Class mobility

You get pity when you lose money. Even if you might be happier. And that's the hard part.

paradoxical circles and the God question

Maybe God is the externalization of our naturally trusting nature?

Or it's our ego's way of coping with the issue that we ourselves can not completely dominate? Is that why we think technology has rendered religion moot? Does this show for whom religion was about ego, and for whom it was about spirituality?

Am I spiritual if I am not religious?

Or maybe God is just a pattern like any other, an idea among many, forever reverberating off each other in the kinesthetic outer-fields of our minds.

Who can tell me? And how can they prove it?

Endless, isn't it?

Predictably Cruel

We are constantly having to re-adjust our notion of reality. Subliminally. When we keep changing the channels. More and more rapidly. Like the moth dancing around the flame.

Youtube Conspiracy

Okay, let me know if you follow me here:

It's boxing day, and it's snowing here in Canada. It's been a foggy christmas, lots of unprecidented junk in the sky. And in our homes. From Wallmart. I just arrived home from my boyfriend's families' picturesque christmas in the country where we saw planes making strange lines in the sky that didn't disappear.

In any event, the reason I'm writing this post is that I was speculating about the New World Order, conspiracy theory, and youtube.

Now, I'm a sceptic on all fronts. I pledge allegiance to no explanation for things other than my own, which is unique as far as I know. Maybe the closest thing would be the discordians?

But I do discuss conspiracy theory with several people that I'm close to.

And so on this evening I found myself speculating about a science fiction-y relationship between Youtube and the New World Order. What if the internet is the new democracy? It is, or will be soon, the total display of our consumer habits. Right? But not just consumer habits. social habits, too. Political habits.

Youtube inspired this, because I was thinking about what the usefulness was of the Youtube people having access to the information about which videos we favourite, which videos we make, and which videos we like. And what comments we like. And what Comments we make. And it dawned on me, as it probably already has most of you at one point or another, that many sites have information like this about many of us. And every display of opinion can be marketed to. And so, in our corporately-owned faux-democracy, that's the closest thing we have to a real vote on real issues that we really want to change.


Maybe...

Now, again, let me know if you follow me here, what if the internet were designed as a reading device for what belief system the public has regarding their experiencial reality? All trends,all fluctuations in mood, is displayed online about all of its users.

So...

 Technology could be the latest device to determine who is progressing in the life-caste system.

Side note: Maybe when certain people get assassinated, it's a time when the universe is making a moment of irony, where on man seals his fate as an angel, and other as an animal, in the next life.

Okay, that's enough spectacular speculation for right now. I'll leave you with two contrasting quotes (Or are they?):

"Just because truth has been omitted, does not mean that truth is not true. Just because reality has not been perceived, does not mean that it is not real."
-Stan Moore

“We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all.”
Chrisel
Kalu Rinpoche


(P.S. Have you ever noticed that playing in the background fashion reality television shows is the exact same type of music people play in the background of pornography?)

Christmas Realism

So, Santa Claus isn't real, after all. (If by Santa Claus you mean the first Amendment to the American constitution...)

WHAT OBAMA SHOULD HAVE SAID

You know what Obama should have said to the bankers when they asked for a bail out?

"In the immortal words of John F. Kennedy, Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

MAXIMUM WAGE

If there's a minimum wage, why isn't there a maximum wage?

Why not put a cap on that shit? Wouldn't this help us not give in to our unendingly greedy instincts, and potentially make everyone happier with the redistribution of wealth?

What are we waiting for?

And while we're at it, why not put a ritual in place for politicians who would like to lead us. Let's give them certain hoops to jump through before giving them the job. Like, say, making them live like a single parent who makes under 30,000$ a year and has three kids. Then they might actually know how to improve social welfare programs, schools, workers unions, the list is potentially endless....

THE NOTHING

Blankness for ages

blanketing virtual space

in my favourite place

and very good snacks, would help.

They'd taste like the way we always remembered they would.

Right?

Because we connect, you can understand me.

Right?

Burp.

Virtual paper isn't expensive

except for the time it costs you

to fill it

the pain it took to come up with the idea

and the drugs you consumed to get the wheels spinning

(Despite the fact that the wheels seem to have abandoned you a while ago. Maybe yesterday.

Maybe fifty years ago.)

(And no one knows any better. Except for your soul. It secretly whispers the phrase 'stop lying to everyone' a couple of times a day. But it knows you and it knows that you're not listening to it until you're ready.)

A dimple today is a wrinkle tomorrow.

And I wish there was a website that connected children to old people. Because I don't think that it's gun control laxity that makes children get violent at school.

Anyways, it occured to me that maybe one reason why this is happening is because it seems as though the young generation are much more disconnected from the older generations, especially the elderly these days. Do you agree?

Hundreds of parents and grandparents get taught to use technology by their children. Which means that their children accessed the information before they did. Which means that their children were relying on their own inner compass to guide them through a crazy mass of information. Luckily, and perhaps predictably, they stuck mostly to their own particular brand of entertainment. And, luckily, they found humour in the gross and the kinky.

However, from another perspective this could be seen as frightening because the young teaching the old is a supposed sign of a coming apocalypse, and also because, let's face it, kids are immature, and lack wisdom and experience, hopefully, in comparison to the older generations.

Anyways, so what if we made a website that connected the elderly to the youth through live video web-cam chat. Like chat-roulette styles. Wouldn't this connect the generations? Give them dialogue so the young can learn from the vast wisdom of the old?

No. There would just be a lot of pranks. The lewd and dismal answer was glaring me in the face the moment I spawned the idea. This is so sad to me because it means that the young potentially have little to no respect for the elderly......

But this is all hypothetical, of course.

THE RECIPE FOR WORLD PEACE

Two latkas,

half-baked.

Nah, I'm just joshin'. But seriously, I think I figured out how to achieve world peace. And it's too bad I'm not the one in power, because it's not even that complicated. Follow me, here:

(NOTE: I am being facetious)

It's been agreed upon by most people I've talked to and heard about that the only way for everyone on earth to get along with each other is if a threat was posed to the planet by, let's just say it now, ALIENS.

Now, if aliens were to actually attack us, that would be a very dangerous situation which would most likely result in at least as much destruction as we've inflicted on each other for centuries, if not, more. However, say the government weren't honest (cough, cough), and they lied to everyone. Let's say they just pretended like aliens wanted to wage war against us in order to sap our planet of its resources, resulting in the end of the human race. Wouldn't everyone put aside their differences in the time being in order to try and win the fight against the aliens??

Now, once this is announced, it will also surface that a secret league of NASA had been preparing for this exact possibility, and that they, in cahoots with a 'weapons' company have been devising the perfect weapons to defeat the aliens with as little casualty count as possible. They have invented a controlling device for battle aircrafts thousands of miles out into space.

Essentially, it would look like a giant booth video arcade game, and it would actually be just that, but they would convince the public and army fighters that the technology was all real. Now not only would there be no need to back up this huge lie with some casualties, but also millions of people who were addicted to video games can be social and have a sense of purpose, not to mention a JOB.

Am I crazy to think that if engineered properly this could work?

DUN DUN DUUUUN...

Hey! Sing it with me kids:

UPPER IN THE MORNING

DOWNER AT NIGHT

UPPER IN THE MORNIN'

DOWNER AT NIGHT

AND YOU WONDER WHY YOUR NATURAL INSTINCTS DON'T KICK IN?

HEY!

UPPER IN THE MORNIN'

DOWNER AT NIGHT.

malanayonaise

I will buy a video camera. This will give my life meaning.

(Lies, Lies, Lies.)

Why is it that injecting meaning into my life seems more and more difficult the older I get? I know, I know, the meaning is inherent, and if I just had the discipline to sit down every day for fifteen minutes, clear my mind of any thought, and just bask in the glory of existence I'd be just FINE. But why is it I end up in front of my computer doing mindless little activities to distract myself from larger goals?

Well, because the world is in a really overwhelming position right now. (Okay, Okay, so what else is new? The fall of Rome, the plague, there's always been something HUGE going on.) But there haven't ever been this many people!! For God's sake, there are so many people in the world. SO MANY. And it makes me feel less necessary. It's so difficult to squeeze your way past the competition and convince the world that you are vital.

Malaise+Mayonnaise= my tuna sandwich.

G20, I shake my fist at you!!!

It has been said that the world is balancing above a giant campfire. Turning slowly over millions of years, and someday the Gods will taste us. Eat our broken, dead cells as tiny particles in a finely-cooked outdoor delicacy. And the Gods don’t even know what’s cooking. They just think it’s a mighty fine dinner after their day of portaging canoes, and hiking up trails. Yes, that’s right, I’m picturing the Gods as good canadian boys going for an indian-summer canoe trip on labour day. Sue me.

*****

Ever wonder if time travel and size-realm travel are intricately connected? Like if I got tiny enough, I’d actually be going back in time. Or maybe not back in time, maybe just to a parallel universe....

This is fiction, and -

***** THIS IS A FUTURISTIC RECONSTRUCTION of a dystopia in canada ***** and it was written in response to the G20 protests in Toronto.  It’s called “G20, I shake my fist at you!”

I was at the protest yesterday and something happened to me.  Call it delusion, but I swear I saw three angels pointing at me from behind a cloud.  They seemed to be huddled together, like a group going tiger-watching at the zoo, and I could see one of their fingers pointing just beyond the edge of the cloud.  Simultaneously, a cop’s baton hit the back of my head, and I was out cold.
When I woke up I was in a cage.  Wait, let me rephrase that.  I was in a giant warehouse with garish orange lighting, and salivating cops waiting with bated breath for any of us to make the wrong move. That’s right, it wasn’t just me in that warehouse with the cops.  There were hundreds, if not thousands of my fellow activists, caged up like dogs at the SPCA.
This had happened before, many times.  The first time it happened we had all kept our spirits up, singing protest songs, and being defiant, until the early morning hours brought us such a lack of clarity from loss of sleep and crummy food that we sang softer, and less often.  We were let out quickly.  There was a media frenzy, a class action law-suit, an uproar.  That was years ago.
Nowadays the cops round us up at every small protest and keep us in that warehouse indefinitely.  A method for containment of the rebellious masses.  They know we’re almost harmless, but there are millions more of us than there are of them, so they keep their duckies in a row, so to speak.  
I remember talking to my colleague earlier that day:
The public is too busy trying to make ends meet to be able to give two shits about the possibility of a revolution, he said.  
Ironically, the media call us communists, when we are fighting for freedom of speech, I snorted back, A culture so devoid of spiritual practice created the perfect circumstance for every high-functioning, self-serving intelligent sociopath to rise to the top and dominate.  But how can its citizens complain when they still muddle around with no connection to their higher spirits?  

But then Tom, while eating his apple, had said, Buddhism could be nothing more than a mechanism of escape for a mind under considerable duress. Complacency and forgiveness don’t change the values of a society, they sustain them.

Unless our society is perpetually unforgiving, I retorted.

I hear all of this familiar dialogue in my head as I wait for my processed cheese sandwich like an eager five-year old waiting for ice-cream.  I hate how my hunger works against my convictions.

I yell silently in my head:
People think we’re crazy even when we tell them that it’s their tax dollars financing internationally organized crime!
And I tell them, your government’s actions greatly effect your lives! I know you don’t see it, because it is hidden cleverly in overly stylized language, forever allowing blame to be passed around the government’s table like crappy fruitcake at a christmas party.

And maybe you assume that there is some kind of legal corner, or economic term that you are just not educated enough to grasp.  Maybe you feel a little dumb for not understanding the situation at the level that the politicians seem to, and boy do you feel tired from a long day of work.  And then, suddenly, a new piece about celebrity getting arrested for a D.U.I. comes on the news, and the mental investigation of the possibility of change has ended.
Were we always this way?  We don’t revolt unless there’s nothing to eat?  And what if there’s plenty to eat, but the food is filled with harmful chemicals, bizarre modifications, moral-compromising methodologies of development, cancer-causing mutations, heart-clogging, body-scratching blister-makers that give you small symptoms early on in order to justify the larger illnesses they will cause sometime in the not-so-distant future?

Together behind the bars, we sing- Oh Canada, We stand on guard for thee.
And still the cops cry, “We are the good guys! We are not the bad guys!”
And still we remained wet, broken, hungry and afraid to continue to speak our minds.

For quite some time we had felt that revolution should be in the air.  But we, as a country, never rose to the occasion. We were too distracted by the mesmerizing lights of prosperity.

And what did we expect, when the very nature of our entire economic system was built on the principle that selfish motivations will churn the wheels of innovation.  What did we expect, when greed was all around us, and celebrated for its particular tastes, and snobbery. Delicacies were the norm.  Vanity was a value to strive towards.  If gratification wasn’t instantaneous, we’d throw a tantrum, and the natural world was measured by, and for, its resources.   And anything we had, someone else wanted, so we thought we must defend it and protect it.  And any new luxury somebody else acquired was something worth striving for.  And we need more nukes than that guy.  And we need so many nuclear bombs that their exponential potential exceeded anything imaginable, even by the human being with the largest bank account.

And late at night, all of the pot heads wondered to themselves if they were just being paranoid, or if it really was the end of the world.

We stopped trusting each other.  We no longer believed in each other’s souls.  

And all the jokes on TV were dick jokes.  As in the jokes a dick would make.

And soon life became a joke that a dick would make.  

Please don’t let Canada become a joke a dick would make.