Early In The Third

 It was my birthday a few days ago. 55. I was supposed to be free by now. You know, freedom 55? Ever see those commercials? But I don't consider "freedom" to be not working. Not any more. I have had a bit of a revelation since Covid. I reckon I can work till I die now if it's online. I don't mind the online teaching gig. In fact I might even prefer it over the face to face teaching gig. One thing you got goin for ya is you don't have to wear a tie. The struggles I have had over my ESL career with ties!!! Especially in Japan. Wearing a tie to play with little kids. What a joke! My neck was a mess! Kids pulling my tie all the time. Shirts that were about 5 neck sizes too small but I still had to hold my breath and force that top button through the hole. Then partially hold my breath the rest of the day. GOD it's nice to not wear a tie! Pants are optional too. Gotch, I gotta wear.  Just in case I stand up for some reason. And a decent shirt. But no tie, never, never. 

If I wax philosophical on yo asses, I figure I'm early in the third period of my life. In philosophical hockey terminology as all those deep thinking hockey guys might say. So 27 1/2 being a third of my life, what was I doing when I was 27 1/2? I was just graduating university. That was the first third of my life neatly packaged all in Canada. Okay, I was 29 when I packed up and went to Korea so I was spinning my wheels in Canada for about a year and a half. But the next third of my life has been spent in other countries mostly. There were a couple stints of over-optimistic attempts to get myself a decent job back in Canada, but by and large, the second period has been all Asia. I'll be here at least a couple more years so it'll work out more evenly. 29 years for my education in Canada, 28 or 29 years of teaching ESL mostly overseas for mostly survival wages... and then what? 

More to the point, 29 years in Canada getting my BA and finding out it won't get me a good job. 28 or 29 years in Asia finding out that BA will get me a better job, but all the good places want master's degrees and all the bad places are the ones that'll take me. Yeah, 26 years or so to this point banging my head against the wall hoping to find a good job in Asia with just a BA. If it was possible, I didn't find it. Although, I had no choice since it'd cost at least 50 grand to get a master's and I have never had that much dough just lyin' around. So with the lack of money came the excess of hope. And that was crushed not long into every contract. 

But then came Covid. I learned, like so many, to work online. It was a steep learning curve, but I pulled it off with a lot of help from people who upload instructional videos on YouTube for guys like me who don't know how to record teaching vids, then upload them to the school LMS (learning management system) or use the school portal to upload grades, or navigate Zoom, use the breakout rooms, make different IP addresses for each of your classes, transfer tests from class to class etc., etc., etc.... It was a LOT of learning in a little time! But I powered through. I got lots of help from my work colleagues too, especially Mike. Thanks, Mike. 

During that time, I learned to teach online and I learned to like it. I had some savings from my time working at SK Hynix and I had given consideration to an online master's too. In fact, the above Mike and I had a couple chats about that. We were both master'sless and realizing that the pickins were slimmer and slimmer for fellas like us. Then another friend, who I've blogged about so often, you should know her by now, Heather turned me onto a university in California called the University of the People where they don't charge tuition. I didn't look much into it at the time, I just told Heather I would. I had signed on for another year of work at Gongju Dae even though it was the shittiest contract I'd ever had in all my years of teaching ESL in Korea. 

Well, then things started happening that made me pretty sure the people at Gongju Dae were going to make the contract suck even more than the already worst contract in Korea that it was. They were gonna reinstate the full 40-hour week with any non-teaching time spent pulling pud in an empty office. They were going to make horrendous schedules for me where I start early in the morning and finish late at night with long breaks in between I go home for. They were going to add Korean students to the already bogus international counselling I was responsible for for the international students. They were going to have the counselling, and probably the teaching, in person, in a new building where all the bosses are, possibly air conditioned, possibly not, while wearing a mask... for the lowest salary in Korea. AND, they'd find a way to fuck me out of my severance again too. I couldn't imagine anything I'd like to do less! I tried to negotiate, but it was useless. I looked more into the UoPeople and it seemed like the thing to do. I can't say I didn't enjoy fake negotiating with Gongju's representative like there was still a possibility of my staying. I even had her offering to remove all the bogus counselling. But I had already made up my mind by then, I was just enjoying watching her sweat. (Don't think I'm cruel, she totally deserved it! She was lying and cheating with every word she said to me) It was actually nice to have the money to not care. Hooray for money, eh?

So, with a little morsel of hope not yet hammered out of me, I have triumphantly embarked upon an adventure that may be rocky, it may be risky, but it may finally land me that job that will allow me "freedom AFTER 55." Or at least partial freedom. Incredibly, I have Covid to thank for this. Covid and the University of the People. See, I complained and whinged about having to spend my last 4 vacations in a row here in Korea, but the money I saved not going golfing in some other country, or sightseeing or kayaking into a mountain or hiking up a volcano, or drinking and "helping" the band at a live rock bar, or just relaxing at an outdoor pub with friends (sssiiiiiiggggghhhhh I really miss those things) is what's paying for the time off! I've been off since the end of Feb. but only 2 weeks into my course.

At the 2-week point, how am I doing? Well, let me just check to verify this... I am taking two courses, EDUC 5010: Education in Context, and EDUC 5210: Learning Theory. I've been graded on two papers, two significant comments, evaluations of 6 fellow students' comments and evaluations of 6 fellow students' papers, and two portfolio entries so far. There are a bunch of numbers posted and my profs are congratulating me, but I can't for the life of me figure out the grades I'm getting! They seem to be good??? That's all I can say for now. But I will update you when I can make sense of this whackadoo grading system they have. 

I have resigned myself to Tuesday and Wednesday as my weekend, and only if I get all my work done by Monday. So far so good two weeks in, BUT, week three we add yet another duty, the group project, which will be a pain in the ass since group members will be from all over the place and we'll all be sleeping at different times. I have settled into vampire mode. I find it easier to study all night long. Right now as I type, it's 7 in the morning and I've been up all night. Got a lot of reading and writing done too after waking up at 6 PM from my nap. It's a complicated schedule, but I think it'll be the best way to do this.

My first week was a little rough. I didn't have the tech I needed for this gig and I think I lost marks for not complying with APA citation regulations. You know like not writing "References" in the center of my page above the references. Not having one inch margins on all sides. Honestly! But Heather helped me out a great deal with that. I had a fake MS Office program called Libreoffice, which the UoPeople had suggested for students to get. I watched vids to learn the APA guidelines for citations and such, but it was all on MS Word and it was different. So Heather said she might have another guest spot on her MS Office online acct. She did, but I was unable to download it. It was bizarre! I got the exe file, I started it, it said, "Getting things ready..." for an insane amount of time, then it just stopped. No welcome to MS Office, let's get you started or anything. I had to search my computer to find it. Well it was there, but when I tried to start an MS Word document, it sent it to One Drive and I still couldn't open it. I tried for hours restarting, downloading again, and all the stuff you do, but it didn't work. There was a point when I could open documents on Notepad, but MS Word never arrived. I figured it was because of my slow internet. I'd try again at a coffee shop.

Heather suggested I do it with a VPN on. I had recently nuked my VPN for trying to renew my one-year subscription without asking me if I wanted it,  (don't use Nord), but I had downloaded a free one. Unfortunately THAT day my "free" one, Windscribe, had told me I was out of data and wouldn't get any more till next month. UNLESS I upgraded to a pay version. I kept the exe file for MS Office and just got rid of everything MS Office and Windscribe, then RE-downloaded Libreoffice so I could do my writing for the night. That's what I had to hand in for the first week.

But, I found a new VPN, tried again to download my gift MS Office from Heather and it worked. It was just Korean censorship that was the problem. Even when downloading the VPN I got a message that a "gomicrosoft" file was unable to download. They have always had a very weird relationship with Microsoft here in Korea, and it's nigh onto impossible to get a legitimate copy here. For years every computer you bought here had Windows on it, but not a legit copy of it. And I tried a few times to buy one, but failed. So, this is pretty much what happens to me every time I try to do anything tech. 

The upshot is, I now have MS Office and this week I did all my writing on MS Word using the APA guidelines I'd studied and written down. So I won't lose any points for that this week I hope. Heather also gave me a program to help with formatting or maybe APA stuff but I haven't figured it out yet. Perrla. Heather's been hard at her Master of Education from a different U.S. university for a while now. So she's given me lotsa good pointers and, if I ever get the time, I have a bunch of her A+ papers I can read and probably get some good stuff from. This week my study topics were education systems from 9 countries around the world including, Iran, Japan, Uzbekistan, India, China, Africa, Afghanistan, Vietnam, the Philippines and some others. I had to compare a "western" and "eastern" education system that was not where I work or where I am from. So I chose Africa and the U.S. I love the African "Ubuntu" pedagogy and used that as a central idea because it's being abandoned in favour of western ideas in Africa, and I think it is exactly what is missing in western ideas of education. It's a beautiful concept.

Answer me this: If you're at the grocery store and you go to the milk section cuz you need milk and you see one carton with an expiration date a week from now. Underneath it are a dozen more with expiration dates TWO weeks from now. You love milk and you KNOW you'll finish the carton in a few days. Do you a) take the carton that expires in a week or b) take a carton from underneath it? More interestingly, why? I think it's got a lot to do with how we're socialized, but also how we're educated. You can say it in positive sounding ways like student-centered education teaching students to be confident and self-sufficient, or you can say that we're taught to be competitive and think of ourselves before other people.

I sometimes wonder if the "Great" Depression or the stock market crash of 2008 would have happened if America hadn't systematically beaten down this Ubuntu kind of cooperative, communal thinking. It's considered indigenous silliness in Africa by a lot of "forward" thinking people. But I think capitalism has subdued any kind of thinking like this all over. Including indigenous people all over North America.

So anyway, that was just one course. The OTHER course I am making contingency contracts with students that contain "fixed interval" or variable ratio schedules of reinforcement... blah blah blah. This is the shyte I was worried most about. Fancy words applied to common sense tactics that almost anybody with half a brain will inevitably employ if emerged into the teaching profession. To give you an idea, a "fixed ratio" is a kind of agreement with students over an amount of responses and the reinforcement it will get them. To be even more childish secret code-like, an FR5 is if 5 people give correct responses, they will receive positive reinforcement. However, FI5, fixed interval 5 means if they don't give those 5 correct responses in a 5-minute interval, they receive negative reinforcement. There are many, many examples like this. Silly. I mean you can't survive as a teacher if you don't learn some of this stuff, or already know it. People have given it fancy sounding names and then claimed it as revolutionary thinking. Now, to be fair, most of these people claiming common sense as their own DID so a long-ass time ago. Before somebody else could do so. And generally, the ones who did so wrote a lot of other stuff, and a lot of that OTHER stuff is really good!

So I'm finding that if you get beyond the obvious stuff that made great educators like Dewey, MLK, Piaget, Horace Mann, and this week Gagne, famous, there is some interesting stuff to learn. I'm pleasantly surprised about that. I was prepared to deal with the Emperor's New Clothes, but I'm enjoying the underappreciated scraps of fabric that I hadn't heard about. It's hard to remain humble when the material for the week is stuff you've already done regularly for many years, just didn't know the name of it, and when the teacher asks you to write about how this "new learning" has "informed your pedagogy." But for two weeks, I've managed. It's really not as bad as that last sentence made it sound either. I AM learning lots of stuff. The nice thing about this course, or one of the nice things, is that we are in constant contact with other teachers. Teachers from all over the world. In communication. I have already learned a lot from them! Collaborative learning like this is something that is only possible online, so it makes these courses a thousand times better than studying with classes full of people who have almost the same educational experiences as you. For a guy who may end up continuing my career in some other countries, this is invaluable experience. And how much have I paid so far for this? Aside from my main expense - staying alive and keeping a roof over my head, I've only paid 60 bucks so far.

 Anyways, I feel SO much better than I would have if I were just getting a subsistence wage from this time! That's all I ever made from Gongju Dae. Instead, I'm losing money, but after each week of study, I feel better, MUCH better, than I would have after every week of teaching. I feel like, in the grand scheme of things, I'm still making money. I just have to postpone the payday for a while.

Not only that, but I'm bulkin' up brain-wise. Reading my weight every week (well, my weight as of last time I was a student) if it were paper pages and not online. Writing more than Stephen King and some is horror actually! The educational environments described by some of my co-students make me really grateful to be in Korea. I complain, but it's a safe, good place to be over here in Asia. You pay for that comfort, and suddenly you pay like 20% more, but it's where I want to do this. And even if I don't get hired on somewhere after the first 6 months of my course, I think I will be able to do another 6 months. So that's what's going on. I type this to inform you but at the same time to remind me of how this time was when I have landed my dream job because of my master's degree and am looking back at the struggle. 

This might be a sweet memory someday when I'm old ER and grey ER.

Pneumaticism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wankda for Life

They have a word for this in Korea: wankda. It means, roughly translated, different person, and it's normally used for social outcasts who... don't have any (or many) friends. When Koreans fad, they fad like nobody's ever fadded! "Longpadding" or puffy (and long) down winter coats, Dance Dance Revolution, "Double eyelid" operations, Starcraft, cellphones and cellphone aps, peace signs and finger hearts... 

they're especially popular with people who want to fit in by doing what everyone else is doing. So, as I've said before, less tongue-in-cheek than possibly perceived, Covid 19 has become the latest Korean trend. Anyone who doesn't have it or hasn't had it, isn't trendy or fashionable. They are wankda. I've been considering contracting Covid for reasons of peer pressure, but it should come as no surprise that I am, as yet, proudly wankda.

I went to the health insurance office in Gongju and learned that my monthly bill is going to be 140,000 won. That's over 140 bucks Canadian. I was told to expect around 123 bucks, but, as I said last post, everything is getting more expensive in Korea. Covid profiteering appears to be the next business fad here. And with the newly board selected - I mean elected - leader, I can't see THAT being nipped in the bud. If anything, the new Korean leadership will encourage it.

I also went to Daejeon and got my visa sorted. I will have my new D-10 visa April 11th. But I have to make another trip into Daejeon to get it. Sitting on buses, in subways, in crowded waiting rooms, and walking around crowded streets or stores like Costco, are the exact things I really shouldn't be doing right about now when the Covid numbers are higher than they've ever been in Korea. But that's what I've been doing. Almost challenging Covid to infect me! Still, as far as I know, (and I really shouldn't even say this) I haven't had Covid. Even if that makes me look like I have no friends, I'm good with that. It's basically true. Other than my long-time friends here, which I can count on my fingers, not even needing the toes, I am friendless. 

There are advantages besides not catching Covid that make me proud of my wankda status. I know I'll never become as successful a blogger as Heather Cox Richardson, Arianna Huffington, Trisha the traveler, or Brooke and Dave doing off grid living vids on their bushradical blog, but if I were, I don't know if I'd blog so much. I wouldn't have the time. I like the spare time my wide open social calendar provides me because it sometimes forces me to write. I am just a little more than a week away from the start of what will be a highly intensive period of writing much more than I ever have. Hopefully my blogging experience will have prepared me a little bit for my master's. If nothing else, it should at least make my writing better, and although I only have a handful of readers, I sometimes receive comments on blogposts and they're not all positive. This has thickened my skin for the upcoming criticism barrage that will undoubtedly be the worst part about becoming a Master of Education. 

Other things I have the leisure to do since being unemployed? Well, just take a gander at this:

I don't make a lot of memes or videos, but in my free time, I have been known to mess about with photo editing and video editing software. It has definitely contributed to my teaching savvy and helped a great deal with getting comfortable with video teaching. I now prefer Zoom to the classroom. But if I need to change to some other program like Google Meet or use a video editing program that is preferred by some workplace, like Camtasia for instance, I'm sure it won't be so daunting a learning curve for me. 

Also, one of my dream retirement plans is to start a YouTube channel on which I open hockey cards. Now is the part of this blogpost where you start to realize that "wankda" has a similar meaning to "nerd." Once again, if collecting hockey cards makes me a nerd, I'll proudly cop to it. I'll ANDREW Copp to it. Career Winnipeg Jet who just got traded to the Rangers. You'll hear more about him because he'll start scoring more AND he's in the center of the universe now, NY, instead of Winterpeg. Have I solidified my nerd status yet? Well, I don't care. If a little Filipino kid can make a fortune rating toys on You Tube, maybe my plan ain't so shabby. And the free time being a nerd/wankda affords me, just might make me some retirement scratch doing one of the things I love the most. So there!

Admittedly, I watch a lot of sports in my free time too. If the Andrew Copp joke wasn't nerdy enough, how about this one: The Masters starts on the same day as My master's. Not really so much a joke as a coincidental fact. April 7th I'll be watching golf and reading. April 8th I'll probably be watching The Masters and writing. That's if I can get my reading done in one day. The hockey playoffs are coming up, and the start of the Korean baseball season is days away. Sports is something that CAN extend your list of friends, but not so much here in Korea. I have met some nice folks at ball games here in Korea, but due to the lack of incoming money, that won't be happening much this season if at all. I may not even watch many games at sports bars. Much like going to a good dance bar can be euphemistically called "networking," hitting a good sports bar is a good way to meet people too. But my playing days are pretty much at an end and I know of no good bars of either sort here in Gongju. So staying at home and staring at my computer screen is just fine with me. On both counts. 

TV and movies are easy for me too. I watch quite a bit of TV and a lot of movies on my own. That way I don't distract any other people while I'm yelling at the screen, "Come on, Rick, you KNOW that's a lowball offer," or "No! Vote out Drea! She's in an alliance AND has an immunity idol," or "Three penalties in a row - that's why Kane is nowhere NEAR worth his salary," or "That's SO realistic! If a huge meteor made of gold was gonna hit the planet, the richest 1% would all be fighting over who gets to own it and be the richest person ever for that last half a second of existence!"

So now that I have a status, until the end of September, of "looking-for-work," and looking for work doesn't take very much of my time, you know what I'll be doing. Studying and writing will be a full time "job" for me, but for the rest of my time here, I won't be getting out that much. I will be hibernating, hunkering down, staying in, a homebody, a wankda. But I'll be doing it with pride. 

My main goal for my future is to get a little off-grid cabin in the bush somewhere in the Kootenays and watch sports and write and maybe open hockey cards on video for my declining years. That might be financed through a nice college job back at home or possibly a teaching gig online. That'll make the master's well worth the time and money. While building and then retiring in my secluded cabin, I will have to go into town for supplies and maybe a visit or two, but I'm expecting to be a wankda for life. Here's hoping...

Stop Enabling the Oligarchs

 I'll start my latest entry with some good news for a change: I have begun my master's course! I don't start in earnest until April 7, but the UoPeople has set up a handy dandy three-week orientation schedule that is a lot like three weeks of regular classes. The first week of work was uploaded to my Moodle dashboard Thursday morning there, which is Thursday night here. That's when the regular week's assignments will be uploaded during the real thing. There was a reading assignment in which we learned about the school, the American university system, and our courses. It answered a lot of the questions I had about the whole thing and was a pretty informative bit of reading. 

Then we had a few assignments. We had to update our profiles and calendars, which I had already done, and we were given a sample discussion question to think about. In a normal week, we'd give a "substantial" response to the question and post it. Then other students would read your post and evaluate it. You are responsible for evaluating three other students' posts as well, and the prof evaluates all of it. Then you write a journal, which only the teacher sees, and you get a quiz. We didn't do any of the writing or grading this week, but we had a quiz on our reading and I aced it. 

We were told that over the years the students have averaged out to about 15 hours a week of study per course. They say 17 hours might be needed for extra careful, (or slow reading) students like me. I will be taking two courses in the first and second terms, so you can see why I'm off work. This'll be 30, I'm guessing more like 35 hours a week. By the end of August, I will have 4 of my 13 courses completed. If I kept it up from April 2022 until June 2023, I'd be finished. I could have an M. Ed. by summer of '23! 

As nice as that sounds, I won't likely be able to keep up with that pace. I reckon I could keep up with the study load, and the university fees for the entire course will be VERY reasonable, so that won't be the problem... it's just living while studying. THAT will be my only limitation. 

I'm not just talking about living in Korea without working. That's gonna be tricky, but I think I will be able to manage. They are not issuing visitor visas during the pandemic, so that won't be an option, presumably because you need to go out of the country, then come back in to get one, and with the whole pandemic, lockdown, quarantine business, visitors to Korea have been cancelled until further notice. Although, I've heard that that is close to changing. We'll see...

My plan is to change my E-2 work visa to a D-10 "looking for work" visa. I've made an appointment for Friday the 25th to try that. My visa expires on March 31, so I'm counting on being able to do it. I know what you might be thinking, if you don't live and work in Korea, "Why didn't you do this earlier? You had almost two months off for crying out loud!" Well, I couldn't have done anything until my last day of work, the last day of February, had come and gone. Then, and this is SO Korea, you are encouraged to wait till the end of your sojourn (i.e. the last minute) before changing visas. I've heard of people being TURNED AWAY for trying to change their visas too early! So I'm not expecting to be refused. But I probly shouldn't say stuff like that...

The D-10 process will require me to bring my passport, ARC, the requisite photo, my housing contract, 130,000 won (135 Canadian bucks (GAH!!! the exchange is really BAD!!!)), and two forms fully filled out. One is the all purpose form that I've filled out for almost everything I've done at immigration over here, but the other one is new. I have to fill out a "plan for seeking employment" form, which sounds like I might have to bullshit, but I won't. I AM actively seeking employment. Since most universities are embracing the master's degree or nothing policy over here, I may not get a job come next semester (September) and might need to renew my "looking for work visa." Then I'll have loads of questions. Can I extend a D-10? How many times? Will it be another 130 grand? If the travel restrictions are lifted, will I need to leave Korea? But, I AM hoping to land a job at a uni here on the strength of having started my M. Ed. The uni positions are ideal here for that. Some people study even during their semesters. I don't think I would do that. I want to give my students a hundo p of my attention. (heh heh)

The plan is to find a job that has the full semester break off. It is just about the perfect length of time to do a term of study at the UoPeople. So two years of teaching with 2 courses during each semester break comes out to 12 courses. If I'm not mistaken, number 13 is the thesis. I don't know if you have to register for a whole course for that or not, but I'm sure I will find out along the way. I know a guy here named Mike, who's doing the same, exact course, so he can probably answer a lot of my questions. That's nice.

Alternatively, if I can't land a job for the September semester (and beyond) I could go full time for another two or three terms and get two more courses per term. That would nearly get me across the finish line with only taking a year off work. That would require renewing my D-10 or changing to a visitor visa, which requires a trip to Japan or somewhere. I feel like that is the thing to do, but I just don't know if the funds will hold out. EVERYTHING is more expensive in Korea and inflation seems to be increasing every day!

Take a year off to get 10/13 courses of my M. Ed. I've gone here before, but let's go down this path again, shall we? What university wouldn't absolutely LOVE for one of their teachers to do that? Any REAL school would probably support the efforts of the teacher with guaranteed job upon completion or even partial payment. I'm going out on an awfully thick limb to say there isn't a university in Korea that would do either for a foreign ESL instructor. If I'm wrong, please let me know because THAT'S where I am going to apply. Somehow though, I don't expect they'll be hiring. People probably hold onto those jobs. It's really hard to know. But to stay positive, I am trying to increase my chances at landing a better job over here. Or even somewhere else. Every bit of study gets me closer.

Now to switch to the negative stuff. The heart of my blog beats negatively, so I hope none of you thought the above would last. Not sure what that means. A negatively beating heart would make you younger with every beat, no? Anyhoo, today I got a message from Nord VPN. Well it wasn't exactly from them, it was an anonymous attempt BY them to take a year's worth of payment out of my bank account. It wasn't their first attempt either. Or the second. It was the fifth. No email asking whether I'd like to renew or to tell me they were trying to FUCKING STEAL my money. Okay, calm down, Dave. You can do this...

Another well trodden path on this blog is the absolute immorality that we allow, nay encourage in the world of finance. I have blogged specifically about automatic rebilling and how it should be illegal. I can't see any grey area here. It's bulllshit and only scumbags do it. Period! The link, if you didn't read it, is to an article that came out quite some time ago, the NY Times may have broken the story, but I'm not sure. I know they had it in their members only website that may or may not include automatic rebilling if your membership fees expire. Folks, why is this legal? Even though they're Trump supporters and they got what they paid for, I still feel sorry for these chumps. This is absolute assholery run amok! Don't give me any drivel about, "Well it was in the fine print of the contract," either! If I bought an apple from Safeway and mumbled under my breath to the check-out worker, "This transaction renewed indefinitely at no further expense to the customer," THAT'S like fine print isn't it? But if I went to that store, grabbed an apple and walked out eating it, I could go to jail. Why? What's the difference? The only difference is us. The little people. We are used to being treated like shit and we refuse to hold our "betters" accountable the way they do us. 

In fact, I bet I could read the entire Nord VPN contract and find NOTHING about automatic rebilling. They just do it knowing full well they won't be prosecuted. I posted long ago about a gym membership in Vancouver making a point of charging by the month that kept charging after I quit. Luckily they didn't have my credit card, but they sent me a notice to appear in court for non-payment of debt. At least they sold my debt to a collector who tried to bully me with that crap. And it WORKS! We pay! WHY??? Well I didn't pay. I didn't even go to court. I would have won if I had. You see, I kept the contract and there was absolutely NOTHING in it that allowed them to keep charging me after I quit. But fuck them, I didn't have the time to argue. They COUNT on this being our reaction.

I'm not paying Nord ever either. And I'd like to take this moment to encourage you to never buy it. If you use it, stop now. It was way too invasive, it constantly ran in the background doing who knows what and a recent "update" caused major problems. They suck and I'm glad they can't get any more of my money. The reason they can't is another post or two from a while ago. I was getting OTHER automatic charges taken out of my account from China and Holland. I think it was from a Christmas present I bought online for two friends. You send a pic of the friends and an artist turns the pic into Simpsons characters and puts it on a T-shirt, bag, mug or whatever. I paid, sent the pic, and never got the products. I sent messages to the site on Facebook and got basically, "Nyah nyah!" from them! So I reported them to an online scam FBI/Interpol site or whatever. IT was probably fake too. ANYWAY, I tried to get my bank to put a stop pay on charges from the sources that were fraudulent. THEY were the ones who traced them to China and Holland! They KNEW who was jacking me up but were, "not at liberty to disclose any information about them." Again, the customer isn't protected, but the scamming company IS. So I asked why I couldn't stop the payment and the reason was something similar. In short, they believe the company, not you. They were telling me without telling me that I was being legally charged by a law-abiding company even though I had gone to the bank more than once and reported the same fraudulent charges more than once. Okay, they might believe I was lying the FIRST time, but when it happens again... they... still don't believe me. So I cancelled the credit cards, which wasn't easy let me tell you! So the folks at Nord can continue to try, but unless the bank ALLOWS them, they won't be able to get any more money from me. I know the banks are kind of IN ON these things, as outlined above, but I hope they're not THAT in on them. 

But we can't go around cancelling credit cards after everything we buy. The simple solution, which always seems to be the very last one investigated in matters of finance, would be to make laws against this sort of crap. I hear about new scams and fraud all the time, but I don't know of any time I have EVER heard of a new law being drawn up to limit this stuff. Oh wait, yes I do, it was the Dodd Frank Act in 2010 that was drawn up to limit the disastrous fraud committed by banks and all sorts of financiers that lead to the meltdown of 2008. Oh yeah, that was basically scribbled out by the Sharpie of the biggest fraudster president ever in 2018, wasn't it? So that doesn't count.

Our owners give us misleading terms like "consumer protection," "regulatory relief," "economic growth," "privatization," "free market," "de-regulation," and many more euphemisms for the screwing they're doing. Take Pfizer as just one example. They made 37 billion on vaccine sales and the Covid 19 Paxlovid pill is gonna make them even more. Their annual revenue is more than the GDP of most countries. While the whole world is grateful for the good Pfizer did, they jacked up prices, enforced copywrite laws, withheld vaccines and without a doubt were the largest pandemic profiteers on the planet. And what are we, the labourers, consumers, grunts of the world going to do when boner pills go up in price this year? We'll demand an answer from Pfizer, that's what! And they'll shrug their shoulders and say, "Hey, pandemic..." Then we'll Pavlovically bend over, spread our butt cheeks a little wider and loob our hoops with a product probably MADE by Pfizer whose price has recently doubled. "Because Covid... "

I warned of this before and we're starting to see it. We can fight it, but we'll probably just force ourselves to get used to it like we usually do. Look, if ANY Pfizer product goes up due to "pandemic inflation" that all the owners' companies have started claiming, somebody needs to go to prison! But that won't happen, will it? Everyone alive today has already been subjected to more inflation than a body should be forced to endure. If the rulers of our world had even a Grinch heart amongst them, they'd LOWER prices after the pandemic. Wouldn't they? Remember, I warned you of this. We're going to see politicians, the mouthpieces of our rulers, tying bullshit into bows and selling us our newly inflated costs of living as patriotic austerity measures or some other bullshit bows of that ilk. If you haven't yet heard it, just wait... But most importantly, recognize it for what it is and DO something about it. And I don't mean vote. Most of our political systems have been all but Pfizerized against the vote changing plutocrat rule. 

That word, "plutocrat." I recently watched something in which it was mentioned along with "oligarch" as a fairly new word in English. Probably a lot newer than the practice, but... It may have originated from the Russian "privatization" program. Remember that word? Interesting... It's the people who have too much money, and, therefore, power. There are a virtual handful of them who run things on this planet and if they aren't stopped, we'll all be blown to smithereens. Evidently, Russia is one of, if not the, best example. We're seeing oil prices soar and being told it's because of the war in Ukraine. Again, bullshit. Like Big Pharma was a pandemic profiteer, fossil fuel companies, who are experts at this, are using the situation in Ukraine as an excuse to jack up prices. Hell, for all we know (Dave dons his tinfoil hat) the whole invasion might have been orchestrated as an excuse to do just that! As I have mentioned before, Putin is a huge name in fossil fuels. He probably has what amounts to controlling stock in Gazprom, which is Europe's main supplier of natural gaz. Oil too. We're all told the fighting is not going as he had planned. Who's to say? I wonder if Putin's stock value is dropping while fossil fuel prices go through the roof like a bomb on a Ukrainian elementary school. I don't think so. And how could he make his net worth increase even more? Just drag the war out as long as possible. 

I'm not saying any of this is definitely happening, but you should understand Ukraine better to understand my skepticism better. Again, not saying I'm any sort of Ukraine expert, but here's a little video of interest. It gives an idea of the THOROUGH corruption Russia perpetrated on Ukraine, the fighting against it, which we could ALL take a lesson from, and the alternative to political control that ANY super-powered, unhinged, maniacally, money/power hungry oligarch is capable of, military invasion. 

What a tangled web, eh? 2014, as the video doesn't really tell you, was what happened when Yanukovych, a total Russian pawn president, finally stopped pretending like he had any intention of signing an association agreement with the EU. Remember, this is also the guy who basically fucked Crimea by renewing the Russian lease on military bases there in exchange for... you guessed it... cheaper Russian natural gaz. This is what made the 2014 annexation of Crimea possible. He got THAT done before he split. And watch the video. Look what he had before splitting! And what he probably took with him (who's to say?) WHEN he split! Is this what has to happen before we stop the voluntary ass rape elsewhere around the world? Can't we see that this is inevitably where enabling oligarchs will lead? 

More than 100 people died in the protests. This traitor was evacked by Russian helicopter and he took the Ukrainian treasury with him! Of the money he FUCKING STOLE, 1.5 billion was traced and frozen. Sound familiar? This is what's being done in response to the Ukraine invasion today, but should really be a matter of course worldwide amongst thieving oligarchs. It isn't because, as the video shows in this particular situation, oligarchs buy the courts, lawmakers and politicians who can enact such financial penalties. The "genius" financial wizardry starts happening. Yes, we have become accustomed to PRAISING financial fuckery like this that hurts us all. 160 million of the frozen FUCKING STOLEN money is "bought" from an unnamed salesperson for 30 mil and a private jet. They sell frozen illegally stolen money to someone with the power to make it "legal" again like my gym sold my unpaid membership fees to a collector. Their world is not our world. 

The oligarchs who bought the FUCKING STOLEN money "remove the arrest" by getting a favourable ruling from a judge. A judge they can afford to buy. This is what happens among the filthy rich. This is what they do while you and I do Wordle or play Yahtzee with friends. How much MORE of the 1.5 billion has this very same thing happened to without being exposed? And how much MORE than 1.5 bill. did Yanu-clepto-vych FUCKING STEAL that wasn't traced? It's a very good illustration of how corruption is a way of oligarchs and politicians collaborating to pilfer from the passive public. And don't kid yourself, it's not just in Russia, it's all over the world. 

And what do you know! The main players in this scam all have connections to one Donald Scumbag Trump. Yanukovych, Quickpace, Onyschenko, Chesterfield, Kurchenko, Foxtron, Fynel, and the Fuchs were all Fuching the people of Ukraine without giving any Fuchs. Why would they? People like that don't go to jail. So long as banks are too big to fail, they'll be too big to jail. People with too much money and power feel untouchable. Imagine doing something dead simple like driving down the street as an oligarch. First of all, you'd have your choice of any car. It costs as much as a coffee to you and me. You can go any speed you want because a speeding ticket is even less. Completely negligible and a non-deterrent. Even driving drunk is fine. Go ahead. Alice Walton of Wal-Mart oligarchy killed someone while driving drunk and got away scott free. The Texas trooper who had the nerve to stop her and not just let her go after finding out who she was, mysteriously got suspended. Her charge was expunged because of that. And the statute of limitations has lapsed. 

We might imagine living in a world like this would be nice. But what happens to people like this? Go back to the video to the Ukrainian lady at the end saying that she doesn't sleep well. She said this before we learned that all the bad guys got away with it. And now we know what might well have kept her awake at nights. The fear of some bored, untouchable douchebag swooping in on her country that had shown itself to still be ripe for the picking despite the revolution, taking by military force, violence, and criminal acts that don't stop short of murder, that which he failed to take politically. Putin is what happens to people who have too much money and power. To the majority, US, he is a monster created by a world full of greed. To the owners of this world, THE OLIGARCHS or PLUTOCRATS, he is a template, a fucking hero! This needs to change. 

I have little hope that it will happen, but I'd LOVE to see Putin busted down to a commoner. I want to see him begging for borscht. And it is my fondest wish for this to become more common in our messed up world. It won't as long as I keep seeing people talking about and posting things like how we should all be grateful for our blessings and thankful that we are not suffering like the people of Ukraine. Really? "Things are shit. I can't get a good job, so I'll keep working the shitty one I have. Inflation is killing me. I'll never own my house or retire. My kids will never get any help from me for their educations and have an even bleaker outlook. But HEY, at least we're not being bombed." All I can add to that stupid kind of thinking is the word "yet" because if you keep thinking like that, you are enabling the oligarchs and just might get bombed. Stop enabling the oligarchs! Thanks for listening to my TED Talk. 

We Cherish Our Deluders

It's March 14th, White Day here in Korea. Like home, Feb. 14th here is Valentine's Day. I did nothing THAT day, but here in Korea, women give chocolate to men on Feb. 14th. I prefer Feb. 15th the lesser known holiday of Saint Cheap Chocolate Day. Although, I don't enjoy it as much as I used to.

What, you may wonder, is White Day? When I hear "White Day," I think of Ambrose Bierce defining "eloquence" as "The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white." Bierce was not fond of politics, to say the least, so I reckon he was thinking particularly of the "eloquence" one might see in politics. He also defined "degradation" as "one of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment." He defined "diplomacy" as "the patriotic art of lying for one's country." Politics, he called "the conduct of public affairs for private advantage." A politician was an eel in the mud upon which society is reared. We, the commoners are but electors who enjoy the sacred privilege of voting for candidates of other men's choosing. And he believed that were it not for political lies along with some self-delusion, we'd acknowledge all of this and maybe do something about it. "All hail, Delusion! Were it not for Thee, the world so topsy-turvy we should see." His ideas are practically 2 centuries old and apply as much or more to politics today. I guess we still cherish our deluders. 

That said, White Day is not about politics. Maybe I just have that on the brain because of the recent election day in Korea. I don't know if the Korean people had anyone worth a vote, but as is so often the case in elections worldwide, the wrong guy won. Yoon looks to be the Korean equivalent of a Republican. Maybe even a Trumpian. I saw the meme already posted by someone here in Korea, but can't find it now. Just imagine this hat:

on this head:

Yoon Suk Yeol doesn't like foreigners although I haven't heard any plans for a wall; has no political experience; doesn't like women although I haven't heard anything about grabbing them by the pussies; will cut taxes on the mistreated ole rich folks; will support the "free market" fallacy; will deregulate particularly in the housing market (because it worked so well for the US just before "08!), this looks more like a candidate of other (filthy rich) men's choosing, rather than one that was chosen by the Koreans. He won 48% of the votes of 77% of Korea so that's like 37% of the people in this country (at best) who unleashed this guy on themselves. If they have super candidates, zoning and gerrymandering like SOME countries so that it's not really one person - one vote, it could be fewer than 37%. So it absolutely WASN'T a guy who was chosen by the Korean people. But for at least one term, they'll probably all pull together in the love of democracy and the false belief that this was the dude the country wanted. And they get him for 5, not 4 years. Don't get me wrong, I don't know much about this guy and for all I know all of the above could be way off base, but he's a politician now, so I'm betting if it's not insufficiently harsh now, it won't be 5 years before it is. I'm with Ambrose! I hate politics too. 

But speaking of love, (silky smooth transition) what is White Day? It's a day in Korea when the boys who received chocolate from their girls on Valentines (assuming they're still a couple) give candy to them in return. Both are just silly rituals of consumerism that benefit businesses, of course, but we like doing them over here. You know how every kid gave valentines to every classmate back in our school days? Well I sometimes give chocolate and candy to students on Valentine's Day and White Day. It makes the students think I love them. And some may have cherished that delusion too. Who knows? For all I know, it could have improved my evaluations. Not that evaluations have ever made a lick of difference...

But anyway, there's also a third day in the sequence. April 14th is Black Day here. Black Day is SINGLES Day! Yes, it's nice that being single is associated with the darkest of colours over here. We're all pretty shadowy, us single people. Morose, gloomy wanderers of the night. We lurk in the shade and populate the dingy dullness of the Korean landscape foraging for mates unsuccessfully. And we mourn by eating black noodles on April 14th. I have the distinction of having been born on that date many moons ago and don't mind being considered a MOST ineligible bachelor over here. A kind of Count Davula of Black Day, if you will. Perhaps this year I'll eat some black birthday cake with my black noodles. If I'm feeling exceptionally dark, I just might. 

Being single - dark, black, negative? I'm sure you can guess from what delusional roots these associations derived. We should have lots of kids. Why? You'll find most of the "reasons" to be old and frankly outdated. Population for protection. The "revenge of the cradle" was something French Canadians adopted in order to gain more control of Canada over the British descendants living in it. But this was the 19th century. It's not something that's done any more. Surely South Korea always wanted more citizens so they could fend off hostile attacks in its past as well. 

Be fruitful and multiply. There are few, if any, religions that don't pressure subscribers to have lots of kids. Similar reasons might be at the core of that strategy if you think of global religions as being at "war" with one another. I think it might be helpful to point out that God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply when there were no people on the earth. We have billions now! I won't presume to speak for the Man upstairs, but maybe there's no need to be as fruitful anymore.

Every kid is a consumer and a future tax payer. The world, through politics, is controlled by big business and the ruling class, to a member, would have us multiply like fruit flies if they had their druthers. This is probably the main influence that causes such wonderful associations to being single as Black Day, not to mention the negativity attached to words and phrases like "spinster," "barren," "sterile," "shooting blanks," "flying solo," "unattached," and "single."  Politicians and economists will warn of hard times if population goes down too. They started quite some time ago in countries over here in Asia, including Korea. Every woman needs to have 2.1 kids to just keep the population of a country the same. Many countries in Asia are at that number (India) or below, (China, Japan, Singapore) and South Korea is at ONE. With urbanization, female autonomy, automation and many other MODERN concepts being very good reasons for already existing population decline as well as a positive perception of it, Korea should actually be happy and maybe even proud of that number. But they're not. They're being happily deluded toward fruitful multiplication.

This may sound a lot like sour grapes from a "childless" man like myself. Don't take it from me then. Listen to the authors of "Empty Planet." They've done more research and might both be married and have kids. Not sure. 

Perhaps (or perhaps definitely) the largest deluder of all is society, within which I include, family, social peers, and media of all kinds. I don't need to tell you all the crazy things we all do because we are influenced by them. Happily influenced some of the time. Fashion, music, trends of all kinds might be fun, but would we participate if we were absolutely unaffected by outside influence? I think the answer can be found every time I use my computer. Don't be surprised if before you watch the above You Tube vid you have to sit through a commercial or two, then have banner ads and pop-ups invading every unfilled corner of your computer screen. Just like politicians, clans, traditions, cultures, tribes and religions, they wouldn't be there if they didn't work. Though I don't know anyone who cherishes the endless online adds. Maybe we'd be better off to stop cherishing some of the other influential entities in our lives that tend to try to delude us. No? Well, it's what I reckon anyway. 

Blue and Yellow Make Green

 Picture the Canadian or American driving in his/her car listening to a radio report on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and mumbling something like, "Fucking Putin! We'll sanction your ass. See how you like that!" The Western motorist activates his/her right turn signal to pull off the road. "Where you gonna keep your billion-dollar yacht now, you crafty Cossack?" Our hero pulls up to the pump. "You like murdering kids? How 'bout we give those kids anti-tank missiles so they're not so helpless any more?" The oil addict removes the nozzle from the pump and roughly pushes the arm across the hole to reset the pump. "Where you gonna buy your vodka now? Or whatever you drink you teetotalling sociopath. A Russian who doesn't drink. How did we miss this?" Our protagonist opens the small door, unscrews the gas cap and slams the nozzle into the hole. "And how you gonna pay for your juicebox, you savage? What's that? Your bank machine won't give you any Rubles? And they're not worth shit anyway?" The junkie squeezes the nozzle and watches the numbers blur into their rocket-like climb. "And don't be surprised to see your own tanks shooting back at you, you bastard. Sure, your soldiers are just abandoning them with full tanks of gas and operating manuals in Ukrainian on the dashboards." The motorist loudly re-hangs the nozzle and shoves a card into a slot. "We'll Charlie Wilson your ass, you weasel-lookin' despot." The motorist punches a few buttons and receives a receipt equal to what his/her car payments used to be. "We should have done something about this LOOONG ago!" The motorist signals to get back onto the road as a commercial message for Norilsk Nickel plays on the car radio. "SOMETHING..."

Now picture a European speaking German or Swedish or some European language mumbling similar threats against Vladimir Putin as he/she waits in line at the bank to pay his/her natural gas bill and a Gazprom commercial passes through Earpods into a nicely washed brain. "Yoptvayoo mat, we'll spank your ass somehow! SOMEHOW..." the European vows in European.

Heavens to mergatroid! What, oh WHAT can we do? We need to do something, somehow, but what? 

In the US, the most studied and publicized country in the world, it was calculated some time ago that spending a million dollars within the American economy would create 26 jobs in the education sector, 16 jobs in the renewable energy sector, 11 military jobs and a measly 5.3 jobs in fossil fuel. Robert Pollin founding co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts, who supplied the above figures, says, "Clean energy investment will create a lot more jobs than maintaining the existing dirty energy infrastructure - in the range of two to four times more jobs per dollar in spending in all of the countries that we have studied, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, and, (of course), the US."

"Well that's interesting. Anyway, how are we going to stop Putin?"

Long before Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, Europe was well aware of the virtual monopoly this raging Putocrat had on the natural gas market across Europe. AFTER, they were still aware. It's been 8 years at the very least of European energy complacency that has brought the continent to this point. Now, surprise, surprise, Russia invades Ukraine and European leaders are all mealy mouthing about perhaps it might just be a pretty good idea to stop dragging ass on energy changeover... but it's going to hurt for a while. Prepare for some belt tightening and austerity measures. 

Back in 2014, Poland's PM Donald Tusk said, "Excessive dependence on Russian energy makes Europe weak." You'd be hard pressed to find a leader in the continent who hasn't gained public support by blathering on about "overcoming import dependency," (Germany) or moving toward "energy independence," (pretty much the whole continent) but DOING anything has been the hard part. Meanwhile, you'd be hard pressed to find a regular citizen of Europe who doesn't think this is long overdue. Here's an article from 5 months ago about how Putin is just getting richer and richer using his energy monopoly as a weapon against the EU while maintaining that his weaponization of oil and natural gas supplies is just "politically motivated chatter with no basis whatsoever." I know you are, but what am I? 

"That may all be true, but how are we going to stop Putin?"

Perhaps Putin is shooting himself in the face with this latest move. Europe (and the world) seems to have largely stood idly by while Russian aggression against Moldova, Georgia, Chechnya, Syria, Crimea, and now Ukraine took place. Yeah, they've been busy! All of this since the 90's! So it may be hard to believe they'll FINALLY pull the trigger in earnest on their Green Deal plan, but for some reason, Ukraine looks like it might have shaken Europe out of its stupor. MAY have. HERE is what we can do to stop Putin. 

GIANT "however" here. Remember the oligarchs and plutocrats I talked about being too lazy to make lots and lots MORE money a few posts back? (Raise A Little (Constructive) Hell) I talked about Dan Price and how he shows that you can make MORE money by paying your workers more money. We all knew this. It's just basic Keynes. The problem, the reason why Dan Price is the one and only guy doing this is basic Smith. That's right, Adam Smith, a guy we all THINK we might know, but most of us really don't. The "Masters of Mankind" as Smith put it, pursuing their "vile maxim" has been the problem. What is that "vile maxim?" "All for ourselves and nothing for others." Basic greed. It's a package deal. Greed comes with stupidity. They are too greedy (stupid) to satisfy their greed. Fascinating!

Like all of the Masters of Mankind, Putin is stupidly doing the opposite of what he should to satiate his Wendigoian appetite for money and power. As established last post, Putin is widely considered to be the richest guy in Europe. I think he is a good bet to be one of or even THE richest in the world. And STILL he will take all these risks! I suppose he hasn't been given much of a reason to cease and desist. Through all the aggression listed above, Europe has continued to buy energy from him. But, with any luck, Ukraine will be his demise. It's the ultimate realization that he needs to be stopped. It's already quite clear that his aggression won't end with Ukraine if it isn't halted. As Stephen Colbert told us, "The invasion of Moldova is being... Moldova." And who knows where else his unchecked aggression will lead him? 

So while we are all waving blue and yellow flags, tinting Facebook photos blue and yellow and wearing blue and yellow to support Ukraine, not to mention paying outrageous prices for fossil fuels...

...let's think about what the combination of blue and yellow makes. I think it's highly poetic that the solution to the war in Ukraine is right there in its flag. You can't make this up folks!

Are Sports A Hundo P Fixed?

 I've said right here on this blog before, not a hundo P tongue in cheek, that I've always been one to enjoy a good conspiracy theory. What? Hundo P? Oh that's a new thing in my hobby - hockey card collecting - that I find so annoying that I'm ironically trying to make it happen. I've been using it in comments on Facebook and I thought it was time for it to make an appearance in my blog. I'm sure they didn't invent it at Upper Deck, the phrase was probably firmly established in the urban dictionary before the subset in Series One Hockey cards came out a couple days ago, but it's the first place I saw it. I'd give you a screen shot or photo of a "Hundo P" card as an example, but they're so new, I can't find one on the old interweb just yet. 

This is not the first thing that has bugged me about card collecting, or, as you'll see when I finally trundle round to the point of this post, sport in general lately either. "Let's go!" When did this become synonymous with hooray, yay, yes, all right, etc.? I get that athletes say this at the same time as those other things when they're celebrating a goal or a good play. Hell, I've even said it. While playing sports. And it didn't mean the same thing, it meant let's go. Let's use this good play to inspire further good play. Let's go. Not yeehaw, yippee, excellent or fuckin' A. Okay I'm being pedantic, but I know what the word "pedantic" means, and I know what "let's go" means. It bothers me when people, maybe people who've never played sports, just hijack a phrase like this. I've always fancied myself a descriptivist linguistically speaking, but as I get older and I see more changes in my beloved language, I am starting to reluctantly identify with the prescriptivists more. 

I guess I'll put a vid in here because it shows a few of the things I will mention. At 3:31 AND 7:10 you will hear the "Let's go." This might have been the first guy I heard it from for all I know. He also gets Hundo P's at the 2:17 and 6:39 mark if you want to see what they look like. Of course THIS guy gets the MackDavid! He's a lucky little shit and I don't like him. Admittedly, envy IS one of the reasons. I have two boxes of Upper Deck Series One on the way to Korea as I type this and I am pretty sure I won't get half the value out of them that this guy gets out of his ONE box. He always seems to be lucky. Maybe he only posts his good box breaks, but it's not just his freakishly good luck that bugs me about him. 

He's a Habs fan too. LOL. Actually, that doesn't bug me, I am only kidding about that, but what DOES grate on the spine a little is the overly French pronunciations of players' names. I dunno, maybe, being a Montreal Canadiens fan, he speaks French, but come on, man! 1:16 Johnathan Marchessault. We KNOW he's French, dude. You don't need to say "Jeunne-a-TUN" Marchessault. He does that with Alexis Lafreniere too. I'm sure I'm not the first guy who has been bugged by this as Antonio Mendosa can tell you. (The old SNL skit?) 

TheHabsGuy clearly knows his stuff, and I have to say his OVER-pronunciation bugs me less than some of the American business collectors who can't pronounce names because they have never watched a game of hockey in their lives. However, the other thing that bugs me about this kid is that he IS what I like to call a business collector. When he gets his Trevor Zegras, at the 7 minute mark, his LAST Young Guns, almost as if this whole break was a set-up, after his initial "Let's go" reaction, the first thing he says is "This is gonna go straight up onto E-bay." Now, I checked and there are already Trevor Zegras Young Guns for sale on Ebay. 150 bucks seems to be the going rate. That's what the box cost. The whole box! And you'll notice, he was actually hoping for a Cole Caufield Young Guns. The Caufield is only 120 bucks on Ebay, so I guess, since Cole Caufield plays for his Habs, maybe TheHabsGuy isn't a hundo p business collector. See what I did there?

Okay, here's where I put on my tinfoil hat. I'm not saying any of this happened... BUT, what if TheHabsGuy opened several packs of UD Series 1 VERY carefully and arranged the cards so that he'd get MORE than anyone has the right to expect from a box? He got a clear cut YG of Kole Lind, which he says himself is a case hit. That means you only get one per case. There are 12 boxes in a case, so he's already bucked the odds by a long shot with this one card. Then he gets the chase card. Everybody wants the Zegras Young Guns cuz it pays for the box. His disappointment at not getting Caufield could just be acting. HEY! If you notice, we don't see him open every pack. The Lind pack, we saw most of it, but some of them, we don't see him open the pack at all. If you notice when he opens the Zegras pack, there's a pause. The cam stopped and started again. He could have easily put the card in there during the pause. The very next pack is a YG canvas. ANOTHER rare card! Oskar Steen is not a big name, but this box is just too good! 

Hear me out here. What if Upper Deck thought TheHabsGuy had enough Youtube followers that he could influence the purchase of their product? What if they SENT him a Zegras and told him to sneak it into one of his packs to make the viewers think it's possible that THEY could pull a Zegras too? Impossible you say? Well let me double down. What if Upper Deck took all the Zegras cards OUT because they're just too valuable and they don't want people getting them basically for free? UD Series 1 was late this year. I pre-ordered mine on December 17th last year after it had already been delayed once or twice. It was delayed something like 4 months. During that 4 months, Trevor Zegras did this:

Then, he did this:

Then at the All Star game, he did THIS:

... AND DIDN'T WIN!!! The hometown player won and didn't even score. It was a travesty, but it's the All Star Game. Nobody takes it too seriously. Except the refs doing off side instant replays. But I digress...

Now I could leave this part out, but I think you will understand why I am not gonna... Trevor Zegras is American. Not just American, from New fuckin' York. He's apple pie. He's baseball. Why, he could be the American Gretzky! Why would Upper Deck just GIVE him away? Do you reckon the delay in Series 1 was partially to remove thousands of his YG cards, then repack millions of packs? Before you answer, I have more...

I have been waiting. like all collectors, anxiously for this product and I don't mind telling you, watching Zegras' stock go up knowing I had two boxes of UD Series 1, each with 6-8 Young Guns inside, just made me MORE excited to bust them open. So when March second rolled around, I was watching every break of UD S1 on YouTube I possibly could. I probably watched 60-70 boxes opened before I got to TheHabsGuy. I don't like him. I usually don't even watch his breaks. But until I watched the video above, I saw ZERO Zegras YG cards pulled. None! And I watched two vids where two people opened two entire CASES without hitting him. That's 48 boxes just from them! That's minimum 288 Young Guns. Let's say 300 since they got some clear cut and canvas Young Guns. But they didn't get a Zegras. I've seen a dozen Caufields pulled already. Lots of the other good ones too that are supposed to have the same odds as Zegras. Is it me? Am I smelling something fishy here or being a conspiracy theorist?

Now in case you don't collect hockey cards. Bwaah haaa haaaa! I know none of you do. But does anybody watch football? We just finished easily the most dramatic NFL post season ever. You'd get no argument. EVER. It was so dramatic, I thought it mighta been TOO dramatic. Anybody else? In fact I posted after wildcard weekend that it was the best weekend of NFL football I can recall. The very next week blew that away! How is this possible? 

I'll tell you how it's possible: Professional sports are fixed. I've gone most of my life knowing most things in the real world are fixed. It's not an equitable job market; I am not gonna find my soul mate and if I do against all odds, we'd have too many obstacles to overcome; politics is almost a hundo P corrupt; banks should be more illegal than loan sharks; there are probably fewer than a thousand giant douchebags who run the whole world; but DAMMIT, I've tried really hard to maintain my faith in the purity and honesty of athletic competition. Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds juicing up? I can live through that. Strikes and lockouts have made me angry and even led to boycotts, but I've always come back. Watching hockey and knowing they're really only skating 75% or so for most regular season games. That's okay as long as they bring it in the playoffs. Even when the losing teams try to lose more at the end of the season in order to get a better pick in the draft. We know that's happened and it's okay. Bobby Clarke breaking Valeri Kharlamov's ankle. Cheating, but at least it was cheating within the sport by a guy playing it. It was cheating to win. But what I've tried to avoid looking into, what just might end up costing me one of, if not THE greatest pleasure of my lifetime, professional sports, is if I find out they're fixed for MONEY. Listen carefully to this next vid:

Scary isn't it? I'm not a hundo P convinced that hockey is totally fixed yet. I've almost given up on baseball and if there is a lockout, which I think there will be this season, I may just give up MLB and concentrate on Korean baseball. I did for a few seasons after the last one. NFL is looking more and more phony and I've already given up on basketball. 

If I find out for sure that money has destroyed hockey too, I'm going to Lhasa to dedicate the rest of my life to meditation and self-discipline. I'll find purity of spirit if I can't find purity in sport. It would be so nice if every CEO of every company, every politician, every banker, every sport team owner were a yogi or yogini who had dedicated his/her life to spiritual and mental pursuits and not the empty pursuits of money and power! But that would be Shangri La. That's never been a REAL place has it? 

So if I stop posting, I'm either dead or here:

Don't come looking for me.