The latest Survivor snuck up on me! But I watched the first episode amongst some fellow fans and it just might have been the best opening episode EVER! But during the show I found myself not recognizing contestants. All of these people have won. Does THAT make them memorable to me? Nope. They all have had some hugely memorable contestants during their seasons that they've beat out. Does that make them memorable to me? Nope. I think I just keep these people in my mind during their season and abandon them for good once the season is over. So for my help as much as anyone else's, I'm going to sum up a few things they did. I have blogged about Survivor before and may contradict some of the stuff I said in those posts because I just can't fully remember all the little personal things from all the seasons. Like Penner talking to Facts of Life Lisa and posing as a genius telling her that she's been trying to please other people her whole life. He was a dead man walking, he knew it, and he resorted to cereal box psychology to try to gain her allegiance. It worked too!
That's the detail there will be little of in this post. I'm just gonna cover what I remember of these people in the broadest of strokes. This will, no doubt, enhance my viewing pleasure. It might even do the same for you. Here we go...
Ethan Zohn - Won S-3 (Africa), In S-8 (All Stars). He's a social entrepreneur/keynote speaker so Survivor became his job. Probably the most has happened to him since we've seen him last. In '09 he was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. He got some stem cell and chemo treatment, SHAVED off his curly hair and whooped it. But after 20 months cancer free it returned. He has since had more localized chemo and appears to have beaten it again. Girlfriend is Jenna Murasca, a fellow Survivor winner. They appeared together on The Amazing Race. This guy is a former professional soccer player and with or without cancer, defiantly runs the NYC marathon. I remember he had an early alliance with Lex and Big Tom. I liked both of them better than Ethan I seem to remember. In episode 5 both of his allies had to change tribes so Ethan was alone but all survived to the merge. The whole time Kim was a coat tail rider but when it mattered most managed two immunity wins eliminating Tom and Lex, who were both better than her and maybe better than Ethan. It was an easy vote for the jury. Ethan 5 - Kim 2.
Nick Wilson - Won S-37 (David vs. Goliath). Lawyer. Never had a vote cast against him the entire season! But he says that THIS season, if he doesn't receive a vote against him, he'll consider it an insult. Says he'll be sneakier and try to create some ninja assassin blindsides.
I dunno, he was pretty sneaky in season 37. He already had an idol but knew there would be another one since an idol was used last tribal. So he made a fake idol and wrapped it in the paper from his REAL one. He hid it under the raft on the beach and while chatting with a few other players "found" it hoping to dissuade them from searching for the new idol. That's pretty sneaky. Anyhoo, everybody but Davie bought it. Davie told Christian (the robotics scientist who became a huge fan favourite) that Nick had an idol and Christian, who had been allied with Nick until he started going rogue, began to doubt his ally. Davie approached Mike about voting Nick out too and although HE was an ally of Nick, it started like his trust was faltering too. They probably could have voted him off, but Nick approached Davie and flat out told him that he faked the idol, so Davie, out of respect for his honesty, abandoned the blindside of Nick. He had found the hidden idol and WAS going to use it against Nick, but changed his mind. Nick wanted to vote out Christian, but saw Alison as a bigger physical threat. Mike wanted Nick to forget about Alison and vote off Davie. He tells Nick that Davie was gunning for him, which WAS true, but has since changed. Nick doesn't know this. The vote was bizarre! Nick, who now knew Davie was after him and still feared Alison more than Christian, voted for Christian. Mike voted for Davie and Alison voted for Davie. Davie played his idol so those votes were scratched. Nobody voted for Nick, but he played his fake idol THEN the real one just to be sure. Had Nick voted for Alison, Christian would have survived and most likely Nick would have been in greater danger. No idea why he voted for Christian but it was what saved his ass. Christian, over the course of the season, got 18 votes, one less than the record. That's surviving! He would have been a deserving winner. I liked Christian AND Davie, but Nick did a pretty good job. Not the most deserving, but he earned it.
Tony Vlachos - Won S-28 (Caguyan). Participated in S-34 (Game Changers) Jersey Cop. Says, "There's no way I can perform the same tricks and get away with it." "I'm going to try my best to control the game/votes without making it obvious." Tony was and IS an idol HOUND! He worked hard for his win, there is no doubt about that, but does anybody like this guy? During his season Spencer tried again and again to vote Tony out but other people either wanted to keep him around because they thought he was a goat and wouldn't get votes from the jury, or they were afraid to waste their votes on him because he had idols. This just about drove Spencer out of his mind! Spencer was betrayed by alliance members Kass and Woo when they voted out Tasha. Both thought Tony was a goat but Spencer knew he was playing both of them like fiddles. Chaos Kass stirred up shit by telling everyone Tony had promised her final three with him and his meat shield Trish. Tony got irate because HE was the only one allowed to share secrets. Kass, Woo and Spencer joined to vote out his favourite sidekick, Trish. Spencer wins immunity, Tony plays an idol and voila - Trish is gone. Then Kass's puzzle skills gave her a massive comeback win over Spence who long ago realized he had to keep winning immunity or he was dead. He was right. Next tribal he was ousted. Woo then wins a surprise extra immunity challenge and chooses to bring Tony to a final two with him STILL believing him to be a goat. The whole jury hated Tony but hated Woo's passivity all game even worse. So Tony won 8-1.
Denise Stapley - Won S-25 (Philippines) Licensed sex therapist. Still drives the same old car with duct tape and dents. "I have no clue how I'll play (survivor 40). Plans quickly dissipate into a miserable mess. Adapt, adapt, adapt." Interesting season! Final three were her at 41, Mike Firediving Skupin at 50, and Lisa Facts-of-Life at 49. S-25 started out as men vs. women. Denise had a good feeling about Malcolm and allied with him early. It was just her, Malcolm and Russel on day 9 and she was nervous. She didn't like the fact that Malcolm was interested in Angie (maybe the hottest survivor EVER so can't blame him) but figured he was smart enough to cut Angie loose in a pinch. They had to vote Russel out, but then they blended with a new tribe (which included Jonathan Penner, one of my favourite voices ever on Survivor) and were the obvious bottom two. Then the tribe lost. Not much better. But both managed to survive. Then the tribe lost again, and again. But both survived. Denise SOMEHOW did something we may never see again: she attended and survived every single tribal council in her season! She had an entertaining disgust for Abi the Brazilian drama queen, but eventually got rid of her. She masterminded the demise of Malcolm when there were only four players left and that won her the season. She totally deserved it, but more than Malcolm? I am not sure. She won 6-1-1 and got both Malcolm and Abi's votes. Penner's too.
Kim Spradlin - Winner of S-24 (One World) Former bridal shop owner, now an interior designer. Since winning has gotten married and had three babies. The season started off with two tribes separated by sex. The men were dominant and won several immunity challenges. Luckily, Kim had formed an alliance right off the bat with Alecia, Sabrina, Cat and Chelsea. It wasn't her idea, it was Sabrina's, but she agreed. Kim busted her ass in challenges, around camp and in game play. She found the women's immunity idol and told her girls solidifying that group. But then she decided that she would align with Troyzan and Jay also. The season had some really hot girls and some hot challenges including one where they oiled themselves up all in their bikinis. It also had a midget, or little person named Leif. Yet I STILL couldn't remember Kim when I saw her this season. Strange. Anyway, she brought some other girls into her girl's alliance and annihilated the men. After a terrible start, 6 of the final 7 were women. Only Tarzan survived till 6. Yes, Tarzan. And I could't remember this season. She did some awesome personal manipulation! Used Troyzan to get rid of Mike and used Christina as the bait just as Jay was about to spill the beans to Mike. She was brilliant! A well deserving winner. Troyzan caught onto her and tried to vote her out. He came close but she got wind of it and squashed that effort. Troy stuck around for a while by winning immunity and fought to get rid of Kim, but a little too late. When she got rid of him, she won. During a challenge a question was asked, "Who would you trust with your life?" and everybody picked Kim so she did quite a job! But she was a monster in challenges too! She dominated everybody but Troy. That link is a very well edited vid of her dominance. She'll be a scary opponent this season! Final three were Sabrina, Chelsea and Kim. Only Troyzan and Leif voted for Sabrina. All others voted for Kim.
Parvati/Parverty Shallow - Winner of S-16 (Micronesia), Participant S-13 (Cook Islands which Yul won), Participant S-20 (Heroes vs. Villains which Sandra won). Yoga teacher/life coach/speaker so another person who can say she'd have way different careers without Survivor. I'm sorry but "life coach" just makes me want to yell, "Buhbye coach!" as she's voted out early by people she reckons could learn about life from her. She says, "I plan to be more aggressive and sneaky, hunting for idols, distributing misinformation, let others lead and take credit, and play up the new mom role."
The fact that Parvati's win was in one of these battles of survivors who have played before, makes her an instant threat to win. But, like Rob, Sandra, Amber and, unfortunately, Tyson, she's played enough. I think the frequent players will be targeted just for that. Having said that, watching how she masterminded her way to victory in season 16 really reminded me of Kim in season 24. She made two different alliances and axed the men. The final 5/6 were women and the man was Erik, who made one of the dumbest moves in Survivor history. The girls were stirring the witches brew while they strategized throughout the show. And rather than being upset with her screwing people, the other players gave her votes at the end for outwitting them. She flirted with James the grave digger right from the beginning then brutally told him, "Sorry I'm taking girls to the end with me." James' response was a classic! "No, you don't mean sorry, you mean ha ha." He didn't give his jury vote to her and neither did Erik who was famously hoodwinked by her. Ozzy never liked her and didn't vote for her. They voted for Amanda, who was just TOO nice. The girls trusted Parvati like the survivors in season 24 trusted Kim. Even as she was lopping off their heads. Even Cirie! She's a dangerous player! Won 5-3 in a shocker.
I'm not going to do Rob and Amber. Everybody knows them. Even I do! I'm also not going to do Sandra. She's won twice and I don't think she should have been invited this season. Twice is enough. Maybe even too much. We all remember Tyson too so I won't do him. Of these four most frequent players, it's Tyson I'd like to stick around longest. He's entertaining.
Sarah Lacina - Participant in S-28 (Cagayan which Tony won), Winner of S-34 (Game Changers). Police officer. She placed 11th in Tony's year. I remember wondering if the two police officers would team up. They didn't. Then in Game Changers I thought they might again. Tony was voted out second behind only Ciera. I don't think the cops will align this time either. Just because Tony is SO unlikable! Sarah IS likable! She believes there's NOTHING she can't accomplish. Says her first time she was loyal and the second time she was a flip-flopper and that won it for her. This time her goal is to create paranoia and watch people self-destruct. Hmm... I wonder who her victim(s) will be. I think maybe Tony would be a good target. At the start of Game Changers she said, "Last time I played like a cop and look where it got me. This time I'm playing like a criminal." She started off with a bang being the only person to see the hidden advantage hidden right at Mikayla's feet and used it. Later in the game, Cirie tried to expose her as a rat using a steal a vote advantage that Sarah had allowed her to hold. Sarah ended up using it on someone else now that it was exposed, and I guess noboby cought on that Cirie was pointing out a rat. Craziest part was, it was an advantage that was originally found on the first day by Sierra. She trusted Sarah and told her about it, then said she'd will it to her if she was voted off. So Sarah voted her off and got the advantage. In the end she didn't get Sierra's vote, but she DID get Cirie's. She was spectacular at tribal council in the end and probably out-talked the other two guys there (Brad and Troyzan, no slouches!) to win the whole thing. Another person who won a show with returning survivors. She'll be tough to beat. Brad got three votes including one from Ozzie, who lost again. Sarah got all 7 of the others. Troyzan got zilch.
Yul Kwon - Winner of S-13 (Cook Islands). Product Manager. (?) He says for this season, "I'm just gonna let it rip, not walk on eggshells." Yul I remember. Since it was so long ago, it must have been an extraordinary thing he did to make me remember him. It was. In the season that created a lot of controversy teaming up African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and European Americans, Yul, of Korean heritage, found another tribemate who was too (Becky Lee) and hooked up with her on that basis. Forehead smack! Yul was a well-educated, Harvard language using geek like Christian or Aubry or Fishbach or John Cochran, only he did not look like it. He was good looking and cut. So I hated him for THAT too. Of note in this season Parvati was 6th and Jonathan Penner was 7th. Of much bigger note, Ozzie was 2nd. I really thought Ozzie should have won this one. Most people did. I think this is why it was so memorable to me. Here's basically how it happened. It was a travesty that Becky made it to the final three. Yul should have considered THAT his victory. But the guy who won all the immunity challenges, caught all the food, lit all the fires, didn't win. Came within ONE VOTE of it though. Yul 5 - Ozzy 4 - Becky 0.
Adam Klein - Winner of S-33 (Millennials vs Gen X). Used to be a homeless shelter manager. Now a keynote speaker/host. I guess because of Survivor fame? He says many think his win was fluky. He wants people to underestimate him. He also says, "Make friends or you're playing a losing game." His was an emotional game. His mother was suffering from cancer but because he and his mother were both superfans, he went on the show knowing his mother could die at any time. As it turned out, she didn't get to see him win. She died two hours after he returned from filming. Here's how he won. It was no fluke. He won challenges and using his encyclopedic knowledge of Survivor, managed to beat out some great players.
Wendell Holland - Winner of S-36 (Ghost Island). Furniture designer. Says he'll "backstab a little bit and have more fun" this season. One of the first things Wendell did on his season was he looked for an idol. And he found one of the ghosts from the past. Something I've mention this blogpost. It was Erik's immunity idol that he just gave away, stupidly trusting Parvati and the other girls who, of course, immediately and shamelessly voted him off. Wendell vowed to "reverse the curse." He was good at challenges but even better at reading people. He instantly allied with Dom, who came 2nd. A little later he saw something in Laurel (who I liked too) and those three made it to the end. He went to a good law school but dropped out because he wasn't where he wanted to be. I can totally relate! I really liked this guy! One of the things I HATE about Survivor is the mellowdramatic reactions when family arrives. This guy said, "Bye Dad, I'll go to exile island instead of visit you." Then he made a fake idol. Then he won a couple more immunity challenges. Then he won a fire making challenge. It's all here. He earned it. Wendell 6 - Dom 5 - Laurel 0.
Michele Fitzgerald - Winner S-32 (Kaoh Rong). Was a bartender. Now a business development manager. She says, "I won big being myself. I won't play much different. Make lots of personal connections." It was a scary season with people dropping from heat exhaustion all over the place. One was even evacuated. (Caleb) I felt bad. He basically went home for trying too hard. There were some real characters like Nick, Scott, Jason, Tai, Debbie, I liked Aubrey too. Michele just wasn't noticeable. She DID make moves though. Here's how.
Ben Driebergen - Winner S-35 (Heroes Healers Hustlers). Real Estate/Stay at home Dad. Former marine so started as a Hero. Another early alliance that lasted right to the end. (Chrissy). Season 35 might have been my favourite. Ben was instantly a guy I liked and as the season went along I just liked him better and better. Even his reunion with his wife on the icky part of the season - I didn't mind that so much. I was gutted THREE times when I thought he was done for, but two Ben Bombs and a surprise fire challenge and suddenly, he was back in the driver's seat. If anyone has done more for US veterans with PTSD I don't know who. This guy IS a hero and his million bucks was well earned! He won 5-2-1 vs. Chrissy and Ryan.
Jeremy Collins - Participant in S-29 (San Juan Del Sur won by Natalie), Won S-31 (Cambodia Second Chance). Firefighter. Another winner of a battle of returning players so a force to be reckoned with. Only finished 10th in San Juan Del Sur where everybody competed with another family member. His wife was second voted off. The eventual winner, Natalie, had her sister voted off first! Now this year SHE was voted off first. But not quite off...
Anyway, this was another emotional one. His wife, Val, who played with him the first time, had a baby boy during the filming. That was his "second chance" and that might have won it for him. He won 10-0-0 over Spencer and Tasha. Here's how.
Sophie Clarke - Winner S-23 (South Pacific). Healthcare consultant. Season 23 was one of my favourites! LOTS of action and memorable characters! Brandon son of the evil Russel Hantz. Coach. Ozzy. Cochran. But many say it was one of the worst seasons. Some say Coach and Ozzy lost this more than Sophie winning it. I think that's how I saw it too. Then again many say she's one of the most underrated winners. Here's her tape. You be the judge. Ozzy thought she was a spoiled brat and I don't think the tape editor really um um um liked her.
Danni Boatwright - Winner of S-11 (Guatemala). Owner of Sideline Chic a sports fan apparel store. She wore her KC Chief jersey and cowboy hat all through her season. I thought of her and talked with some other folks about her during this year's Superbowl. I'm sure she's happy! I remembered her recognizing Gary, the secret former NFLer right away.
During her season, I liked her but I liked Stephenie more. Like a lot of people. But in the final vote, she beat Steph 6-1. Here's how she did it. She reminds me of Kim a LOT. Same build. Same challenge all-out effort. Same social game. Here's another well edited vid of how she won.
Tyson is another marked man because of all his survivor experience so I won't do him. We all remember him anyway.
Natalie has already been mentioned and she's not playing anymore. Just waiting to get back into the game. So that's about it.
I'm sure I will be referring to this frequently during the season.
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Monday, February 10, 2020
The Funniest Joke in the World
Question 1: Canadians, at tax time every year, do you think to yourself, "I LOVE paying taxes! I am joyfully and financially supporting laws and programs that I believe in and I trust my government will use my money to implement!"?
Question 2: How good a laugh did you have at that?
To use an overused word, Canadian taxes (and the governments who have collected and done whatever they have done with them over the years) are LITERALLY a joke. The punchline is that that statement in question 1 is the way things are supposed to be. We all agree on that and our "elected" representatives, who traditionally perform their duties to keep things from being this way, will even go so far as to TELL us that this is how things are. But the vast chasm between reality and this statement, this lie, is so vast as to be comical making THEM a joke as well.
Back in the days when Canada was still strongly linked to Britain and we even fought wars together, the joke in question 1 was what Ernest Scribbler wrote in the above documentary footage. It became the ultimate weapon in the war against the Hun. Even two words of this joke could put you in hospital for several weeks back in the 40's and 50's. But in the ensuing years, we've built up such an immunity to it that it is now met with no more than the helpless, hopeless chuckles you may have given it when you read it.
All part of our governments' desensitization plans.
But why is this joke so funny? Dare I analyze a joke? The best way, it is said, to make a joke unfunny is to examine it and describe exactly why it's funny. So in an effort to diffuse what volatility remains in this knee-slapper, I shall now endeavor to explain it. Perhaps a large portion of its hilarity is contained in the irony that this joke we weaponized and won WWII with, originated in 1917, a few years into WWI as a temporary, "bad" tax viewed as the federal government "invading" the hitherto provincial field that taxation had been. Why? Because the Business Profits War Tax Act, which taxed large business in Canada, making $50,000/yr or more (who were profiting as businesses do during wartime) was not, in Conservative Finance Minister Sir Thomas White's opinion, "wide enough in scope." In essence, it was the origin of the very hilarious why-tax-the-people-who-are-profiting joke in Canada. A joke that lives on today in the form of slapstick humour such as "trickle down" economics, alarmism over taxes on business "scaring" them away from Canada, wage stagnation in the midst of runaway inflation and other such absurdities. It was White's very black assertion that the tax be reviewed after the war, but, 100 years on, this has yet to happen. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Why such vehement laughter? Because this tax has not only NOT been reviewed and abolished, it has, over the years and years of politicians being elected without even a small portion of their platforms being the abolition of this increasingly burdensome and complex tax, been made, by those very politicians, illegal NOT to pay. That's right, it has become larger and more complex in order to disguise its largeness and complexity, and legally enforced. How's THAT for a gag?!
What are the penalties for non payment you may wonder. Read this gut-busting article. In it, you will find that if any Canadian does not pay this temporary tax that is still criminally collected by our government, the courts may fine them up to 200% of the taxes evaded and impose a jail term of up to five years. I can hardly type I am laughing so hard! The crime, oh, aidez moi, the crime that could DOUBLE your payment to the mafia that is our government, is described as, and I'm not making this up, "defrauding the Canadian government." lol That's right, if a Canadian citizen were to decide very correctly that this is a fraudulent tax, for not paying a tax that the Canadian government defrauded Canadians into paying with the promise that it would be temporary, and have continued to collect after their crime against the Canadian people - fraud - you may be forced into DOUBLE defraudment and charged with the crime of I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I (fraud). You just can't make this stuff up folks! Five years in prison for not enabling our criminal government.
Is that too strong? Calling our government criminal? We'll come back to that. First of all I refer you to the previous paragraph in which I was committing the same crime our government commits on you working Canadians that are reading this. They commit it every year! If you read the article I linked closely, it doesn't say non payment of income tax, it says non payment of taxes. And if you try to find information on the penalty for not paying INCOME tax, you get nothing but articles on not paying taxes in general. Canadians have been jailed for non payment of taxes. But I recall not so long ago reading an article written by a Canadian, I think he was a lawyer, no way of confirming because the article has since been removed from the internet, but anyways, he wrote about this very thing. He wrote about paying all his taxes except his income tax and basically daring the government to fine him or jail him. He knew that if he were charged with fraud he could very easily defend himself by saying refusal to pay a fraudulent tax is not fraud and set a precedent. THIS is what every member of the government and legislature of Canada didn't want to happen. Because then everybody would stop paying and there goes most of your budget. So this dude just never paid his income tax and went along his merry way unfined and unjailed in Canada. Do you imagine he was the one and only guy who found this loophole? Loophole. Is that fact that a tax is illegal a "loophole?" You see how funny this is?
I submit to you that this guy was not the best lawyer in Canada. I submit to you that the best lawyers in Canada all know of this "loophole" and most work for big businesses and corporations. I seriously doubt big businesses and corporations in Canada pay their income taxes, or capital gains tax or whatever the equivalent may be. They can probably go back to the origins of these taxes and say that they were temporary taxes created to help in war and they shouldn't have to be paid any more. And they don't even need to do this because of the tax favouritism shown to them in Canada.
The other good lawyers in Canada who know about this "loophole?" Why, they become politicians. Do you suppose it is a coincidence that, to the best of my knowledge, NONE of the politicians in our lifetimes have ever made this drastic injustice a part of their political platform? This is without doubt the largest con ever perpetrated upon the Canadian people! By our government! And it is inconceivable that no politician (most of whom come from the legal profession) in the past hundred years has seriously challenged, or even made mention of what should be the biggest or at least one of the biggest issues in Canadian politics! Because THEY don't pay it either! Or at the very least they know they don't have to, but any politician who paid income tax knowing he/she didn't have to would be a politician who shared this information with the Canadian public. Which is why I maintain that there has never been a Canadian politician from any party that I would consider worthy of my vote. Because their participation in the continued collection of a criminally fraudulent tax makes them all criminals or at least accomplices whether they pay their income tax or not. And if you don't split your sides laughing at the idea that this is the crop from which we have had to choose our leadership since we were old enough to vote, well you just don't have a sense of humour.
But this just gets funnier! I gave you just one of a thousand different ways these con artists we call our government have devised to obscure the knowledge that income tax is illegal and not only should we not pay it, we should topple our "government" for collecting it. Including income tax in the word "taxes" in common social training axioms such as, "If you don't pay your taxes, you don't have a right to complain about your government," is another example. Isn't that amusing? Because if you DO pay your taxes, specifically the biggest one - your income tax, then YOU, my fellow dupe, are contributing to the delinquency of our government and have lost the privilege of complaining about it. How hilarious is that? We all pay our income tax, don't we? But by doing so, we excuse ourselves from any right to complain about doing so! It's kind of a "Catch T-1" isn't it?
The original tax code of Canada was 11 pages. The Canadian Tax Code is now so lengthy and complex that even accountants can't understand it. How can Joe Canuck be expected to? Well he's not. By tax season 2019 it had ballooned to 3227 pages. Another little zinger for you.
You want to read a fantasy/comedy classic? Try to get your hands on the Canadian federal budget every year. It's laugh out loud entertaining!
It seems like one of my favourite rants from one of my favourite comedians might fit just nicely here. In fact he's gotta be the best no? Carlin? Who's better? Maybe CK but at least Carlin didn't jack off in front of anybody. I used to love Cosby, but look at what happened there. George Carlin said this:
I have had this in my head since the first time I heard this. It's truth. It's super true. It's what many don't realize is true. It's true for Canada as much as for the US and it's gotta be spread.
I have been offered another university job here in Korea. YAY! I am very excited about that for two main reasons: 1. I will get paid vacation during both the summer and the winter semester breaks. This is HUGE! It makes the job seem like less work for more pay than any other job I've had. I hope this job has some staying power. Fingers crossed!
2. Like any job I have had in Korea, I don't even notice the taxes! My employer calculates them, takes them off my check and I don't even notice. This I have found to be the new funniest joke in the world and I hope I can manage to die laughing from it!
LMFAO!
Question 2: How good a laugh did you have at that?
To use an overused word, Canadian taxes (and the governments who have collected and done whatever they have done with them over the years) are LITERALLY a joke. The punchline is that that statement in question 1 is the way things are supposed to be. We all agree on that and our "elected" representatives, who traditionally perform their duties to keep things from being this way, will even go so far as to TELL us that this is how things are. But the vast chasm between reality and this statement, this lie, is so vast as to be comical making THEM a joke as well.
All part of our governments' desensitization plans.
But why is this joke so funny? Dare I analyze a joke? The best way, it is said, to make a joke unfunny is to examine it and describe exactly why it's funny. So in an effort to diffuse what volatility remains in this knee-slapper, I shall now endeavor to explain it. Perhaps a large portion of its hilarity is contained in the irony that this joke we weaponized and won WWII with, originated in 1917, a few years into WWI as a temporary, "bad" tax viewed as the federal government "invading" the hitherto provincial field that taxation had been. Why? Because the Business Profits War Tax Act, which taxed large business in Canada, making $50,000/yr or more (who were profiting as businesses do during wartime) was not, in Conservative Finance Minister Sir Thomas White's opinion, "wide enough in scope." In essence, it was the origin of the very hilarious why-tax-the-people-who-are-profiting joke in Canada. A joke that lives on today in the form of slapstick humour such as "trickle down" economics, alarmism over taxes on business "scaring" them away from Canada, wage stagnation in the midst of runaway inflation and other such absurdities. It was White's very black assertion that the tax be reviewed after the war, but, 100 years on, this has yet to happen. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Why such vehement laughter? Because this tax has not only NOT been reviewed and abolished, it has, over the years and years of politicians being elected without even a small portion of their platforms being the abolition of this increasingly burdensome and complex tax, been made, by those very politicians, illegal NOT to pay. That's right, it has become larger and more complex in order to disguise its largeness and complexity, and legally enforced. How's THAT for a gag?!
What are the penalties for non payment you may wonder. Read this gut-busting article. In it, you will find that if any Canadian does not pay this temporary tax that is still criminally collected by our government, the courts may fine them up to 200% of the taxes evaded and impose a jail term of up to five years. I can hardly type I am laughing so hard! The crime, oh, aidez moi, the crime that could DOUBLE your payment to the mafia that is our government, is described as, and I'm not making this up, "defrauding the Canadian government." lol That's right, if a Canadian citizen were to decide very correctly that this is a fraudulent tax, for not paying a tax that the Canadian government defrauded Canadians into paying with the promise that it would be temporary, and have continued to collect after their crime against the Canadian people - fraud - you may be forced into DOUBLE defraudment and charged with the crime of I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I (fraud). You just can't make this stuff up folks! Five years in prison for not enabling our criminal government.
Is that too strong? Calling our government criminal? We'll come back to that. First of all I refer you to the previous paragraph in which I was committing the same crime our government commits on you working Canadians that are reading this. They commit it every year! If you read the article I linked closely, it doesn't say non payment of income tax, it says non payment of taxes. And if you try to find information on the penalty for not paying INCOME tax, you get nothing but articles on not paying taxes in general. Canadians have been jailed for non payment of taxes. But I recall not so long ago reading an article written by a Canadian, I think he was a lawyer, no way of confirming because the article has since been removed from the internet, but anyways, he wrote about this very thing. He wrote about paying all his taxes except his income tax and basically daring the government to fine him or jail him. He knew that if he were charged with fraud he could very easily defend himself by saying refusal to pay a fraudulent tax is not fraud and set a precedent. THIS is what every member of the government and legislature of Canada didn't want to happen. Because then everybody would stop paying and there goes most of your budget. So this dude just never paid his income tax and went along his merry way unfined and unjailed in Canada. Do you imagine he was the one and only guy who found this loophole? Loophole. Is that fact that a tax is illegal a "loophole?" You see how funny this is?
I submit to you that this guy was not the best lawyer in Canada. I submit to you that the best lawyers in Canada all know of this "loophole" and most work for big businesses and corporations. I seriously doubt big businesses and corporations in Canada pay their income taxes, or capital gains tax or whatever the equivalent may be. They can probably go back to the origins of these taxes and say that they were temporary taxes created to help in war and they shouldn't have to be paid any more. And they don't even need to do this because of the tax favouritism shown to them in Canada.
The other good lawyers in Canada who know about this "loophole?" Why, they become politicians. Do you suppose it is a coincidence that, to the best of my knowledge, NONE of the politicians in our lifetimes have ever made this drastic injustice a part of their political platform? This is without doubt the largest con ever perpetrated upon the Canadian people! By our government! And it is inconceivable that no politician (most of whom come from the legal profession) in the past hundred years has seriously challenged, or even made mention of what should be the biggest or at least one of the biggest issues in Canadian politics! Because THEY don't pay it either! Or at the very least they know they don't have to, but any politician who paid income tax knowing he/she didn't have to would be a politician who shared this information with the Canadian public. Which is why I maintain that there has never been a Canadian politician from any party that I would consider worthy of my vote. Because their participation in the continued collection of a criminally fraudulent tax makes them all criminals or at least accomplices whether they pay their income tax or not. And if you don't split your sides laughing at the idea that this is the crop from which we have had to choose our leadership since we were old enough to vote, well you just don't have a sense of humour.
But this just gets funnier! I gave you just one of a thousand different ways these con artists we call our government have devised to obscure the knowledge that income tax is illegal and not only should we not pay it, we should topple our "government" for collecting it. Including income tax in the word "taxes" in common social training axioms such as, "If you don't pay your taxes, you don't have a right to complain about your government," is another example. Isn't that amusing? Because if you DO pay your taxes, specifically the biggest one - your income tax, then YOU, my fellow dupe, are contributing to the delinquency of our government and have lost the privilege of complaining about it. How hilarious is that? We all pay our income tax, don't we? But by doing so, we excuse ourselves from any right to complain about doing so! It's kind of a "Catch T-1" isn't it?
The original tax code of Canada was 11 pages. The Canadian Tax Code is now so lengthy and complex that even accountants can't understand it. How can Joe Canuck be expected to? Well he's not. By tax season 2019 it had ballooned to 3227 pages. Another little zinger for you.
You want to read a fantasy/comedy classic? Try to get your hands on the Canadian federal budget every year. It's laugh out loud entertaining!
It seems like one of my favourite rants from one of my favourite comedians might fit just nicely here. In fact he's gotta be the best no? Carlin? Who's better? Maybe CK but at least Carlin didn't jack off in front of anybody. I used to love Cosby, but look at what happened there. George Carlin said this:
I have been offered another university job here in Korea. YAY! I am very excited about that for two main reasons: 1. I will get paid vacation during both the summer and the winter semester breaks. This is HUGE! It makes the job seem like less work for more pay than any other job I've had. I hope this job has some staying power. Fingers crossed!
2. Like any job I have had in Korea, I don't even notice the taxes! My employer calculates them, takes them off my check and I don't even notice. This I have found to be the new funniest joke in the world and I hope I can manage to die laughing from it!
LMFAO!
Saturday, February 8, 2020
Oscar Predictions 2020
I have been off work for enough time to create a few projects for myself. One has been to get all set up to work again, of course. Doing visa stuff, sending out resumes and such is always a project. Not a nice one, but a necessary one. And it becomes more of a "project" every time I do it.
The second project has been a bit of a failure. I told myself I was going to stay active and eat healthier during this little break. However, there has been Christmas, World Jr. Hockey, New Year's, Ukrainian Christmas, Lunar New Year's, Super Bowl, it seems like every weekend has had some occasion or another to meet with somebody or other and eat and drink too much. This weekend it's Oscars. I'm sure I could go somewhere and eat and drink and watch the Oscars too.
And speaking of the Oscars, it was my third project. I have had the leisure and wherewithal to see as many of the Oscar nominated movies as I could and have done so. Most of the movies nominated for best picture, I've watched twice. In fact, there is only one movie with any major nomination that I have yet to watch. Gotta watch "Harriet" today.
Cynthia Erivo, perhaps the most interesting person to watch at the Oscars this year because she could win for both her acting AND her singing, and Oscar politics being what they are these days, I'm sorry to be honest like this but, in a movie about Harriet Tubman, the underground railroad, slavery etc., she could win even if she doesn't deserve it. I'm afraid the local movie, "Parasite" is in that same category. But we'll get to that. But aside from Cynthia and Harriet, I've seen and even seen again, every performance and movie that will play a part in the Oscars tomorrow. So on this Oscar's Eve, I'll give you my predictions. I don't think I need to warn you that there will be plenty of spoilers, do I?
BEST PICTURE
My vote: Ford vs. Ferrari or Jojo Rabbit. It's a tie. The only movie that really brought a tear to my eye this year, although Harriet might, was Ford vs. Ferrari. I hated cheering for an evil corporation, I knew the hokey, Hollywoodian hogwash I was getting myself into, but they got me. TWICE! Second time was even better! So it's my pick. My second pick is Jojo Rabbit just because it was such a quirky, unusually brilliant movie that I am pulling for it. I believe Waititi should have been nominated for Best Director and for crying out loud, he also played a major part in the movie: the part of HITLER! Imaginary Hitler. I think he should be up for Best Actor for that too! So Ford vs. Ferrari AND Jojo Rabbit tied for Best Picture.
Probable: 1917 got the nod at the BAFTA's. Is anyone surprised? A movie about British soldiers' in WWI. It was great, but I think Joker will have a huge Oscars this year and will win the Best Picture award. Among others. It has already had an effect on American culture. The stairs are now a tourist hot spot; the Joker dance is iconic - I used it in this very blog to describe Trump's reaction to being acquitted as "Joker-dancing down the steps of the Capitol Building singing, 'I'm Tremendous! Totally Exonerated! Everybody's stupid but me!'"; Joker's main character has apparently become a sort of patron saint to incels; and people are worried that the movie might be powerful enough to inspire violence in the country. That link is a very well written description of the "uncomfortable viewing" the film offered. Joker - Best Picture.
BEST ACTOR
My vote:
I made this mistake last time I did this when I thought for SURE Christian Bale would win Best Actor for acting AND looking so much like Dink Cheney. Just look at that resemblance! But it wasn't just that. The Two Popes was nothing but two guys talking. That was it! And I was rivetted all the way through! That deserves an Oscar in my book. Jonathan Pryce - Best Actor.
Probable: Joaquin Phoenix will likely get this. He WAS spectacular. This was as perfect a role for him as Pope Francis was for Pryce. But not because he looks like a Joker, because he is half a Joker himself! He's a volatile person and this role might be actually dangerous for him because of the depths he tends to sink into his roles. He won at the BAFTAs and made a political speech. He has always been, or acted, uncomfortable with winning awards. I'm not a fan to be honest. He's had some good performances, but he's had some bad ones. The good ones always seem to be when he plays unstable characters. Not a big stretch. I'd give him an Oscar nod if he could act like a regular dude. Maybe I just hold a grudge against him for his performance in Inherent Vice. He's no Dude, lemme tell you! Joaquin Phoenix - Best Actor.
BEST ACTRESS
My vote: This is probably the toughest choice for me. Of course it's impossible since I haven't seen all the performances yet. But of the 4 out of 5 I've seen, it's STILL hard to pick a winner! I didn't like Little Women so she's out. That leaves us with 3. Hated Judy. REALLY! I dunno, maybe I'm just tired of the feel-sorry-for-the-privileged type of movies in which people who are living our dream and theirs, are portrayed as depressed, alcohol-swilling, drug abusing sad sacks. Don't you WISH you had "problems" like those? Renee was fine I suppose but not my kind of movie. Charlize Theron in Bombshell was fantastic! What a chameleon! But I can't let myself be swayed by how someone looked again. But, come on Charlize, give us a spin. Just a little spin. (bad joke from the movie) I'm going for ScaJo on this one. I went into Marriage Story thinking I was going to hate it like I knew I'd hate Little Women, so it had to work harder to win me over. And it did! For many years my favourite movie was When Harry Met Sally. This could be considered, in my view, the When Harry Met Sally of the younger generation. It reminded me in places of every married couple I know! I'm not going to give Scarlett Johansson the Best Supporting Actress for her role in Jojo because it was a simple role. Be as syrupy sweet as you can. One of those characters who is so GOOD, you KNOW she/he has to die. That was her in Jojo Rabbit. Nicole, the Sally character in Marriage Story, is absolutely NOT one-dimensional! It WAS hard for me to get past her good looks. Like Brad Pitt (who was great as the stunt double in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and won the BAFTA for it (good for him!)) she is too pretty to be taken seriously, but too good an actor not to be. This was the best I've seen her. So pending Harriet, Scarlett Johansson for Best Actress.
Probable: Little Women is one of those movies that the academy chooses to make them appear to have more refined cinematic wisdom than the average movie viewer. I hated the book when I was young and was forced to read it. I guess I still haven't grown up because I didn't like the movie either. But my guess is that Saoirse Ronan will get the academy's vote on this one. Again, pending Cynthia Erivo.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
My vote: Okay, no, THIS is the hardest choice for me! While I LIKED The Irishman, both Pacino and Pesci have been in gangster movies where they've been better and haven't won Oscars. I might take heat for this but Pacino was miscast. Jimmy Hoffa was not tall but a big, burly, tough looking guy. AGAIN I may be thinking too much about appearance but he was no Hoffa. Pesci doesn't look anything like Russel Bufalino either. And let's face it, the Irishman Frank Sheeran, was bigger and Irisher than De Niro. That trio was chosen to get Oscar buzz. Well they got it. They shouldn't get the Oscar. Of the remaining trio, Pitt, Hopkins and Hanks, it's a photo finish. There were times when Tom Hanks did a pretty passable Fred Rogers, but I have to remove him from the running. His accent was inconsistent and he didn't look a lot like Mr. Rogers. But it WAS a really great and unexpected movie! So it's down to Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. While I would like to give the Oscar to Brad Pitt for kicking a cocky Bruce Lee's ass and getting Once Upon a Time banned in China, I have to go with Anthony Hopkins. Again, this movie is just two guys talking. In several languages! They didn't need flame throwers or killer dogs or serial killer cults. So although Hopkins didn't look so much like Pope Benedict, he was awesome! Best Supporting Actor - Anthony Hopkins.
Probable: I have a sneaky suspicion that the academy will go with Pesci or Pacino on this one. Brad Pitt won the BAFTA. He'd be my second choice so I wouldn't be disappointed if they chose him.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
My vote: This one wasn't too hard for me but when it got down to the final two, I wanted to call a tie like I did with the Best Pic. But there are 9 nominees for Best Pic, only 5 for this. I will make a choice if I have to flip a coin. As I said, ScaJo is out. I hate Little Women so Pugh is out. Kathy Bates played the same role as ScaJo, the perfect mother, but she was harder to eliminate because it was SO different from her tough women portrayals in Misery and Dolores Claiborne! Incidentally, Richard Jewell, the movie Kathy Bates was nominated for, has another Oscar worthy Best Actor performance in my opinion by Paul Walter Hauser. But we're getting off track. The final two are a toss up. Laura Dern, who I'm gonna tell you right now I have never liked, and Margot Robbie, who I'm gonna tell you right now I think is a goddess! You might think I'm going on looks again, and maybe I am, but I am going with Margot Robbie who also acted in a movie with an Oscar snub. How good was John Lithgow as slimy Fox News chief Roger Ailes in that? More uncomfortable viewing there! So Best Supporting Actress - Margot Robbie.
Probable: I think Margot will suffer the good-looking curse and Laura Dern will win this one. She DID get the BAFTA and I have to say her performance was irritatingly solid. I hated her as much as I think I was supposed to. Her AND Ray Liota. Nobody wins but the lawyers! Best Supporting Actress - Laura Dern.
BEST DIRECTOR
My vote: Oddly, this was easy for me even though I don't care much about this category and I will tell you right now, my pick is a director who has made some movies I didn't care for. Bong Joon Ho is a political pick. Parasite was really two movies. The beginning in which the poor family cons their way into the rich family's service, could have made for an Oscar worthy plot line if not abandoned. But the second half of the movie was terribly contrived and just plain silly. It's a lock for best foreign film but it shouldn't win a major Oscar. Not even my favourite Korean movie. Scorsese did what he does, but the cast in The Irishman was as contrived as the second half of Parasite. Sorry Marty. Todd Phillips didn't do anything really extraordinary in Joker that I saw. The best two directorial performances were by Sam Mendes and Quinton Tarantino for 1917 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in my opinion. 1917 was crazy! I almost felt like I was in the first world war! Just walking along and you see some guys who might be friends or might kill you. A plane crashes, you find a cow and milk it into your canteen then find a hiding Jewess who needs milk for her baby. Far-fetched in any normal setting, but war is not a normal setting. This and Jojo Rabbit made me alter my mindset and suspend my disbelief because of the pure counterintuitive nature of war. But I have to applaud the love letter to Hollywood of yesteryear that Quinton Tarantino wrote in his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Now maybe I'm biased because I'm similar in age to Tarantino and have a soft spot for TV commercials, old cars, movies, clothing, toys, houses, streets, hairstyles, glasses, chairs, coffee cups, this list could go on and on and I could pause this movie randomly and count the relics from the 70's that bring back memories. That alone made me love this movie. But I hear it's even better if you lived in the specific area back then. Theater names, restaurants, so much stuff is lovingly but not too obviously snuck into this movie ON TOP OF the mesmerizing story of the Manson murders a la Mad Magazine's Scenes We'd Like To See. DiCaprio was great as a washed up tough guy and Brad Pitt was even better as his stand-in and ACTUAL tough guy that DiCaprio's character wanted to be. I loved this movie and almost wished I'd lived in California for a while in the 70's because I just KNOW I missed some nostalgia! Quinton Tarantino - Best Director.
Probable: Since the Oscars is a festival all about movies and Hollywood is where so many movies are made, I gotta think the academy is filled with people who will absolutely love a fond retrospective and a really great movie set in 1970's Hollywood even more than I do. So I think this is the one major Oscars category on which they will vote the same. I think/hope they pick Tarantino here.
I reserve the right to alter my predictions after the viewing of Harriet after I finish this blogpost.
*** Well, I have to say, Harriet is a beauty! As expected, it was a tear-jerker. And Cynthia Erivo earned her Oscar nomination! The whole time I had no idea she was British! But I have to say the best part of the movie was the end. The end where they put on the screen a little of the accomplishments of Harriet Tubman. Then the credits. The credits were AWESOME! Because this song was playing:
This has gotta win the Oscar, no? What are the other nominees? Frozen? Toy Story 4? Elton John? Okay Elton John. That's probably a good one. So can this girl get the double? Best actress AND best song? I think she CAN! But in my opinion, maybe. She gets Best Song I think, but not Best Actress. I'm sticking with Scarlett Johansson as my favourite. I hope I don't sound like I have a heart of stone when I say that this movie didn't have anything we all haven't seen in other slavery movies. It wasn't new so it wasn't great. But it WAS good and Cynthia's acting was special. Within the movie there were short snippets of song that I liked too. But this song, especially "I can feel it in my bones"... ooooh shivers! So I wouldn't be too surprised to see her pull off a double!
This year's Oscars will be fun to watch!
The second project has been a bit of a failure. I told myself I was going to stay active and eat healthier during this little break. However, there has been Christmas, World Jr. Hockey, New Year's, Ukrainian Christmas, Lunar New Year's, Super Bowl, it seems like every weekend has had some occasion or another to meet with somebody or other and eat and drink too much. This weekend it's Oscars. I'm sure I could go somewhere and eat and drink and watch the Oscars too.
And speaking of the Oscars, it was my third project. I have had the leisure and wherewithal to see as many of the Oscar nominated movies as I could and have done so. Most of the movies nominated for best picture, I've watched twice. In fact, there is only one movie with any major nomination that I have yet to watch. Gotta watch "Harriet" today.
Cynthia Erivo, perhaps the most interesting person to watch at the Oscars this year because she could win for both her acting AND her singing, and Oscar politics being what they are these days, I'm sorry to be honest like this but, in a movie about Harriet Tubman, the underground railroad, slavery etc., she could win even if she doesn't deserve it. I'm afraid the local movie, "Parasite" is in that same category. But we'll get to that. But aside from Cynthia and Harriet, I've seen and even seen again, every performance and movie that will play a part in the Oscars tomorrow. So on this Oscar's Eve, I'll give you my predictions. I don't think I need to warn you that there will be plenty of spoilers, do I?
BEST PICTURE
My vote: Ford vs. Ferrari or Jojo Rabbit. It's a tie. The only movie that really brought a tear to my eye this year, although Harriet might, was Ford vs. Ferrari. I hated cheering for an evil corporation, I knew the hokey, Hollywoodian hogwash I was getting myself into, but they got me. TWICE! Second time was even better! So it's my pick. My second pick is Jojo Rabbit just because it was such a quirky, unusually brilliant movie that I am pulling for it. I believe Waititi should have been nominated for Best Director and for crying out loud, he also played a major part in the movie: the part of HITLER! Imaginary Hitler. I think he should be up for Best Actor for that too! So Ford vs. Ferrari AND Jojo Rabbit tied for Best Picture.
Probable: 1917 got the nod at the BAFTA's. Is anyone surprised? A movie about British soldiers' in WWI. It was great, but I think Joker will have a huge Oscars this year and will win the Best Picture award. Among others. It has already had an effect on American culture. The stairs are now a tourist hot spot; the Joker dance is iconic - I used it in this very blog to describe Trump's reaction to being acquitted as "Joker-dancing down the steps of the Capitol Building singing, 'I'm Tremendous! Totally Exonerated! Everybody's stupid but me!'"; Joker's main character has apparently become a sort of patron saint to incels; and people are worried that the movie might be powerful enough to inspire violence in the country. That link is a very well written description of the "uncomfortable viewing" the film offered. Joker - Best Picture.
BEST ACTOR
My vote:
I made this mistake last time I did this when I thought for SURE Christian Bale would win Best Actor for acting AND looking so much like Dink Cheney. Just look at that resemblance! But it wasn't just that. The Two Popes was nothing but two guys talking. That was it! And I was rivetted all the way through! That deserves an Oscar in my book. Jonathan Pryce - Best Actor.
Probable: Joaquin Phoenix will likely get this. He WAS spectacular. This was as perfect a role for him as Pope Francis was for Pryce. But not because he looks like a Joker, because he is half a Joker himself! He's a volatile person and this role might be actually dangerous for him because of the depths he tends to sink into his roles. He won at the BAFTAs and made a political speech. He has always been, or acted, uncomfortable with winning awards. I'm not a fan to be honest. He's had some good performances, but he's had some bad ones. The good ones always seem to be when he plays unstable characters. Not a big stretch. I'd give him an Oscar nod if he could act like a regular dude. Maybe I just hold a grudge against him for his performance in Inherent Vice. He's no Dude, lemme tell you! Joaquin Phoenix - Best Actor.
BEST ACTRESS
My vote: This is probably the toughest choice for me. Of course it's impossible since I haven't seen all the performances yet. But of the 4 out of 5 I've seen, it's STILL hard to pick a winner! I didn't like Little Women so she's out. That leaves us with 3. Hated Judy. REALLY! I dunno, maybe I'm just tired of the feel-sorry-for-the-privileged type of movies in which people who are living our dream and theirs, are portrayed as depressed, alcohol-swilling, drug abusing sad sacks. Don't you WISH you had "problems" like those? Renee was fine I suppose but not my kind of movie. Charlize Theron in Bombshell was fantastic! What a chameleon! But I can't let myself be swayed by how someone looked again. But, come on Charlize, give us a spin. Just a little spin. (bad joke from the movie) I'm going for ScaJo on this one. I went into Marriage Story thinking I was going to hate it like I knew I'd hate Little Women, so it had to work harder to win me over. And it did! For many years my favourite movie was When Harry Met Sally. This could be considered, in my view, the When Harry Met Sally of the younger generation. It reminded me in places of every married couple I know! I'm not going to give Scarlett Johansson the Best Supporting Actress for her role in Jojo because it was a simple role. Be as syrupy sweet as you can. One of those characters who is so GOOD, you KNOW she/he has to die. That was her in Jojo Rabbit. Nicole, the Sally character in Marriage Story, is absolutely NOT one-dimensional! It WAS hard for me to get past her good looks. Like Brad Pitt (who was great as the stunt double in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and won the BAFTA for it (good for him!)) she is too pretty to be taken seriously, but too good an actor not to be. This was the best I've seen her. So pending Harriet, Scarlett Johansson for Best Actress.
Probable: Little Women is one of those movies that the academy chooses to make them appear to have more refined cinematic wisdom than the average movie viewer. I hated the book when I was young and was forced to read it. I guess I still haven't grown up because I didn't like the movie either. But my guess is that Saoirse Ronan will get the academy's vote on this one. Again, pending Cynthia Erivo.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
My vote: Okay, no, THIS is the hardest choice for me! While I LIKED The Irishman, both Pacino and Pesci have been in gangster movies where they've been better and haven't won Oscars. I might take heat for this but Pacino was miscast. Jimmy Hoffa was not tall but a big, burly, tough looking guy. AGAIN I may be thinking too much about appearance but he was no Hoffa. Pesci doesn't look anything like Russel Bufalino either. And let's face it, the Irishman Frank Sheeran, was bigger and Irisher than De Niro. That trio was chosen to get Oscar buzz. Well they got it. They shouldn't get the Oscar. Of the remaining trio, Pitt, Hopkins and Hanks, it's a photo finish. There were times when Tom Hanks did a pretty passable Fred Rogers, but I have to remove him from the running. His accent was inconsistent and he didn't look a lot like Mr. Rogers. But it WAS a really great and unexpected movie! So it's down to Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. While I would like to give the Oscar to Brad Pitt for kicking a cocky Bruce Lee's ass and getting Once Upon a Time banned in China, I have to go with Anthony Hopkins. Again, this movie is just two guys talking. In several languages! They didn't need flame throwers or killer dogs or serial killer cults. So although Hopkins didn't look so much like Pope Benedict, he was awesome! Best Supporting Actor - Anthony Hopkins.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
My vote: This one wasn't too hard for me but when it got down to the final two, I wanted to call a tie like I did with the Best Pic. But there are 9 nominees for Best Pic, only 5 for this. I will make a choice if I have to flip a coin. As I said, ScaJo is out. I hate Little Women so Pugh is out. Kathy Bates played the same role as ScaJo, the perfect mother, but she was harder to eliminate because it was SO different from her tough women portrayals in Misery and Dolores Claiborne! Incidentally, Richard Jewell, the movie Kathy Bates was nominated for, has another Oscar worthy Best Actor performance in my opinion by Paul Walter Hauser. But we're getting off track. The final two are a toss up. Laura Dern, who I'm gonna tell you right now I have never liked, and Margot Robbie, who I'm gonna tell you right now I think is a goddess! You might think I'm going on looks again, and maybe I am, but I am going with Margot Robbie who also acted in a movie with an Oscar snub. How good was John Lithgow as slimy Fox News chief Roger Ailes in that? More uncomfortable viewing there! So Best Supporting Actress - Margot Robbie.
Probable: I think Margot will suffer the good-looking curse and Laura Dern will win this one. She DID get the BAFTA and I have to say her performance was irritatingly solid. I hated her as much as I think I was supposed to. Her AND Ray Liota. Nobody wins but the lawyers! Best Supporting Actress - Laura Dern.
BEST DIRECTOR
My vote: Oddly, this was easy for me even though I don't care much about this category and I will tell you right now, my pick is a director who has made some movies I didn't care for. Bong Joon Ho is a political pick. Parasite was really two movies. The beginning in which the poor family cons their way into the rich family's service, could have made for an Oscar worthy plot line if not abandoned. But the second half of the movie was terribly contrived and just plain silly. It's a lock for best foreign film but it shouldn't win a major Oscar. Not even my favourite Korean movie. Scorsese did what he does, but the cast in The Irishman was as contrived as the second half of Parasite. Sorry Marty. Todd Phillips didn't do anything really extraordinary in Joker that I saw. The best two directorial performances were by Sam Mendes and Quinton Tarantino for 1917 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in my opinion. 1917 was crazy! I almost felt like I was in the first world war! Just walking along and you see some guys who might be friends or might kill you. A plane crashes, you find a cow and milk it into your canteen then find a hiding Jewess who needs milk for her baby. Far-fetched in any normal setting, but war is not a normal setting. This and Jojo Rabbit made me alter my mindset and suspend my disbelief because of the pure counterintuitive nature of war. But I have to applaud the love letter to Hollywood of yesteryear that Quinton Tarantino wrote in his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Now maybe I'm biased because I'm similar in age to Tarantino and have a soft spot for TV commercials, old cars, movies, clothing, toys, houses, streets, hairstyles, glasses, chairs, coffee cups, this list could go on and on and I could pause this movie randomly and count the relics from the 70's that bring back memories. That alone made me love this movie. But I hear it's even better if you lived in the specific area back then. Theater names, restaurants, so much stuff is lovingly but not too obviously snuck into this movie ON TOP OF the mesmerizing story of the Manson murders a la Mad Magazine's Scenes We'd Like To See. DiCaprio was great as a washed up tough guy and Brad Pitt was even better as his stand-in and ACTUAL tough guy that DiCaprio's character wanted to be. I loved this movie and almost wished I'd lived in California for a while in the 70's because I just KNOW I missed some nostalgia! Quinton Tarantino - Best Director.
Probable: Since the Oscars is a festival all about movies and Hollywood is where so many movies are made, I gotta think the academy is filled with people who will absolutely love a fond retrospective and a really great movie set in 1970's Hollywood even more than I do. So I think this is the one major Oscars category on which they will vote the same. I think/hope they pick Tarantino here.
I reserve the right to alter my predictions after the viewing of Harriet after I finish this blogpost.
*** Well, I have to say, Harriet is a beauty! As expected, it was a tear-jerker. And Cynthia Erivo earned her Oscar nomination! The whole time I had no idea she was British! But I have to say the best part of the movie was the end. The end where they put on the screen a little of the accomplishments of Harriet Tubman. Then the credits. The credits were AWESOME! Because this song was playing:
This year's Oscars will be fun to watch!
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Still Your President
Only the nobodies have to do what is right.
This quote inspired by the recent travesty in the U.S. senate that surprised no one, but is now drawing a slight investigation into the country and how things are done (or not done), which will have the requisite shelf life of a few days, then blow over and things will return to their corrupt, undemocratic norm.
A friend of mine posted on Facebook a gloaty #stillyourpresident and has been taking a bit of a shelling for it. In the midst of the shelling, he defended his position saying, "He was just proven not guilty via a trial. We cannot question the verdict of that trial anymore than we can question the verdict of a trial of a hypothetical loved one who gets convicted of vehicular homicide because they are our brother and he didn’t mean it or only drank once." He went on to say, "As Americans we have to respect the system."
My retort was, "But to be fair, in your vehicular homicide analogy, the cop who measured the blood alcohol level, the people who saw the accident, the survivors of the accident, they just might be allowed as witnesses, no?" To which, to his credit, he replied that he would have voted in favour of calling witnesses if he were a senator.
I then posted, "Corrupt people with too much power altering proper legal procedure. That's the issue here. Alice Walton (Walmart bazillionaire) has refused breathalyzers while drunk driving. She even struck and killed a woman while, witnesses say, she was speeding. Got away with it. Not only should you NOT respect this, you are supposed to fight it. Dawson and Downey in A Few Good Men. They were found innocent but dishonorably discharged. Because they followed orders but shouldn't have. They were nobodies so they had to pay the penalty. If they were Walton or Trump, they would have had a "good" lawyer who altered proper legal procedure. I think the senators who voted against witnesses shouldn't go to jail, but they should be dishonorably discharged. What do you reckon?"
Well? What do you reckon? Should the cop who took a pile of money from Alice Walton to NOT test her blood alcohol level be dishonourably discharged too? Does it depend on how much? Even a million bucks is small potatoes to Alice Walton. But I'm sure it would convince a LOT, I'd even venture to say a MAJORITY of police officers to waive the breathalyzer. Anybody disagree? Maybe YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
Imagine Colonel Jessup as a congressman. He doesn't give a damn about American people who live comfortably under the leadership they provide and then question the manner in which they provide it. Had they BEEN called as witnesses, how many of the senate members (who are also members of the military called the G.O.P.) would have spewed some shit like this? Trying to convince Americans that they should shut up and settle for leadership that is clearly corrupt and legally incorrect, otherwise, they are just entitled snowflakes. How many of those same senators would STILL have supported the president even IF witnesses were called and then used something similar to this as their private or even public defense?
The media will say Republican senators voted "along party lines" or it was a "partisan" vote or some softer sounding euphemism for what it actually is: highly entrenched bullying and peer pressure. I submit to you that Republican Senate leaders "whipping" the vote against calling witnesses is even beyond peer pressure. It is purposeful alteration of proper legal procedure. There's another term for that we've been hearing for the last 3 and a half years: it's called obstruction of justice. You can't have justice if you obstruct proper legal procedure. Why the hell do they even get a vote? If your best friend was up on charges of, I'll stick with the analogy, vehicular manslaughter, and he also happened to be your boss, and for some obscenely unethical reason you were able to vote on whether or not witnesses to his crime could be called in his hearing, and he told you to vote against calling witnesses in his trial or you'd be fired, what do you think you'd do? No, no, no! Even better, he called you up and he told you that if you voted against calling witnesses in his trial... you would have a long and prosperous career in his company. A perfect phone call! No quid pro quo! He didn't say if you allowed witnesses you'd be fired, but it's exactly what he meant.
Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, well done! Every other republican senator should be dishonorably discharged. When leadership harms the people it MUST be removed. This is an obligation, not a suggestion. So despite people insisting you must honour your leadership and/or legal system, you, as American citizens, have a higher calling to answer.
But the American people knew this would happen, didn't they? And they will soon get used to accepting another vile and outrageous attack on their democracy and way of life. And this will strengthen the resolve of bad politicians and people with power in America to just keep treating the American public like bigger and bigger pieces of shit. How long before this goes too far?
*** Whoops! Sorry. Well done Mitt Romney! Susan Collins jammed out.
P.S. Instead of ripping up papers and giving sarcastic rounds of applause, maybe Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi should do some soul-searching and rule-changing about why in the name of fuckety-fuck party members of an impeached president are even allowed to vote on ANY part of his trial, not just calling witnesses. Or whoever is in charge of this colossal FUBAR in American government procedure. An obvious hole to plug. Let's not hold our breath until it happens though.
P.P.S. Instead of the above happening, THIS happens! It's in your face, catch me if you can, Trump doing the Joker dance down the steps of parliament singing, "I'm tremendous! I'm untouchable! Everybody's stupid but me!" bald faced, unrepentant corruption! If he DID walk down Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, his flunkies would pass laws that allowed people loyal to him to be jury members and choose the witnesses and evidence exhibits to be introduced during the trial... if there even would be one.
Right of revolution. In political philosophy, the right of revolution (or right of rebellion) is the right or duty of the people of a nation to overthrow a government that acts against their common interests and/or threatens the safety of the people without cause.
Do your duty America! And don't depend on your ridiculously impotent voting system.
This quote inspired by the recent travesty in the U.S. senate that surprised no one, but is now drawing a slight investigation into the country and how things are done (or not done), which will have the requisite shelf life of a few days, then blow over and things will return to their corrupt, undemocratic norm.
A friend of mine posted on Facebook a gloaty #stillyourpresident and has been taking a bit of a shelling for it. In the midst of the shelling, he defended his position saying, "He was just proven not guilty via a trial. We cannot question the verdict of that trial anymore than we can question the verdict of a trial of a hypothetical loved one who gets convicted of vehicular homicide because they are our brother and he didn’t mean it or only drank once." He went on to say, "As Americans we have to respect the system."
My retort was, "But to be fair, in your vehicular homicide analogy, the cop who measured the blood alcohol level, the people who saw the accident, the survivors of the accident, they just might be allowed as witnesses, no?" To which, to his credit, he replied that he would have voted in favour of calling witnesses if he were a senator.
I then posted, "Corrupt people with too much power altering proper legal procedure. That's the issue here. Alice Walton (Walmart bazillionaire) has refused breathalyzers while drunk driving. She even struck and killed a woman while, witnesses say, she was speeding. Got away with it. Not only should you NOT respect this, you are supposed to fight it. Dawson and Downey in A Few Good Men. They were found innocent but dishonorably discharged. Because they followed orders but shouldn't have. They were nobodies so they had to pay the penalty. If they were Walton or Trump, they would have had a "good" lawyer who altered proper legal procedure. I think the senators who voted against witnesses shouldn't go to jail, but they should be dishonorably discharged. What do you reckon?"
Well? What do you reckon? Should the cop who took a pile of money from Alice Walton to NOT test her blood alcohol level be dishonourably discharged too? Does it depend on how much? Even a million bucks is small potatoes to Alice Walton. But I'm sure it would convince a LOT, I'd even venture to say a MAJORITY of police officers to waive the breathalyzer. Anybody disagree? Maybe YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
The media will say Republican senators voted "along party lines" or it was a "partisan" vote or some softer sounding euphemism for what it actually is: highly entrenched bullying and peer pressure. I submit to you that Republican Senate leaders "whipping" the vote against calling witnesses is even beyond peer pressure. It is purposeful alteration of proper legal procedure. There's another term for that we've been hearing for the last 3 and a half years: it's called obstruction of justice. You can't have justice if you obstruct proper legal procedure. Why the hell do they even get a vote? If your best friend was up on charges of, I'll stick with the analogy, vehicular manslaughter, and he also happened to be your boss, and for some obscenely unethical reason you were able to vote on whether or not witnesses to his crime could be called in his hearing, and he told you to vote against calling witnesses in his trial or you'd be fired, what do you think you'd do? No, no, no! Even better, he called you up and he told you that if you voted against calling witnesses in his trial... you would have a long and prosperous career in his company. A perfect phone call! No quid pro quo! He didn't say if you allowed witnesses you'd be fired, but it's exactly what he meant.
Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, well done! Every other republican senator should be dishonorably discharged. When leadership harms the people it MUST be removed. This is an obligation, not a suggestion. So despite people insisting you must honour your leadership and/or legal system, you, as American citizens, have a higher calling to answer.
But the American people knew this would happen, didn't they? And they will soon get used to accepting another vile and outrageous attack on their democracy and way of life. And this will strengthen the resolve of bad politicians and people with power in America to just keep treating the American public like bigger and bigger pieces of shit. How long before this goes too far?
*** Whoops! Sorry. Well done Mitt Romney! Susan Collins jammed out.
P.S. Instead of ripping up papers and giving sarcastic rounds of applause, maybe Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi should do some soul-searching and rule-changing about why in the name of fuckety-fuck party members of an impeached president are even allowed to vote on ANY part of his trial, not just calling witnesses. Or whoever is in charge of this colossal FUBAR in American government procedure. An obvious hole to plug. Let's not hold our breath until it happens though.
P.P.S. Instead of the above happening, THIS happens! It's in your face, catch me if you can, Trump doing the Joker dance down the steps of parliament singing, "I'm tremendous! I'm untouchable! Everybody's stupid but me!" bald faced, unrepentant corruption! If he DID walk down Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, his flunkies would pass laws that allowed people loyal to him to be jury members and choose the witnesses and evidence exhibits to be introduced during the trial... if there even would be one.
Right of revolution. In political philosophy, the right of revolution (or right of rebellion) is the right or duty of the people of a nation to overthrow a government that acts against their common interests and/or threatens the safety of the people without cause.
Do your duty America! And don't depend on your ridiculously impotent voting system.
Saturday, February 1, 2020
Procariat Problems
February. Watch out. This is unhappy blog post time. While it IS Superbowl time and it is no mosquito time and it is hockey time, this time of year has also been find a job in Korea time for me. March is the start of the spring semester and (sort of) the new year in Korea, so it has been my time of scrambling for last minute jobs that have been abandoned by masters or doctorate holders and at this time of re-confirming my indentured servitude to the man (and it's not just a Korean or Canadian man as we'll see, it's now a global man) I have cranked out some of my more acidic blog posts. Well, get ready for another one. There will be some new stuff if you are thinking of sticking around and reading this, but I think most of it will be the necessary chest unburdening that has been a major part of the purpose of this blog since its inception. It's gonna sound familiar and it's gonna be bitching. So... fair warning.
I suppose if I wanted to force myself to be positive... okay, even I laughed at THAT! But I COULD craft a sentence in that oft blogged about precariat way, something like, "At LEAST I don't have any complaints about work!" If you don't know, a precariat is a precarious proletariat. This is not a word I made up although this blog has contained many such words. This is something I heard my hero Noam Chomsky utter. Precarious proletariats are those gutless wonders we have in every profession who are ruining things for everyone. They are so scared of losing their jobs that they will polish mucky-muck knobs to a glistening shine then act like it's what we all should be doing. And I fear they are becoming the majority. As mentioned before, the only two successful ways of maintaining workplace dignity in history have been honest government regulation and honest unionization. Even if you change the word "honest" to the more realistic "proper" in those two phrases, both are either endangered or extinct but I am still trying to make it through life without being a knob-gobbling precariat. It ain't easy.
Also, if you didn't know, I'm unemployed. Exercising whatever the opposite of the behavior of a precariat is, (let's make up a word shall we?) I have left another job as a "procariat," a protesting proletariat. Truth be told, my procariat behavior, though, it should have (if implemented) led to improved workplace harmony and increased profit for all, including the mucky-muck management, shareholders and owners, was not appreciated as such, being in variance with one of the aforementioned mucky-mucks (whose knob I refused to polish) and precipitated my leaving. In fact, left me no choice. If I had my druthers, I'd still be working with Carrot/SKhynix, mainly to avoid the hellish processes I am about to complain of. So to sum up, at LEAST I don't have any complaints about work... because I'm not working. Sometimes I feel so alone in my failure to see any positivity in a statement like that!
But I HAVE REALLY enjoyed my short break since mid December! It's nice not working. Tasting the tiniest bit of true freedom us beasts of burden are allowed by our owners. It HAS been sweet. Vacations and/or brief respites from servitude to the man that we call with socially acceptable shame and disdain "unemployment," really allow one to understand the attractions retirement holds. They also make one starkly aware that not working ain't gettin' one closer TO retirement. So with great reluctance, this Superbowl weekend will mark my departure from sports/movie watching, visiting, sightseeing, travel and leisure, and my return to pre-retirement vocation.
To be more accurate, there has been quite a bit of resume updating, cover letter writing and begging different institutions to allow me the privilege of making lots of money for them and so very little for myself. And sometime next week I have an interview that I am hopeful, WILL lead to my re-entry into the sluggish participation in the proletariat workaday world. But it does not come without the requisite punishment for having left it for a wonderful, little while.
My least favourite thing. You know what it is if you know me at all. The tedious paper pushing, certification, affirmation and participation in what with every jot and tittle re-confirms my voluntary slavery. Stamped this, apostilled that, proof of this, evidence of the other, including and diabolically perhaps ESPECIALLY all the stuff I have done many times before. It's Chinese water torture, soul-sucking, waterboarding, human abuse! I feel like Westley on The Machine.
"Turn it all the way to 50!" say the immigration officers, embassy certificationers, Ottawa document service owners, banks, travel agents, hotel owners, politicians, lawmakers, and of course, my employers. They're all scratching each others' backs making sure I can't get ahead let alone jump up to their class.
What's new this year? Well I have already noticed a few things that have been added to the penance of the Canadian proletariat hoping to find work in Korea. I'll start with the D-10 visa. It's not really new, but it's new to me in that I looked into getting one this time around. After my last day of work in mid December, if I IMMEDIATELY applied for the D-10 (looking for work) visa, it would have taken 3 weeks to process. So in the second week of January, if I had absolutely immediately found employment, it would have taken at least 4 weeks to change the D-10 to a new E-2 work visa. So I could have sneaked under the wire if I had found work in no time flat. But, as I have mentioned, I usually don't. It's probably because most ESL employers in Korea are still knocked out by paper. I only have a BA. If I had a masters or doctorate in fish scaling, pie baking, A NY THING, I'd be scooped up in the first wave of hiring. With my experience, I'm sure of it. But I still have just a BA. For this reason, I normally get hired in February.
Being the eternal optimist I am, I chose to hope for an early hire this year. If that had happened before February, which it didn't, I could have simply transferred my E-2 sponsorship from one employer to another. I wouldn't have had to leave Korea or get all the superfluous paperwork done. I also chose this route because of all the things I found out about the vaunted D-10 visa. It's 150 bucks or so for getting it AND changing it to an E-2. That's 300 bucks, which is MUCH cheaper than what I'm doing now. However, you also need to go to your bank in Korea and get an official statement proving you have a balance of about 5 grand. You have to fill out the 34D application, which I'm sure is just another repetition of a thousand other forms I've already filled out a thousand other times. You have to present a "job seeking plan" to an immigration agent, who can require proof of this plan. How do you prove you've been to an interview? Travel receipts? Who keeps them? You can see how it could be dead simple for an immigration officer to make their day more fun adding a few more trials to a foreigner's tribulation. And then my favourite: the "possible supplementary documents." Again, it could be any Herculean task like acquiring sworn statements from interviewers or getting a Korean criminal record check (which IS a thing now). It would probably depend on the kind of day the individual immigration officer was having and I have had bad luck in this regard, so I wasn't about to chance it. I was even told that I would have to go to the nearest immigration to my residence. My residence is something the Korean government doesn't know about. For a long time it's been this way. This was the choice of my employer. So I would face a pretty steep fine applying for a D-10 visa at the proper location. The immigration officer I asked about this couldn't come up with a figure but said it depends on how long ago you moved without telling the government. So all tolled, I'm betting that the D-10 option would have been even MORE expensive for me than what I'm doing now.
What I am doing now actually started last week. I had to leave Korea to convert my E-2 visa (which expired Jan. 31) to a Canadian visitor's visa, which lasts 6 months. This is another new thing. I FEAR new things because I have this phenomenal "gift" of being able to gravitate toward any flaw the novelty of something will create. Another example will follow. As for this example, they used to stamp your passport in Korea. Like every other country. Now they've chosen to just give slips of easily lost paper. As you will note from the following pic, they've done it in the customary inexplicable Korean way. I have often postulated that they believe complication = sophistication. You tell me.
The top two were my two previous visa runs to Japan for my year-long and 6-month E-2 visas. Notice that the dates are completely messed up. The only correct date is the January 31st printed on top of "permitted until." My new stamp says I'm permitted until the day BEFORE my previous visa expired! But according to this site, the Korean immigration department did this on purpose. So under, or ON TOP OF "permitted until," they chose not to put the date you are permitted until. Why the hell would they? Complication for complication's sake. Pretty standard. Now we have to know how long Korea allows people from our country to stay. Probably hoping for overstay fines. Money is always the reason for stupid shit like this isn't it?
But anyway, I'm back in the ROFK baby! Now on a tourist visa and I used my ACTUAL address so it's closer to legal now. And they didn't get their pound of flesh for my move from one unknown address to another. I don't like doing things illegally but in Korea you are so often forced to! Mostly because of corruption leading to inscrutably stupid laws. But that's the same everywhere.
Because I'm now back on the visitor's visa, in order to convert to an E-2 visa, I need to get the usual criminal record check and verified degree. And oh yeah, there's something new, complicated and more expensive added to this process too. A few things actually. Used to be there were a few places that required sealed transcripts from your university. Mokpo University was one place I worked where they required them. So I've done this at least once before. I think twice if I'm not mistaken. The transcripts are sent directly to your employer as further proof of your degree to augment the stamped, apostilled or otherwise exhaustively (and for me superfluously) verified degree. Now EVERYBODY has to include them with the other dox submitted to the Korean embassy in Canada. I've had Korean immigration officers show me their screen and tell me that my degree has been verified in so many ways that it is totally unnecessary to do it in any way again. But the love of complication must not go unrequited.
Here's the fun part: I went to the Lakehead University web page from whence I had previously downloaded their request form for transcripts and it had been completely updated! 2019! Oh excellent! Now transcript requests can be handled online. That ALWAYS makes EVERYTHING easier! heh heh Doesn't it? Here comes example number two. Not only are they triple what they used to cost, but you need to access a section of the website called myInfo. In order to do that, yup, you guessed it, the bane of my existence, you need a username and password. So after navigating my way to the myInfo part of the page, which wasn't easily found, I am told I can recover my username and password easily. Since I haven't ever been given one or chosen one, I, of course, need to register. No registration for myInfo to be found. I spent at least an hour trying to send someone a message or find a good troubleshooting area to no avail. The closest I came was a troubleshooting area where you can put in your student number and your name and they will "retrieve" your login info. I put in my student number and my name. "Invalid name" was what I received. So I tried every spelling of my name and none worked. I managed to send an email to a troubleshooting for alumni email, but who knows if that was a genuine address or not?
Not finished yet. After returning from Japan on January 30th (and receiving my new and confusion-upgraded visa paper) I went to visit friends who live in the airport city of Incheon. Since they have a big police station there, I talked my helpful friend Amber into helping me get fingerprinted. I also sent an email to the document service I have used for both Korean and Chinese visas the past few times I've needed them. I asked for information on everything I needed to send them. I received a prompt reply with a link to their site. I was told that I would find a list of everything I needed. What I wasn't told was that I had to order what I needed AND PAY before I GOT the list. But I had successfully used fingerprints from this very police station with this very document service in the past, why wouldn't I be able to use them again? See how optimistic I am?
We go to the station and get the prints. I remembered getting a signature and a stamp one time so I asked the fingerprint taker if she could stamp the fingerprint form. She said no. She told me they don't have a stamp. I am pretty sure the stamp I received before was from the same police station. But it was a different officer so maybe she doesn't have a stamp and the other guy did. Whatever, it shouldn't be a problem, right? The next day I got home from visiting my friends and did the application on my computer. I couldn't do it conveniently on my phone or at my friends' place. Then, as promised, I received the list. Sure enough, the fingerprints MUST be stamped or they will not be accepted. This is new. AND more complication-efficient. So now I have three sets of fingerprints that I think are useless. I will probably need to go somewhere else to get printed again and I will probably need to pay. It says in the new rules that without a stamp or seal they could be acceptable with a receipt and business card of the police station. Well I received no receipt because the fingerprints were done for free. And I didn't ask for a card of course.
So here I sit waiting for responses from the document service and my university. I can't do anything until I find out what I can do. So another day passes without the ability of getting a visa even if I were to be hired. Why? Because the foreigner punishment Machine is on level 50. I'm sure this won't be the final batch of complications. I still have to get a job offer and move!
But AT LEAST I haven't caught the Corona virus! Oh my God Magnum! Did I really just type that?
I suppose if I wanted to force myself to be positive... okay, even I laughed at THAT! But I COULD craft a sentence in that oft blogged about precariat way, something like, "At LEAST I don't have any complaints about work!" If you don't know, a precariat is a precarious proletariat. This is not a word I made up although this blog has contained many such words. This is something I heard my hero Noam Chomsky utter. Precarious proletariats are those gutless wonders we have in every profession who are ruining things for everyone. They are so scared of losing their jobs that they will polish mucky-muck knobs to a glistening shine then act like it's what we all should be doing. And I fear they are becoming the majority. As mentioned before, the only two successful ways of maintaining workplace dignity in history have been honest government regulation and honest unionization. Even if you change the word "honest" to the more realistic "proper" in those two phrases, both are either endangered or extinct but I am still trying to make it through life without being a knob-gobbling precariat. It ain't easy.
Also, if you didn't know, I'm unemployed. Exercising whatever the opposite of the behavior of a precariat is, (let's make up a word shall we?) I have left another job as a "procariat," a protesting proletariat. Truth be told, my procariat behavior, though, it should have (if implemented) led to improved workplace harmony and increased profit for all, including the mucky-muck management, shareholders and owners, was not appreciated as such, being in variance with one of the aforementioned mucky-mucks (whose knob I refused to polish) and precipitated my leaving. In fact, left me no choice. If I had my druthers, I'd still be working with Carrot/SKhynix, mainly to avoid the hellish processes I am about to complain of. So to sum up, at LEAST I don't have any complaints about work... because I'm not working. Sometimes I feel so alone in my failure to see any positivity in a statement like that!
But I HAVE REALLY enjoyed my short break since mid December! It's nice not working. Tasting the tiniest bit of true freedom us beasts of burden are allowed by our owners. It HAS been sweet. Vacations and/or brief respites from servitude to the man that we call with socially acceptable shame and disdain "unemployment," really allow one to understand the attractions retirement holds. They also make one starkly aware that not working ain't gettin' one closer TO retirement. So with great reluctance, this Superbowl weekend will mark my departure from sports/movie watching, visiting, sightseeing, travel and leisure, and my return to pre-retirement vocation.
To be more accurate, there has been quite a bit of resume updating, cover letter writing and begging different institutions to allow me the privilege of making lots of money for them and so very little for myself. And sometime next week I have an interview that I am hopeful, WILL lead to my re-entry into the sluggish participation in the proletariat workaday world. But it does not come without the requisite punishment for having left it for a wonderful, little while.
My least favourite thing. You know what it is if you know me at all. The tedious paper pushing, certification, affirmation and participation in what with every jot and tittle re-confirms my voluntary slavery. Stamped this, apostilled that, proof of this, evidence of the other, including and diabolically perhaps ESPECIALLY all the stuff I have done many times before. It's Chinese water torture, soul-sucking, waterboarding, human abuse! I feel like Westley on The Machine.
What's new this year? Well I have already noticed a few things that have been added to the penance of the Canadian proletariat hoping to find work in Korea. I'll start with the D-10 visa. It's not really new, but it's new to me in that I looked into getting one this time around. After my last day of work in mid December, if I IMMEDIATELY applied for the D-10 (looking for work) visa, it would have taken 3 weeks to process. So in the second week of January, if I had absolutely immediately found employment, it would have taken at least 4 weeks to change the D-10 to a new E-2 work visa. So I could have sneaked under the wire if I had found work in no time flat. But, as I have mentioned, I usually don't. It's probably because most ESL employers in Korea are still knocked out by paper. I only have a BA. If I had a masters or doctorate in fish scaling, pie baking, A NY THING, I'd be scooped up in the first wave of hiring. With my experience, I'm sure of it. But I still have just a BA. For this reason, I normally get hired in February.
Being the eternal optimist I am, I chose to hope for an early hire this year. If that had happened before February, which it didn't, I could have simply transferred my E-2 sponsorship from one employer to another. I wouldn't have had to leave Korea or get all the superfluous paperwork done. I also chose this route because of all the things I found out about the vaunted D-10 visa. It's 150 bucks or so for getting it AND changing it to an E-2. That's 300 bucks, which is MUCH cheaper than what I'm doing now. However, you also need to go to your bank in Korea and get an official statement proving you have a balance of about 5 grand. You have to fill out the 34D application, which I'm sure is just another repetition of a thousand other forms I've already filled out a thousand other times. You have to present a "job seeking plan" to an immigration agent, who can require proof of this plan. How do you prove you've been to an interview? Travel receipts? Who keeps them? You can see how it could be dead simple for an immigration officer to make their day more fun adding a few more trials to a foreigner's tribulation. And then my favourite: the "possible supplementary documents." Again, it could be any Herculean task like acquiring sworn statements from interviewers or getting a Korean criminal record check (which IS a thing now). It would probably depend on the kind of day the individual immigration officer was having and I have had bad luck in this regard, so I wasn't about to chance it. I was even told that I would have to go to the nearest immigration to my residence. My residence is something the Korean government doesn't know about. For a long time it's been this way. This was the choice of my employer. So I would face a pretty steep fine applying for a D-10 visa at the proper location. The immigration officer I asked about this couldn't come up with a figure but said it depends on how long ago you moved without telling the government. So all tolled, I'm betting that the D-10 option would have been even MORE expensive for me than what I'm doing now.
What I am doing now actually started last week. I had to leave Korea to convert my E-2 visa (which expired Jan. 31) to a Canadian visitor's visa, which lasts 6 months. This is another new thing. I FEAR new things because I have this phenomenal "gift" of being able to gravitate toward any flaw the novelty of something will create. Another example will follow. As for this example, they used to stamp your passport in Korea. Like every other country. Now they've chosen to just give slips of easily lost paper. As you will note from the following pic, they've done it in the customary inexplicable Korean way. I have often postulated that they believe complication = sophistication. You tell me.
The top two were my two previous visa runs to Japan for my year-long and 6-month E-2 visas. Notice that the dates are completely messed up. The only correct date is the January 31st printed on top of "permitted until." My new stamp says I'm permitted until the day BEFORE my previous visa expired! But according to this site, the Korean immigration department did this on purpose. So under, or ON TOP OF "permitted until," they chose not to put the date you are permitted until. Why the hell would they? Complication for complication's sake. Pretty standard. Now we have to know how long Korea allows people from our country to stay. Probably hoping for overstay fines. Money is always the reason for stupid shit like this isn't it?
But anyway, I'm back in the ROFK baby! Now on a tourist visa and I used my ACTUAL address so it's closer to legal now. And they didn't get their pound of flesh for my move from one unknown address to another. I don't like doing things illegally but in Korea you are so often forced to! Mostly because of corruption leading to inscrutably stupid laws. But that's the same everywhere.
Because I'm now back on the visitor's visa, in order to convert to an E-2 visa, I need to get the usual criminal record check and verified degree. And oh yeah, there's something new, complicated and more expensive added to this process too. A few things actually. Used to be there were a few places that required sealed transcripts from your university. Mokpo University was one place I worked where they required them. So I've done this at least once before. I think twice if I'm not mistaken. The transcripts are sent directly to your employer as further proof of your degree to augment the stamped, apostilled or otherwise exhaustively (and for me superfluously) verified degree. Now EVERYBODY has to include them with the other dox submitted to the Korean embassy in Canada. I've had Korean immigration officers show me their screen and tell me that my degree has been verified in so many ways that it is totally unnecessary to do it in any way again. But the love of complication must not go unrequited.
Here's the fun part: I went to the Lakehead University web page from whence I had previously downloaded their request form for transcripts and it had been completely updated! 2019! Oh excellent! Now transcript requests can be handled online. That ALWAYS makes EVERYTHING easier! heh heh Doesn't it? Here comes example number two. Not only are they triple what they used to cost, but you need to access a section of the website called myInfo. In order to do that, yup, you guessed it, the bane of my existence, you need a username and password. So after navigating my way to the myInfo part of the page, which wasn't easily found, I am told I can recover my username and password easily. Since I haven't ever been given one or chosen one, I, of course, need to register. No registration for myInfo to be found. I spent at least an hour trying to send someone a message or find a good troubleshooting area to no avail. The closest I came was a troubleshooting area where you can put in your student number and your name and they will "retrieve" your login info. I put in my student number and my name. "Invalid name" was what I received. So I tried every spelling of my name and none worked. I managed to send an email to a troubleshooting for alumni email, but who knows if that was a genuine address or not?
Not finished yet. After returning from Japan on January 30th (and receiving my new and confusion-upgraded visa paper) I went to visit friends who live in the airport city of Incheon. Since they have a big police station there, I talked my helpful friend Amber into helping me get fingerprinted. I also sent an email to the document service I have used for both Korean and Chinese visas the past few times I've needed them. I asked for information on everything I needed to send them. I received a prompt reply with a link to their site. I was told that I would find a list of everything I needed. What I wasn't told was that I had to order what I needed AND PAY before I GOT the list. But I had successfully used fingerprints from this very police station with this very document service in the past, why wouldn't I be able to use them again? See how optimistic I am?
We go to the station and get the prints. I remembered getting a signature and a stamp one time so I asked the fingerprint taker if she could stamp the fingerprint form. She said no. She told me they don't have a stamp. I am pretty sure the stamp I received before was from the same police station. But it was a different officer so maybe she doesn't have a stamp and the other guy did. Whatever, it shouldn't be a problem, right? The next day I got home from visiting my friends and did the application on my computer. I couldn't do it conveniently on my phone or at my friends' place. Then, as promised, I received the list. Sure enough, the fingerprints MUST be stamped or they will not be accepted. This is new. AND more complication-efficient. So now I have three sets of fingerprints that I think are useless. I will probably need to go somewhere else to get printed again and I will probably need to pay. It says in the new rules that without a stamp or seal they could be acceptable with a receipt and business card of the police station. Well I received no receipt because the fingerprints were done for free. And I didn't ask for a card of course.
So here I sit waiting for responses from the document service and my university. I can't do anything until I find out what I can do. So another day passes without the ability of getting a visa even if I were to be hired. Why? Because the foreigner punishment Machine is on level 50. I'm sure this won't be the final batch of complications. I still have to get a job offer and move!
But AT LEAST I haven't caught the Corona virus! Oh my God Magnum! Did I really just type that?
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Small Deeds and Great Moments
"Countless small actions of unknown people lie at the roots of the great moments of history." Howard Zinn
I didn't like the way I left off my first post of the year. It was a bit of a downer. I've been told it's whinging if you complain without offering alternatives, constructive criticism if you do. So I will elaborate on the previous post as intellectually as I can so that I will appear less of a party pooper. I will also do my best to conjure up the indomitable positivity of the late Howard Zinn and suggest some ways that we might make 2020 a good year.
Back in the 1920's and 1930's and for some time later, a couple of guys named Walter Lippmann and John Dewey had one of the slowest arguments ever. They were arguing in book form. Lippman wrote "Public Opinion" in '22, "The Phantom Public" in '25 and Dewey, by way of rebuttal, wrote "The Public and its Problems" in 1927. They were arguing mostly about the role of "the public" in a democracy. A lot of what I wrote in my last post was awfully Lippmannian. But I'd like to be a bit more Deweyish in this post if I might.
Originally, Lippmann wrote that people face severe limitations in comprehending their sociopolitical and cultural environments. Thus, they tend to employ simplistic stereotypes to a reality that is highly complex. The old frog in a well example is used in Korea. When a frog falls into a well early in life, it sees only that well and begins to believe there is nothing else in the world. We tend to personalize our worlds and create our own pseudo-environments. Most need, or prefer, the world summarized for them by the better informed in whom they place, or misplace their trust.
In this way most "public opinion" is formed. In this way also, it is open to manipulation by anyone who understands it well enough. Lippmann had an odd idea of how this should be avoided in American politics. He (correctly) believed that the political elite were of a class incapable of accurately understanding the public. The public being mostly made up of the middle and lower classes. Anybody see that episode of Ellen when she gets Bill Gates to guess grocery prices? Yeah. NO IDEA about regular folks. So anyway, Lippmann proposed a "specialized class" to gather and analyze data, give the data to the decision makers in society and they could use it to help them govern. This, of course (wrongly) assumed that the ruling elite gave a shit.
Still, in his later book, "The Phantom Public," he cited so many erroneous concepts people have of exactly who and what "the public" is comprised of, that he called the public a myth, illusion or phantom. One of these mistaken ideas was that the public could act competently to direct their own affairs and a functioning government is the will of the people. He viewed the vast majority of the public as ignorant "bystanders" who were more interested in their private affairs than those that govern society. "The outsider is necessarily ignorant, usually irrelevant and often meddlesome, because he is trying to navigate the ship from dry land." He believed that there were a few, the "agents," who were members of the ruling class, who were the only ones capable of governing and that they should be subjected to as little interference as possible from the "bystanders."
"The public must be put in its place... so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd." By "us" in that quote, I presume Lippmann meant the important, intelligent, upper class people, and he included himself among them. His ideal government was a sort of technocracy in which people with the skills, connections and educations to govern, (the rich) ,were better suited and therefore better governors. This was not democracy.
John Dewey believed that democracy, in which the public chose their representatives, was better for an increasingly complex society even though it was flawed and continuously subverted. The way to make it effective, he believed, was constant public vigilance. He advocated almost total control and regulation of government by the public. Otherwise, he said that politics, laws and policy would be just a shadow cast by business over society. Every governmental authority needed to be constantly challenged and justified. If it couldn't be justified, it needed to be dismantled. The Declaration of Independence states that governments are entirely artificial and when they become destructive of basic democratic principles such as equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government. So while you could make the argument that he had a more American idea of the role of the public than did Lippmann, he also had considerably more faith in the public than Lippmann, or than I did in my previous post.
One way in which they agreed was that the public doesn't really have much influence on the "state," until they experience negative consequences of its leadership. They practice most of their vigilance in the face of substantial crises such as government impeding basic democratic principles. Interestingly, Dewey felt that the biggest problem with this type of public representation was distraction. The largest distraction, he felt, was technology. Back in his day, he was referring to movies, cheap reading material, and cars. I wonder if he'd just surrender to Lippmann if he saw the technological distractions of today. But NO! We can't give up on Dewey just yet!
Dewey believed (correctly) that technology could be used to improve communication and make information more readily available so as to increase public interest in politics. Why, I've been using my computer and internet all day to learn all this stuff I'm blogging about. We ALL can! Right? I won't tell you what I did with my computer and internet for the two or three weeks BEFORE today. But it is this unfortunate reality that makes it pretty tough to side with Dewey on this.
Add to it studies like Gilens and Page that showed about 70% of Americans have no influence on public policy. And, not surprisingly, they're the lower and middle classes. In fact, both Gilens and Page agree that if the missing element in their meta-study, the super rich, were represented, that 70 would rise dramatically.
Noam Chomsky, in his documentary "Requiem For The American Dream" said that even during the great depression, which he remembers, there was more hope than he sees today. Class mobility, which was an important part of that American Dream, has all but disappeared. He tells us that James Madison, the father of the American Constitution said that it should be used to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." So like Lippmann, he believed democracy should actually be PREVENTED.
Way back in 1776 when Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations," he wrote about merchants and manufacturers thinking of their own profit, no matter how grievous the impact on England. He called it the "Vile Maxim." All for us and nothing for all (or at least the 99.9%) Back in his day it was merchants and manufacturers, while today it's financial institutions and multinationals, but the Vile Maxim remains. Learning about what happened in the U.S. is a good way to learn about what most likely happened to all the other countries that have similar problems, and a solution that works for the States, will probably work anywhere else. So what happened?
Well, I'm glad I asked that. In the 50's and 60's I hear "the public" was pretty happy in the U.S. and in Canada. I think those were pretty prosperous times for a lot of nations who didn't lose the war. Even for those who DID for crying out loud! The whole world was wonderful! Despite all of his policy, I gotta believe these are the halcyon days to which the right impeachable Donald Trump refers when he says he wants to make America great again. If he only knew how they BECAME great!
One of the things that made those years great was actually the kind of vigilance in government regulation that Dewey advocates. Unions were strong, government agencies regulated, businesses actually PAID their taxes, capital gains and dividends were taxed like workers' wages, banks were dead boring places where money was stored, and America made money by making stuff. People felt like they contributed to society and to their government and culture. Almost everybody loved it! Almost.
In the 70's businesses started to fight back. Captains of industry have never liked democracy. It gives too much power to the people who they don't want to wield it. Namely, the people who aren't them. This had to stop. So what did they do?
1. They shifted the economy away from making stuff to money manipulation. This gave financial institutions a lot more power and big businesses started making more money with their money than with their products. For example, by the 70's General Electric made 50% of its profit by just moving money around. Of course new schemes for this magical money manipulation were needed and less regulation had to be part of the plan.
2. Workers were put in direct competition with the rest of the world including the super oppressed workers like the Chinese. Insecure workers don't ask for raises. They don't unionize or complain. They work overtime for nothing. They do as they're told. Alan Greenspan once commented that greater worker insecurity was the base of his success. These insecure workers were even given a title: the "precariat." The precarious proletariat. I have never felt job security in my life. Have you?
3. The burden of sustaining society had been shifted off the rich. Taxes were lowered, in some cases eliminated, CEO's got big raises, stockholders got big benefits from stock buybacks and other financial trickery, workers got the shaft. In the 50's and 60's, companies used to raise workers' salaries so they'd buy more of the companies' products. In the 70's, stockholders got rich through artificially rising company values. Workers get jack.
4. Regulatory capture was necessary. The 70's was a time of lobbyist explosion. People who persuaded governments and lawmakers to do what they wanted bought government favour and literally got laws made for them. Companies became people because they bought laws that said so. Money became speech because companies bought laws that said so. And representatives of companies were showing up in leadership positions of the agencies that were supposed to regulate them. Limitations on risky new money manipulation were removed. Worst of all, agreements were made so that if the financial institutions went overboard, they'd get bailed out. Banks were loaning money on the PROMISE of government bailout! And there's no such thing as "government" bailout, there is only taxpayer bailout.
5. I call number five Applizing. Because as much of a douchebag as he was, Steve Jobs was one of the best at fabricating consumers. Getting people to make irrational decisions about purchases they couldn't afford of things they didn't need. This provided distraction of the "bewildered herd." They didn't realize how bad things were getting as long as they could get, or hope to get the latest gizmo they coveted.
If you're still not with me and Lippman and you don't think democracy is completely gone, total control is in the hands of the elite and most of us are just ignorant bystanders, Chomsky gives a very good litmus test. It's a test we can do once a year on April 15th, the tax deadline. How do people feel at that time? It should be a day of celebration if our society is a successful democracy. We should be happily funding the programs we have all agreed upon. But, like I said in the last post, it seems more like usury/sodomy. Are you happy at tax time?
Okay, Howard Zinn to the rescue. When asked how he can remain so positive in the face of such great negativity about American democracy, he says, "I have seen enough change to suggest that more change is possible."
While he was alive Zinn lost his job teaching at Spelman College for marching in the civil rights movement during the 50's and 60's. He thought the allies couldn't win WWII, but it happened. He thought the US would never get out of Vietnam, but they did. And he remembers that before the famous protests, sit-ins, freedom marches and freedom rides, there were small protests, sit-ins, freedom marches and freedom rides that nobody knows about. He believes we need to EARN our democracy. The 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution were never enforced... until people forced them to be. In fact the 14th amendment was more useful to hurt democracy. It was intended to protect the rights of freed slaves. But that's the one that was somehow used to get a court ruling that corporations are people.
Zinn was a(n) historian. He wrote a history book that sold more than 2 million copies called "A People's History of the US." He says that incorrect history isn't bad. It can be corrected. He was inspired to write this book by unknown history. The stuff that doesn't appear in history books. The stuff we don't learn in schools. Chapter one in the book is the truth about Columbus. Not a hero. Much is known about the civil war and slavery but little is known about what happened to the native Americans during that time.
Other small people who made a difference were people who went on strike and won. Where are those stories? Why don't school children learn them I wonder. The Colorado Coal Strike of 1913. There's a Woody Guthrie song about the Ludlow Massacre, but does anybody learn the song in school or read about the bloodiest labour dispute in the US? They say between 69 and 199 people died.
What about the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912? Bread and roses. These are heroic stories of small people fighting big industry and winning. Zinn says people don't go to wars, governments do, so when people fight in wars, which he did (he was a bombardier in WWII) they fight for their government, not their country. But people who are fighting for proper labour practices, freedom of speech, equality and the proper government of their country... THOSE are people who are fighting for their country.
It seems to me that governments in the US, and some other countries I can think of, have become destructive of their citizens' basic democratic principles. If people want to fight for their country, they just might have to fight against their government. I'm not advocating bloodshed. I hope we are more civilized in this day and age. But let's all try to do many, many small deeds like joining a rally or protest; starting one; writing a member of government; joining a labour union; starting one; writing a song; (writing a blog post); studying REAL history; learning about REAL heroes in your culture; there are a million things we can do, but staring at our phones isn't one of them.
As we can see already, 2020 ain't making ITSELF a good year!
I didn't like the way I left off my first post of the year. It was a bit of a downer. I've been told it's whinging if you complain without offering alternatives, constructive criticism if you do. So I will elaborate on the previous post as intellectually as I can so that I will appear less of a party pooper. I will also do my best to conjure up the indomitable positivity of the late Howard Zinn and suggest some ways that we might make 2020 a good year.
Back in the 1920's and 1930's and for some time later, a couple of guys named Walter Lippmann and John Dewey had one of the slowest arguments ever. They were arguing in book form. Lippman wrote "Public Opinion" in '22, "The Phantom Public" in '25 and Dewey, by way of rebuttal, wrote "The Public and its Problems" in 1927. They were arguing mostly about the role of "the public" in a democracy. A lot of what I wrote in my last post was awfully Lippmannian. But I'd like to be a bit more Deweyish in this post if I might.
Originally, Lippmann wrote that people face severe limitations in comprehending their sociopolitical and cultural environments. Thus, they tend to employ simplistic stereotypes to a reality that is highly complex. The old frog in a well example is used in Korea. When a frog falls into a well early in life, it sees only that well and begins to believe there is nothing else in the world. We tend to personalize our worlds and create our own pseudo-environments. Most need, or prefer, the world summarized for them by the better informed in whom they place, or misplace their trust.
In this way most "public opinion" is formed. In this way also, it is open to manipulation by anyone who understands it well enough. Lippmann had an odd idea of how this should be avoided in American politics. He (correctly) believed that the political elite were of a class incapable of accurately understanding the public. The public being mostly made up of the middle and lower classes. Anybody see that episode of Ellen when she gets Bill Gates to guess grocery prices? Yeah. NO IDEA about regular folks. So anyway, Lippmann proposed a "specialized class" to gather and analyze data, give the data to the decision makers in society and they could use it to help them govern. This, of course (wrongly) assumed that the ruling elite gave a shit.
Still, in his later book, "The Phantom Public," he cited so many erroneous concepts people have of exactly who and what "the public" is comprised of, that he called the public a myth, illusion or phantom. One of these mistaken ideas was that the public could act competently to direct their own affairs and a functioning government is the will of the people. He viewed the vast majority of the public as ignorant "bystanders" who were more interested in their private affairs than those that govern society. "The outsider is necessarily ignorant, usually irrelevant and often meddlesome, because he is trying to navigate the ship from dry land." He believed that there were a few, the "agents," who were members of the ruling class, who were the only ones capable of governing and that they should be subjected to as little interference as possible from the "bystanders."
"The public must be put in its place... so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd." By "us" in that quote, I presume Lippmann meant the important, intelligent, upper class people, and he included himself among them. His ideal government was a sort of technocracy in which people with the skills, connections and educations to govern, (the rich) ,were better suited and therefore better governors. This was not democracy.
John Dewey believed that democracy, in which the public chose their representatives, was better for an increasingly complex society even though it was flawed and continuously subverted. The way to make it effective, he believed, was constant public vigilance. He advocated almost total control and regulation of government by the public. Otherwise, he said that politics, laws and policy would be just a shadow cast by business over society. Every governmental authority needed to be constantly challenged and justified. If it couldn't be justified, it needed to be dismantled. The Declaration of Independence states that governments are entirely artificial and when they become destructive of basic democratic principles such as equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government. So while you could make the argument that he had a more American idea of the role of the public than did Lippmann, he also had considerably more faith in the public than Lippmann, or than I did in my previous post.
One way in which they agreed was that the public doesn't really have much influence on the "state," until they experience negative consequences of its leadership. They practice most of their vigilance in the face of substantial crises such as government impeding basic democratic principles. Interestingly, Dewey felt that the biggest problem with this type of public representation was distraction. The largest distraction, he felt, was technology. Back in his day, he was referring to movies, cheap reading material, and cars. I wonder if he'd just surrender to Lippmann if he saw the technological distractions of today. But NO! We can't give up on Dewey just yet!
Dewey believed (correctly) that technology could be used to improve communication and make information more readily available so as to increase public interest in politics. Why, I've been using my computer and internet all day to learn all this stuff I'm blogging about. We ALL can! Right? I won't tell you what I did with my computer and internet for the two or three weeks BEFORE today. But it is this unfortunate reality that makes it pretty tough to side with Dewey on this.
Add to it studies like Gilens and Page that showed about 70% of Americans have no influence on public policy. And, not surprisingly, they're the lower and middle classes. In fact, both Gilens and Page agree that if the missing element in their meta-study, the super rich, were represented, that 70 would rise dramatically.
Noam Chomsky, in his documentary "Requiem For The American Dream" said that even during the great depression, which he remembers, there was more hope than he sees today. Class mobility, which was an important part of that American Dream, has all but disappeared. He tells us that James Madison, the father of the American Constitution said that it should be used to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." So like Lippmann, he believed democracy should actually be PREVENTED.
Way back in 1776 when Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations," he wrote about merchants and manufacturers thinking of their own profit, no matter how grievous the impact on England. He called it the "Vile Maxim." All for us and nothing for all (or at least the 99.9%) Back in his day it was merchants and manufacturers, while today it's financial institutions and multinationals, but the Vile Maxim remains. Learning about what happened in the U.S. is a good way to learn about what most likely happened to all the other countries that have similar problems, and a solution that works for the States, will probably work anywhere else. So what happened?
Well, I'm glad I asked that. In the 50's and 60's I hear "the public" was pretty happy in the U.S. and in Canada. I think those were pretty prosperous times for a lot of nations who didn't lose the war. Even for those who DID for crying out loud! The whole world was wonderful! Despite all of his policy, I gotta believe these are the halcyon days to which the right impeachable Donald Trump refers when he says he wants to make America great again. If he only knew how they BECAME great!
One of the things that made those years great was actually the kind of vigilance in government regulation that Dewey advocates. Unions were strong, government agencies regulated, businesses actually PAID their taxes, capital gains and dividends were taxed like workers' wages, banks were dead boring places where money was stored, and America made money by making stuff. People felt like they contributed to society and to their government and culture. Almost everybody loved it! Almost.
In the 70's businesses started to fight back. Captains of industry have never liked democracy. It gives too much power to the people who they don't want to wield it. Namely, the people who aren't them. This had to stop. So what did they do?
1. They shifted the economy away from making stuff to money manipulation. This gave financial institutions a lot more power and big businesses started making more money with their money than with their products. For example, by the 70's General Electric made 50% of its profit by just moving money around. Of course new schemes for this magical money manipulation were needed and less regulation had to be part of the plan.
2. Workers were put in direct competition with the rest of the world including the super oppressed workers like the Chinese. Insecure workers don't ask for raises. They don't unionize or complain. They work overtime for nothing. They do as they're told. Alan Greenspan once commented that greater worker insecurity was the base of his success. These insecure workers were even given a title: the "precariat." The precarious proletariat. I have never felt job security in my life. Have you?
3. The burden of sustaining society had been shifted off the rich. Taxes were lowered, in some cases eliminated, CEO's got big raises, stockholders got big benefits from stock buybacks and other financial trickery, workers got the shaft. In the 50's and 60's, companies used to raise workers' salaries so they'd buy more of the companies' products. In the 70's, stockholders got rich through artificially rising company values. Workers get jack.
4. Regulatory capture was necessary. The 70's was a time of lobbyist explosion. People who persuaded governments and lawmakers to do what they wanted bought government favour and literally got laws made for them. Companies became people because they bought laws that said so. Money became speech because companies bought laws that said so. And representatives of companies were showing up in leadership positions of the agencies that were supposed to regulate them. Limitations on risky new money manipulation were removed. Worst of all, agreements were made so that if the financial institutions went overboard, they'd get bailed out. Banks were loaning money on the PROMISE of government bailout! And there's no such thing as "government" bailout, there is only taxpayer bailout.
5. I call number five Applizing. Because as much of a douchebag as he was, Steve Jobs was one of the best at fabricating consumers. Getting people to make irrational decisions about purchases they couldn't afford of things they didn't need. This provided distraction of the "bewildered herd." They didn't realize how bad things were getting as long as they could get, or hope to get the latest gizmo they coveted.
If you're still not with me and Lippman and you don't think democracy is completely gone, total control is in the hands of the elite and most of us are just ignorant bystanders, Chomsky gives a very good litmus test. It's a test we can do once a year on April 15th, the tax deadline. How do people feel at that time? It should be a day of celebration if our society is a successful democracy. We should be happily funding the programs we have all agreed upon. But, like I said in the last post, it seems more like usury/sodomy. Are you happy at tax time?
Okay, Howard Zinn to the rescue. When asked how he can remain so positive in the face of such great negativity about American democracy, he says, "I have seen enough change to suggest that more change is possible."
While he was alive Zinn lost his job teaching at Spelman College for marching in the civil rights movement during the 50's and 60's. He thought the allies couldn't win WWII, but it happened. He thought the US would never get out of Vietnam, but they did. And he remembers that before the famous protests, sit-ins, freedom marches and freedom rides, there were small protests, sit-ins, freedom marches and freedom rides that nobody knows about. He believes we need to EARN our democracy. The 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution were never enforced... until people forced them to be. In fact the 14th amendment was more useful to hurt democracy. It was intended to protect the rights of freed slaves. But that's the one that was somehow used to get a court ruling that corporations are people.
Zinn was a(n) historian. He wrote a history book that sold more than 2 million copies called "A People's History of the US." He says that incorrect history isn't bad. It can be corrected. He was inspired to write this book by unknown history. The stuff that doesn't appear in history books. The stuff we don't learn in schools. Chapter one in the book is the truth about Columbus. Not a hero. Much is known about the civil war and slavery but little is known about what happened to the native Americans during that time.
Other small people who made a difference were people who went on strike and won. Where are those stories? Why don't school children learn them I wonder. The Colorado Coal Strike of 1913. There's a Woody Guthrie song about the Ludlow Massacre, but does anybody learn the song in school or read about the bloodiest labour dispute in the US? They say between 69 and 199 people died.
What about the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912? Bread and roses. These are heroic stories of small people fighting big industry and winning. Zinn says people don't go to wars, governments do, so when people fight in wars, which he did (he was a bombardier in WWII) they fight for their government, not their country. But people who are fighting for proper labour practices, freedom of speech, equality and the proper government of their country... THOSE are people who are fighting for their country.
It seems to me that governments in the US, and some other countries I can think of, have become destructive of their citizens' basic democratic principles. If people want to fight for their country, they just might have to fight against their government. I'm not advocating bloodshed. I hope we are more civilized in this day and age. But let's all try to do many, many small deeds like joining a rally or protest; starting one; writing a member of government; joining a labour union; starting one; writing a song; (writing a blog post); studying REAL history; learning about REAL heroes in your culture; there are a million things we can do, but staring at our phones isn't one of them.
As we can see already, 2020 ain't making ITSELF a good year!
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
The World is Another Year Older and Stupider
Well happy new year first of all. Why not start off with something stupid? Happy new year. It's a new year of making money for our employers. This should make us happy? It's a new year of spending five days of smiling at people you want to throat punch; receiving a small fraction of the pay for the work you do 100% of; getting out of bed before the sun comes up and coming home after it goes down; just getting out of bed at all; wearing clothes that make you uncomfortable; maintaining a professional demeanor; faking your fake, fake fakeness all for two days off. If you're lucky. That's happiness nowadays. And the ratio of years we do this to years we don't is even worse. Check out some information I ran across in an article by Alex J. Pollock titled "Retirement Finance: Old Ideas, New Reality." Pollock discusses what he calls the work-to-retirement (W:R) ratio, which divides your number of working years by your number of retirement years. In the past, when people worked longer and lived shorter lives, the ratio was modest. Someone who worked from age 20 until age 70 and then died at 75 would have a ratio of 50:5, or 10. Today, someone who works from age 22 until age 62 and lives to 82 has a ratio of 40:20, or 2. That's a big difference. That may sound better, but it's not. Because now it's practically impossible to save enough money for retirement so we're actually at a worse ratio. Anyway, I don't want to get into the money.
Basically, we get five years off from birth to the age of 5 because we're pretty useless workers. By age 5 or 6 we start our training. Companies of the world agree to allow that 15 years of downtime when we COULD be put to work, in order to make us better employees later in life. That's euphemistically called our education. Used to be just get your high school and you could move on to a good job. Nowadays it's almost mandatory to get some university education so we get a few more years of the good life before becoming the property of some company or other. Then you just work. For 50 years. That whole time we may get enough to have what we think is a "good" life with a home, a car, cable TV, but added in there are children. Future workers that we are responsible for overseeing while they're trained to put in their 50 years. We still only have 2 days out of 7 that are good ones, if we're lucky. You could look at that and say it's 28.5% of our lives that our owners allow us, but after we get the shopping, banking, kids activities, social responsibilities etc., taken care of, how much of the weekend actually IS what we call "me time?"
Is it any wonder that by the time most of us reach retirement, we're so used to being robotic workers, we're practically racing to the grave to escape the non-productivity of retirement? How many people reading this actually feel GUILTY when you're not busy? That's our programming. You can consider me a conspiracy theorist, and I am so you'd be right, but am I wrong on this? Are we not programmed to practically self-destruct if we're not doing something? "How are you? Keeping busy?" If we were not so well trained our answers to that would (and should) be, "Hell no! I'm doing nothing my friend!" But when was the last time you felt proud of doing nothing? Here's an extreme example:
It's extreme NOW, but this is where we're all heading. Japan may be the perfect corporate society. It's a bit of a long vid, but watch it and see how stupid we are. The subject of the video, if your owners have not allowed you the time to watch it, is how the Japanese are concerned with their declining birth rate. It's the same here in Korea. They are all told it's disastrous, but every time I leave my apartment I am slapped in the face with the nagging reality that Korea would be SOOO much better with fewer people! Japan is like that too. So why is it a "disaster?" It's bad for the companies. Less livestock. That is all.
In case you doubt this, watch this vid all the way to the end when there are a few brave people who talk about the overwork, "karoshi" culture and suicide rate in Japan. "Karoshi" is basically dying from overwork. And if they don't die, they commit suicide. Similar in Korea. These SAME people who are (acting) so concerned about declining birth rates affecting the happiness of the people, when confronted with this very real problem in their society, will generally say, "This does not exist. You are mistaken. We are all happy in our work. Look at our national joy!" Maybe joyless people don't multiply.
If you have the balls to actually TAKE your vacation even though you can see the boss looking favourably on the sycophantic employees who didn't and looking down his nose at you as he shakes your hand while saying, "Enjoy your vacation..." while invisibly stabbing you in the back with the other hand and thinking, "... you decadent, lazy, non-team player! I can find a thousand people right now who would forfeit their vacations for the privilege of having your job," just think how exponentially stupider that is when considering automation. It's coming, and instead of preparing for it by cutting workweeks and lengthening vacation time, two things the workers of the world have more than earned from the companies, well, a lot of companies are just going the exact opposite route because... GREED.
In an ideal society, large companies, not the workers, will have to PAY for automation. They don't just get to axe our jobs and put the extra livestock out to pasture where they'll eat all the grass in a day, then die of starvation. They have the responsibility of easing the machines into our lives. This will cost them money. The employees must still maintain their wages but work less. In our present corporate world, which is only getting worse, in which maximization of shareholder profit is the one and only thing that matters, and this is a socially acceptable virtue, machines, robots, computers are going to cost people jobs and put people in the poor house. We are told, and more importantly, we BELIEVE, that there is no alternative, but that's bullshit. Corporate bullshit. The smelliest kind.
SKhynix, where I used to work, has a great example. Not long ago, the computer chip factories that I live right across the street from (and smell when they're cooking chips) employed people to carry chips by hand from place to place. Now they have robots that do the same thing. The guys who work in this area at SKhynix will tell you that the robots are slower and less efficient. But that doesn't matter. They're doing the work more cheaply. You have electrical and maintenance fees, but compared to a worker's salary, those are much better... for the shareholders who care about nothing but money. But when you talk to the executives, which I used to do 5 out of every 7 days, they'll tell you that the very worst thing about these robots is that they have cost hundreds of people their jobs.
From what I learned while working with Hynix people, this is not a totally evil company. The employees who are let go (well executives anyway) are given a two year severance parachute package. I am not sure if chip movers get that deal or not, but if they did, it would give them a little bit more grass to graze on while they try to insert themselves back into a society with fewer and fewer (not to mention worse and worse) jobs available. The execs agree, this is reckless and irresponsible behaviour on the part of the company for whom a lot of these workers have worked ten, twenty, thirty or more of their 50 year terms. They should be treated better. And most, if not all of my execs agreed that if the company can't afford to take care of the employees instead of just heartlessly releasing them, then they should NOT use the robots. Problem is, exactly none of them have to balls to present this idea to management and owners because they'll lose their jobs.
Management and owners need to be forced to do what is right and the agencies who are the only ones who have ever succeeded at this, namely unions and government regulatory agencies, boards and commissions, are being systematically dismantled as part of our deteriorating global society. Will 2020 be the year we slide into another seemingly inevitable depression? I dunno, but HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody!!!
Another way the whole world is getting stupider: online shopping. I have avoided getting a credit card my whole life... okay, I can't just pass this stupidity by. Before we get to online shopping, let's talk about credit cards, which are a necessary part of it. There's a word that Montgomery Burns and people of his ilk (or worse) don't want you to know about.
Usury. It's pretty high up there on the list of the most despicable things a person can do. Jesus himself was forgiving of murderers, thieves, prostitutes, and other criminals, but he thrashed the usurers. Scorn for moneymen has a long pedigree. Jesus expelled the moneychangers from the Temple. Timothy tells us that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Muhammad banned usury. The Jews referred to interest as neshek—a bite. The Catholic church banned it in 1311. Dante consigned moneylenders to the seventh circle of hell—the one also populated by the inhabitants of Sodom and “other practisers of unnatural vice." With credit card companies combining with the ingenuity of the financial minds who brought us credit default swaps and bundling to maximize the interest on credit card usage to well over 20%, and minimize the regulation, or what they'd prefer to call "government interference," credit card users really ARE being Sodomized.
But who among us doesn't have and use them? Even I, a lifetime boycotter of this evil, stumbled into one when I found out that the bankcard I got with my most recent Korean account is not an actual credit card but CAN be used as one on an increasingly large number of online shopping sites. (And I won't get into how stupid we continually are to just allow banks to be the holders of ALL of our money because I've blogged endlessly about that before. But with stupider and stupider ways to make us pay more to pay them more, it's still the stupidest thing we do.) My bank card actually worked as a credit card last time I was in Japan too. I saved the receipts because I wanted to calculate the exact rate of usury that was applied, but I lost them. I assure you that with the worst possible exchange rate (Korean won to Japanese yen) plus a service charge on top of the interest rate, the "bite" VISA took out of me was probably closer to 40% than 20%. This is legal usury folks. Prove me wrong. So why do we allow it? In fact ENCOURAGE it by getting all the credit cards we can? Because we're stupid.
Okay, now for the online shopping. It is not by accident that I inserted the Simpsons and Jesus references above. For it was through the wanton desire to purchase a Simpsons related product, not for myself, but as a Christmas gift for two of my best friends, ONLINE, that the stupidity of online shopping was illustrated. And if you've known me a minute you know exactly NOTHING is illustrated to me the easy way. I have to go through some highly unlikely experience that sucks like a nuclear Hoover at the time, but makes for great blog fodder later. And here we have another. I saw a site through an internet ad (don't let me forget the next category of stupid: internet advertising) on Facebook called Toon Me On. It's a good idea but DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM.
I sent a pic of my friends Amber and DB to them. They were going to draw it in the style of the Simpsons then put it on a bag for Amber and a baseball cap for DB. Amber loves bags and DB collects ballcaps. I was all excited about it! I just KNEW they would LOVE these gifts. It was a great pic of them too. The site says that within a few days you will get a jpg of the drawing emailed to you. Delivery was going to take 3 weeks to a month but I had ordered well before Christmas so I reckoned they'd get here on time or early. Two weeks went by and I still hadn't received the drawing. I was noticing on the Facebook site of theirs that a lot of people were complaining about them being slow. I sent an email to their contact email address asking what the schedule was. I received a couple days later, "Working on it." Three weeks after ordering I started participating in the Facebook chat and got ANOTHER response, "Dave, what's your order number?" I replied, "1035." They did not reply. A month after ordering it was nearly Christmas and I had sent emails, Facebook questions, everything I could and they were just ignoring me.
I was supposed to be sent an email when my order was shipped. Still no email and it's been 6 weeks. The site is a scam. Trust me to find a site like this! 105 American dollars down the shitter. With the worst possible exchange rate (Korean won to US dollar), a service charge no doubt and the exorbitant interest rate. Plus on Christmas Eve, I had to go out and buy Amber and DB replacement gifts that were nowhere near as nice. I reported the site to a sort of online scam reporting site, but what the hell are they gonna do? It's probably some enterprising young Chinese capitalist trying to "teach" us stupid westerners the error of our ways. I've mentioned this before on this blog. The Chinese cheat generally has the same mentality as the western con man: they convince themselves that they are doing us a favour by scamming us so that in the future we won't be so trusting. It's how they can sleep at night. But in this instance I think this Toon Me On fraudster may have tuned me in. I had previously avoided online shopping the same way as I had the credit card. Because they're both STOOOOPID! Think about what we are doing!
If I asked 7 billion people around the world their top three secrets, just about every one of them who had a credit card would include that number as one of their top three secrets that they don't want anyone to know. In some cases that number is actually the same as their bank account number. With only this information, somebody could steal all your money for crying out loud! WHY are we so cavalier about just giving our credit card/bank account numbers to online sites? It really IS stupid and in my final email to this fraudster I actually said something to the effect of, "This was a really good scam! Congratulations and go fuck yourself."
Before I leave the topic, I have to mention the delivery of these online goods. Here they are just left on the floor behind an unlocked door where any Joe Blow can pick one up and walk away with it. In other countries, they're left on the doorstep. Now we have a new kind of criminal. What do they call them, Amazon porch pirates? 90,000 packages go missing daily in the US? Maybe this is just a really loud and clear message to us: stop being STUPID! Read this article. It makes some awfully good points about online shopping being just another way the internet is making us antisocial. Don't fall for the cooked up stats that say it's good for the environment. You KNOW credit card companies and Amazon can afford misleading studies like the ones tobacco companies used to pay for. Online shopping should only be done by people who don't have access to some products because they can't get out or they live in a place where they can't get that product. Otherwise, get off your lazy arse and go out. You'll feel better afterwards. You might even have to TALK to a friend or MEET a new friend. You may even help save a small business from getting absorbed into the burgeoning monopoly of Amazon.
Okay, on to internet ads. Do you remember way back when we thought that the internet was kinda like, sorta, almost, in some ways FREE? Yeah a long time ago. Like a few years back? Yeah. I member! D'you member? We could pay our 50 bucks a month and then we'd have all kinds of stuff available free! Free music, free movies, free chat sites, free information, libraries of free books, free news, free comedy, free videos of all sorts and, of course, free porn! Best 50 bucks of every month. Well it used to be anyway. Here's another phrase The Man doesn't want us to know: Bait and Switch. They get you hooked on the goods, and with the internet it didn't take very long, then they take it away. And we're so stupid we act like they're heroes and we pay these assholes money to give us back what we used to get for free.
I remember when I could go to Youtube and watch a video. That's it. Just watch a video. Those days are long gone. Now I go to Youtube and immediately have to scroll past a banner ad for some Korean shit. Often it has some music, and to say annoying Korean music would be redundant, that I have to mute. Then I type the song I'm looking for. It comes up. I click. An ad comes up. Five seconds later I get the option, and this is beautiful, the option to "skip ads." Oh and by the way, there's another little banner ad in the bottom left corner. I select "skip ads" and we go to ANOTHER fucking ad! Sometimes it's another 5 seconds until you can select "skip ads" or even more misleadingly, "skip all ads" again. And by the way, there's another small banner ad in the bottom left. Other times, especially if it's an Apple ad, the ad will play for its entirety. Sometimes 15 seconds or even longer. Then your song starts and I swear to GOD at a random time in your song there just might be ANOTHER AD!
My internet rates have not gone down since the addition of all these extra ads. In fact they've gone up a little. Ahh but have no fear fellow stupid people, there is a new and improved internet we can purchase for a little bit more that is almost completely ad free. The bait and switch. They're doing the same thing with clean air and water but that's been a longer and stupider process.
And now for the final example of the world's increased stupidity, the university/college degree. This could very well be considered a beautiful example of the bait and switch con. For years and years, and I do believe I even said so at the beginning of this post, it was nigh onto impossible to get yourself a decent shot at feeling a little better than some company's asset without one. In certain professions and certain specific institutes of those professions, this remains true. I gave an example in a recent post of a place where I was hired before, refusing to hire me for not having the same master's degree I didn't have when they hired me last time. This is a sign that employers are feeling like they are getting the upper hand in the power struggle between the worker and the employer. They are getting more brazen and even refusing to hide their power tripping, much like we can see from their political cronies nowadays. There was a time when they kept their abuse of the working man better hidden. But the steady erosion of government agencies and people's organizations that will do anything about it, has emboldened them.
In the university example, they are no longer shy about admitting true mastery of a skill, study or profession is meaningless. It's the purchase of a piece of paper denoting that mastery that is meaningful. The PURCHASE. After 20 years in the field, I am a master of teaching English as a second language. When I took my TESL certification a few years into my career, my teacher said I could teach the course and I have little doubt if I signed up for a masters in TESOL now it'd be the same thing. I'd be teaching the teacher as much as he/she would be teaching me. But that's not important. The important part of the transaction would be me paying some education business (college or university). That's what these institutes have become. Schools are businesses nowadays. And I can't teach at one until I pay my dues and bow to the powers that be, admitting that I literally buy into what they're selling. Like getting a credit card and online shopping, I have avoided this for a long time, but it might be another thing I get forced into. Why? Because I am stupid too! The world is stupid and I am stupid.
Happy stupid new year.
Basically, we get five years off from birth to the age of 5 because we're pretty useless workers. By age 5 or 6 we start our training. Companies of the world agree to allow that 15 years of downtime when we COULD be put to work, in order to make us better employees later in life. That's euphemistically called our education. Used to be just get your high school and you could move on to a good job. Nowadays it's almost mandatory to get some university education so we get a few more years of the good life before becoming the property of some company or other. Then you just work. For 50 years. That whole time we may get enough to have what we think is a "good" life with a home, a car, cable TV, but added in there are children. Future workers that we are responsible for overseeing while they're trained to put in their 50 years. We still only have 2 days out of 7 that are good ones, if we're lucky. You could look at that and say it's 28.5% of our lives that our owners allow us, but after we get the shopping, banking, kids activities, social responsibilities etc., taken care of, how much of the weekend actually IS what we call "me time?"
Is it any wonder that by the time most of us reach retirement, we're so used to being robotic workers, we're practically racing to the grave to escape the non-productivity of retirement? How many people reading this actually feel GUILTY when you're not busy? That's our programming. You can consider me a conspiracy theorist, and I am so you'd be right, but am I wrong on this? Are we not programmed to practically self-destruct if we're not doing something? "How are you? Keeping busy?" If we were not so well trained our answers to that would (and should) be, "Hell no! I'm doing nothing my friend!" But when was the last time you felt proud of doing nothing? Here's an extreme example:
It's extreme NOW, but this is where we're all heading. Japan may be the perfect corporate society. It's a bit of a long vid, but watch it and see how stupid we are. The subject of the video, if your owners have not allowed you the time to watch it, is how the Japanese are concerned with their declining birth rate. It's the same here in Korea. They are all told it's disastrous, but every time I leave my apartment I am slapped in the face with the nagging reality that Korea would be SOOO much better with fewer people! Japan is like that too. So why is it a "disaster?" It's bad for the companies. Less livestock. That is all.
In case you doubt this, watch this vid all the way to the end when there are a few brave people who talk about the overwork, "karoshi" culture and suicide rate in Japan. "Karoshi" is basically dying from overwork. And if they don't die, they commit suicide. Similar in Korea. These SAME people who are (acting) so concerned about declining birth rates affecting the happiness of the people, when confronted with this very real problem in their society, will generally say, "This does not exist. You are mistaken. We are all happy in our work. Look at our national joy!" Maybe joyless people don't multiply.
If you have the balls to actually TAKE your vacation even though you can see the boss looking favourably on the sycophantic employees who didn't and looking down his nose at you as he shakes your hand while saying, "Enjoy your vacation..." while invisibly stabbing you in the back with the other hand and thinking, "... you decadent, lazy, non-team player! I can find a thousand people right now who would forfeit their vacations for the privilege of having your job," just think how exponentially stupider that is when considering automation. It's coming, and instead of preparing for it by cutting workweeks and lengthening vacation time, two things the workers of the world have more than earned from the companies, well, a lot of companies are just going the exact opposite route because... GREED.
In an ideal society, large companies, not the workers, will have to PAY for automation. They don't just get to axe our jobs and put the extra livestock out to pasture where they'll eat all the grass in a day, then die of starvation. They have the responsibility of easing the machines into our lives. This will cost them money. The employees must still maintain their wages but work less. In our present corporate world, which is only getting worse, in which maximization of shareholder profit is the one and only thing that matters, and this is a socially acceptable virtue, machines, robots, computers are going to cost people jobs and put people in the poor house. We are told, and more importantly, we BELIEVE, that there is no alternative, but that's bullshit. Corporate bullshit. The smelliest kind.
SKhynix, where I used to work, has a great example. Not long ago, the computer chip factories that I live right across the street from (and smell when they're cooking chips) employed people to carry chips by hand from place to place. Now they have robots that do the same thing. The guys who work in this area at SKhynix will tell you that the robots are slower and less efficient. But that doesn't matter. They're doing the work more cheaply. You have electrical and maintenance fees, but compared to a worker's salary, those are much better... for the shareholders who care about nothing but money. But when you talk to the executives, which I used to do 5 out of every 7 days, they'll tell you that the very worst thing about these robots is that they have cost hundreds of people their jobs.
From what I learned while working with Hynix people, this is not a totally evil company. The employees who are let go (well executives anyway) are given a two year severance parachute package. I am not sure if chip movers get that deal or not, but if they did, it would give them a little bit more grass to graze on while they try to insert themselves back into a society with fewer and fewer (not to mention worse and worse) jobs available. The execs agree, this is reckless and irresponsible behaviour on the part of the company for whom a lot of these workers have worked ten, twenty, thirty or more of their 50 year terms. They should be treated better. And most, if not all of my execs agreed that if the company can't afford to take care of the employees instead of just heartlessly releasing them, then they should NOT use the robots. Problem is, exactly none of them have to balls to present this idea to management and owners because they'll lose their jobs.
Management and owners need to be forced to do what is right and the agencies who are the only ones who have ever succeeded at this, namely unions and government regulatory agencies, boards and commissions, are being systematically dismantled as part of our deteriorating global society. Will 2020 be the year we slide into another seemingly inevitable depression? I dunno, but HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody!!!
Another way the whole world is getting stupider: online shopping. I have avoided getting a credit card my whole life... okay, I can't just pass this stupidity by. Before we get to online shopping, let's talk about credit cards, which are a necessary part of it. There's a word that Montgomery Burns and people of his ilk (or worse) don't want you to know about.
Usury. It's pretty high up there on the list of the most despicable things a person can do. Jesus himself was forgiving of murderers, thieves, prostitutes, and other criminals, but he thrashed the usurers. Scorn for moneymen has a long pedigree. Jesus expelled the moneychangers from the Temple. Timothy tells us that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Muhammad banned usury. The Jews referred to interest as neshek—a bite. The Catholic church banned it in 1311. Dante consigned moneylenders to the seventh circle of hell—the one also populated by the inhabitants of Sodom and “other practisers of unnatural vice." With credit card companies combining with the ingenuity of the financial minds who brought us credit default swaps and bundling to maximize the interest on credit card usage to well over 20%, and minimize the regulation, or what they'd prefer to call "government interference," credit card users really ARE being Sodomized.
But who among us doesn't have and use them? Even I, a lifetime boycotter of this evil, stumbled into one when I found out that the bankcard I got with my most recent Korean account is not an actual credit card but CAN be used as one on an increasingly large number of online shopping sites. (And I won't get into how stupid we continually are to just allow banks to be the holders of ALL of our money because I've blogged endlessly about that before. But with stupider and stupider ways to make us pay more to pay them more, it's still the stupidest thing we do.) My bank card actually worked as a credit card last time I was in Japan too. I saved the receipts because I wanted to calculate the exact rate of usury that was applied, but I lost them. I assure you that with the worst possible exchange rate (Korean won to Japanese yen) plus a service charge on top of the interest rate, the "bite" VISA took out of me was probably closer to 40% than 20%. This is legal usury folks. Prove me wrong. So why do we allow it? In fact ENCOURAGE it by getting all the credit cards we can? Because we're stupid.
Okay, now for the online shopping. It is not by accident that I inserted the Simpsons and Jesus references above. For it was through the wanton desire to purchase a Simpsons related product, not for myself, but as a Christmas gift for two of my best friends, ONLINE, that the stupidity of online shopping was illustrated. And if you've known me a minute you know exactly NOTHING is illustrated to me the easy way. I have to go through some highly unlikely experience that sucks like a nuclear Hoover at the time, but makes for great blog fodder later. And here we have another. I saw a site through an internet ad (don't let me forget the next category of stupid: internet advertising) on Facebook called Toon Me On. It's a good idea but DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM.
I sent a pic of my friends Amber and DB to them. They were going to draw it in the style of the Simpsons then put it on a bag for Amber and a baseball cap for DB. Amber loves bags and DB collects ballcaps. I was all excited about it! I just KNEW they would LOVE these gifts. It was a great pic of them too. The site says that within a few days you will get a jpg of the drawing emailed to you. Delivery was going to take 3 weeks to a month but I had ordered well before Christmas so I reckoned they'd get here on time or early. Two weeks went by and I still hadn't received the drawing. I was noticing on the Facebook site of theirs that a lot of people were complaining about them being slow. I sent an email to their contact email address asking what the schedule was. I received a couple days later, "Working on it." Three weeks after ordering I started participating in the Facebook chat and got ANOTHER response, "Dave, what's your order number?" I replied, "1035." They did not reply. A month after ordering it was nearly Christmas and I had sent emails, Facebook questions, everything I could and they were just ignoring me.
I was supposed to be sent an email when my order was shipped. Still no email and it's been 6 weeks. The site is a scam. Trust me to find a site like this! 105 American dollars down the shitter. With the worst possible exchange rate (Korean won to US dollar), a service charge no doubt and the exorbitant interest rate. Plus on Christmas Eve, I had to go out and buy Amber and DB replacement gifts that were nowhere near as nice. I reported the site to a sort of online scam reporting site, but what the hell are they gonna do? It's probably some enterprising young Chinese capitalist trying to "teach" us stupid westerners the error of our ways. I've mentioned this before on this blog. The Chinese cheat generally has the same mentality as the western con man: they convince themselves that they are doing us a favour by scamming us so that in the future we won't be so trusting. It's how they can sleep at night. But in this instance I think this Toon Me On fraudster may have tuned me in. I had previously avoided online shopping the same way as I had the credit card. Because they're both STOOOOPID! Think about what we are doing!
If I asked 7 billion people around the world their top three secrets, just about every one of them who had a credit card would include that number as one of their top three secrets that they don't want anyone to know. In some cases that number is actually the same as their bank account number. With only this information, somebody could steal all your money for crying out loud! WHY are we so cavalier about just giving our credit card/bank account numbers to online sites? It really IS stupid and in my final email to this fraudster I actually said something to the effect of, "This was a really good scam! Congratulations and go fuck yourself."
Before I leave the topic, I have to mention the delivery of these online goods. Here they are just left on the floor behind an unlocked door where any Joe Blow can pick one up and walk away with it. In other countries, they're left on the doorstep. Now we have a new kind of criminal. What do they call them, Amazon porch pirates? 90,000 packages go missing daily in the US? Maybe this is just a really loud and clear message to us: stop being STUPID! Read this article. It makes some awfully good points about online shopping being just another way the internet is making us antisocial. Don't fall for the cooked up stats that say it's good for the environment. You KNOW credit card companies and Amazon can afford misleading studies like the ones tobacco companies used to pay for. Online shopping should only be done by people who don't have access to some products because they can't get out or they live in a place where they can't get that product. Otherwise, get off your lazy arse and go out. You'll feel better afterwards. You might even have to TALK to a friend or MEET a new friend. You may even help save a small business from getting absorbed into the burgeoning monopoly of Amazon.
Okay, on to internet ads. Do you remember way back when we thought that the internet was kinda like, sorta, almost, in some ways FREE? Yeah a long time ago. Like a few years back? Yeah. I member! D'you member? We could pay our 50 bucks a month and then we'd have all kinds of stuff available free! Free music, free movies, free chat sites, free information, libraries of free books, free news, free comedy, free videos of all sorts and, of course, free porn! Best 50 bucks of every month. Well it used to be anyway. Here's another phrase The Man doesn't want us to know: Bait and Switch. They get you hooked on the goods, and with the internet it didn't take very long, then they take it away. And we're so stupid we act like they're heroes and we pay these assholes money to give us back what we used to get for free.
I remember when I could go to Youtube and watch a video. That's it. Just watch a video. Those days are long gone. Now I go to Youtube and immediately have to scroll past a banner ad for some Korean shit. Often it has some music, and to say annoying Korean music would be redundant, that I have to mute. Then I type the song I'm looking for. It comes up. I click. An ad comes up. Five seconds later I get the option, and this is beautiful, the option to "skip ads." Oh and by the way, there's another little banner ad in the bottom left corner. I select "skip ads" and we go to ANOTHER fucking ad! Sometimes it's another 5 seconds until you can select "skip ads" or even more misleadingly, "skip all ads" again. And by the way, there's another small banner ad in the bottom left. Other times, especially if it's an Apple ad, the ad will play for its entirety. Sometimes 15 seconds or even longer. Then your song starts and I swear to GOD at a random time in your song there just might be ANOTHER AD!
My internet rates have not gone down since the addition of all these extra ads. In fact they've gone up a little. Ahh but have no fear fellow stupid people, there is a new and improved internet we can purchase for a little bit more that is almost completely ad free. The bait and switch. They're doing the same thing with clean air and water but that's been a longer and stupider process.
And now for the final example of the world's increased stupidity, the university/college degree. This could very well be considered a beautiful example of the bait and switch con. For years and years, and I do believe I even said so at the beginning of this post, it was nigh onto impossible to get yourself a decent shot at feeling a little better than some company's asset without one. In certain professions and certain specific institutes of those professions, this remains true. I gave an example in a recent post of a place where I was hired before, refusing to hire me for not having the same master's degree I didn't have when they hired me last time. This is a sign that employers are feeling like they are getting the upper hand in the power struggle between the worker and the employer. They are getting more brazen and even refusing to hide their power tripping, much like we can see from their political cronies nowadays. There was a time when they kept their abuse of the working man better hidden. But the steady erosion of government agencies and people's organizations that will do anything about it, has emboldened them.
In the university example, they are no longer shy about admitting true mastery of a skill, study or profession is meaningless. It's the purchase of a piece of paper denoting that mastery that is meaningful. The PURCHASE. After 20 years in the field, I am a master of teaching English as a second language. When I took my TESL certification a few years into my career, my teacher said I could teach the course and I have little doubt if I signed up for a masters in TESOL now it'd be the same thing. I'd be teaching the teacher as much as he/she would be teaching me. But that's not important. The important part of the transaction would be me paying some education business (college or university). That's what these institutes have become. Schools are businesses nowadays. And I can't teach at one until I pay my dues and bow to the powers that be, admitting that I literally buy into what they're selling. Like getting a credit card and online shopping, I have avoided this for a long time, but it might be another thing I get forced into. Why? Because I am stupid too! The world is stupid and I am stupid.
Happy stupid new year.
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