to a point. After that point it becomes the tin-eared, out of touch ramblings of the privileged. And with the availability of living wage jobs on the steady decrease due to inflation, the demise of labour unions, and globalization to name a few causes of the dilemma, it doesn't help much to tell a person who can't even pay the rent or put food on the table even though he/she is working two jobs that their unhappiness is not their fault, but it IS their responsibility. 

I read the book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck" by Mark Manson and in it he tells a lot of good stories and makes some great points. But oddly, after a chapter decrying the "well at least" people who always try to be happy with the least, saying that denying negative emotions leads to worse negativity and emotional dysfunction, he launches into the reverse Uncle Ben philosophy. Everybody knows the line from Spiderman when Uncle Ben says, "With great power comes great responsibility." Well, Manson decided to reverse that and write a chapter explaining how with great responsibility comes great power. We have the power to make our lives happy if we take responsibility for our sorrows essentially. This was in successive chapters for crying out loud!!!

He gives the infuriating example of a man who lost his son in a car accident and called him an asshole for expressing in a blog post that he might be responsible for the pain he felt at his son's death. I agree with the man who lost his son. Manson goes on in the book to describe that how the man reacted to his son's death was his own choice. Manson describes how he wanted to reply to this man and angrily tell him that his comment was missing the point and that just because he hadn't lost a son doesn't mean he hasn't felt pain. But he didn't. He writes proudly of how he just told the man he was sorry for his loss, then applied his OWN advice to his own situation and took responsibility for staying happy and not fighting with this man. Then fucked up his wise decision by writing the whole story in his book. I guess because he gave too much of a fuck? Not subtly or artistically either.

He should have stuck with his previous chapter's advice. Only one thing can heal a wound like that and that is time. We all have differing grief recovery schedules. But to try taking responsibility and forcing the grief out of yourself unnaturally, that's escapism and it could lead to emotional dysfunction. He talks about one of his relationships in the book too and as gag reflex inducing as that is, I actually related to that better since I've never lost a son either. 

He caught his girlfriend cheating and they broke up. He says he blamed her for a long time until he finally took responsibility for his sadness and got on with life and dating. I feel like maybe he didn't give time enough of the credit. I had a breakup that I moped about for a long time too. But it was when I was young and stupid. Before I learned of Aristotle, syllogisms and the art of mindfuckery. The saying goes that love is for the young. I think they should add "foolish" to that. I was young and foolish and I was in love. Fooled around and fell in love... as it were. What got me out of my funk after breaking up with my girlfriend was the realization that I was largely deluding myself! The ability to overlook warning signs or fault in a relationship can be what keeps successful relationships successful. But it was what made me realize that while in the relationship, I wasn't as happy as I was forcing myself to believe, just as I wasn't as miserable as I was conning myself into believing I was when it was over. What I learned with time was love was self-delusional and so was my blubbering over lost love. It was awesome while I thought I was in love, but it was also largely a complex mental construct of what I had learned from songs and movies I enjoyed while I was a kid. With that knowledge, or dare I say wisdom, it's unlikely to ever happen again. Love is for the young. 

In my "mourning" period you'd better believe I had people trying to sell the same garbage that I'm talking about here. Join our group, convert to our way of thinking, become a member of our church, open your mind to our philosophy, sign up for our cult, I'm sure the "responsibility" ploy was in there somewhere. But I wasn't buying. It would have just been trading self-delusion for being conned by someone else. A step down intellectually, I thought. No, by then I had developed a healthy skepticism. I had grown up.

ANOTHER unpopular opinion among the hyperpositive. I'm gonna be hit at the party tomorrow. I'm going out, which we're not supposed to do during Covid Chuseok, but there will probably only be a handful of folks there, all vaxed and we'll be outdoors. Hopefully none of my opinions espousing harsh reality will seem too buzz killing to the partiers who don't know me. I sometimes feel outnumbered. If only I could master the subtle art of not giving a fuck about that. It's probably easier than mastering the art of taking JOY in the sufferings of the world. It's such a hard thing to do! 

Some of you might be thinking right now that taking joy in suffering sounds an awful lot like taking responsibility for your suffering. It DOES too! But I think the difference is how. If you try to hide from your problems and pain, and fake like you're happy, it's that toxic positivity. I'm working on making my life a happy one that includes, and actually REQUIRES suffering. How can we know happiness without suffering? I have actually been known to subconsciously set myself up for suffering from time to time. Bad choices are the spice of life! Tomorrow might be the next...

 

RIGHT?

 It's been a few days since 9/11. People have posted things on Facebook, had conversations, said prayers, participated in moments of silence, and remembered in their own ways. Not just Americans either. A lot of people around the world were shocked at the reality that if it can happen in NEW YORK CITY, surely it can happen anywhere. 2977 civilians, mostly American, tragically lost their lives that day. The world mourned in 2001, and those victims have been mourned every year at this time since the WTC attacks. Millions of people vowed never to forget. 

 I was 34 in 2002 when it happened and there are many things I have not forgotten about the terrorist attack on the Trade Center. There are also many things I have not forgotten about what life was like before 9/11. This article briefly talks about the 4 changes that may have been the biggest, not just in America, but all around the world. Give it a read. Watch the vids. It'll give you some perspective on just how momentous an occasion 9/11 really was, in case you have forgotten a little bit.  

 Category 1 in the article, "Forever Wars," reminds us that Afghanistan was invaded less than a month after 9/11 and as a result of it. The purpose of the invasion was the dismantling of Al Qaida and the Taliban government harbouring it in Afghanistan. Just under 20 years, it has been America's longest and most costly war. Since the recent withdrawal, most have heard of the 2 trillion or more that was spent on the war, but the far more tragic and far-reaching cost has been human lives. According to this AP article, US soldiers - 2448, US contractors - 3846, Afghan military/police - 66,000, other soldiers - 1144, Afghan civilians - 47,245, Taliban and other opposition - 51,191, aid workers - 444, journalists - 72, for a total of 172,390 lives. 121,199 excluding the 51,191 that represent the terrorists in this "War on Terror." 

 It's impossible for me, and for anybody in my opinion, to truly grasp the gravity, the suffering, the loss, the varying emotions, the COST each one of those lives has had on the US, Afghanistan and the entire world. Al Qaida is not gone and the Taliban is back in control of the government of Afghanistan, but the "War on Terror" continues all over the world. It seems like it might continue forever. 

 It could be argued that the the greater tragedy of the forever war on terror that began with 911 has been in the lives of survivors, as the above article describes. Not only from Afghanistan but Iraq and all over the world. And not just soldiers with PTSD and brain injuries, but in some way, the war against terrorism that was ramped up on Sept. 12, 2001, has affected almost all of us. Most of us have been impacted in many ways. 

 The article goes on to describe changes in American immigration and deportation laws and in the videos you can listen to regular people admitting that the events of 9/11 changed their ideas and their trust of people from areas and ethnicities associated with the attacks. In the article, airport security is the 3rd major change listed. Good Lord, even de-privatization, something notoriously hated by Republicans, was a sacrifice they agreed to in this area! Now the government run TSA is in charge. Since 9/11, scans, body pat downs and shoe removal is complained about, but can you imagine what it's like - to this day - for Arabs or East Indians with the appearance of Arabs and East Indians, trying to have an uneventful flight? It's hard to say without being blunt: discrimination, racial profiling, anti-Muslim sentiment, and what we so erroneously call "racism," has absolutely increased since 9/11. 

 And the fourth of the big changes listed was that of "big surveillance." This would probably have increased with or without 9/11, but there is little doubt the way was cleared and the scope was widened by the attacks. 

 Think about all of this and how hard it has been for all of us. Few can say they've remained unaffected by the events of and the reaction to 9/11. Few have not been impacted by major changes and few have not had to make sacrifices. There's really no way we can forget 9/11 even if we try. Yet even for those who consider the entire 20 years in Afghanistan to have been futile, the Iraq operations to be criminal, the immigration standards to be immoral, the deportations to be cruel, the airport security to be excessive, the surveillance to be invasive, and the suffering to be harsh, we all agree that it was necessary. Right? If you refuse to take your hat off and be silent at a baseball game on Sept. 11th, why, you're an asshole! Right? If you don't like people's Facebook posts on 9/11 saying, "Never forget," and if you don't feel saddened by the tragic loss of lives and suffering of those most immediately affected by 9/11 and the resulting war on terror, you are absolutely heartless! Right? 

 I'm not going to disagree here! This might look like I am going to. That's not my intent. While there are plenty of mitigating details and conspiracies that have emerged since 9/11, the act of terrorism might even make me angrier and more heart-wrenchingly saddened every successive year. I hate terrorism. I wish it could be reasoned away and/or fought diplomatically, but I understand that sometimes force is warranted. Right?

 Not just forcing people to take off shoes at airports, or have their internet surveilled, but physical, deadly, military force is sometimes warranted. I'm assuming most people would agree with me since very few, if any would protest the moments of silence at the baseball games. I'm not saying it's not an American's right to do so, but I haven't seen anyone do it yet. Think about why. Reduce it to the bare minimum. Break it down. Why? It's because foreign invaders came into the US and killed 2977 innocent people. That's what it boils down to. This is what warranted all the voluntary suffering and loss of freedoms Americans virtually unanimously agreed to and still support today. 

 NOW you might know where I'm going with this. While the above is not yet accurate, it might as well be. It won't be long anyway. It's neck and neck. On the day I am typing this, over 662,000 Americans have been killed by another foreign invader. That's certainly many more than the 9/11 attacks, Iraq and Afghanistan combined! It's like a world war! Americans know the invader's identity and they know how to defend themselves against it. I'm talking about Covid 19 and every 2 days it kills more Americans than were killed in the 9/11 bombings. 1500 people dying every day!!! That's GOTTA stir in the hearts of Americans, the same kind of defiant sacrifice that allowed them to endure the hardships and personal freedom restrictions that 9/11 led to... RIGHT? Joe Biden has declared war on Covid 19! And the president, who has certainly mounted a counter-offensive against the deadly invading force every bit as aggressive and tough as George Jr's "War on Terror" if not, even moreso, should be receiving the kind of praise and hero-worship that was piled on Dubyuh during his retaliation against the terrorists back in the day... RIGHT??? 

 Well, that would just not be in keeping with the absolutism, the infallible contrarian political stance of the true, modern day Republican. I'm not talking about those who still apply thought to their political views, I mean the knee-jerk jerks who need nothing but an idea, opinion or action from the enemy to completely devote themselves to the opposite. If ever you had any doubt that this was the attitude of a great many Republicans, including many in positions of power within the party, not just the electorate, surely this issue has got to wash all that doubt away! Ivermectin? THAT'S dedication!

 And these are not the kind of people who, even if they disagree, would take off caps and silently go along with the crowd at the ballgame either. They are proud and boisterous in their vacuous defiance. Some Republican senators as well as media sycophantic to the Republican cause are calling Biden's vaccine mandates "a power grab," "(a) blatantly unlawful overreach," "one of the most heinous displays we've ever seen from a president," "the closest thing we've gotten to a dictator yet," "naked authoritarianism," even saying they'll "fight them to the gates of hell!" As Seth Meyers says, they're just "crime-adjacent weirdos pandering non-stop to the ugliest instincts of their base to stay relevant." 

This despite the obvious parallel (shown in the vid) of his worship, the hairpiece head of the party, when he stated in relation to ordering people back to work despite the pandemic and the lack of a vaccine, that the president has "the ultimate authority" and that's the way it's gotta be. There is not a doubt in anyone's mind that every good GOPer would re-agree with Cheeseface if he said the exact thing again... as president. And they'd go right along with every bill he signed and agency, board or commission he created to establish the infrastructure of a police state. But with Biden as president, this does not apply. 

 There are elections upcoming in both Canada and the US. Party politics has become just as absurd in Canada as it is in the US, don't kid yourself. They want you to vote based on us vs. them, not based on platforms, which, let's face it, are only lightly tacked together so they can be more easily ripped down after the election anyway, win or lose. And I'm not just talking about the Republicans or their equivalent in Canada, the Conservative Party. Both the Democrats and the Liberals do the same. False promises, pandering to private interests, accepting bribes (or as we call them today, lobbying), selling our legal system to the corporate rulers of the countries, it's total corruption. And they're not hiding it any more. 

 BUT... if I were to suggest that the vote is absolutely ludicrous because of the quadrennial farce politics has become, I'd be that asshole at the ballgame with the hat still on, refusing to be silent, maybe even saying, "9/11 was a fake!" RIGHT?

A Bit of Employment Perspective

August is drawing to a close and so, therefore, are my holidays. As I understand it, I have the month of August off, which means I will be returning to work on Sept. 1, a Wednesday. I've been told, not by my supervisors or anyone who works at my place of employment whose duties might include assuring that there will be a teacher in the classroom or in the Zoom room for all of the English language classes that will be the foreign teacher's responsibility to teach, but by a guy who teaches in a different department, that classes actually START on Sept. 1. Well, not for this ranchero. I'll be using Sept. 1-3 to design my curriculum and that, I assume, will include making my lessons. If there are plans of using a text, teaching face-to-face, starting on Sept. 1, moving to a new office, using new classrooms, or any semblance of a schedule, I have not been informed of those plans yet. So I will do what I ASSUME I am supposed to do. Not an uncommon thing around these here parts. 

I told you last post that I asked for help getting vaccinated and none was forthcoming from any member of administration at the unigwan where I work. If you don't know what unigwan means, and can't guess, I will explain that word as we go here. I also asked for some idea of what I will be expected to do in the upcoming semester and, in typical unigwan fashion, no response was forthcoming. I have been lucky enough to have friends who have given me what meagre information I have, and who helped me get vaccinated. What I'm saying is I'm on my own here. Expect no help and management will not disappoint. That sort of thing. The same as it was in Gongju Dae Cheonan. 

Now, don't get me wrong, there are definitely positives to that! Full autonomy is the dream of a lot of ESL teachers in Korea who work at hagwans (private cram schools) where owners (of the hagwan and teacher) are constantly changing schedules, class content, students, even contractual obligations, often at the whim of one pushy parent (I could have said mother) of one student. I already have the HUGE boon of not posting grades, marking tests or evaluating my students. My classes are already very casual. So if you add to this the advent of being completely ignored by management and administration, it's a dream ESL job in Korea! So, if I am ignored during the upcoming semester the same way I've been ignored when asking for help getting vaxxed and with schedule information, it will have been worth it. But as you might guess, from the tone of this post, past experience, or just my luck, I don't expect that to be the case. 

We'll find out soon, but so far my predictions about this university posted to this blog have been outrageously accurate. I hope that changes, but... sigh... it won't. This "school" has behaved as a hagwan on each occasion. It's proven to be a hagwan posing as a university, or, a unigwan. The only slight surprise was the success of my campaign to cut out the desk-warming, and if you recall, "success" is a bit of an overstatement, "conditional success" would have been better. The other problems with this job, I'll have less success at changing. But again, don't get me wrong, if these problems were enough to make this a bad job, I'd go somewhere else. Having said that, sure, this job could be, and really ought to be, a durn sight better. 

I am ever mindful of improving my lot in life and if that seems like I am always complaining, a Negative Nathan (or whatever), well I'll gladly put up with your derision, but I will not say I'm full when I'm hungry. I shall not accept as the crown of my desires a big tenement block with flats for impoverished tenants on thousand-year leases! May my hand fall off if I carry one brick to that tenement! Lots of folks get the impression that maybe I'm just fond of sticking out my tongue or cocking a snook at ESL jobs in Korea, but I've lived here long enough to say with confidence that if the position existed worthy of no snook cocking or tongue sticking outing, I'd cut off my tongue and my... umm - er - nose and never again have to urge to do either. Look up "cocking a snook" and you'll see why I didn't offer to cut off another appendage you might have expected. Ahem.

I love me some Dostoyevsky! Anyhoo, unlike old Fyodor, I won't be put in front of a fake firing squad then have my sentence commuted to hard labour in Omsk, Siberia if my protests are discovered. Probably just relegated to job hunting again or sent back home to hard labour in northern Canadia. And so, I will record in this very blog, the inevitable conditions of my "conditional success" getting desk-warming cut down. One I am already aware of and hopefully it will not prove to be the hagwan-esque micromanagement that it threatens to be, but from experience, not negativity, I am predicting that it will be. I have been informed that I will need to write out daily reports of every hour I spend on the job, who I am with, what I am teaching, sign them and turn them in once a week. Format and detail will likely be micromanaged within this micromanagement. It will just add some extra, tedious busywork to each day that I feel the right to protest. If they don't care enough to get me vaccinated or give me my schedule, then it would seem in character for them not to care enough to expect neat, detailed and frequent reports of my classroom activity. But I fear it is coming. 

I feel some history is needed here lest you take me for an ingrate. I have a job doing less work, making more money and enjoying more vacation time than any I could hope to have in Canada. I've given my country more chances than enough to demonstrate the superior employment market all my friends and family seem to be convinced exists there and while it was good to see those friends and family members while I was there, apart from that and a few cultural indulgences, I count those years as wasted time. However, the situation in Korea has steadily deteriorated, at least in the ESL racket, in a very familiar worldwide economic way. And it has a great deal to do with the inherent weakness in the occupation, which I've talked about before: teachers are nice. Nobody wants someone who isn't nice spending time with their children. It's a must in the profession. "Nice" is scoffed at as weakness in the business world and since education is now just business, teachers are being punished for their kindness. We won't unionize or demand fair conditions, we're too "nice." We won't even try to get cost of living adjustments. We're too "nice." We'll basically take any shit the hagwan bosses and university administrators can come up with in their limited, but diabolical business brains. 

The list is endless, but I'll point out a few that the administration of Gongju U. where I work now, has gotten away with piling on the "nice" teachers who came before me. Basically, this job has been stripped of almost all the good stuff it almost certainly USED to have. The salary of 2.1 million per month is bare minimum. It was probably competitive or even superior at one point, but hasn't changed since that point. "Nice" teachers, rather than being negative, have moved on to higher paying jobs away from here most likely. 

University jobs are sweet because they have two semester breaks that are two months long. That's a lot of vacation and it's paid. Those jobs are quickly disappearing. A lot of unis give teachers optional or mandatory "camps" during that time now. Teaching kids, teachers or administrative staff. The better (or slower to take advantage of "nice" teachers) schools pay their teachers over and above their regular salaries since these camps are not part of their regular salary, but paid holidays ARE. And, you guessed it, some places give the "nice" teachers mandatory camps with no extra pay. That's what I did in the month of July. So not only was I working for free, I was also given the worst schedule imaginable, one that actually breached my contract, AND told to do attendance AFTER the camp had finished. You can see how the month of July for me could have been considered just a part of the contract if I were ignorant of the past in Korea when universities just didn't do this. But I know about it. I just have to pretend I don't. Undoubtedly they've had a string of teachers here who either don't know that these two camps a year should be extra pay or vacation, or they've had teachers like me acting like they don't know this. And I have done many of these camps. They average close to a million won a week. Some I've done have paid more. That's 8 million won of free labour I am giving my employers. Per year. But are they satisfied with that much "niceness?" Oh no. 

I said "per year," last paragraph, but to be exact, my contract is 11 months. This was a fad at hagwans and universities that I thought I'd seen the last of till I got here. It's done because of the Korean severance pay law. Employers must give employees the equivalent of a month's salary after a year of work. Private schools have screwed "nice" teachers legally by adjusting laws to consider pension and severance the same thing. They couldn't just eliminate the severance, they just act like they've never heard the word. (in Korean or English) But public schools, including national universities (Gongju National University) employed the 11-month contract to screw the "nice" teachers. I asked about that at contract signing time and was lied to. As explained before, I didn't expect them to pay my severance even after I was told they would. I knew they were lying, but it was an acceptable loss. Of 2.1 million. So where are we now, about 10 million won I am knowingly being gauged here. A young, inexperienced teacher might not realize this. "Nice." That's what management think. But is that nice enough for them? Oh no!

The main "niceness" was the one I had removed. I was spending conservatively half of my time in the office not teaching. What that amounts to is an entire salary I was not receiving due to the mandatory office hours. That brought our total of free money for the uni up to an astounding over 35 million won. That's a savings of over 38 thousand dollars per year (or per 11-month contract)!!! 

Now you begin to see how management around here all consider the teachers, or at least the ones they can screw like this, to be STUPID, not nice. But I'm STILL not finished. 

Housing is expected to be provided on an E-2 visa contract. That's what the majority of teachers get here if they are not Korean, married to Koreans, teaching fully qualified positions, or some other ways to get a better visa. Universities and hagwons have largely switched to housing allowance instead of housing for their teachers. It has allowed them to provide the same amount of money to teachers while landlords have consistently raised rents throughout Korea. There's no way of proving this, but I'm absolutely convinced the landlords and schools conspired together on this. Landlords KNOW how much housing allowance you are getting. They use it against you when you are looking for apartments. They'll say, "You are getting 300,000 a month housing allowance, so you can easily afford 500,000 won for this 200,000 won apartment I am trying to fuck you into renting." Teachers, not the hagwans and unigwans, have been forced to endure the rising housing prices. And we won't ask for higher housing stipends because??? Now you're getting it! We're too "nice/stupid." But if you think anybody is finished taking advantage of that niceness, OH NO!!! I'm not finished yet.

The good contracts for university jobs used to be like the REAL university jobs around the world that require minimal hours of teaching per week in order to allow you to publish papers and books in your field of choice. You know, like a dozen hours a week or so. I had some of these sweet jobs before! But since most of us aren't publishing works in the ESL field, and since the amount of money charged for an hour of ESL teaching has gone up by a factor of 10 or so in the last 20 years, universities too are getting as many hours out of their ESL livestock as the hagwans do. There are actually a few remaining places where they expect publications from teachers, but in most places, just more teaching. Public classes, kids classes, English cafes, teacher training, and camps.

And along with 12-hour weeks, full vacation is destined to become a thing of the past here in university ESL gigs. Two other phenomena are cropping up: 1. Refusal to grant permission to teach elsewhere (camps for a million a week) during vacation, and 2. Difficulty in doing immigration paperwork for the private camps has increased. I wouldn't be surprised if you need more than a letter of permission from your current employer nowadays. Not to mention salaries for the private camps are rarely a million a week any more. Though the cost for students attending the camps has steadily risen.

Relocation allowance (moving expenses), travel allowance (for commute to and from work), annual air tickets home, Chuseok bonuses, Christmas parties/presents, performance rewards, Korean classes, communication with department heads, communication with supervisors/buffers, and any number of other perks are disappearing too. Immigration is constantly becoming more tedious, difficult and expensive. Application processes and interviews are too. And both are becoming more like hostile spy interrogation than the start of an overseas adventure it once felt like. 

As far back as I can remember teaching ESL in Korea (1997) people have been saying that the industry is going to be gone in 2 years. I have to give Koreans credit for not just dumping it in 2 years. They've strategically (diabolically) made it more profitable for Korea, and less profitable for teachers. And who can blame them if the teachers are nice/dumb enough to keep accepting crappier and crappier jobs? 

I have little doubt that my job was a whole lot better than it is now. And there are still a few ways it could be made worse. I wrote this because it's probably difficult for most of my readers to understand why I complain about my job, but still stay. I will be back teaching, most likely by the 6th of September, although, as I said, I still have no idea. But I will be happy to be working a job I know I couldn't match in Canada. It could be, and once was, much better, and I will continue to complain and try to improve my work situation as much as I can, but inevitably, it will get worse and worse until I change jobs and/or go back to Canada.

I shouldn't say, "inevitably," since there is a shinier endgame to my employment over here in Korea. It is possible for me to save here, unlike anywhere else I've worked. This means a very modest retirement, not in Canada, but in a cheaper, probably Asian country is a possibility. And it's not far away for me, a single, aging dude with very few needs in life. 

Dang, the weather is getting better, sports is getting more interesting, my favourite month of the year, the glorious month of October, is approaching, and in a lot of ways, I'm actually looking forward to getting back to work. I hadn't planned on this being such a bummer of a post. 

As the saying goes, life is suffering. Every day I manage to find ways to take joy in my suffering. I suppose this blog being an attempt at self-therapy, more of the suffering than the joy tends to find its way into it. But, to end on a happy note, don't worry, I'm not gonna blow my head off or anything. Dark humour. Come on! Things are pretty good. Seriously! As I've railed against before, I refuse to say, "Well at least I..." and pretend to be deliriously happy in everything. For example at least I didn't get hired for 12 months only to be fired at the 11 month point.

It happens in Korea. I didn't make that meme. Or, at least I ALMOST had to do mandatory Covid testing, one of the times Koreans panicked about the filthy foreigners spreading Covid. But I didn't. Also I didn't make THIS meme:

In both cases, the Korean characters mean "hagwan." And I was ordered by Gongju University to get tested immediately, just didn't go. The response was, "Oh, so you are not going to do what the directors told you to do? Do you want me to tell them that?" I said, "Yup. Please tell them that." The next day I called the Covid hotline and was informed that without symptoms, I shouldn't be tested, nor would I have been able to get a test when I was ordered to "by the directors" at 9:30 PM. This, as I'm sure you know by now, is probably the worst of the things that is increasing every year: the discrimination and general anti-foreigner sentiment that comes with the gig.

All that being said, things are tough all over but not as tough here, trust me. September will mark the beginning of 8 or 9 straight months of weather I like in Korea, possibly a new (full-year this time) contract here in Gongju, maybe a better apartment and with any luck the end to Covid and the return of really great vacationing. Although, I can only imagine how expensive things will be with airlines and all things tourism trying to make up for Covid losses. 

The future will contain more complaining about my job, but the future is bright. Now at least you have a better understanding of perspective. If I've given you that, this post was a success. Further complaints as events warrant...

Just Milling the Wind

 Promoter: Listen, we need one more song for the "Open Arms" album. What do ya got, boys?

Steve: I have a song I'm working on, but it's only half finished. 

Promoter: What's it called?

Steve: Doesn't have a name yet. Maybe something like "They Won't Break Me." 

Promoter: You say it's not finished?

Steve: Yeah. It has a good beginning, but I'm stumped.

Neal: I have a song I'm working on too. It's called "I'm On My Way," or maybe "On My Way." 

Promoter: Okay, that sounds promising. Can we hear it?

Neal: Nah it's not finished yet. I can't think of a good beginning for it.

Promoter: Well, here's an idea: We need to get this album out, boys! I'm feeling solid gold here! How about we put those two songs together? 

Steve: What? No way, that's crazy! I've heard the song Neal's talking about. It's pretty different from "They Won't Break Me." Completely different key, rhythm, everything.

Promoter: And for a crappy group, that might be a problem. But you guys are the best! Can't you write a complicated bridge, put the two songs together, make it trendy? This sort of thing is starting to catch on. Whatchamakallit... progressive rock? Right?

Neal: I'm sure I could do that, but the fans are gonna know no matter which title we use.

Promoter: Well that may be, but couldn't you throw in a line at the end, something like, "This is my escape," then just call the song "Escape?"

Steve: I dunno... The fans are probably gonna think it's just an extra song to fill out the album, aren't they?

Promoter: Yeah. I guess so. You're probably right. But hey, and I'm just putting this out there, if you don't like it, forget I said it, but we COULD make "Escape" the title of the album??? 

Neal: Hey, that's so crazy, it could work! Only one problem: I haven't figured out an ending for my ending.

Promoter: I'm sure you guys will figure something out...

Just listen to this song. The above conversation never took place. I just made it up. But ever since the summer of '83 when I listened to Journey "Escape" non stop, this song has been a mystery to me. It was a song I fast forwarded through when I first started listening to the album. Then as I got older and my music appreciation matured, it grew on me. I started fast forwarding through the overplayed hits instead. Now it's one (or let's be honest, it sounds like two) of my favourite songs from my youth. 

I can't explain why this song has come up in my life recently, but I've woken up singing it or with it rolling around in my brain several times during this past month while I've been trapped in Korea on my latest staycation. It could be related to the fact that Journey "Escape" was virtually the soundtrack of the best vacation I ever had. Summer vacation with the Pillas in 1983 in Penticton. What a great family and what a great vacation that was! Camping, going to the beach, arcades with Grant, go-carts in the rain, water slides, "Fast Times" at the drive in, tragically lost summer love, and endlessly cruising in Darren's yellow car up and down the Penticton strip listening to this album over and over. 

It might have been another one of those internet challenges that has thrust this old song upon me. Someone posted, "What is an album you are positive you've listened to over 100 times?" This was the one that instantly came to mind. 

Or it might just be the weather. Who can say? The normal Monsoon June and July here was more of the heat wave most of the world had, but half of August Korean weather has been playing catch up. So because it's raining almost every day, I'm not only stuck in Korea (because no travel during Covid) I've been largely stuck in the apartment. I surf the net, I read, I write and I do a lot of thinking. This is the sort of thing I think about.

What about you? Can you name any songs that grew on you like this? I remember Dire Straights "Brothers in Arms" listening to "Money For Nothing," "Walk of Life" and fast forwarding over some of the lesser known songs. Now I fast forward through those two songs and "Your Latest Trick" has become my favourite on the album. That and, again, the title track, "Brothers in Arms." "Thriller" was like that. Purple Rain. Synchronicity. 

Do you suppose, and I'm just putting this out there, if you don't like it, forget I said it, but is it possible that some songs take longer to appreciate? And who hears the songs of an album more than the artists? By the time they've released their albums, they've heard all the songs so many times, they are probably tired of the hits. Do you reckon that could be why so many albums are named for songs that aren't the best ones on the album? Or at least they aren't to begin with. No? 

Probably not. There aren't that many like that. I'm just letting my mind get carried away. But it helps to put it down on paper. Well... that's what USED to help. Now it helps to put it in my blog. Therapeutic writing. Getting it off my chest. It's been the genesis of some great writing! One example comes to mind because I've been reading on rainy days too and one of the books I've been really relating with has been "Notes From The Underground." 

If I were to rename this blog, I might call it, "Milling the Wind." Dostoyevsky wrote, "But what can one do about it if the direct and sole purpose of any intelligent man is idle chatter, that is, deliberately milling the wind?" He also wrote, "But there's something else: why, why exactly do I want to write? If it's not for  the public then couldn't I very well commit everything to memory without putting pen to paper? Quite so; but it will turn out somehow grander on paper. There's something inspirational about it, one can be more self-critical, and it makes for better style. Besides, perhaps by writing things down I really shall find relief."

To make this post just a bit more topical, I suspect that the Underground Man, were he alive today, might refuse a Covid vaccine out of what he calls "superstitious spite." If you'll indulge me a long quotation, here's the very beginning of the rantings of the Underground Man: "I'm a sick man... I'm a spiteful man. I'm an unattractive man. I think there's something wrong with my liver. But I understand damn all about my illness and I can't say for certain which part of me is affected. I'm not receiving treatment for it and never have, although I do respect medicine and doctors. What's more, I'm still extremely superstitious - well, sufficiently (enough) to respect medicine. (I'm educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious.) Oh no, I'm refusing treatment out of spite. That's something you probably can't bring yourself to understand. Well, I understand it. Of course, in this case I can't explain exactly to you whom I'm trying to  harm by my spite. I realize perfectly well that I cannot 'besmirch' the doctors by not consulting them. I know better than anyone that by all this I'm harming no one but myself. All the same, if I refuse to have treatment it's out of spite. So, if my liver hurts, let it hurt even more!"

There are obvious parallels and obvious differences between the ailment of Dostoyevsky's character and people who don't want the Covid vaccine. Fist of all, he has a sickness while shot deniers are not sick, they're denying prevention, not cure. Secondly, the idea that his liver trouble can only harm Underground Man while Covid 19 is something that can harm others around us. Liver disease is not contagious, Covid 19 is. Believe it or not, I have seen comments written on Facebook friends' posts about Covid saying, in intelligently written English, that Covid 19 is not contagious. Just a few days ago I saw one!  

This brings up one of the parallels: that there are people, a lot of people, (and I include myself amongst them) who know damn all about Covid the way U.M. knows nothing about his liver disease. But that hasn't stopped some folks from clinging to aging arguments against its treatment rather than, you know, researching those arguments. I read another person saying that Coronavirus isn't even a virus. This is related to the first silly statement I believe in that the Coronavirus, which is a virus, hence it's name, causes Coronavirus 19 disease, which is not contagious. Polio was not a virus either. Poliovirus was a virus. It lead to Polio. If you wanted to be a dick, you could use this minute detail to pretend that you are smarter than other people and say, "Polio wasn't contagious." That is probably what dipshit who posted on my friends Facebook page was trying to say. Coronavirus disease isn't contagious, it's the virus that's contagious. Okay you pedantic prick, maybe you know something that other people may or may not know, but you have no point that is germane to the argument so shut the fuck up.

You know people like that are just posting comments like that to appear more knowledgeable on the subject than others more than anything out of spite. Other arguments like it's a new virus or the vaccine has not been researched enough to be considered safe are aging too. We know that coronaviruses like SARS and MERS, have been researched for years. In fact, scientists identified a human coronavirus in 1965. So over 50 years of research has contributed to development of the Covid 19 vax. It's not something that just started in the Wuhan days. Also, with the FDA's approval of the Pfizer (and soon Moderna) vaccines, it means they have been found to be safe and effective by the FDA. Before you can guess the next spite argument, no, not all of the 15,000 or so employees of the FDA are scientists and doctors, but many are. And all but two of the FDA's commissioners since the mid 60's have been MD's too. So they know a little more than "damn all" about the things they approve.

While I DO agree that there is in many people an almost god worship for doctors that could be characterized as superstition, as experiments with placebos have consistently shown, and I think it may be as strong as ever despite damning findings against the medical profession and big pharma that seem to be in the news more than ever, I think, due to the serious nature of a worldwide pandemic, the doctors and drug companies might be worthy of our trust in this case. Not in SO many others, but in this case, I think so. Big pharma and a lot of doctors are screwing us, and I feel like a voter saying, "Well maybe THIS time things will be different," before casting a vote for a Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich in some country or another, but, in the case of Covid 19 and the vaccination, I think this time things are different. And I have no evidence for this, but I assure you this has nothing to do with my recent vaccination. I do HOPE more that I'm right, but don't feel any surer. 

Perhaps, as with music, the tunes that Covid vax opponents are singing will become tiresome and other tunes that they didn't like before will grow on them. It has been a year and 8 months since the beginnings of the outbreak. I've become tired of music much faster than that!

Yet I am seeing just as much, if not more of the arguing between family, friends and strangers online over the whole Covid 19 controversy. I still continue to see it dominating news sites as well. I am starting to get one of those feelings of, "I wonder if this isn't pushing some much bigger, more important world issues out of the public eye." This happens. A lot. My last post comes to mind as one of the issues that we should be hearing more about: Taiwan. 

I am wearing my mask no less than I did before I got vaccinated. I am doing it for others. I understand and agree with people who hate the masks. But I haven't heard any new or convincing arguments against them, so I'll continue to wear them. I AM becoming more and more convinced that the vaccine is the real deal and it seems to me that most of the people who are still standing in opposition might not be as convinced of the arguments they're offering as they once were, but they're loathe to do anything that would appear as an admission of error or bad judgment. And I see people who I think are well aware that they are losing the vax argument, they just refuse to capitulate out of spite. 

Interestingly, there's a portion in "Notes From the Underground" in which sleep is described as an ESCAPE into the sublime and beautiful. With all the rain (I love sleeping when it rains) and nothing to do, I've escaped to the sublime and beautiful a lot too. I just wish they had more toilets there...