Pneumaticism

 Here are a couple of guys selling fresh, Canadian air for 20 bucks a can. They are making money! $230,000 a year! Granted, those are CANADIAN dollars, but still... 

Being a bit of a jaded, life-hardened, realist, I instantly thought, "Why don't those foolish, lavish, money-wasting people who are buying our air in cans, just buy some bags of Canadian Cheetos or Ruffles and get a few chips with their fresh air?" Here's a study of which bags of chips have the most air for your buck. Word of warning: the breath of air at the top of a bag of salt and vinegar chips might make you cough. 

Here in Korea, chip eaters are suffering too. Unfortunately, the air isn't comparable to that of Canada, so they use nitrogen. Luckily, I haven't breathed the gas at the top of the chip bags here in Korea. Now that I know it's nitrogen, I'll remember to hold the bag at arm's length when I open chips here. As a protest against chiseling chip makers, a couple of students made a raft using 160 bags of chips and paddled across the Han River in Seoul. Well done, lads! But I haven't noticed any improvement yet.

If you suffer through the Canadian Tire commercial at the beginning and the use of "less" instead of "fewer" when referring to the amount of chips in bags, (a common mistake I admit to making for most of my life that has now become an irritant in my grammatically pedantic older age) this isn't a bad report about how a LOT of products, or, rather, their manufacturers, are offering less for the same price or more. They call it "shrinkflation" and I think I started noticing this when I was a LOT younger in a product I haven't seen for probably over 20 years - Wagon Wheels. 

If I'm not mistaken, the ad had a slogan something like, "They're so huge, you have to grin to get them in." The statement put out by the manufacturers is that people think they've shrunk because we remember eating them when we had smaller hands and appetites, but manufacturers give us AIR in all sorts of ways. 

Hearken back to the previous video where the guy says, "Air is free," the term "shrinkflation," and you might also, if you're like me, hearken back to the usage of the word "pneumatic" by Aldus Huxley in "Brave, New World." In the novel, it was used to describe chairs (inflated with air pockets to make them more comfortable) and women. A lot of people think that Lenina's body was described as "pneumatic" because she was a buxom beauty, but I always took it as a reference to her intelligence, or attractive air-headedness as well.  

Let's be honest, an airhead is attractive to a man because she's gonna be easy. We can easily score with her. She'll be easier to persuade into doing what we want her to do. I think the guy who said, "Air is free," is a bit of an airhead himself. Not so much our quotester Habyarimana because he probably only said it satirically in his quote. However, consumers who are airheads are attractive to manufacturers for identical reasons as dumb girls are attractive to the ungentlemanly of us guys in the world. Airhead consumers are more easily manipulated and coerced into doing what the manufacturers want us to do: pay more money for less shit. "Shit," the object, not the act, being an uncountable noun, as opposed to "chips," being a countable noun, receives the quantifier, "less," rather than "fewer," which is the correct choice for "chips" for this reason. Anyway, we are, most of us, Leninas in this way, aren't we? Call it shrinkflation, call it pneumaticism, call it what you will, it's a fact. We pay more and more for less and less. We don't have to, we just do. Because we're airheads. 

Any airhead reading this now think air is free? I'm not going to quibble about the air in the tops of soda bottles or chip bags, we have all paid for THAT air even though the manufacturers didn't. How else do we pay for air? I guess I could talk about the two years I spent in China and how much that cost me in the currency of time on this planet, which becomes more valuable as one ages, but I've talked about that before. It comes off the end of life when I will sweat the expense a great deal less. 

What other sorts of air do we pay for? Through the bloody arse for, if you'll pardon my airy phraseology. You know how old radio shows used to have those lights when DJ's were broadcasting that lit up and said, "On The Air?" Think "Good Morning Vietnam" or "WKRP" if you're as old as I am. That air USED to be free. TV and Radio was once free. Radio has now become Itunes. How do you like THEM Apples? Absolutely nothing associated with Apple is free. And take a drive around any major Canadian city. Go to the downtown area where all the big buildings are. Which one or two is or are the biggest? There's gonna be a massive Roger's building, and you'll also find a gigantic Telus building. Shaw and Bell will be there too. This kind of air is certainly not free! In fact it's the most expensive thing going! Meaning the biggest rip-off. Not only do they charge exorbitant rates for some of the slowest internet speeds in the world, they also force ads onto us even though we are buying their service. More and more ads for higher and higher prices. And we keep pneumatically paying for it.

What's another type of air we pay for? If one considers the amount of "hot air" we are bombarded with from politicians, opinion makers, media and influencers on those "airwaves" we pay so much for on a daily basis, these may be the largest air purchases we make in our daily lives. But when was the last time you flew anywhere. In a sense, when you fly, you are purchasing the air, aren't you? And with a couple hundred billion in losses absorbed by the airlines during the pandemic, the cost of flying anywhere will be "taking off" soon and won't be "landing" until more than the 200 bill has been recovered. It's the way corporations work. Any losses are passed on to the customers... and THEN some. So if I have to do a visa run to renew my D-10 visa or change to a work visa in six months, I'll be taking the ferry to Osaka from Busan. 

In a more concrete example, if you are not convinced that flying is buying air, there is obvious proof that air can be and IS owned. Where? What do you think would happen if you boarded an airplane and flew over Russia right now? Russia's a huge country! And I guess the arbitrary residents and/or the representatives they may believe they have chosen, OWN all that air over their country. In reality it'll be the military that shoots your ass down. They are controlled by the government, which is not so much representing the people, (they wouldn't shoot your ass down) but are representing, and in large part, consist of, the richest people in Russia. 

Finally, the air we probably incur the highest amount of payment and debt from all around the world is the air from which the World Bank, IMF, and other such vulture capitalistic consolidations of paper-printing, nationless, imperialistic power/money, magically materialize the money that enslaves the nations they loan it to. Right now Ukraine is the best example of their handiwork. When the invasion began, the news that the IMF and World bank were negotiating money packages to aid in the Ukrainian defense of their nation was treated as GOOD news in the hot air the media was blowing. But that money was not GIVEN to Ukraine. In fact, during this illegal invasion, Ukraine has actually PAID the IMF and World Bank (which are basically the same assholes I think). This new "heroic" aid package will have massive strings attached to be sure. Like so many of the rulers of our world, who should be making things easier for us after suffering through the pandemic, the IMF and World Bank are seeing Ukraine in an even more disastrous position and they're rushing to them with contracts in one hand and pens in the other, weapons far worse than Putin's tanks and bombs, that will probably bring about the REAL conquest of Ukraine. They should be forgiving debt. The world should be treating the IMF and World Bank the way they're treating Russian billionaires. But how do you sanction an entity that just pulls money out of the air?

I could be way off with this, but the central bank systems that most countries have, whether they want them or not, are pretty much represented worldwide by the IMF and World Bank. They are the central banks of the planet. While most country's central banks have too much power, these two entities have WAY too much power. They're the ultimate in pneumaticism. 

I have heard that Thomas Edison was the hero and friend of Henry Ford and in the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan, there is a test tube that is said to contain Thomas Edison's last breath. It was sent to Ford by Edison's son, Charles. Okay, I think I have just corrected myself. THIS is the ultimate in pneumaticism surely! To believe that someone, possibly his own son, was beside Edison's death bed holding this tube under his nose and capping it after each breath then checking his pulse, uncapping it and placing it under his nose again, and repeat... well you'd have to be an airhead to believe this, wouldn't you? To add to the pure insanity of our world, I guaran-damn-tee there are people who'd probably pay millions for that test tube! Pneumaticism!

So if you've ever looked at the world and thought, "For fuck's sake! Soon they'll be charging us all for the air we breathe, and we'll be stupid enough to pay," well... here we are.

I still have hope though. Not much, but just a breath of airy hope for this world. We need to think of another, much more important kind of air that binds us all together: spirit. Or, as a dude even smarter than Edison might call it, the Aether.