How Much You Got, BOY?

 Anyone remember this?

It's a scene from Vacation. A comedy movie. A spoof. A satire. Make believe.

Well in keeping with my latest theme of how real life is now imitating make believe, does anybody feel like this with other commodities nowadays? Like buying a car or a house or going to the grocery store? 

If you remember from one of my latest posts the mention of Adam Smith who considered himself to be an ethical economic philosopher you may have thought then what you're probably thinking now: "Can the two mix? Have they ever?" Well I am pretty sure they have. I think I've even known a few honest businessmen in my day. But mixing ethics and business is pretty much extinct now. How are prices set? Ever wonder that? I truly believe that folks used to calculate what it cost to produce their product, add a reasonable (and BOY has THAT word changed!) profit for their efforts and boom - there's the price. I have to make up a word here cuz I don't know what they'd call this in economics but I'll call that description "subsistence pricing." Enough to pay production costs and still earn a reasonable profit. Regardless of what the difference in meaning "reasonable" might have between two people, let's imagine subsistence pricing was actually practiced in Reality Land. How different things would be!

First thing that I can think of is Covid 19. When the supply chain issues started happening, real or imagined, then quite rightly prices would need to go up if subsistence pricing were being followed because costs would increase and absorb the "reasonable" profit. That's fine and dandy but now that the pandemic is under control and supply chains are no longer problematic, prices would go DOWN. When was the last time the price of A NY THI NG went down? Subsistence pricing is a thing of a bygone era when a person still could utter the words "ethics" and "economics" close together and not be scoffed at.

Today we have the exact thing the above video represents. When a company is deciding on a price they ask "How much you got, boy?" Well it's worded in more polite language like "what the market will bear," "fair market value," or "competitive pricing," but it's identical to the robbery of Clark W. Griswold who, after the robbery, you will remember, he has to ask how much babysitting money Audrey has so they can fill the Family Truckster with gas. Anybody asking their daughters to borrow babysitting money after buying.... EGGS for instance?

What the actual FRIG is going on there? And I say "there" because here are some American eggs:

And I have seen them MORE expensive. Why has this happened in the States while Canadian eggs seem to be unchanged in price?

Is it Covid 20? Well if you remember what I said about opportunistic consters in a previous post - yes it is. Well technically it's bird flu but to call a con a con it could just as accurately be called Covid 20. And I have little doubt that after this comes to the attention of Canadian egg farmers and Canadian egg price fixers there will be a sudden jump here too cuz we too have the bird flu in Canada. It didn't stop at the border. So guess who's stocking up on eggs today?!?!

Would either country's egg producers and sellers lose a significant amount of money if they just kept their prices on the level they were before the bird flu struck? They might lose some of the ridiculously over ballooned profits that have already been attached to the eggs we eat here in Reality Land but they wouldn't lose enough to go out of business. So the 10 extra dollars? That just plain greed. And there was a time not so long ago that such greed was considered criminal and even punished. 

Let's reference the educational video at the start of this post once again. "What would the egg barons' sheriff think of their business practices?" Well what would the sheriff's equivalency be in the U S of A? One would be the "Watchdogs" or inspectors general. This office was created in 1976 to provide a check on government abuse following the Watergate scandal. They are supposed to work independently of the White House and that too was put into law in 2022 in response to (you probably guessed it) Trump's arbitrary firings of watchdogs during his first term to replace them with loyal subjects who he could work with, i.e. flunkeys who obey his commands. 

So guess what Trump did in his, what, 2nd, 3rd day in office? He dismissed a pile of inspectors general ignoring even the 30 day's notice they are supposed to receive. He's also supposed to provide each with a "substantial rationale" for their firing but welcome to the new America and King Trumpty Dumpty who will hopefully have a great fall off of his wall and shatter like the 13-dollar egg he is. Or at least has become known as...

Did you know that originally Humpty Dumpty was a cannon? It was none other than Lewis Carroll who anthropomorphized old Humpty into an egg in Alice's adventured through the looking glass. And through the absinthe glass and laudanum glass... I won't wax too literary on your asses here.

So now if I were to buy a dozen eggs in the States for 15 bucks and ask the retailer or egg farmer what the inspector general thought of his business practices, chances are pretty good that he could produce some ID from his wallet indicating his position as Trump-appointed inspector general of poultry or whatever and say, "All of it, boy!" I guess I'm stretching the metaphor a bit but you can see what I'm driving at can't you?

And if I were an American I'd wave goodbye now to 4 or 5-dollar eggs because when the bird flu outbreak is over do you suppose these criminally appointed inspectors general will be lowering the prices back down to their original levels? No, I'm sure they will invent some losses incurred during the bird flu outbreak that will take years and years of outrageously high poultry profits to recover from. Get ready for chicken to become more expensive than steak. Or more likely get ready for more mad cow disease. It's well known that farmers have destroyed crops to increase prices. When you ponder whether this was done to make a reasonable or UNreasonable profit the idea of perpetuating livestock disease becomes less far fetched doesn't it? The phrase in the article "corporate-focused system" is the culprit.

Finally, I don't mean to flog a dead horse but I'm sure we all recall the issue upon which Trump has even admitted he got elected, don't we? Well just in case:

Making America GREAT!

2 Cult Classics

 

I don’t know if I’ve covered this fully enough. I was guilty of not explaining the latest con that was successfully run on Canada and the US, the Covid Fleecing we’ll call it, so I want to make sure I explain the latest, the Tariff War we’ll call it, in hopes that someone will recognize it and start a movement to halt it before we embarrass ourselves by electing swindlers to office that we believe are being heroic.

It’s too late in the US but we may still have hope here in Canada.

I am currently in Trail, BC, one of many small towns that have been turned into virtual ghost towns in comparison to the lively villages they were before Covid. I’m not saying it was a hoax. I believe Covid is real and have gotten my shots. But, as I blogged, consters that find their ways into government are nothing if not opportunistic. The Pandemic was seen by them as a giant opening to do what they do best: squeeze as much of the working people’s money up through the bottleneck to the economic elite as they can.

I think, instead of trying to figure out exactly what the Artless Donald and Doug WWE Ford BELIEVE tariffs are and how they work, we should cover what they are and how they work in Reality-Land.

We talked about how the Fed sets interest rates and prints money so ignore that part. Skip ahead to just before the 2:30 mark where Trumpty Dumpty is exposed as "pathological." That or just stupid. US tariffs are paid by businesses in the US to the treasury of the US through a customs agent. That agent sends the money to the treasury and Scott Bessent Trump's choice as secretary of the treasury, a hedge fund manager who donated "bigly" to Trump's campaign and is a fan of tariffs. Surely HE knows how a tariff works and he's for them. He's gonna get a lot of money if the Tariff war starts. While Bessent defends tax cuts to the rich and any Dem challenges Bessent by saying Tariffs will be inflationary he just lies and says history does not support that theory. When asked what is done with treasury money he says the benefits to the rich will be paid for by (fantasy again) economic growth of the "trickle-down" variety. He's very good at "respectfully disagreeing" with challengers and producing (not to say pulling out of he ass) contradictory (not to say fabricated) stats that support enriching the rich. 

HOWEVER, history does NOT support tariffs working or cutting taxes for the rich trickling down as benefits to the working people of any country. Those are just lies and he knows it folks. They're not hiding that any more. This is a Disney bad guy who is the one who gets the money from tariffs. And let me clear up one thing again, merchants or agencies who are paying the tariffs do NOT raise prices in accordance with the tariffs. For example if there's a 25% tariff it's just not considered good business nowadays to raise your price only 25%. The price will go up 35% or 40% or what the hell, screw the consumer, 50%. That is the definition of inflationary. In this way "tariff" is just another word for tax raises. So the rich get lower taxes and higher profits and the general public gets higher prices for everything. This is how you collapse an economy. And the exact same thing will happen in Canada if we fall into the trap Doug Ford is trying to con us into - retaliatory tariffs. 

Don't get sucked in by this Trump wannabe Canada. His hat is blue because blue=red in Canada for some reason but make no mistake, it might as well have MAGA on it. He's peddling international rivalry, basically hatred of our neighbours and don't forget "hatred" is just "red hat" in reverse. Compound the tariff wars with climate change-driven insurance-based economic collapse and Ford's hatred of carbon taxes and you have agreement with Trump's "drill drill drill" economy collapsing mentality. It's almost like politics in our nations are TRYING to break us all.

Don't fall for it! Don't get sucked into the cults of tariffs and climate change denial. They'll have worse effects than Covid.

Addendum: I wrote this just as His Trumpishness was imposing tariffs on Columbia for not accepting a planeload of Columbian citizens he had deemed to be criminals. I don't know much about the people on the plane but I wonder how much worse they were than the criminals Trump gave sweeping pardons to for January 6th. Anyway, because of what I've described here, now the prices of things the US imports from Columbia are going up. Coffee comes to mind. Here's a partial list that includes bananas, pineapples, avocados, and oh yeah, OIL and flowers and some more products:

Donald Bone Spur Trump wants war. As long as he doesn't have to, you know, fight. He's a warmonger. He THINKS trade wars will be good for America. Or does he? Maybe he just thinks they will be good for a small number of Americans who are at the very top of the financial spectrum. This is the very definition of oligarchy - government by the few for the few - that you've heard about. It's coming to a democracy near you. I don't want this to happen but it might be a matter of the world deciding to go with Trump or go against him. We've had decisions like this before and they've been disastrous. Do we want this manchild to incite trade wars or worse WAR wars? He's just not worth it! 

While I LOVE the description of Trump as an "unhinged toddler" and the fact that he doesn't understand this shit as an indication of his ignorance... I'm not so sure. I think it's malicious greed. I don't think Trump is a genius but I give him credit for being smarter than a toddler who would probably understand this shit. So America, you're under the control of a guy who is maliciously fucking your economy. At the same time I'm not so convinced of Trudeau saying he's got the backs of Canadians. Unless he means he's behind us loobing up, I don't trust this statement. He and our elected representatives are every bit as malicious in this manufactured trade war and it's just a way to suck more blood from the stone that is the oversodomized worker of both Canada and the US. 

Ethics Schmethics

 One of the things I failed to mention in my last post on reality being made up largely of fantasy was economics. When you talk economics you will probably make reference to Adam Smith even if you don’t know you’re doing it. He knew the score in the 1700’s when he was alive and if it has changed since it has only been for the worse. The best quote I know of from The Wealth of Nations (and there are a good many) is as follows, “People of the same trade (businesspeople) seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Know any of these? There are still people like this everywhere. Maybe more of them than ever. EVERYTHING is about money, and they consider themselves so entitled to more of it than YOU that they think nothing of obtaining it through unscrupulous methods. Cheating, lying, and stealing is their trade. They’re thoroughly corrupt and take a deviant pride in how hilarious it is to cheat stupid people out of their money. Think “The Big Short” when Mark Baum meets the slimy synthetic CDO salesman and needs to hit the Vegas crap tables to “cleanse” himself afterwards.

 Now imagine something that would make that scumbag orgasm. Imagine a graft that would make every pore on his body excrete greed in the form of slime. THAT is central banking.

The history of central banking goes through Holland, Sweden, and England before it reaches its apotheosis in “The Fed” of the US. The fact that it WAS in England is why it took the US so long to continue starting banks that failed one after another because the business model of a bank is just counter-intuitive. It took a while for the business of banking to refine itself and that refinement was nothing more than fantasy. They didn’t need to base their existence on solid, concrete, gold or silver against which to base their currency. That had been tried and it failed because war is expensive and when a lender of last resort runs out of gold-backed currency, why, it’s just not ethical to lend more. Well ethics schmethics! Yes, central banks were invented on the principle of “ethics schmethics.” Anyone who tries to legitimize them is a slimy synthetic CDO type.

“Fiat currency” is government issued money (more precisely central bank issued currency) that has no backing in physical commodity like gold or silver. It is what the central banks of the world have been printing since the central banking systems took over. It is completely based on the public’s faith, nothing of substance. It is that gossamer thin, unsubstantial faith that is all that keeps countries like the US and Canada from debilitating bank runs that would crash their economies. If you watch The Big Short again and remember the bank “bailout” of 2008 or Wall Street Bailout or any of the technical names it was given to make stupid people trust in its legitimacy like the TARP Troubled Asset Relief Program, or the EESA Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, it was just 700 billion dollars created out of thin air, backed by nothing but the public faith that it would solve the problem. That loan to banks, who ironically are the least likely entities in the world to pay it back, has ballooned well into the trillions even at modest interest rates but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that people BELIEVE it solved the financial crisis.

The central banks of the world are just the wet dreams of these reptilian robbers that Adam Smith warned us about centuries ago. They are walking around with pads of paper and pens scribbling on the paper, ripping off the sheet, handing it to merchants and getting goods and services, REAL LIFE goods and services, in return. And they only get away with it because we believe in them.

Well, Canada, the CEO of a central bank is the guy whose job it is to legitimize the thing. He’s the dude (or she’s the dude, Christine Lagarde) who makes us believe that fantasy cash she/he is printing has value. Guess who did that for both the UK and Canada. A guy named Mark Carney. I absolutely LOVE the name! Ever go to the carnival and meet a carney? This guy is no better. Those rings don’t fit around the Coke bottles and this guy is no more legitimate. He’s a con man. He’s got to be, or he couldn’t have done his jobs leading two central banks. He’s never won an actual election anywhere, so the people of Canada have never given him their stamp of approval (if you believe elections are still won by the folks we actually want to win them). So immediately we are putting the possible leadership of our country in the hands of the members of the Canadian Liberal party. We trust them…. don’t we?

I trust them to pick a guy like this who perpetuates the ongoing fantasies, the WWE fake sports that are Canadian politics and banking. If he wins the Liberal party leadership and then the federal election we will have our FAITH to blame.

Don't believe these guys will be enemies. The Tariff War con has already started. I bet Carney will try to sell it to us. 

In 2020 it was estimated that the amount of fiat currency in the world was around 215 trillion US$. That was ALL the money in the world in 2017. So quietly go to your bank and withdraw all of your money. Buy gold or silver or something of value. In Russia they use vodka. We could probably use maple syrup here in Canada. The vast majority of money in the world, because of the central banking systems that have been forced upon us, is just pure fantasy. Keeping your money in banks is just having faith in bankers. Watch “The Big Short” one more time. Do these snake oil salesmen warrant such faith? NO! Emphatically NOOOO! They’re just a mess of carnies.

Here's a pretty detailed explanation:

Adam Smith was a moral philosopher, not an economist. "Ethics schmethics" is immoral and economics has always been about philosophy just as much if not more than science. Economics has lost its morality. "Greed is good" is not something a person should be proud of. It's not something we should be proud of our countries for tolerating either. Bribing politicians, cheating the working class, increasing the gap between Haves and Have-nots, running countries like amoral businesses, it's all wrong and we all know it. If we do nothing about it we are just empowering the "ethics schmethics" mindset. It's gotta stop.

Maintaining Mortal Meaninglessness

 Perhaps only one thing is worse than dreaming one’s way through life and that is the brain bomb that the dream IS life. Love, friendship, education, politics, religion, professional wrestling, most sports probably, even science the discipline that wears its concrete, imperialism like a badge of honour laying claim to the veritable opposite is, in the final analysis, yet another triumph of imagination over intellect.

“Nebulous at best.” That was word for word what the most relevant quantum physicist I have ever known said about the very building blocks of science, in particular scientific method. It is in essence what a bright young student of IT said to me about the cyber-universe recently; it is what my experiences in the world of academia have taught me in no uncertain terms; it is the ultimate absurdity that comprises the basics of a shockingly comprehensive list of what we tend to consider the most meaningful things in life!

Oh to regain the joys of youthful ignorance! This is no aspersion, slight, or disparaging of those who wear the protective cloak of ignorance, nay, there just might be wisdom in their folly.

Today my mother put some bags inside of a shopping bag I had hung over the others empty and ready for easy access when I needed it next. I knew it would be soon. This should not have upset me, but it did. The simple act of taking the other bags out before using my preferred shopping bag is compounded by other ills my mother has perpetrated upon me in the past. Why don’t good things come to mind? My mother combed my hair when I was young. Not just enough to tidy it but excessively. I know, to this day, of nothing more relaxing and I know that that is why she did it. Was it an act of apology for the whips and scorns of time into which she had ushered me? Or even those she thought she would cause me?

My mother is a trip! I can think of few citizens more esteemed and loyal to the world of mindless folly over reason nor better suited to be its travel agent than my mother. More than once daily she proudly utters the phrase, “I have no idea (about that).” Proudlyl! She doesn’t consult a dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, or (perish the thought) the internet to maybe gain SOME idea about that which she has none. Never. It could almost be said that she is well versed in only ignorance. She is row, row, rowing her boat gently down the stream of a life that is but a dream.

But does a thorough education in fantastical heaven prepare a person better or worse for the shocking specter of hell? If I were to take after my mother in this trait, could I blame her? I think not. Preparation cannot be left solely to the parent. No matter how soothing the comb, or the memory of it now that I no longer require one, the responsibility of maintaining memories falls on my shoulders. I choose the good or bad to dwell on and even the most hopeless of parenting provides a child with both. I choose to think negatively and compound the simple act of rearranging the shopping bags into something more annoying than it would be if I chose to remember my mother’s ASMR triggering hair combing. I seem to recall her being a back scratcher too, which, for me, had the same effect.

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. Simple. Problem solved, right? Or is this in itself just a variant pathway to that land of ignorant bliss? Intelligence shows me daily that negativity cannot be glossed over successfully with positivity without sufficient swings of the dumb-hammer to my own head. Maybe that is the root of the issue. Is the dumb-hammer medicine or poison? This question applies to the list at the start of this rant and every single entry on it. Ignorance makes them all more palatable and that can be viewed from both positive and negative perspectives. Indeed both can be found within each entry. I’ll start with religion.

Matthew 18 is where Jesus said that having faith like a child will make one the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. But it’s easier to forgive as a child. They’ve only been lied to a few thousand times and betrayed a few hundred. As those numbers increase the child grows up and its faith is tested. Accentuating the positive in overwhelming negativity may just be what separates children from adults. After all, every adult has something beyond the fear of death that keeps them from throwing themselves off of tall buildings or taking a few extra sleeping pills. Is it then just the discipline of pinpointing those things and being ever-mindful of them? Again, too simplistically escapist.

Before I mention Buddhists spending their lives in meditation trying to accomplish exactly the above, let’s see what Jesus says in Luke 7 about childishness. He said the people of this generation (and presumably all since) are like children who are never satisfied and can see the bad side of everything. John the Baptist didn’t eat bread or drink wine, and he was called a demon. Jesus did both and was called a glutton and a drunkard. Worse, he was called a friend to tax collectors! I love that! Tax collectors were the worst back then and all that has changed is the explosion in the percentage that they collect.

But concentrate on the seeming contradiction and in it you will find a fine example of the nuances that make life the challenge so worth accepting that it is. Don’t you see this all the time? In yourself just as much as others? I think I see it in myself MORE than in others. I can get used to/tired of anything and the older and more used to/tired of life I become the shorter this process is. If I could somehow convert my “take-for-granted” gene into a “be-happy-in-what-I’ve-got” gene, I might just have life figured out and I could die a truly happy and satisfied man. But just to illustrate how far I am from attaining this impossible dream, I hadn’t even finished typing it before reproducing and selling that gene came to mind. Being unsatisfiable and always wanting more is actually compared in the Bible to trying to catch the wind.

On the other hand didn’t Jesus himself preach against complacency and teach his disciples to constantly strive for improvement? Hasn’t ambition, desire, envy, even greed resulted in great achievement and accomplishment? So what the hell, bro? Is it good or bad? Who am I to say?

But back to comparing the wisdom of being complacent in ignorance vs. being greedy for knowledge. Or should I say satisfaction in simplicity vs. striving for advanced intelligence. They can both be bad or good, can’t they? What about the concept of just acting intelligent? Knowing everything became impossible long ago if it ever were but since new knowledge by the brainful is created every day, it’s just getting harder and harder to know enough about everything to be considered smart. I believe even knowing a little bit about everything, even just one fact about everything is even impossible. Yet there are many who would like us to think they know a lot about everything. When does the desire for knowledge intersect with vanity? Is it when a person is loathe to admit to ignorance in something or when a person is loathe to admit to ignorance in anything? I don’t know the answer, I’m just asking. It is most likely neither. Maybe it’s when we start creating our own facts because we just don’t want to do the hard work of finding the real ones. That ring any bells??? It’s everywhere isn’t it? It’s one of the most annoying things in the world and one of the most dangerous. Yet, it can be fun, beautiful, even therapeutic creating worlds of make-believe.

Seymour Glass might be my favourite character in all of fiction. In Salinger’s short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” he convinces an innocent girl of the existence of bananafish. The girl manufactures the bananafish in her vision as well as her faith exclaiming, “I see one!” The Jesus-like Buddhist character Seymour’s reaction to this was to go back to his hotel room and blow his head off. Is creating beautiful fancy in a world of squalor noble or evil?

I watched the movie “Babylon” two nights ago. Lead characters Manuel Torres and Jack Conrad have opposing epiphanies to these respective effects. Jack too blows his head off.

I can’t claim to know the answer and although I may be getting better at describing this, the enigma of my life, I admit to being no closer to its solution, perhaps further from it than when I was a child. Maybe death, or non-existence, holds the solution and being closer to it as kids we maintain some knowledge however subconscious of it. Should it or shouldn’t it follow, then, that as we get older and closer to re-obtaining that knowledge that comes through non-existence, that we should subconsciously or even consciously remember it? Seymour and Jack didn’t want to hang around and find out, rather they hastened their passage to that undiscovered country to which Hamlet didn’t have the balls to travel. Am I saying suicide is strength and remaining in a life of futile suffering is weakness? Maybe if the futility can be proven and the only solution lies in the ultimate solution, but, as yet, I have found no such evidence. So for those who accuse me of cynicism, HAH! My insistence upon maintaining this mortal meaninglessness is evidence to the contrary.

Nellie LaRoy never feared death and it found her young. I am guessing it was tragic too although the movie leaves us guessing. She epitomized the joy of youthful ignorance of which I write. Who of us would not consider it a satisfactory cherry on top of a life well lived to attend a gathering of the pompous patrician perfumed aristocracy and puke on the proceedings AND the chief poseur among them? Aye, tis a consummation devoutly to be wished! How often I have pondered the abandonment of my intellectual search for meaning and truth for the idealization of hedonistic enjoyment! In truth it may only be finances that have kept me from the pursuit of worldly pleasures and the abandonment of intellect altogether. For the time being I shall count the failure of the lottery to match my numbers as my chief muse though there remains some question in that sentiment. How can I know but through experience? I can read of Sidhartha Gautama who renounced hedonism for a life of asceticism that ultimately led to enlightenment. But reading is not experiencing. Now, as promised, on to the Buddhists.

“Life IS suffering Highness. Anyone who tells you different is selling something,” said Westley to Buttercup. This, though few make the connection, was quite a Buddhist concept. I belittled them a while ago when I said they were spending lifetimes in deep meditation and self-sacrifice trying to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. However, the Taoist tenet of joy and suffering being two parts of the same cloth is central to the philosophy. There’s a Taoist allegory that comes to mind. There always IS! Lol I love that about Taoism actually although, if you are sagacious you will see that the little stories are not always as wise as they sound.

Okay, a Taoist master was known to tell his followers that “Life is suffering. We are born only to grow old then die. The things that we want, we never get. The majority of the things we get we never wanted. Life is suffering.” His followers couldn’t get this out of their heads. In fact it weighed on them heavily. They started shirking their studies and just lying around in morose lethargy. The master noticed and decided to take them on a journey to a beautiful and pristine lake. The spirits of the master’s followers improved but still the suffering of life remained foremost in their thoughts. One apprentice approached the master and asked if he could further explain the statement. The master produced from his knapsack a cup half filled with salt. He instructed the young learner to fill the rest of the cup from the lake. After he did so the master instructed him to drink it. The apprentice drank and spat the water out. It was an affront to his tastebuds, and he poured the majority onto the ground. The master produced a second cup only this one was filled with salt. The student feared punishment for wasting the contents of the previous cup, but the master said, “Now, go to the lake.” The young learner stood in the lake waist deep and waited for further instructions. The master then said, “Now pour the salt into the lake.” The apprentice did so. The master then said, “Now, drink from the lake.” The student drank from the lake and the salt could no longer be tasted. The water was pure and fresh tasting.

The master explained, “When you experience suffering as an individual it is more concentrated and painful. But we are all part of each other and the rest of nature. When we train our minds to commune as one with all of nature our personal suffering is just a small part of the whole.”

Great story, right? PPPPbbbtthhhtthhbbbttt! If I were the student I would have kicked the master in the nuts and told him to train himself to think of his personal suffering as a small part of the whole of nature. And such it was with my mother and the shopping bags. If I could train myself to think of that action as just one in a lifetime of actions in our coexistence, or even the whole family’s existence, and if all the good and bad deeds could be piled upon each other in one good pile and one bad pile, surely the positive pile would be higher than the negative pile! I know that but it doesn’t seem to do much good. Maybe the concept of proximity comes into play here. What have you done for me most recently? The pain from a kick in the balls is immediate just like the nuisance of having to reorganize the bags just before going shopping. Life happens chronologically and I would love to be able to take it in on an astral plane in which I could reckon time holistically rather than lilnearly, but I can’t. And I don’t give a shit HOW long you’ve studied at the Shao Ling Temple, YOU can’t either.

So here we are again at the truth being compared to make believe. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to believe all the mythology of the ages old teachings about Kung Fu masters who flew through trees and cured cancer by massaging a person’s baby toe? I just have a distinct preference for facts.

Now, you probably knew this wasn’t long in coming, let’s talk about Trump. He is now the president of the United States. Scroll back to where I asked if any bells were ringing and when I referred to making one’s own fantasy world as being something dangerous I’m sure that the Make America Great Pumpkin came to mind for many of you. There WAS a time when we needed comparisons, analogies and allegory to talk about Orange Mulius but we don’t have to anymore! I used to say his government was LIKE the WWE but he now literally HAS Linda McMahon the WWE co-owner and ball-kicker in her own right IN his cabinet. I think at one time I warned that if Trump was elected president he’d help the filthy rich and leave Joe average American out in the cold but look at the ludicrous display that was his inauguration. If I could be granted the ability to collapse ONE building in my lifetime… But life is suffering. What we want, we don’t get and what we get we don’t want. With the possible exception of those inside the Capitol Rotunda…

I watched a movie last night too. Maybe the best movie made in the last decade or two. “Don’t Look Up.” Like “Idiocracy” I expect that movie to become more a documentary with each passing day of the next 4 years. Well, save for the meteor part. The space ship at the end – Trump’s inauguration – the list would vary only slightly. And like the heroic spaceman sacrificed for humanity in the movie I think the good people in the Rotunda would chain the exits shut and go down with the ship. Anyway, I gotta get off that. I’m spending a bit too much time. I could get flagged and put in a car full of FBI agents with a bag over my head. Lol

That was a reference to the movie. I think we’re in for 4 years of “Don’t Look At America” instead of “Don’t Look Up.” There is going to be some world record breaking obfuscation, exaggeration, sophistry and prevarication. We will, to borrow an oft-heard phrase, have no idea what the hell is going on in America for the next four years. Now, will that be good? Probably. Will I still want to know what is really going on? Absolutely!

I have no doubt and few qualms about the conscious choice I have made against the passive acceptance of ignorance in favour of the heroic search for truth. In THAT at least there is no confusion. But confusion arises when I start fact finding. There is so much misinformation out there it’s hard to know whether you’re finding your way to the truth or just obtaining a harder earned and less passive version of the prevailing ignorance of the time.

Fortunately, I have found some trusted sources of knowledge, and I believe that I am on the side of good. I may be no closer than any other dreamer or no less self-delusional than a cult member or devout political or religious believer. I may be more trapped than someone in a bad marriage or friendship just going through the motions even though my heart is no longer in it. I might even be like a scientist or a Ph.D. candidate slowly coming to realize the folly of my chosen field but pressing on long enough to pay off my student loans before I regret my choice too much. But for all I know, I write about the truth, or more accurately the dream that has become truth to me, and I thought I would make this an extra special post because this is the exact point in time when that truthy dream is going to get bumpier than ever. Short of repeating the Colbertian term “truthiness,” I think I will call it maintaining mortal meaninglessness and much of the ensuing posts will consist largely of it.

Canada IS Evidently for Sale

 Read this carefully. It is evidence of Canada's long-term economic subservience to the US in a couple of major areas: automobiles and the fuel they run on. You come to a province like Alberta and you can see every effort being made to force citizens to drive vehicles and burn fuel. Sidewalks are disappearing, city transit is getting worse and long distance buses are practically things of the past. You wanna go somewhere? Drive a whole vehicle by yourself. Make it an SUV or a full sized truck. Why not a Hummer or a van or, what the hell, just go all the way and finish the cycle of absurdity, why not just drive your own fucking bus? Oh Canada! Shit yeah!

For as long as I can remember we've been exporting 99% of our crude oil to the US. That's mostly in the form of bitumen from the oilsands in Alberta. In October of 2024 (and for hundreds of months before that I'm pretty sure) it topped the list of exports from Canada to the US at $10.9 billion. What is next on the list? Sounds like the same thing but it's not. It's petroleum gas which is compressed petroleum or (in Canada's case) natural gas. $3.52 billion. So to simplify that's almost 11 billion in tar sands bitumen and 3 1/2 bil in natural gas. 

Next, oddly enough is cars $3.35 billion worth. Then even oddlier REFINED petroleum cuz, YES, Canada has finally done the obvious and started building its own oil refineries I guess. $1.84 billion. And finally car parts. $1.3 bil. 

Now, what is it that we are so hooked on importing from the US that we would be willing to suffer 25% tariffs that are being proposed by His Florida Orangeness? Cars $1.61 billion, refined petroleum $1.43 billion, car parts $1.41 billion, delivery trucks $1.34 billion, and crude petroleum $ 1.15 billion. 

This is just one month. I don't think all months are the same so this is going to be simplistic economics but bear with me cuz it serves a purpose. Let's start with cars. Canada gave the US $1.74 billion more in cars than they gave us. So we can eliminate that trade and import more Hyundais or Kias or Ladas or Tatas or cars from any other nation. The cars built here are American Chevy, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, GM, and Lincoln, Japanese Honda and Toyota or Lexuses anyway. Lexii? We're good for cars without the States.

We give them .41 billion more in refined petroleum than they give us so fuck 'em, we'll keep all that in Canada which we should have been doing a long time ago anyway. 

We can surely live without the .11 billion more in car parts that we import from US than we export.

Anywhere in Europe where Gazprom is holding the monopoly on natural gaz I am sure we could wheel and deal for 3.5 billion bucks a year. That would ease the Gazprom (Putin) foot on the neck of European fossil fuel control somewhat. 

What does that leave us with? The massive $9.75 billion dollar difference in favour of the US in crude oil being shuffled back and forth. What have I been saying for DECADES? We need to build more refineries and refine it ourselves for our own use instead of sending it to the US and China! 

However, this is all just to illustrate that we don't NEED the trade we have with the US in our top 5 products. Forget about delivery trucks, we use them to deliver shit to the US anyway. We could get by without them in the top 5, who's to say we need them in the rest of our trade? I mean it seems odd that we trade the same stuff back and forth doesn't it? Maybe "odd" isn't the right word. Maybe "fishy" is a better word or "fraudulent" or downright "diabolical." 

So when the His Impending Doomishness proposes 25% tariffs on ANY trade commodities, given the increasing diversity of the global economy it would seem blatantly obvious what the prudent response would be from Canada, wouldn't it? Just say, "Okay, we'll shop elsewhere for that. Smell ya later." RIGHT?

Well, wrong. Because when you have been engaged in the longest international screwing of the consumer partnership in the world, you don't do the obvious... it would be too obvious. Sure enough turn on the news in any Canadian household and you will see Canadian politician Doug the Macho Man Ford, not to say Macho Camacho from Idiocracy, doing his best pre-bout trash talking wearing a "Canada is Not For Sale" cap in lieu of wrestling tights and threatening retaliatory tariffs. 

If you haven't read my (and some Nobel Prize-winning economist's) explanation about how tariffs work, see my blog entry entitled "WTF." No company pays tariffs. Some companies who don't want to pay tariffs attached to goods commit customs fraud. For instance if I want to import 1000 Chinese made TV's I could stamp "made in Mexico" on them and have them re-routed through Mexico so the customs agent can match the manifest with the goods. (or just skip all that and bribe the customs agent) What a GREAT time to be a customs agent the next 4 years could be!!! I think I'll apply tomorrow!

But most companies do the easy thing and for some reason the LEGAL thing and just jack up the prices. And I don't need to say it again but I will: nobody but NOBODY jacks up the price just enough to cover the tax or tariff or whatever, they jack it up that much and then a little more. So let's give these sheisters more credit than they deserve and say the Canadian consumer will inherit 110% of the 25% tariffs Trump is imposing on imported American goods. This COULD hurt the company. It COULD. But only if the customer stops buying after the price hike. And we are good little consumers in Canada. We won't. We'll just bitch a bit louder about inflation, take our Soma, and go on consuming making the companies even richer. 

The tariff money goes to the American government which, no doubt, they will use to help out the citizens of America who voted them in.

No that money will go to the rich in the form of tax breaks or whatever and many of the owners of the companies by which the tariffed material is produced will actually benefit from the tariffs on their own goods! And it will go exactly in reverse for Canadian government and corporations. They'll put retaliatory tariffs on Canadian goods that will make them more expensive for the consumer and make all the rich richer in America too. 

But they can't act like it. They have to convince the Canadian and American people that they are outraged at the damage tariffs will do to what they laughingly call "the economy." Every industry could be making record profits and they'll still be crying the blues about the ailing economy. In reality it's the best example I've ever seen of Jonathan Swiftian war politics to date. We might just as well be arguing over whether to crack our boiled eggs at the big end vs. the little end or whether to wear Slamecksanian low heels or Tramecksanian high heels. This shit has been going on since the 17th century folks and I'm pretty sure Jonathan Swift didn't make it up.

Watch the play acting on the news. I can't cuz it drives me to drink. But observe how they feign outrage and how they borrow gestures and phraseology from professional wrestlers. When the shit hits the fan these people who are playing with lives like Risk tokens will have destroyed and even ended many but they'll have their ill-gotten gains to comfort them. 

I thought maybe there might be a chance the government, business and banks of Canada would be smart enough not to fall for such a simplistic ploy offered up by such a simpering simpleton but this has made it crystal clear once and for all how deeply committed Canada is to enriching the few at the expense of the vast majority. The worst of it is how this betrayal, this outright treason will be supported by many. Indeed, this will probably increase Canadian pride. It already fucking HAS!

In this war of tariffs I can foresee no upside for any but the rich. They are certainly not doing something I would call "winning" the war or something that is in any way beneficial for either country. War is always like that. My favourite quote about that is from Bertrand Russell: "War does not determine who is right, only who is left." 

Just Me and IT.

 Art's funeral is over and I am with my Mom back in Canada for however long it takes. I'm not holding out any hope for long term residence here based on past attempts... but you never know.

This is Calgary where my brother Mark and sister-in-law Sherrilyn's HUGE family enjoys tobogganing from time to time. It's just a small hill at the school at the end of the road where they live. Because of that I was pretty certain I could participate injury free.

I didn't go over the jump. I didn't hit any of those trees. I didn't crank my back in any uncomfortable direction although I felt every bump as I went over it. I actually came off the hill unscathed...

... until we took a shortcut through a neighbor's back yard. There was a tree in front of the fence door and because I had my hoodie hood up a branch from that tree seemed to jump right out at me and scratched my face! My glasses came off and you know those oooohs and aaaahs people make when old, feeble folks slip on ice or fall down for some other reason in lieu of laughter? Those sounds were made.

But who cares? Look at us! We were having fun! That's my niece Elanor wearing the hat I got her for Christmas last year. Isn't she cute? Their whole family is cute. I had a lot of fun staying with them. Sherrilyn's dad George was over and we played Euchre every night. It's an Ontario thing. 

During the day we played games too. One day Gwennie decided to hide at bed time. Everybody was searching the house for her until I checked the washing machine. There she was, squeaky clean and dizzy. Hah, no, just kidding. It was latched somehow, but it wasn't washing.

I decided to get some steps one day and I walked down the street to the 7-11. I planned to get some chicken wings and some munchies for Euchre later that night. I had just started out when I heard pitter pat pitter pat pitter pat getting louder and louder behind me. It was G-dawg (Gwennie) coming on the walk with me dressed in her red and black plaid onesie PJ's, gloves and boots. Luckily the jammies had a hood so she didn't get too cold. About half way there I asked if she'd told anyone she was coming with. "No," she replied. So I called Mark and told him she was with me and nobody needed to check the washing machine.

I didn't say that but I wish I had. 

Despite the sad circumstances, Art's funeral turned out to be a largely positive experience... although you might not know it from the pics. What are you supposed to do? Smile? Cry? Frown? I wasn't sure but I hadn't planned on looking ANGRY! It just worked out that way I guess. 

I know, I know, the spellings are different. I am happy to remember the names. I'll work on the spellings later. 

Andy is from Victoria. His twin boys (30 years old now) Tyler and Dylan, and his better half Linda did not make the trip with him. Jeff, who lives in Calgary, had to stay home too but it's the most people from my family we've had in a photo in... maybe ever. 

I'm not even gonna take a stab at ages. You can guess.

We had a nice little weekend. We all did some catching up; we at lots of junky food; played with the kids; Andy and I went fishing, and we did a bit of preparation for Mom's future life without her husband of 25 years. Art was a wonderful man and we'll all miss him but he took very good care of my Mom and I am sure she will miss him most. I'm going to stay with her for a while and, as much as I can, ease her grief and transition to Calgary where most of her family now live. If you have ever read this blog you might be wondering why she might put herself in such a precarious position and, suck a bag of dicks but you'd be right. 

Andy had just left and for the first time Mom and I were alone in her and Art's house to start our adventure together. And start auspiciously it did NOT. Well what did you expect from this blog? I went downstairs to go to the bathroom and the toilet was clogged. I got a plunger and plunged until I was getting fountains of water in the shower beside the toilet every time I plunged. Mom flushed all the toilets upstairs and ran the sinks but everything was going straight into the shower. We had to bail poopy water out of the shower and throw it on the front lawn. It was about 1 AM by the time we had determined that we were not going to fix this problem so we waited till morning to make some calls. Long story short, we set up a bucket and a lid in the back shed until the next morning when Shirley the next-door neighbor allowed us to use her basement facilities until ours were fixed. Luckily the plumber came next morning at 7:30 and drilled out the clog. When I say "drilled" I mean there were tree roots coming out. Things are back to normal now but it was a shitty start to operation "Move Mom to Calgary." 

Just about everything we've done so far has been a big ordeal but that was expected. I couldn't find a decent deal for internet or hijack the neighbors' so I added data to my phone plan and am typing this on a hotspot. Hopefully the 100 gigs will meet all of our needs, particularly when I start doing my final M.Ed. course. You would not BELIEVE the hellish internet/phone gymnastics I had to go through to achieve THAT goal. It is an entire blog post itself. I had seen an ad for a position in Trail/Montrose here as an educational assistant and was unable to apply cuz you need to complete your entire Indeed or whatever middleman site it was to apply and even though all the blanks were full they kept telling me my profile was only 80% complete and I could not apply for that reason. So I called the board of education directly and was transferred to Monica with whom I left a message and it wasn't answered. So I sent another email to 4 people in the education system here and got referred to a website call "Make a Future." It didn't work. I called the help line. They filled in everything exactly as I had and it worked for them. My site still had the cancel button clickable but the "finish" button was all greyed out. So anyway, I was then in and I searched for that job and found it. BUT I couldn't apply for it cuz I had signed up as a teacher but the job was inexplicably listed under "support." Well it turns out that you need to go through all the application steps all over again to apply for a "support" job. SOoooo I did it all over again and got a greyed out "finish" button again, called support again, they filled in all the blanks identically and it worked for THEM again. So after only 6 hours of THAT, I had applied for one job.

That's just me and IT. 

Anyhoo, I gotta watch Wheel of Fortune with Mom and maybe yell out some answers on Jeopardy. We have already started packing but the first thing we tried to do was take a couple beds apart to make more room to pile and pack but the garage door was locked so we couldn't get a wrench we needed to even do THAT. But that has since been remedied and we started packing today.

So we're off to a flying start. More to come...

Everything is NOT Amazing

 Look, I've said it here before but I'll say it again: aside from any of what we call "under-the-table" transactions, the government of Canada, like the government of the US, knows about every dollar that passes through our hands. Our governments are businesses and THAT is what they make their business. They really WANT to know about the other money because they believe that too is any of their business... which it isn't. They have slowly but surely made inroads into all commerce in the country to cut our "under-the-table" transactions and make people who engage in them feel more and more criminal, but to this day it remains none of their fucking business if I want to sell you my car. However, in most cases they've managed to stick their noses into our private business. We now need 1. a bill of sale, 2. an application for transfer that must be included in the vehicle registration, 3. a vehicle permit, 4. proof of ID (not just ID). To be safe you also might want to include in the transaction an "as-is" report; a safety recent inspection; vehicle history; maintenance records; warranty documentation; and a record of every time you drove it and where you went. WHO DOES THIS??? Are we supposed to live our lives like the anally retentive busybodies at the government expect us to? No, we are REQUIRED to live our lives this way! 

As you might have guessed it's my recent tax issues that have inspired this entry. To begin with, read this article and it will give you a bit of an idea of how put upon we already are every year at tax time. They KNOW what we make and don't need us to do our taxes. Folks it's unnecessary, it's unnecessary, it's unnecessary! Return-free filing is long overdue in our countries and you can blather on about how some people's taxes are more complicated than others but the biggest reason the government has made an art out of making taxes complicated is so that we will do them. Can you think of any more diabolical subservience hoop jumping to maintain citizen control? I can't. Our taxes every year are just penance to our masters.  We still call them "government" but just think about that. I won't rehash how broken our electoral process is, you all know most of it, so you know we don't legitimately elect our leaders. Why we even still use terms of respect they don't deserve to refer to them like "governers" is probably just habit. Governors are meant to be elected. Trudeau's approval rating is about 33%. Governors are meant to be respected and elected through our respect for them. I don't know how closely approval and respect track but I can't imagine a third of Canadians actually respect that dumbass not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of other people in government who look like they govern us or the holders of the majority of Canadian funds who REALLY govern us.

You may ask the obvious question: why??? but I've posted about that too. H&R Block alone is worth over 7 billion. They spend a lot of that money lobbying our government to NOT use return-free filing that is successful and well loved in all those wonderlands we frequently read about who are not (yet) totally beholden to their currency and the people who control the largest amounts of it. Germany, Japan and the UK are mentioned as places where return-free taxation has proven to be successful. Intuit and TurboTax are also powerful lobbyists according to the article. 

The writer of the article, Marty Smith, offers a solution: just don't file for several years. He says the IRS will file for you. The CRA (Canada revenue agency) is evidently less prompt. In my recent stint overseas I went 9 years without filing and the CRA did not do the job for me. I went to H&R Block because knowing the depths of its depravity, I can't spend too much time on my yearly taxation supplication to the masters of money because adhering to the tenets of this national brainwashing revolts me. "If you don't file your taxes, you are not a good Canadian." Get thee behind me you impudent flunkey! Let me give you an illustration of the indifferent public servants who handle our taxes in Canada and the methodology they employ.

I filed sometime in late March or early April. Because the taxes for 9 separate years included benefits like sales tax, child and carbon tax rebates the money started getting deposited into my account a little at a time. I was out of the country so you might think I don't deserve any of these and you'd be right - for the child rebates. People who are temporarily overseas (like me because Canada has no good jobs for me) still have expenses they pay in Canada like bank fees, storage fees, property fees etc. I was paying money so the GST/HST which are attached to everything we buy in Canada (almost) were attached. There is a minimum rebate and I qualified for it. As for the carbon rebate, I emitted ZERO carbon in Canada so I should get that too. Anyway, H&R Block told me, to my surprise, that I qualify for that money for all nine years. I thought there was a 5 year limit but the person who did my taxes told me that was no longer true. 

I didn't receive the full amount calculated by my tax return preparer when suddenly on May 23 I received an audit letter stating that they needed some info about my residence since returning to Canada and proof of that info. They also said in the letter that they would be "withholding retroactive payments" until I did so. There was a number with that letter and I called stating that I could not provide driver's license, utility bill, or any of the other proof of my residence asked for. I also asked if they wanted my residence info for the time I was away from Canada. To my relief the lady said no. Just send the info of where I've lived since Feb '23 when I came back. So I did and I texted it to her. She said (untruthfully) that she could not receive the info thru text. I tried to send it on the website but like all Canadian gov't websites it was shit and purposely so. I couldn't send it and explained the loop I got stuck in when I tried. She said, "Then fax it to me." So I faxed the info. Done, right?

Oh no! I had just begun. The deadline was July 9th for submission of the info. On July 5 I received a letter stating that since I had not submitted the requested info I would have my account adjusted. This could require repayment of money that had already been sent to me. So I started sending emails to every online site I could find that might help. The first was the CRA website, which, as I mentioned before, is shit. They ignored my explanation that I had indeed sent the info requested and that the remainder of what my H&R Block return was calculated to be (2-3000 bucks) had still not been deposited into my account. There was another place - the office of the minister of revenue or some shyte like that to which people were prompted to send other complaints if the CRA was ghosting them. So I sent my explanation there. ANOTHER month went by so I wrote to the office of the ombudsman. I received some FISHY correspondence from a lady there named Ms. Johanne Poisson. She wouldn't give her last name at first, then wouldn't answer calls and dodged messages I left. Finally she sent a message through some user-unfriendly Canada Post private internet communication system. Eventually she too said that if I'd contacted the office of the minister of revenue there was nothing she could do to help. 

Today I had a two-hour phone call with some people at Revenue Canada named Crista, Amy, and some Indian name I did not hear respectively. I gave the usual information to confirm I was who I said I was to all three separately. Crista had the same dox I have. All the letters are on my file. So she saw my confusion but said she'd have to refer me to someone in "benefits." That was the better part of an hour. I got Amy in benefits who also had all the documents on her screen and who ALSO could not figure out what the hell had happened. She brought up what I had feared from the beginning, that I would be told that I don't get benefits like GST/HST etc. while overseas. But the letter had said, "retroactive payments." What would they be if there were no benefits? And she actually looked through and saw that I had been given some GST/HST and CCR (carbon rebate) for some of the years between 2013 and 2023. So there MUST have been payments available to me. In the end she told me that maybe the confusion arose because I had not told Revenue Canada where I was during all that time.

Let's recap. I left the country and Immigration knew. That's the government. I only told them because I had to. Since returning home I had told H&R Block and all of the various agencies where I had been. I didn't give them addresses for the overseas places but who cares? I also didn't feel like they needed me to give them my addresses in Canada because THEY ALREADY KNEW THOSE TOO. They were on my T4's. That's NOT immigration, that's CRA. Those are the papers you include in your taxes that have your pay, name and the place your worked on them. But all three people I talked to today and all the people I've been communicating with are trying to pretend like it's a big thing to find out where I'm living in Canada. If they can't wait till tax time, they can ask immigration. That's the government too.

Anyway, the Indian gal went through the usual ID crap then started telling me that I need to go to a website and fill out this and that form to let CRA know where I'm living. She also said that it was MY responsibility to do that when I was overseas. She said that I was not eligible for the benefits I received while overseas and... the news I had expected... I would probably have to pay back some of the money I had already received. 

So then she continues saying here's how we want you to fill out more forms giving us information that is none of our business and that will cost you money you've already been given...

I told her that maybe they ought to look into making this THEIR responsibility, not mine, and that maybe I don't really want to help them steal money back from me to add to the money that they were already withholding from me to extort information. Or something to that effect. Then I hung up since the phone call was almost into the third hour. 

To recap, again, I am constantly going overseas to work. I have never before provided Revenue Canada with information on where I'm living or any of that. Didn't know I had to. Don't think I SHOULD have to. Particularly since THEY KNOW. Just as well as they know all the money I'm making. Even when I'm outside of Canada. They have pension arrangements with the countries where I've taught. I pay taxes in the countries where I've taught. Return-free taxes btw. They don't need any more information from me. I probably can't give them any information about me that they don't already know anyway. Maybe the whole point of asking is to make me think that's not the case. 

So that's where things stand. I still don't know why H&R Block told me I was entitled to those benefits while I was overseas if I actually wasn't. I also don't know why the CRA actually PAID me some of those benefits if I wasn't entitled to them. Why the ghosting? Why the misinformation? Why tell me I was overdue before I was overdue? Why tell me they hadn't received information that they HAD and later admitted they HAD received? Why the colossal incompetence? And finally, why would I want to be governed by liars, cheaters, and idiots like these? Why would ANYbody?

I'm back home in Canada to get this settled and to live with my Mom while we figure out what she will do, where she will live, and how we will make that all happen now that my stepdad Art has passed on. He was a great guy and he was a wonderful husband to my Mom. So it's gotta be tough for her to figure out what she's going to do without him. But we'll get 'er done. 

The distraction of this tax clusterfuck is particularly unwelcome at this time. However, I am in the last week of my penultimate course in the M.Ed. Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to find decent employment in my own country finally and avoid tax shenanigans such as the above. But probably not. I've got some prospects already but most of them are overseas. 

Further updates as event warrant.