Sel-fish-ness

 In 2007 while teaching at the leading language school in the country of Korea, Hangook University of Foreign Studies, I made a blog for my students and on that HUFS blog I posted the results of the test I am going to write about today. Here's the whole thing, make-up classes, syllabus, class pics, and the Kiss experiment. 

"Hmmm... make-up and kisses in English class? This sounds like it could be good! Ngo ooooooon...."

It's nothing so scandalous I assure you. It was just a social experiment I stumbled upon at the time and even in 2007 it was hard to find it again online after I'd heard and read about it. If I had posted the link on my blog it would most certainly be dead now. These are the things we're not allowed to know about and THAT concept is a very big part of the illustration of the experiment. 

Okay I'll get to it. I cannot post a link to the original experiment and I dare you to find it. It is zealously wiped off the internet as fast as it can be uploaded and has been since before 2007 so good luck. It was a lady who taught in the USA. She put something like 100 (for the sake of easy explanation) Hershey's Kisses in a jar. She lined up her students in no specific order. When replicating the study in Korea I chose to line my students up in the order they volunteered so as to encourage future class participation. It's not a strong suit of the average Korean student although at HUFS, as you can see, the students tended to be above average. Anyway, she told the kids the rules were as follows: Grab as many chocolates as you want and they're yours. Then pass the jar to the next person and they do the same. When the jar reaches the last person (again for convenience we'll say there were 10 students) the chocolates in the jar will be doubled and the process will be repeated. 

I'm sure you can guess what her results were and why this social experiment on the damage American culture does to the mentality of its children has been whitewashed from the internet. It's almost unnecessary to type but I'll do it anyway. She did this with several classes and the jar never made it to the end of the line with any Kisses left in it. In EVERY stinking class there was a Johnny Capitalist who selfishly and ignorantly emptied the jar. I only call the student Johnny because of the Little Johnny jokes. You've heard at least one of them. If not: An elementary school math teacher asked her class one day, "If there are three birds on a wire, and a farmer shot one, how many are left?" One little boy said two, but little Sally, realizing it was a trick question, said, "None, 'cause everyone knows that if you shoot at birds they all fly away." The teacher congratulates her on her correct answer.

Little Johnny, however, disagreed. He said, "No, there would be one --the one that the farmer shot."

The teacher replied, "No, Johnny, you're wrong, but I like the way you think."

"OK, teacher, I have a riddle for you," boasted Johnny. "Let's say three women are at a bar and they each order a single scoop ice cream cone. The first one eats it by gently licking it around the edges, the second slowly sucks the ice cream off the cone from the top, and the third gobbles the top and then sucks the rest out of the cone. Which one is married?"

After a few seconds of contemplation, the teacher replied, "Well, I think it must be the third, the one that gobbles the top and sucks out the inside."

Johnny responded, "No, teacher, you're wrong --it's the one with the wedding ring. But I like the way you think."

I first heard it with popsicles and the descriptions of how the popsicles were eaten was far more graphic but you get the idea. I particularly like this Johnny joke cuz it leads to good comments from married people afterwards like, "No, it's the one who has a headache and refuses the ice cream cone but I like the way you think." Or "No, it's the one who orders the cone by phone cuz her husband won't let her go to the bar, but I like the way you think." or "What is the married lady doing at the bar anyway? She should be home making dinner for her husband! I DON'T like the way ya'all think!" 

At any rate, I'm sure it wasn't always a boy who hoarded all the chocolate and I'm sure he wasn't always named Johnny but I AM sure that one of the problems WAS capitalism, or more specifically American capitalism. Don't get me wrong, there IS capitalism in the Korean culture as well and if I had done this experiment in any other place I had worked I KNOW there would have been a Johnny Capitalist and I have a very good idea the specific students it would have been. However, I doubt there is any classroom in the US or Canada that could replicate or even come close to the results I got at HUFS. Take a close look at those class pictures. NONE of those kids will be the CEO of Samsung, a partner in a large Korean law firm, a central banker, or president of Korea. They're too smart and too nice.

But hold the phone. I want to analyze the experiment a little more closely because I don't think it's just about capitalism, greed, selfishness, parenting, socialization and such. There is a major factor that I think I missed at the time and I think it would skew the results in Korea more closely to or even beyond the results the original teacher obtained. What I'm saying is I doubt teachers would be able to get such positive results even at HUFS in Korea today. It may not be so much about the capitalism entrenched in the culture, however. 

There is a worldwide shortage of what have become known as "soft skills" and every employer is looking for the kids who best exhibit them. You all know what they are. It's actually a military term. If you don't know, the skills they call soft are things like critical thinking, emotional intelligence, teamwork, cooperation, collaboration, the ability to describe the same thing in three different words, communication, adaptability, time-management, stress management, and my favourite - creativity. Basically they are not "hard" skills because hardware like machines, computers, or robots can't do them very well. There are those who believe they can now but I do not include myself among them. Machines, in my opinion, are not now as good at soft skills as people can be, nor will they ever be. 

"MMMmmmmm... Strong with irony this blog post is!"

Think about the choice every student of mine and that long since anonymous teacher had. And let's use the convenient numbers I suggested. These were not the numbers in either of our experiments but... there were 10 students and 100 Kisses in the jar. It wouldn't take much cooperation, collaboration, teamwork, the ability to express the same thing in three different words, problem solving, critical thinking, communication, etc., etc., to figure out that the possibility of endless candy for all exists. All it would take is basic math skills and some common sense to figure out that if each kid took 5 kisses the jar would have 50 left, that would be doubled, and the process could be repeated until they all died from diabetic shock. So what stops every single class from doing this? Perhaps a couple of better questions might be "Did they even realize this?" and "If so, THEN what the hell kept them from doing it?" I think in a LOT of cases the students DID realize the possibility of endless candy for all. Let's analyze together what caused them to suppress this knowledge and allow the group not to do it. During our analysis you will undoubtedly begin to realize that this is a microcosm of the countries of Canada and the US and you will also understand why this is something the owners of those countries DESPERATELY do not want their assets (or citizens) to know.

1. The Johnny Capitalist argument. This is Johnny and we already know that he wants all the candy for himself, fuck everybody else! This rare psychotic, anti-social tendency will take him far in our countries. Be honest, do you know a Johnny? Do you have a Johnny in your family? Is one of your kids a Johnny? Have you ever contemplated harming or even killing Johnny? It might even be a genetic tendency. If might even be possible to remove this putrid gene from the world pool but you just KNOW there would be that one country, North Korea, Russia, the US, Canada, that ONE evil country that would nurture the gene due to its power and its world-domination possibilities. There are those who believe this is inevitable, that this gene just occurs naturally in kids. I LOVE this cartoon:

On this I think it DOES occur naturally but it can be culturally nurtured to be dominant or recessive to the point of stigmatization. In US and Canada it is now the former but all of our original peoples proudly maintained the latter for many glorious generations until some people from Lord of the Flies countries invaded and rubbed it out. William Golding, fittingly, is from the UK and it was largely the British who I am talking about. (He's the author of Lord of the Flies) It may be even MORE fitting that the boys on the island in LOF were evacuated from a war that was raging in Britain, in order to keep them protected from it. 

A little literary break might be needed here. In the LOF story the evacuated kids initially choose a good boy, Ralph, as their leader but eventually a Johnny named Jack, who had been appointed by Ralph to be the food hunter and gatherer for the boys, becomes overwhelmed by his lust for power and the violence with which he can increase it. I think Bill Golding leaves us to surmise that the very same thing is what had led to the war from which the boys were evacuated. Eventually Jack and his followers end up hunting Ralph and burning down the island - the very source of the resources and power they think they are killing him for. The fire is seen by a British naval officer who meets the boys on the beach just before they can kill Ralph and asks what the hell is going on... and they all end up crying in shame. I remember reading that book in school and wondering if the soldier chastened the boys and they cried because their consciences exposed their shame... or did he have a fucking machine gun? Were they stopped from killing Ralph AND the officer because of morality or superior fire power? They probably saw the officer's ship too. I guess we'll never know...

Even as a youngster I had some soft skills. Analysis is one we haven't mentioned yet. OVER-analysis? Well I think it's still a soft skill but maybe a lesser one. In fact I think I'll go lesser and lesser by bringing up another of my favourite literary examples of this very same microcosm of some countries and possibly the planet: Catch 22. I definitely believe a great deal of the major problems nationally and internationally killing us all qualify as catch 22's and so does Yoda. (Yoda believes, he doesn't qualify, although maybe he does... okay that's over-OVER-analysis) The main catch 22 in Joseph Heller's novel was Yosarian, a bombardier during WWII, wanting to be grounded due to insanity the evidence of which is flying more missions, which you'd HAVE to be insane to do. Knowing this, however, proves his sanity and disqualifies him from being grounded thereby mandating the flight of further missions, which is insane. There are many more like when he's sweet-talking one of Nately's whore's co-workers and they agree that marriage is insane (with which I heartily agree!). Nevertheless he proposes to the ho proving his devotion to the match through the insanity that elicited the proposal. She refuses him on the grounds that he is too crazy to marry because he is crazy enough to propose something as insane as marriage.

Maybe the best catch 22 in the book was when American soldier and entrepreneur Milo Minderbinder, possibly the best Johnny Capitalist in the entire literary canon, comes to an agreement with the German military to take some product off his hands - I think it was cotton - in exchange for agreeing to bomb his own bomber base all the while announcing on the base PA that what is good for M & M Enterprises, his syndicate, is good for us all because we are all share-holding member of this syndicate. 

Bombing the base, burning the forest, taking all the Kisses, do I need to belabour the obvious associations here? Perhaps the mentality, the catch 22 mentality of Johnny Capitalist, Jack, and Milo Minderbinder goes something like this: Exhausting your own profit base is something only an insane person would do, but only an insane person would pass up the opportunity for so much instant power/chocolate that could be taken by another if I don't take it right now, and I, Jack/Milo/Johnny, am not insane, which proves I am insane. This is the Johnny Capitalist argument which is one I recognized at the time of my experiment and post. I'm sure you can see why the government and our owners would not want us to know this. 

There is another cartoon I'd like to show here that I just can't find. Perhaps like the study it has been diligently taken down by the internet censors. It's a man talking to some kids in dystopian times with nuclear bombs exploding in the distant background saying, "Yeah but for a while we sure had some great return on investment!" 

I don't know if it's ethical or even possible to eliminate all of these kids from existence. My suggestion would be to find them and mark them. Maybe force them to wear wristbands with a clear demarcation of their insular thinking, WWJCD, on them. "What Would Johnny Capitalist Do?" No? That wouldn't work? Why not? 

2. The fish-kids argument. Okay here's the other one and it's one I have recognized since the original 2007 post because it has increased a great deal since then. We need to start with the goldfish analogy. You've seen this I'm sure. 

Attention span has been decreasing. By now it's probably less than 8 seconds and I've heard the attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. I don't know for sure but I think they measure this by the length between incidence of the goldfish sucking up a piece of its own shit, realizing it's not food but shit, and spitting it out, then 9 seconds later doing the same thing. As far as the attention span of a kid, I can tell you it's getting shorter just from my teaching experience. I see more kids than the average person and I do things with them that are good indicators of attention span. Here's an article that explains it more thoroughly and even though this article misleads you by calling it a myth, it basically says it's NOT a myth. 

I have a theory, and I think back and I probably should have recognized it at the time, that some of the kids who took more or ALL the Kisses from the jar may have done so out of FOMO or the instant gratification to which our current tech-driven age has allowed them to become accustomed. If we think about the mechanics of the studies, giving the first student the jar, waiting for his/her decision, waiting for the student to count/take the chocolate then pass the jar and wait for the next student to perform the same sequence, it's time consuming. Is it possible that a student could become so bored with the exercise that he/she would just empty the jar and say, "Okay, move on teacher, this has become tiresome."? You might not think so but I've witnessed more of just such behavior as we have fallen deeper and deeper under the spell of our devices. Like the Eagles said, "We are all just prisoners here of our own devices." Or something like that. 

The massive irony in all of this is that almost every one of the people skills or soft skills that are so prized by employers and what separate us from computers and machines require patience and sticktoitiveness that are the very things being systematically drained from us BY the machines. It's almost as if machines are making machines of our kids so that they won't steal their jobs in the future. I'm sure there's a catch 22 in THERE somewhere too. You can't get a job without computer skills and soft skills. The computer contributes to destroying the skills you need to get a job. You can't afford a computer without a job. But you can't get a job without a computer or the skills you learn from it.

I tell ya, I wouldn't want to be participating in a job market so rife with moral relativism and catch 22's... oh wait, I AM! Maybe this is one, or two, of the reasons why I'm currently contributing to that job market as a job hunter rather than a gainful employee. 

Pyramid Teaching

 In keeping with the theme of fakeness, a bent I've been on now for my last handful of posts, let me share with you something that I don't think has a name yet but you may have come across it like I have a few times. I'm going to call it pyramid teaching. The first reason why I call it pyramid teaching is because, like many of the cons I've been inundated with in my current confines of Scamada as well as abroad, this one starts with desperation, panic, some sort of crisis and let's be honest - it's usually a crisis of money.

Twice in my experiences with pyramid teaching I was in a money/job crisis, broke, depending on the kindness of friends or family to live and in need of work and I stumbled upon teaching "jobs" that wanted me to teach English in the most counter-intuitive, anti-educational, mathematical, corporate manner and had absolutely no chance of my falling for or buying into this pyramid scheme if I hadn't been. Once in Korea at a corporate training company called SPEP, once in Canada at a business designed to take advantage of taxpayer money (or, in the spirit of fakeness, government funding) from RAP (resettlement assistance program), mostly the IRCC (Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada), and other programs. The business used LINC, PBLA, and CLB (language instruction for newcomers to Canada, portfolio based language assessment, and Canadian language benchmarks) to attain their goals of creating a used car lot of GOOD teachers not working together but in competition with others paranoid of losing their part-time jobs with no benefits or being outperformed on monthly and yearly "performance evaluations," teaching in manners against their instincts and best practices always with the carrot of full-time hours and legal benefits like medical coverage just out of reach. I came across pyramid teaching in one or two courses during my master's too but dropped them both. You see without the desperation and the NEED for money it is easier to just recognize what's going on and get the fuck out. Unfortunately, the lure of money and basic survival forced me to endure the evils of pyramid teaching for much longer than I would have liked. But now I am able to illustrate it for you.

I remember being at my wits' end in Seoul  drinking a corner store beer and talking on the motel room phone with Heather in Pyeongtaek who, despite her considerable gifts in this area, almost didn't manage to talk me off the ledge a succubus nicknamed Diane has forced me out onto with highly skilled pyramid teaching. This was after the first day of "training" for SPEP which is the hook day. The hook is accomplished simply by giving the student the most impotent, helpless, useless feeling of failure he/she has ever encountered in the realm of education. You set them up to fail and utterly humiliate them. For me the experience was made infinitely worse due to the fact that I had apprenticed for over 20 years and learned how to teach well, recognized the shit show I was being forced to legitimize by my participation, but was trapped into continued participation on account of my desperate need for money. It was without any exaggeration torture. Let me explain...

Diane was a fairly attractive middle-aged Korean woman and also a hell-spawned demon. She had called me, congratulated me on being chosen for the job, and introduced herself as my trainer. She told me to arrive at the SPEP offices for my first day of training. They had some fake name for the procedure with undoubtedly an official sounding abbreviation. I remember there being a TON of abbreviations childishly thought to sound professional but that made the whole experience even more mickey-mouse amateurish because they stood for something else. I actually think the video lessons I was doing on the first day were abbreviated as ESP. I don't know what that stood for but even WITH ESP I wouldn't have been able to ascertain what it was that Diane wanted from me. With 20/20 hindsight I now know that what she wanted from me was utter failure and humiliation... and she got it... bitch.

Yes, I was going to be videotaped teaching lessons. I was told by Diane that I needed to stand for the entire lesson, (so I couldn't sit with individual students to help, which is a teaching skill I have developed over time), there would be a few students and she wanted me to pretend I knew them already and pretend I was setting them up with conversation partners, not to actually do it. "Don't make me talk to myself," I think she told me. So I was not teaching I was ACTING like I was teaching ON CAMERA. I don't know about you but these are two surefire ways to make me sweat. I would be a crappy actor. I remember filming a lesson for the webpage of a college where I taught in Korea. It was outdoors and the students were my actual students who I had developed good relationships with. As soon as the camera went on I launched into this nervous performance that was nothing like my actual teaching. My students were asking me, "David, what's wrong?" That increased my anxiety. It was outside in the hot sun, which made it worse. And I remember having worn the absolute WORST shirt for the occasion, a powder blue shirt that made any moisture blatantly obvious. I was sweating, the stains were increasing which in turn increased my sweating which made me more nervous and awkward and the cherry on top was the "director" saying, "More character! More emotion!" Basically, dance like a monkey for me. 

Not only was Diane making me dance like a monkey for her, she was playing a prog rock Kansas, Yes, or Rush song that was impossible to dance to. She had left the room to allow me to see the lesson in a book and plan my teaching strategies. I rarely do this without employing some sort of secondary exercise or game that relates to the topic or grammar or skill the lesson is teaching. Couldn't do THAT. I also arrange the class to best suit group conversation arrangements. Couldn't do THAT. I bring props, show videos, tell stories from my experience, could only do ONE of those. So I planned a lesson with the resources I had. She told me she was bringing several people, she showed up alone. Then on went the camera and she said, "Go ahead and TRY to teach me bitch!" 

Immediately I started saying something like welcome to class and I had planned to call on individuals to quiz them on the previous class. Another skill I had developed over the years. It's called formative assessment and it works. Let me call on someone, hmmmm... Diane blah blah blah. I asked her a question. She answers in this falsetto highly Korean accented, broken English, airhead teenaged girl voice, "I no Diane. I Minnie." I broke the fourth wall or whatever they call is in the biz. "See what I was trying to do there..." She interrupted me, "No no no... continue." I guess she didn't want me to break her method actor transformation into "Minnie." So I continued, "Okay let me ask another question from last lesson to a different student... uh Minnie?" She gives this stunned look like how am I supposed to know and gives a purposely grammatically incorrect answer. At least that's what I thought. So I quickly correct the grammar mistakes and tell her the answer. Well then SHE breaks the fourth wall. "What are you doing?" she asks. So I explain the concept of review to her. She says something dismissive like we don't need that then launches into a defense of Minnie's grammar mistake. I'm wondering if this is a test or if she really believes this. Turns out she really had this bad grammar habit (because I heard her making the mistake again when she wasn't in the character of Minnie) and she was pretty sure she was right. I can't remember what it was but it was something like "I were bowling yesterday," which might be okay shootin the shit with friends at a pub in certain areas of the UK but it's not okay in most places English is spoken. But I need the job - she wins the argument. Off to a flying start!

I decide to go into the preface for the lesson and tell a story from my life and ask if she can relate. Again with the stunned thousand-mile stare. She briefly breaks character after stonewalling my attempts to ask if she has ever had this HIGHLY relatable experience or something similar that has OBVIOUS connection to the upcoming lesson and says, "They don't care about you, just teach the lesson, there isn't much time." Or something like that. She might as well have slapped me in the face. This is the very root of my teaching philosophy. I get to know my students in order to attain about a dozen tried, tested, and true educational principles such as relevance, meaning, context, motivation, participation, engagement, learning preference, learning style, etc. She shot them all down in one fell swoop. And on and on she swooped! She was by no means finished!

You can imagine I was sweating as much as the mock lesson for the college website. And worse than that I was enraged at her repeated attacks on my well-established and valid pedagogy/andragogy (two words she DEFINITELY didn't know). When I get really, really mad my mouth dries out and I sound like an Asian man slurping noodles when I talk. Now I got THAT going for me. Each new thing compounded the anger and the sweating and the nervousness until finally I was the one who broke the fourth wall and came a hair's breadth from saying, "FUCK THIS!" and storming out. Instead I presented a long, well-researched and practiced explanation of how I was trying to teach the lesson and why. Diane sat there writing in her book note after note about how poorly I did. She eventually said something that just made things worse like, "Well I wanted you to SHOW me not TELL me." 

What she had now was a video that made me appear to be a shitty teacher. This was what she wanted. The very next day I was forced to (red-faced and sweaty again) sit through the the video recording of the whole fucking ordeal with Diane stopping periodically and giving vacuous feedback. Throughout the "training" she referred back to it to illustrate how far SHE had brought me with her brilliant training. She was teaching me the error of my ways you see and I would be a changed man, with gainful employment, all because of her. This would also do no harm to her reputation in the company. But it's all a scam! Pyramid teaching.

As time went on and I learned how to deal with Diane, understand what she wanted even though it was all wrong, and adapt to her messed up style of training, she actually became nice and frequently reminded me of how "improved" I was over where I started. Soon I started referring to that class and the video joking with her about how embarrassing it was. heh heh heh heh. So funny. 

I performed one lesson in front of two experienced SPEP instructors and it was what kept me there. I almost chose being jobless in a foreign country over teaching in such a ludicrous manner. But they both told me something that got me through the training and it was basically just dance the dance for a while and do the stupid shit they tell you to do and when you get to your REAL classes you can go back to teaching properly. Which is what I did until the company trapped me PHYSICALLY in living and travel situations I needed to get out of and I really DID say fuck this and quit mid-contract without agreement from my employer for the first time ever. That's how bad this place was.

I enjoy the study of both science and religion and subscribe to neither. Through my personal research I have boiled one of the most universal debates down to an admittedly simplistic but highly serviceable explanation. Wanna read it? It's very short. I have come to the conclusion that science is comprised largely of people who have a tendency to accept theory as fact and religion is comprised largely of people who tend to accept faith as fact. I believe, and to be clear I CHOOSE to believe in Tesla's theory of Aether more than Einstein or Darwin's theory of the permanence of matter or Kant or Augustine's faith in an eternal sentient being. Don't argue details please, I may not have described any of the four people's beliefs exactly, they were only chosen as well-known names associated with the schools of thought to which I associated them. Details may differ. I DID admit to a certain simplification. The bottom line is it is all just chosen belief that we cherish although it is impossible to prove. Although both would argue to the death, science has no more proven the existence of the Higgs Boson than the Catholic church has proven the existence of God. So I really don't know how we all can't just get along... but people have fought wars!!!

Anyway, when I worked in Calgary at the Centre for Newcomers it was very similar in many ways to SPEP. They differed much like the difference between religion and science. Neither went so far as to convince me to subscribe to their teaching methodologies, I had already made my choice, but whereas SPEP depended on their trainees accepting their teaching practices through faith, I found my time at CFN (the centre for newcomers) chock-o-block full of workshops and certificate acquisition designed to convince me of the scientific nature of their educational theory. Neither proved valid, in fact I have solid evidence they were both fraudulent, which I suppose destroys my analogy, but let me describe to you a bit of the pyramid teaching to which I was subjected during the acquisition of my PBLA certificate:

Oh I got it, but it was no less torture than the SPEP pyramid training. It's hard for me to remember the exact details of the frustrating baloney I was forced to accept as fact (or lose my job) but I'll give a few forinstances. We were meant to write a lesson plan and an assessment on three types of questions that was characteristically WAY overanalytical and mathematical for something as abstract as language. The statement that John had written on a postcard was, "Europe is great! I am having a blast! Wish you were here." Q: Is Tom enjoying himself? Our assignment was to characterize the question as either interpretive, analytical, narrative, or some other category I have since blocked out of my mind. We were all told that there was only one answer. We were ALWAYS told that there is only one answer. That's why I refer to this type of training as "mathematical." This, we were informed, is 100% an interpretive question meaning you need to interpret the statement to answer the question. Now, imagine Tom wrote, "Europe is great! The weather keeps me guessing, the food keeps me thin, and the drivers keep me on foot. I've lost 10 pounds! Wish you were here." THAT makes the question interpretive. Translating "I'm having a blast" to "I'm having a good time" is not interpretive, it's translative if that's a word. I discussed this with a few of the other teachers studying with me and we all shared the opinion that the answer was wrong but we also shared the familiar advice, "Just dance the dance, give them what they want, get the certificate and do the RIGHT thing in your classroom.

So I went through 5 weeks I think it was of the teacher giving me and other students these mind-bogglingly obtuse opinions that were offered up as unassailable factoids. I really don't want to relive too many of them so I'll just stop at the one example. I hope you can understand.

This was the type of pyramid teaching that I had to suffer through and try my best to act like I was employing in the classroom while surreptitiously doing the exact opposite. I thought my days were numbered and when they realized I was teaching properly that would be the end of me but THAT job ended because they constantly promised more hours and had no intention of giving them to me. The final semester they hired about 10 new people and gave me NO extra hours. This is simply because they don't want to pay the benefits that come with full-time employment. Pyramid teaching tends to come at businesses rather than schools and I have been surprised how many of the former there are around the world posing as the latter!

I worry that "dancing the dance," maintaining the fake while I pick and choose a very few moments to be genuine is a pattern that could spread beyond my professional life. Do you ever wonder that yourself? Are we ALL doing this a little bit?

What do ya reckon? Are our lives becoming more fake than real? Have we surpassed the halfway mark? Exceeded it? Are those moments of veracity on the decline? What is an acceptable percentage? Has THAT changed too? 

It's Royal Rumble... I Mean Election Time in Canada

 I have received this link from three of my friends on Facebook recently.

It begins with the purposely ambiguous "Canadian law enforcement has issued a stark warning!!!" I wanna know who "Canadian law enforcement" is first of all. Are you talking about the RCMP, provincial police, the courts, the legislative branch of government... I should read on to see this stark warning...

No warning stark or otherwise in connection to any law enforcement agency in Canada. Maggie Dwyer is an author. A good one. But not an agent of Canadian law enforcement. Alexandra Lavoie is a journalist for the Rebel News Network. For that matter, who is Dean Blundell, the original post creator? He's a shock jock who has pissed off "Canada Proud," a right wing organization with direct connections to the CP Conservative Party of Canada, that Blundell accused of organizing anti-Trudeau protests. They sued him for a couple hundred grand. Is that enough to compromise the unbiasedness of a shock jock? I'd think so. 

Remember the Brooks Brothers riot? The fake protest against the Florida vote recount of the 2000 Bush Jr. vs. Gore election... that actually WORKED and stole the election from the rightful winner - Gore. Remember that? You really should. It was an absolute, once-and-for-all condemnation of the democratic process of the US. If you think I am exaggerating, watch this:

The protestors were suspiciously non-Cuban and well dressed. They were just people the Republican party keeps around for strategic protesting. I bet you'd find a lot of the same people participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack only, having learned their lessons, this time they sported face paint, flags, and Viking helmets...

Well, as can be said about a lot of things, we have our equivalent here in Canada and it IS the Canada Proud bunch. Here they are distracting attention from a Trudeau speech by dressing as bananas:

So they DID what Blundell is being sued for saying they did. Speaking of fruit, the lawsuit is currently being handled in the Canadian public court of M-LIME (My Lawyer Is More Expensive) so we'll see who has more money, the Canada Strong Bananas or Dean Blundell. Actually I think he lost to the tune of 200 grand and he's started a GoFundMe page to pay for it.

I think you'll find, having learned HIS lesson, Blundell kept the phrase "Canadian law enforcement" intentionally vague so that he won't be sued again. There was no "stark" warning and when has Canadian law enforcement ever issued stark warnings? I've seen the RCMP issue public warnings about fraud and scams - the end to which is seemingly non-existent here in Scamada - Public Safety Canada, or Canadian Civil Liberties or even the CRTC issue warnings on TV or radio, but they tell you exactly where the warning is coming from. So someone receiving this Facebook message should already have their healthy skepticism on high alert.

The fake "stark warning" that has NOT been issued by any law enforcement agency is ostensibly against a misinformation campaign targeting Mark Carney. As you read it asserts the diabolical co-conspirator participation of "Russian-affiliated efforts," "Trump-aligned forces," "radical right-wing operatives," and even the "fake news." This is fake news condemning fake news FFS! By this point I would think the post would have been written off as such by any but our most special citizens, but evidently not. Some smart people are circulating this dreck. 

Guilt by association to Jeffrey Epstein conjured up by - guess who? - Canada Proud is also brought up.And while we're at it let's do a pre-emptive strike against the mudslinging we think Carney will surely be the victim of, and even though they haven't, we'll act like the Conservatives were definitely going to do it: HEY he's got a trans-gender son! 

Even if you didn't know, are not Canadian, or just don't give a shit about the WWE competitions we call politics here in Canada, there is a federal election on April 28th. That's only a little over a month from now. This post is nothing more than next level political mud-slinging and when has any law enforcement agency issued "stark warnings" against that? Why, it's as Canadian as maple syrup on poutine! It happens every election. It beats the hell out of talking about the issues that ACTUALLY concern 99.9% of Canadians! Those issues are always ignored, lied about, or both.

I can't even post a lot of things on Facebook here in Canada due to the national dumbing down of Canadian Facebookers that HAS been done by some government, or maybe even law enforcement agency or another. Have you ever received a message like this after Facebook blocks an attempted post? "This content isn't available in Canada In response to Canadian government legislation, news content can't be viewed on Facebook." I have. And frankly, I am surprised this particular post hasn't been blocked. I've received it from a couple of Canadians who are currently living in Canada.

Maybe this is the final warning flag: It isn't even considered news here in Canada. And it's not. Just political drama that is no more news than John Cena or The Rock turning heel in the WWE. At least the people who take that sort of news seriously, fake well, bless their little hearts and brains! But the people who take posts like the one in question here seriously, somehow THEY are still taken seriously by a lot of people. To me that's the biggest shock of this shock jock's story.

She

Maybe read this: a post of mine from the past (2018) before reading the following poem. And maybe think about this statement made by Margaret Atwood, probably the foremost and best known Canadian feminist after being accused of misogyny: "In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn't puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated."

She 

The stoutest of stock before she became she,

the champion of millions through uncompromisingly

fierce female lifeforce.

The apotheosis of innumerable generations, she emerged.

She grew mighty guided by

the calloused hand of wisdom,

a hand that had shucked fieldfulls of corn;

had socially snapped beans into soup

for the souls of loved ones;

a hand that had held a first dollar and a last;

a hand that could be heavy

when hubris got out of hand;

a hand gently holding hers, wrinkling as she became she.

A hand that set hers free.

 

Then came he, the he of she.

How he hoarded her and she he!

Hormonal harmony obscured from shame by desire,

Cognitively coerced by bohemian euphemism:

“He fell for her innocent charm.”

“She was attracted to his ambition.”

For a while they indulged each other’s lusts

bound by this contractual guile.

Who would fall first and by what harm

the goddess Irony determined.

 

Innocence faded, ambition grew.

So ends the honeymoon for these two.

The attributes they spoke of smugly

had shrunk and grown and made them ugly.

And what do ugly people do? They fight each other tooth and nail.

Wage war, the height of ugliness, with which ugliness they assail.

A second he, a second she, the first he in sex therapy.

He cheated she. He could you see, while claiming “sick” and “weak” to be.

Fleeting are beauty and sex appeal, but she stays young and fit and healthy.

She thrusts and swipes her card with zeal, his ugliness has made them wealthy.

How long can this warfare go on while happiness is on the skids?

She can’t admit this union wrong! So strengthen it by having kids.

A second he, a second she, but this time it is literally.

Chips off the block, apples near the tree, she’ll groom them very carefully

With manicured hands and psychology she’ll raise a second he and she.

She’ll right the wrongs of parenthood – the abuse her generation withstood.

She’ll call the mediocre good, give what her parents never could.

She’ll raise no hand to discipline. Say no a few times then give in.

She’ll write it all down, legislate! Empower the certificate.

With love she’ll kill the he she hates. She’ll he-ify till power equates.

Or maybe just a little more to make things more she than before.

Because she is she he will agree. If not, what use is he to she?

Her independence he impedes! She knows exactly what he needs:

Just like her parents before he, her enemy needs to set her free.

 

She has the job, she has the home, she has the kids, he’s all alone.

She was entitled to this all. She had to rise, he had to fall.

So he fell first, she was victorious through manipulation laborious.

His past achievements – all vainglorious. Is there any doubt who is the sorriest?

 

The spoils of war a wide wasteland for she.

A pampered hand shucks no corn and snaps no beans.

Abandoned femininity leaves no loved ones

to consume the soulful soup of kindness. 

Only comrades in war who parrot propeganda

comfortable in their echo chambers.

The hands of hubris hold the assets of the war.

Her final thought before returning to the

fierce female lifeforce form:

Who has suffered more than she at the hands of she?

 

And if you read this poetry and think, “This sounds a lot like me,”

There is a chance you will agree, she is she’s own worst enemy.

What Does A Carney Do?

 I say this a lot but who am I kidding? "If you follow this blog..." I have 4 or 5 loyal followers I think. So if you are one of those people you will have probably guessed I'd eventually get to today's topic. If not, I've been on a phoniness heater for the last half dozen posts and if you ask a well-informed person to list the phoniest shit in our world they won't get too far down the list before they mention money or banks or economics. This post will include as little of their lingo as possible but that is ONE of the many ways the members of the money industry smooth talk their ways out of trouble, they have a language that can be used to confuse, obfuscate, and create ambiguity - indeed, that may be its main purpose. To give you just one example I will tell you in lay-lay-laymen's terms what "fiat currency" means. Almost all of the money you or I have used physically or electronically in our lifetimes was fiat currency. What that means is it's not backed by anything of value like gold or silver - it is pulled out of the ass of a banker or central banker and is in every way imaginable phony. They've done their best to smooth talk us into believing this "creating money from nothing" idea is fake, but it's recently been empirically proven. Richard Werner has not been debunked yet as far as I have seen.  So what that means is... ahem... One of the only things that isn't fake about banking is that a lot of what they do is fake. The percentage of fakeness is in almost direct proportion to the size of the bank and the "size" of the customers they deal with. 

Go to 7:30 in this video which is the man himself, Richard Werner explaining how he proved the theory of credit creation. First of all, don't feel bad if, like me and even John Maynard Keynes, you thought that when banks "lend" money they actually give out money they had gathered over time through customers making deposits. This is the "financial intermediation theory." Or maybe you thought they use our money to make investments and create a reserve governed by a central bank and it is out of this stock that they "lend" us money. That's called the "fractional reserve theory." Both or either of these is what banks and central banks wanted us to believe. But both are wrong. Unbelievably, or believably if you are as jaded as I, when Werner "borrowed" 200,000 Euros from this bank as part of his scientific experiment, the first thing that bank did was record a deposit of 200,000 Euros! A FAKE deposit from which they "lent" him his newly pulled-out-of-orafacial money. This is called the "credit creation theory," euphemistically speaking. It could more accurately be called the money creation theory or the arse-exit theory or even the defecation theory. But that terminology might cause alarm and people might revolt. After all, by extension this means the bank has zero responsibility to anyone to magic this money into existence. They have no onus to create any value to associate with this money. They are handing it over to YOU and saying, "This is entirely worthless, now go ahead and work, create something, or do something with this money to give it actual value - then give it back to us WITH INTEREST! If that is not revolution-causing practice, what the hell is? 

But wait, there's more! If the people DID revolt, or even just find out about this, lose confidence in banks altogether, and run to the (more likely drive to but...) bank to take out all their money - which has happened before and it's called a "bank run," 1. There would only be enough for a small number of people to get back their savings or investments and, hmmmm... who do ya reckon THOSE folks would be??? The banks would start right at the top of course repaying their top customers. 2. Even if you DID somehow manage to get your money back like if you saw the bank run before the rich (which never fucking happens cuz the rich don't bank on the same planet as the rest of us. I'll illustrate a bit later.) your money would now have lost a lot of its value anyway. And 3. To "solve" this problem, the "government" would step in. I put that word in quotation marks because no government has its own money, the government is the people. Not those rich assholes who got their money back people (who don't pay taxes), the REGULAR people. Yeah, that's who will be responsible through taxation for paying back the money the banks screwed them out of and then lost it all in the first place! And on THAT there would be interest too! Look at the "rewards" all the bankers took from the 700 billion dollar 2008 bailout. That debt to the taxpayers of just America has ballooned into the trillions - yet they're still dutifully banking. 29 trillion 15 years ago as THAT article calculated. But we've stopped calculating, or at least publishing the calculations, I guess to avoid embarrassment. 

And the very WORST part about this is the bankers know that this is what they're doing and the only way this all ends is if the public finds out. The info is out there and the banks of the world have been precariously running this scam on ordinary people for years and years in constant jeopardy, they get discovered every once in a while and the system "corrects itself" (by taxing the workers more) and for this massive crime nobody ever seems to go to jail. You can see why they get off on that! It's the wet dream of the greedy and envious: magicking money into existence with virtually no consequences.

I say they are constantly in very big trouble but they don't think so. Banks make sure they hire the most narcissistic people they can who believe they are too smart to be in trouble. Sure there is the titillation of knowing that it's possible. It helps when they are practicing auto-erotic asphyxiation in their money vaults coked up with their high-priced call girls. Maybe they add the thought of getting caught to heighten their sexual pleasure somewhat but pride assures these bankers that they are too smart for the rest of the world to realize that what they do is entirely fake. And they have been right for a surprisingly long time! 

How long, you may wonder. The US is not the only country that practices this crap and I don't even know if they invented it, but they are, and have been for some time, world leaders in it. *** A word of warning: this may be hard to take if you are American or participate in the hero worship of Alexander Hamilton or even George Washington. The power of money to corrupt is formidable and can sometimes weaken the best of us. 

PLEASE READ THIS.

This is admittedly full of bias, but this was the creation of America's very first central bank. And this happened back when there still were principled Americans like Jefferson and Adams to oppose it. Alex Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury at the time needed president Washington's approval to set up this central bank of the corrupt, by the corrupt and most decidedly for the corrupt. Ever wonder why Washington DC is called that? It's pretty far from Washington. It probably would have been in Philadelphia or somewhere in Pennsylvania if not for a little corruption on the part of even old "I cannot tell a lie" "Father of America" Washington. His land, Mount Vernon, certainly skyrocketed in value after the capitol was placed so close to it! It was called Washington DC and abutted his land in exchange for his partially reluctant support for the central bank. I guess in his old age the previously moral George Washington was more concerned with providing for his security than doing the right thing. 

But this was after the American Revolution! The nation was broke from selling out to the war effort. The money and war bonds were almost completely devalued. This was all the soldiers had and the rich contrived to fuck them out of those war bonds for pennies on the dollar. This was a "gift" or maybe it could be better described as an IPO (initial public offering) to get the confidence of the rich, who, let's face it, were ALREADY war profiteers, behind the new central bank. You could say Hamilton and what he called the "monied" class of the country threw the rest of the people of America under the BUS (Bank of the United States). The money that was used to buy up the war bonds at face value didn't exist. There was a little contributed by the rich backers of the bank and people are taught that there were other sources like the French and Dutch who just loved to see the British getting their asses kicked in a war, but the initial value of the Bank of the United States was just in confidence. They employed the credit creation theory only a few years after confederation! Where is THAT song in the popular Broadway musical "Hamilton?" I guess that doesn't make for good singin'. Lemme take a crack at this:

We fought the high class British gents who taxed our tea and raised our rents then Hamilton our paychecks fenced to give us what we'd fought against.

Through sycophance and sophistry to early aristocracy he puckered up and rose to be secretary of the treasury.

Young Hamilton is who to thank for our initial central bank which helped the bad and screwed the good like some opposite Robin Hood.

Six years we languished at the yoke of this unprincipled young bloke till one man rid us of this cur. God bless the aim of Aaron Burr! 

No? Not boppy enough? Well I gave it a 1700's ring. Maybe the retention of the British mercantile system and the oligarchy that plagued the early days of the fledgling nation made it something less than a musical place to be. 

Nowadays, more and more people are beginning to realize that banks and the central banking system really do this and there exists a recurring pattern to it that the above illustrates. Werner tells us that for the past 50 years macroeconomic policy in most "developed" (I'm using a LOT of words in quotes. That tends to happen more in direct proportion to the fakeness of what I am writing about) countries, in particular Europe, N. America, and Japan, has been dominated by the views of their central banks. These views or what Werner calls "narratives" have been consistent if not identical from central bank to central bank all over the world. 

Step 1 is the crisis. If there isn't one already like a war or a pandemic, just create one. For example, two countries could cooperate politically and economically to manufacture social rivalry and financial crash that would qualify as a crisis. Sound familiar? Anyone believing the WWE posing between Musketrump and the newly UN-elected leader of Canada, and I hasten to add former governor of the central banks of Canada and England, Mark Carney? A friend asked me recently what I thought of the new Canadian PM. A good friend. One who might be doing it to get a friendly rise out of me. It worked. My response was something like This banker who, for the most part, Canadians didn't even vote for the people who voted him in, is trying to ingratiate himself by appearing to oppose Trump and appearing to cut carbon taxes right after replacing Junior T who had to step down for doing things like enacting the Emergency Act to nose through and actually freeze people's bank accounts - a move that was legally declared unconstitutional and illegal search and seizure - but for which he'll never be imprisoned or anything like that. Think of his name: What does a carney do? They coerce you into playing their rigged games and smooth-talk you into thinking you have a chance of winning and even when it appears like you won you've really only spent 50 bucks on a 3-dollar stuffed animal. 

The crisis is just a game to these puppet masters. Carney's "game" is this trade war which is nothing more than inflation for both countries which will come with the requisite step 1 economy crash. Recession or depression is the desperate panic state or "crisis" that enables the central banks to dictate macroeconomic policies that NOOOObody wants. The soldiers didn't want to sell their war bonds at 3 or 4%, they HAD to. This is step 2: The implementation of draconian economic policy. "Belt-tightening," "Reform," "Austerity Measures," you've heard the euphemisms. With the ever-increasing success of banks and corporations, and now that we know money creation is as easy as it is, why are we constantly given these doom-and-gloom fairy tales? To put it simply, these are policies of power and control.

What, you may ask, is the policy both Trump and Carney are seeking? Well, I'm glad I asked that question. Both have spoken about it and it represents what Werner calls "dystopian, 1984-like power and control." And, in true banker fashion, they have an abbreviation for it: CBDC. Central Bank Digital Currency. Here is Werner again talking about it:

Werner and Carney went to school together at Oxford! Even THEN Werner describes himself as the rebel to Carney's obedient disciple. 

Fascinating stuff to me! I can't remember enjoying researching a blog post more than this one. Yet, I am certain none of my posts forecast more danger. As always I don't want to be the soothsayer, prognosticator, prophet, or sage. I don't want to look back on this post and say, "I told ya so." But when Werner describes the central banks realization that they are FINALLY busted for their money-creation BS, I can just see the bad acting. It's almost comical. 

Like they were waiting (a century or more) for us dimwits to finally catch them. There was only FAKE surprise. But Werner tells us there was no denial. They jumped straight to, "Yup we're guilty so we must stop this. Here's how..." and they rolled out the CBDC plan as an alternative. It's not an alternative and it won't fix what ails us. It's something they've been anxiously waiting to spring on us that will give them EVEN MORE control than their "credit creation theory" did. 

You can search the internet as well as I can and find Trump talking about it or Carney writing and talking about it. They both want it. WE don't. So what do you reckon this central banker and dick-tater will do to try and get it? It's already started. 

The irony is there are ways to stop this like in France where everybody loaded up carts with groceries in supermarkets that stopped accepting cash and just left the full carts and walked out when their cash was refused. We still have the power to stop this and even the central banking "narratives" can be used for good and HAVE been if the fake money is made real by consumers instead of given to the rich who just artificially inflate their wealth with it... But that may be best left for another post.

It Is What It Is

 I have expressed to friends and family my annoyance with phrases of the day that come and go. You can even read about them on this blog. Some are even used by my favourite people. Just last week I heard Bernie Sanders say that Donald Trump and the billionaire class "could care less" about the American working class. Jimmy Carter, who might be as close as the US had in my lifetime to a good president, always said "nucular." My latest pet peeve phrase is probably when someone says something like, "The weather was nice... until it wasn't." "He had a great career... until he didn't." That phrase was clever... until it wasn't. (like after about the third time I'd heard it)

I remember one time telling my sister how the phrase "It is what it is" is about as useful as saying, "I am talking right now." I think I even wrote that in this blog. She disagreed and said she uses it how Mary Trump in the video below says most people use it - to mean something like "That's how things are and it's too bad," which, if you ask me, isn't much more helpful. Maybe in the sense that the person is relating and empathizing and telling you that they might understand there is a morsel of value to it, but nothing close to substantial. I think it is used just as much or more to cover the fact that the person who utters it DOESN'T understand or relate, or was thinking about something else while you were talking. 

Like most of what Mary Trump talks about, I find her analysis of the phrase and its use amongst her family members fascinating. Watch this vid and listen to her description of how the Trumps use the phrase "It is what it is," and see if you don't hate it more than you did before.

It is what it is: It's a terrible situation, I could help you, but I don't give a shit." Or, as Bernie Sanders might say, "I could care less." Forget "Make America great again," THIS should be Trump's slogan. It is what it is. This was what Trump said about 1000 Americans a day dying from the Corona virus and, although we suspected, Mary Trump puts THAT comment into perspective. Don't give a shit. Your father's dying wishes - don't give a shit. You're upset at being screwed out of your inheritance (by me):

Coooooudn't give a shit!

YET... when a visiting dignitary doesn't wear a suit...

While we're on Zelensky, didn't Donald of Orange say the US gave 350 billion dollars of aid through a president who was stupid? (Biden) Well it is safe to assume without fact-checking that anything out of that lie hole of his is at the very least hugely exaggerated but in case you still have doubts about the pathological lying path of his psychopathic pathology, here you go. So why was he so butt-hurt that Zelensky didn't say thank you. I made my own meme about this one:

While Trump demanding thanks from Zelensky reminded ME of Darth Vader, it reminded Rachel Maddow of a former senator from 1937-1940 when he died in a mysterious plane crash with a speech in his pocket that he never got to deliver to congress. You can read the original (stained from the plane crash) speech here. I did. I don't know if he does himself any favours by immediately citing the "white race" and "Aryan race" as the one commonality Americans share with the UK. He calls it a "family" with the same "human nature" then says that other than the Teutonic/German element, Americans should "disinfect" themselves of Anglicanism. He continues by asserting that England is not the fatherland but Germany. Then comes the "thank you" entitlement: Surely, he says, the 30 million American citizens with German forefathers have made contributions that entitle them to generous appreciation!

He warns of being catapulted into a fury of hatred that they fell under in WWI under the sinister spell of foreign propaganda. P15 He talks about English "agents" changing schoolbooks to brainwash kids. Then on P 17 a Trump-like escalation of the German-American population to 35 million. He conjectures that maybe the contributions of German Americans are not so well known due to their humility and reluctance to brag about their own achievements. 

What ensues is a lengthy and detailed account of specific achievements and contributions made by German immigrants to the US including Daniel Boone who was probably Bohne, George Custer who was probably Kuester, but absolutely NOT Benedict Arnold. "We owe infinitely to Germany" for their hatred of slavery and being the determining factor in Lincoln's election; Heroism in various wars and conflicts; farming and agriculture; engineering; education; music; art; literature and he goes into detailed stories of some more notable German Americans. Then on page 102/3 he mysteriously flip-flops and says German Americans DON'T have special claim to our gratitude. BUT Germany has as much right to ask the US for help as England. The thing is... Germans are too humble to ask for help.
 

On P 105 he starts with the Hitler stuff saying that most of what America is hearing about him is hearsay based on one interview with him. To say we must fight Hitler because he is a threat to the world is false and cowardly. It is not Hitler spouting hysterical rhetoric, it's those who oppose him.

I'd like to point out the parallel here with a habit we see so often in Felon 47 that some of us are developing involuntary shaking, delirium tremors they could be called, or even the DT's when we hear him accusing someone I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I-style of something of which he is FAR more egregiously guilty. I've recently heard a GOOD new phrase that I would like to apply to this: self-own. Any time Trump accuses anyone of anything there is a better than average chance you can find video of him committing the same offense only worse. In essence every bad thing he says about anyone else is a self-own. Maybe not EVERY, but you will find a helluva lot more evidence for this statement than against it so as near as makes no difference Donald Trump is not just a pathological liar, he's a pathological self-owner.

Ernest Lundeen's self-own was ultimately exposed when it was revealed that he was a Nazi operative paid by the Hitler government to promote NAZI propaganda. The link reads like a Le Carre spy novel folks. Do yourself a favour and check this guy out. I don't think I need to tell you that shortly after this plane crash he seemed to know was coming, Hitler launched his Blitzkrieg attacks that got WWII rolling in earnest (my apunogies). 

To belabour the obvious parallels, Trump demanding thanks from Zelensky saying HE was toying with WWIII and defending Putin as well as receiving the support of his government to say nice things about him, and even (maybe NOT so obviously) a Nobel Peace Prize nomination (both Trump and Hitler hilariously received) make us wonder if the parallels are ended and pray they ARE.

Trump has just threatened large scale sanctions on Russia undoubtedly in response to too many people suspecting the truth about his broner for Putin. He's not going to carry through with them unless the suspicion grows. TRUMP is the one "gambling with the lives of millions of people" (a self-own he expressed during the now infamous meeting with Zelensky. As we all should know now it has almost nothing (or exactly nothing) to do with the lives of people, rather it's about large deposits of what the Orange Ignoramus calls "raw" earth minerals and him (and probably Putin) getting a better deal on them.

Do I even need to mention that in 1994 Ukraine was the 3rd largest nuclear power on the planet and signed the Budapest Memorandum with the US, Russia, and the UK (mainly) to de-nuclearize in exchange for promises of non-aggression? Putin broke the agreement in 2014 when he invaded Crimea then when he invaded Ukraine in 2022. 

Instead of the US apologizing for NOT kicking Putin's ass, putting him in jail, or getting him on an Ernest Lundeen flight, this Bozo in Chief has the nerve to demand a "thank you" from Zelensky. His reason you can bet was, "Well, your situation is terrible. I could help you but I don't give a shit." 

Or maybe just, "It is what it is."

Can somebody please tell me how and why THIS video a) was not what actually happened b) has been erased from YouTube, and c) does not win the internet forever? 

I'll tell you why: because everything is fake. 

I told you I wasn't finished.

Probably STILL not finished.

Fugazi Fees and Furniture

 I am having another hate the world day today. As I type this I think I am being scammed. The world isn't as bad as it seems... is it?

First of all an update on a previous post - one you and I HAD to be expecting - I didn't get the job as a teacher assistant in the local school system here. While I was sitting in the office of the school where the interview took place I got some interesting looks from the principal, vice principal, and all the OTHER gals working there. One dude walked in. He was a guy with Down Syndrome who had a full plastic garbage can of trash he'd picked up around the school. The ladies were all congratulating him on his good work. Their reactions to me on the other hand, I think I explained that in my previous post, like Manson applying for parole. Some seemed amused at my token appearance to keep up the facade that equity promotes equality. The two females who interviewed me actually showed fascination at some points at the experiences and the experience I had and most likely at my massive overqualification for the position. Sympathy? Did I see some, "Awww... you poor, poor, shelter dog."? Possibly, but it wasn't enough for them to break down and hire me. 

This comes close to how I felt after absolutely NAILING the interview:

But that's not what has me hating the world today. I got the Korean university job offered to me and I'm filling out the contract and other immigration paperwork and sending it to them now. They have postponed the start date from the original March 17th to May 1st because they want me. It's nice to feel wanted! Especially at my age and with the legislation that currently governs racial and gender limitations on hiring in Canada, I feel happy to be relevant in the job market of SOME country. 

No, aside from THOSE fugazi practices that are a well entrenched part of my home and native land, there is something happening as I type this that has incurred my daily rage at the disingenuous behavior with which we conduct business that even extends beyond our professional personae. I started advertising my Mom's furniture today. Online. If you read the blog you know how the online hockey card market has been contaminated. I told my Mom that I was expecting much the same once I started advertising her stuff online. She doesn't get the whole magic of the internet yet so I figured I'd give her an example of the scamming that goes on. I was pretty confident there would be some of it eventually but I hadn't even finished posting my second piece of furniture when the first scammer tried his luck. I am still not convinced he was a scammer but I think so. He asked if the furniture was still available and I posted yes. IMMEDIATELY I got the long message that "I won't be able to go there myself to pick it up but I will send you a check you can deposit with your online banking app." All this guys' messages were instantaneous like it was a bot! I said okay and he said he'd sent the check. Sure enough there it was. I tried to deposit the check in my account but couldn't. Luckily I do my online banking on my computer, not on the app. The app doesn't even work on my phone. Never has. I think HIS scam was for me to deposit the check and it would show on my bank balance even though the check would not clear for 5 business days. By then they would have picked up the furniture. OR maybe he just wanted my email or was phishing for other personal info. Isn't it sad we actually have the word "phishing" for that? 

Anyway, I soon got some other responses. One said he was buying it for his mother. I told him I was selling it for my mother. He didn't get back to me. Scruples? I doubt it. He got my name and email too and said his mom would contact me later. 

The best one was from the old and frail "Ella Rose." Doesn't that just sound like a sweet old lady? It's supposed to. "She" said she was unable to pick it up too because she is currently in the US. Yeah I'm guessing a large U.S. city like Mumbai, Beijing, Manila, or Delhi. She told me her "cousin" will come to pick it up and she'd need my name and email. Then this sweet old lady said she'd like to add something as a gift since her cousin is so dear to her. She asked me to help her purchase a $500 Apple gift card for her dear cousin and wish her a happy birthday when she came to pick up the furniture and the card. For this favor she was willing to add a bonus of $100 to the deal that I could keep for myself. I agreed and said absolutely! Just deposit 1600 bux into my account and I'll even help with the lifting when her dear cousin comes to collect. I told my Mom at lunchtime that it was probably just an elaborate way to sell Apple gift cards. Probably some slave laborer in China who couldn't get on at the Apple iPhone assembly plant for a dollar an hour. 

After lunch I got the message that the payment was made. I checked my account. Surprise, surprise - no payment. She said there would be an official verification of payment in my email inbox. Surprise, surprise, no verification. Then she said to check my spam. Well surprise, surprise part III, there it was! 

Well I'll be! So I went out and bought a $500 Apple card and sent the card details but Ella Rose hasn't gotten back to me. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Just kidding. I texted "No thanks." I received a reply of "I don't get." So I responded, "Right. You don't get your sale." And I haven't heard back from Ella Rose. Poor Ella. I hope she finds a nice gift for her dear cousin's birthday. 

I was thinking about posting the check that was sent to me by a guy named Jeffery Martins that was signed by someone NOT named Jeffery Martins, but I'll check it out when I go to the bank on Monday. If it's bogus, I'll post it Monday. The reason I'm going to the bank Monday is - you guessed it - yet another scam.

THIS one has been going on for a while and I haven't noticed. It's only because of the reduced activity in my bank account that I noticed this month a withdrawal of about 30 bucks. I checked a few months back and there it was again. Same entity, same amount. I stopped after 4 months because I don't want to even think of how much I've pissed away to whatever this entity is but I hope it's not more than $120.00! I looked up the entity, I found their webpage, I even found a contact online who I could chat with in real time who told me they represent thousands of companies so there is no way of knowing which one it was. But the person said that if it isn't something I have purchased then my account has been compromised. I think of my many friends who buy things online ALL THE TIME and never have this happen. It happens to me so often I've lost count. It happened with Christmas presents, books, and I think this time it might be the resume website. 

You may know THIS scam. You search for a free resume builder site and get one. You plug in all your information which takes an hour then they tell you that if you want to download your beautiful new resume that will SURELY get you a job, you need to provide them with a card they can keep on file. Not to worry, there will only be a one-time-charge of 2 bucks or some shit like that for "processing" or some shit like THAT. We only do this in case you want to take advantage of our various services in the future. Right. If your resume works, I won't be needing your services in the future. But you say, What the hell," and you pay. You don't notice that somewhere hidden deep in the fine print is the TOTALLY LEGAL hidden fee of the 30-dollar a month membership to the site you didn't order and they told you you wouldn't be paying. There are no legal restrictions on this kind of crap believe it or not. Convict # 47 even famously added hidden monthly charges to his supporters' campaign contributions that some paid for years! This is one of few things His Orangeness calls "business" that he is NOT on trial for!

According to this article, basically everybody gets dinged by these and we all hate them. For all I know it could be something from the site where I bought my recent air ticket. Maybe my bank account or debit card. Maybe a hotel or telecommunication provider. That wouldn't surprise me. The nightmares I've had with Telus, Kudos, Bell... it could be one of THEM who keeps finding me. Evidently these types of scumbag businesses regularly add hidden charges. 

The upshot of it all is that I am going to have to change my bank account and tell everybody that deducts monthly charges the new card number. Come to think of it I only have TWO monthly charges, Chatr - my phone I'll be abandoning when I go to Korea. They're fine cuz I only pay month to month. I will DEFINITELY be looking for Chatr when I get to Korea because they don't lock you into lengthy contracts, another practice that shouldn't be allowed. I also pay storage fees every month for my locker in Victoria where I have my worldly belongings 90% of which I'll probably throw in the trash if I ever empty it out and take it somewhere. Yeah, it's possible that they are attaching extra fees but I doubt it. 

The shittiest thing about this is whoever is scamming me out of I don't know how much money is completely untouchable because of this anonymous online payment middleman. That's exactly WHY thousands of companies use them! Even if these practices WERE illegal, how could you catch them? The article above says that a lot of people who fight these charges are successful but they're the ones who know who they're fighting. I always run up against these agencies in Holland or New Zealand or some countries that have no regulations on shit like this and I have to cancel my card. It has happened half a dozen times probably. Not going to disappear under Trump, he uses them himself to flog his worthless crap. Canada? It's under the purview of the Competition Act and some other consumer protection law enforcers and we've seen how they are disappearing and being de-funded. 

Junk fees, drip pricing, hidden charges, and other deceptive sales tactics are another way our countries keep things fake for us. 

I'm probably STILL not finished with this folks.

Tipflation

 Like the person who posted this on Facebook, I have seen it a few times and maybe you have too. It's that story about a server who got a bill with "do better" filled into the area where the tip was supposed to go. So the person decided to take the advice to heart and started working harder and, lo and behold, tips started getting better. 

This smacks to me of the rich, one-percenter bullshit mantra they are constantly trying to push on the workers of the world (who they own) and get them to believe that if they just work hard, say their prayers, and take their vitamins, blah blah blah, lie lie lie. The old joke comes to mind. Rich guy drives up to one of his workers and says good morning. The worker comments on the beautiful Bentley his owner is driving. The boss says, "Well maybe someday if you work really hard... I can buy ANOTHER one." 

We're chattel, folks. Tipping is one of the best bits of evidence we have of this. We all know it's just greedy employers who are taking advantage of the Satanic "tipped minimum wage" in America of $2.13/hr. They do this simply by passing most of their workers' wages onto the customer on top of the price of the product. We may not know of the evil origins of tipping, but we all know it's scumbags who take advantage of it. Make no mistake about it, if you run a business in which your employees depend on tips, you are a scumbag whether you know it or not. Canada does not have a tipped minimum wage and in this way it can be considered more Christian than the US but scumbaggy sometheless. 

But even still, minimum wage is not a living wage and workers in both countries depend on tips to live and we have been domesticated, like the obedient livestock we are, to think not only is tipping okay, maybe we oughta work EVEN HARDER to make our owners even richer. Well the guy who posted the above, Bryan Hutson, or maybe just one of his friends, went ever further and insinuated that this is what Jesus would have us do. Christians, who pray over their meals and then leave paltry tips, are giving Jesus a bad name I think was the point. Even worse are the ones who leave tracts (which I think is what is meant by "tracks") in lieu of tips. That would be almost identical to "do better" wouldn't it? 

I wish we could see the TOP of that receipt. What did the customer pay $54.08 for? Probably a burger, fries and a Coke. Inflation is just another form of greed we've been domesticated to tolerate by the flesh farmers who bought us at auction, or hired us. Would Jesus even eat at this place? I've read the Bible and I think I got a pretty good impression of what Jesus might do at a restaurant. We're talking about a dude who fed 5,000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish... es. He also made the wedding planners and guests at a certain reception much jollier by changing the water into wine. Jesus was all about getting MORE food and drink for his money, not paying more money for less food. He would also know that tipping in America coincided with the Emancipation Proclamation and was just a way of extending slavery among the 3.5 million people it turned into unemployed vagrants. What to do with all these slaves started the racist prison and police systems in the US and, no doubt, our lord and savior would know about THAT too. I think if you jump to the end where this Facebook poster wrote "If you don't plan on tipping, don't eat somewhere that employs people who work on tips," THAT is how you should be thinking if you're a WWJD type of person.

The US is a Christian nation. Reportedly even more so under his good and loyal disciple Donald Jedediah Trump. So tipping must be something on its way out, no? No. In fact it is so NOT the case we have a new word: tipflation. More and more places, not fewer and fewer, are asking, expecting, even demanding tips. Even at places where YOU have now become a non-salaried worker. Self-serve kiosks, self-check-outs, even Subway. SUBWAY where they went from 5-dollar footlongs to 11-dollar six-inchers in less than a decade! Now they want tips? As the internet meme says, "Come on, Subway, we made this sandwich together!" It's like tipping a co-worker isn't it? 

Canadians are at their tipping points when it comes to tipping according to this article. We tip more often and more than we used to. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that things are even worse in the States but here's a Forbes Magazine article that says the tipping culture is out of control there too. The Canadian article says that even here "abolishing tipping is hopelessly idealistic." It's part of our culture and, like a surprising number of things (income tax and banking come to mind) most of us don't like it or even know why we do it. So why are we "idealists" if we want to get rid of it?

In the late 1890's many Americans believed tipping was against the very principles upon which they had built their country. In an 1897 NY Times article tipping was the vilest of imported vices because it resurrected the aristocratic class they had left Europe to be done with. Many states tried to make it illegal but they too were idealistic trying to move against their owners, the rich and powerful that they certainly were not done with. In his book "The Itching Palm" a guy named William Scott described tipping as "democracy's mortal foe" and "a servile attitude for a fee." There really WAS quite a groundswell against tipping for a while in the US. Probably Canada too. But they were all just a bunch of idealists. We know this because there hasn't been a serious endeavor to abolish it in 100 years even though tipping has increased, tipping amount has increased, and hatred of tipping has increased exponentially the whole time.  

If you think that's the whole iceberg, it's just the tip. Unfortunately, tipping ignorance has also increased. When the hell, where the hell, and how bloody smegging much are we supposed to tip? Who makes the rules? Is there a governing body? I remember when 10% was expected. Now you get your pizza spit on next time you order from the same Dominos where you only tipped 10%. Some people don't even tip for pizza! I had to use Uber once when I was living in Calgary. I was out too late and there were no more buses home. I could have walked in an hour or so but I called an Uber instead. It was HORRIBLY expensive! I mean way more than even a taxi. And the asshole driver says to me in his frostiest Calgary winter voice, "So for a 33-dollar ride you are giving me only a 7-dollar tip?" I seriously thought for half a second he was complaining because that was too much. If not for the look and the tone I might have puffed out my chest like an aristocrat and said, "Don't worry about it young fella," or something to that effect. Instead I was feeling like I had over tipped (17.5%) AND like I had ripped this greedy bastard off. Add to that the pressure of the rest of Canada expecting Canadians to behave like Canadians and follow our culture. Yeah, tipping for me, a guy who has been away from it for years over in gloriously tip-free Asia, has become a lose-lose-lose proposition. 

But even if you've been here in Canada during the greedular evolution of tipping, statistics show you don't have much more of an idea than I do. According to the study in this article 60% of Canadians don't even think Uber drivers should get tips! But I bet more than 40% of us ARE tipping them. And what do we get for our extra money? We're not satisfied that tipping gets us better service. 

Here's an idea: get rid of it. Mandatory tipping that is. Tip when and how much you want. If we had a minimum wage that people could survive on, tipping guilt would be a thing of the past. Nobody knows how to do it right or how to find out. It's just another added stress to our already stressful lives. 

And, since there is no good reason for it to even exist, it is yet another in our seemingly inexhaustible laundry list of fakeness. 

I understand J.D. Salinger more all the time. My KINGDOM for something REAL!