Monthly Archives: September 2008

Money, banks, and the whole con…

For many years I’ve tried to understand the whole business of money…and failed. Very knowledgeable, tolerant, patient people have tried to explain the international banking system in the simplest terms they can conjure, and I still didn’t get it.
But today The Tea God directed me to this brilliant description of what is going on. Suddenly, it all makes sense, like some sort of epiphany. Many of you will already understand these basic things, and I ask you to go easy on me for missing the point for so long…money has never made sense to me. Now I realise that it just doesn’t make sense full-stop [period].

It’s a shame to discover this now, just as I’m beginning to enjoy life. Even work is enjoyable at the moment; something that hasn’t happened for many years. I’m doing interesting, mentally stretching work, and that seems to make me happy. Weird eh ? Admittedly another source of pleasure is that my line manager has been able to keep me far, far, away from meetings, internal politics, and all of the other shit that gets in the way of the work. Also, we get to eat some good lunches…mmmmmmmmmm…Wawa…


Proud to be a moron

There’s a guy that lives over the road from us and today he placed “McCain/Palin” posters in his front yard; and then illuminated them. Now, it’s astonishing enough that anyone, even a Republican, would support a muppet like McCain – even before the whole Palin debacle. But now that McCain’s economic doctrine has been proved wrong, and now that his VP (ie the next president) has been shown to be incapable of dealing with any sort of trouble, anyone supporting them must surely be regarded as a dangerous lunatic.
So, why not buy some of these enlightening materials, because the proud morons would probably love to have them attached to their signs/houses/cars…and you can help them out.


Oh dear…that’s terrible…..hahahahahahaha

After watching George W Gump’s hilarious message to the nation, where he appealed to the masses to give him and the other oligarchs all of the money they assumed would be heading their way before it all went pear-shaped, I’m lost for words. Yet again, decades after his death, Bill Hicks puts it better than I ever could:

(now that Jesse Helms is (thankfully) dead, you can substitute his name for W, McCain, Palin, Bernanke, Paulson, or any of the other bastards who continue to piss in the same pot.)


Spot the difference

What’s the difference between this:

rm ice*

and this:

rm ice *

?
Well, the answer is that the first one removes some unwanted files, while the second one destroys an entire fucking days work at 5:22pm leading to much annoyance and swearing.



Beer, fish, and rock

Now that the environment has yielded its four-month protest against humanity, it’s safe to leave the house without risk of drowning in sweat and exhausted anger. This has been a long, hard summer, that started just before spring got a chance to spread its wings. This week has consisted of a few days of utopian weather pleasure. About 78 (25C), not humid, bright, and beautiful. So, for the first time in months, I went out a couple of times this week.

This rather excellent guy called Tom invited me along to something that sounded too good to be true: a night of gastronomic excess, for $20 a head…with beer! It was also going to be a double date: me and Michele, he and his long-term love-sink. It wasn’t until we arrived that we realised we were actually taking part in a Sam Adams survey, but in honesty that didn’t strike me as a bad thing. And I was right not to worry. We had four courses of gourmet food, with each course including the perfect beer accompaniment. For the record, the courses were:

  • Cheese (smoked Gouda and Morbier) with walnuts and some yummy prosciutto-style beef.
  • Home-made chorizo crumbled on scallops.
  • New York Strip (rare) sprinked with ground coffee beans in a raspberry sauce.
  • Beeramisu – guess how good that was…

Each course had its own beer that was supposed to perfectly accompany the flavours. I can’t tell you how good the whole experience was. Tom and I plan to go back there this Saturday to sample some of their Shepherds pie, which is, correctly, made with lamb.

The next evening I went downtown to meet a couple of good friends for a fish dinner at Anastasi Seafood followed by my first ever go at Rock Band 2. Let me tell you, that is a fucking fun way to spend time! Even on “easy” I was crap at the drums, but I now have a great deal of respect for Bill Ward.

Good night.


Greater Depression: simple explanation

  1. Capitalism doesn’t work. If it did, there would be no need for regulation, antitrust, monopolies commissions or any of the other bandages that are used to heal the wounds. Capitalism isn’t supposed to be regulated, it’s supposed to take care of itself. The invisible hand of the market is supposed to keep things in order and make the world a functional and happy place. As I said, capitalism doesn’t work, and so that clearly doesn’t happen. But rather than ditch capitalism, we bandage over it from time to time.
  2. When the capitalists are in control, they do whatever they can to remove the bandages, to show how well capitalism works unaided. In fact, for them, it works very well indeed as they get more wealth than can understand.
  3. The wounds go septic with all of the pus-filled bubbles and everything starts collapsing – the core of the infection affects the low-level workers first, and slowly moves outwards.
  4. Before the infections reach the top-level capitalists and law-makers, they panic and re-apply the bandages and then buy expensive antibiotics like “regulation” and “nationalisation” which keep the top-level rich, and are paid for by the low-level dying in the form of taxes.

That’s it! This time the wounds are pretty serious; they may even lead to proper change, but I doubt it.
Personally I’ve been enjoying watching lots of people in suits get a slapping. It’s just a pity that it’s only those people that are deemed newsworthy, and not the hundreds of millions who really are getting the shitty end of the stick. Pity them, not the wunches of bankers.



Real politics

It’s difficult to bear in mind that life and politics back in England is just as shallow, stupid and shitty as it is here, especially during the Republican National Convention week.
So, in the middle of all the blather and bluster it’s refreshing to see people commemorating one of the most significant examples of people power in the 20th century: The Battle of Cable Street.
On October the 12th is an anti-fascist historical walk around the east-end of London; I wish I could just hop on a bus and attend.
On one of the sites linking to the walk, someone posted an excellent YouTube clip of a newsreel with footage of the actual battle. I’ve never seen film of it before and it blew me away. Have a look.