As <wiki>Huxley</wiki> paraphrased Marx in Brave New World Revisited: Once upon a midnight bored out of my freakin' skull and pondering the imponderable, as oftimes I do, comes The Commercial for a "Happy Pill", refreshing in its brutal honesty. WellTabs, Hey, they put a lot of thought into that name. Are you sad, anxious, tired, restless, beat-up, beat-down, ragged, dragged or just plain not feeling good? Take Our Dope!! All natural!! or "some of the ingredients are all natural" Big Pharma usually has the trippiest commercials, pipe people for a pee-pee problem, a grey bathrobe following you around for an antidepressant, wonder catheters that make you happy, diabetic finger-stick-readers all smiles... (and a butterfly design) A list of probable ways the crap will kill you that would scare you silly if you weren't taking dope to turn your brain off. (My favorite was a diet pill where the second-to-last side effect mentioned was "uncontrollable anal leakage") Sometimes I think the ad producers get paid in merchandise. They promise, in short, Soma. That's what Huxley called it in Brave New World. There's actually a narcotic sleeping pill with that name. Damn shame that Big Business got it declared Porn. Gotta keep the Masses shivering in fear of Socialists so The Masses don't notice it' the Capitalists screwing us. "Animal Farm" (written by a Socialist" - Good. "Brave New World" - Baaaaad. They have the same group of Majority Shareholder (face it , kids, when the 18 political wankers tell you they care about Grandma's pension they're simply Lying, the one thing they do best, followed by shirking military service and Real Work, about which the LIE when confronted) yea, veriy, brethren and sistren, the Same jerkoffs who own the businesses which sell us the most gas guzzling cars, the gas itself, McGreaseburgers and Diet Plans, Alcohol and Anabuse, sleeping pills and the so-called "Puritan" work ethic that sleep is evil and we should take stimulants to work harder (Boxer's Last Words as related by Squealer) Smog and asthma/COPD meds, stress that makes you impotent (and stops your heart) and Viagra, Cialis and Smiling bob's Magic Penis Pills (which also stops your heart) ... and Uncontrollable Anal Leakage. Don;t worry, though they sell Adult Diapers too... The sell us Sugar in quantities and forms never intended by God or Nature or both, then sell us diabetic supplies shipped direct to your door. There was another commercial right after the Happy Pill one pictures in black & wAhem... A knife sharpener. $ 19.95. Damn it, I know people who can't write their own names, but know better than using an unsharpened knife. They also know how to sharpen knives. Which once again begs the question: "Is you completely lost yo' MIND?" If you can't figure out what to do with a knife, might I suggest you use a baseball bat instead? Not that you'd have more success, but a lot of stoners would pay to watch the videos. Now, yours truly was, in his mis-spent and wicked youth, a space cadet. Many an intriguing story
Tag: Karl Marx
George Who?
This is a paper from some time ago, well prior to the advent of Occupy events. Henry George wrote from a sensibility one rarely finds expressed so explicitly today. The modern reader should note that Christian underpinnings in no way disrupt either the reasoned logic or the passionate humanity behind George's arguments. Follow the links! Many Occupiers have promoted education, the deeper aspects of which are rarely available in 3 page tracts.... For Eric Stephenson 16 February 2009 George Who? It seems peculiar that in 2009 no one has heard of Henry George, if only for the fact that during his prime a hundred years past his was easily one of the most recognizable names on Earth. Just a journalist really, George’s hardscrabble upbringing, his early experience in the business world, and maybe just a little OCD inspired him to craft an entirely new approach to economic theory. Its publication very quickly garnered him international acclaim, respect, and supportive friendship from many of the greatest figures of his day. Many, encountering his work for the first time today, would no doubt label him a Commie, particularly given that George’s work followed Marx and Engels’ by three decades. This misinterprets George. His thinking split the difference between Adam Smith and the Communist theorists in many ways, sharing common ground with both camps but firmly establishing his own territory. His work deserves a second reading. George was born in Philadelphia, September, 1839, to a family headed by a hardworking but low-budget printer. By providing the Church cut-rate printing services, George’s devout father enabled Henry to garner a relatively high-standard primary education from the Episcopal Academy. He left home after high-school seeking his own way, and after a brief period of adventuring, found himself in San Francisco where he joined the Printer’s Union, following in his father’s footsteps after all. George lived a poor man’s life--same as any tradesman at the height of the Robber Barons’ power--until an editor at the San Francisco Times came across a piece he had written and left lying around. He accepted an offered staff writing position at $50 a week, which seemed a princely amount compared with his father’s $800 a year. He traveled quite a bit for the Times, and in 1868 on assignment in New York City first encountered the squalid conditions surrounding and adjoining vaunted islands of luxury and power that would inform and undergird his writing for the rest of his life. Having gained considerable respect as a newsman and a fair amount of seed-money, George and a partner, William Hinton, established the San Francisco Evening Post in 1871. George unabashedly used the paper as a human rights platform until 1877, when, some say, powerful railroad interests against whom he had
Karl Rove admits error in Iraq strategy
ERROR? wtf? Since when, exactly, does a long string of bald-faced Lies work out as being mistakes? Saying something is orange when it's actually red is a "mistake". Losing count of how many beers you drank before getting behind the wheel is a "mistake". Voting for Bush once would be a "mistake" and twice would be unspeakable stupidity, (or Complicity). Underestimating the strength of the will of Human Beings to not be conquered, murdered and robbed might be a very large and stupid mistake, but once it's been pointed out that it never works and has historically FAILED every damn time, then it becomes Sheer Arrogance to push on with it. Not a "mistake". After being warned, calling everybody who warned you "Traitors, Idiots, Moonbats, Bleeding Hearts, Deluded, Crazy, Terrorist Sympathizers" and so forth, then having your collective nose rubbed in the big steaming pile of your own "mistake"... and then pushing on... that's not a "mistake". That's, in the case of sending Americans to kill and die for your money and your arrogance, Treason. And Murder. Thousands of counts of Capital Murder just for the American Soldiers, made airtight Capital Murder by the Patriot Act and several Executive Orders that Karl Rove wrote. Any one count of a serviceman murdered by their treasonous actions would get the entire Bush Administration including Rove and their Ministry of Propaganda Fox News HANGED. Much as I'm opposed to Capital Punishment, I believe I'd buy tickets to the event. Then there are the murders of Iraqi and Afghan and Somali and Sudanese and Pakistani and Uighur and Filipino and the list goes on Civilians and Prisoners of War, Each one of them an act of Capital Murder by reason of it being Terrorism. And again, through the definitions provided by Rove and Jeb Bush and Condi Rice and their fellow PNAC Imperialists. Which one would be a Mistake?
How a ‘credit crunch’ can help kick an economic depression into place
In a system...where the entire continuity of the...process rests upon credit, a crisis must obviously occur -- a tremendous rush for means of payment -- when credit suddenly ceases and only cash payments have validity. At first glance, therefore, the whole crisis seems to be merely a credit and money crisis. And in fact it is only a question of the convertibility of bills of exchange into money. But the majority of these bills represent actual sales and purchases, whose extension far beyond the needs of society is, after all, the basis of the whole crisis. At the same time, an enormous quantity of these bills of exchange represents plain swindle, which now reaches the light of day and collapses; furthermore, unsuccessful speculation with the capital of other people; finally, commodity-capital which has depreciated or is completely unsaleable, or returns that can never more be realized again. The entire artificial system of forced expansion of the [ecomony] cannot, of course, be remedied by having some bank, like the [Federal Reserve], give to all the swindlers the deficient capital by means of its paper and having it buy up all the depreciated commodities at their old nominal values. Incidentally, everything here appears distorted, since in this paper world, the real price and its real basis appear nowhere, but only bullion, metal coin, notes, bills of exchange, securities. Particularly in centers where the entire money business of the country is concentrated, like London [or New York]...the entire process becomes incomprehensible.