All Wet

 
Sooooo, like everyone else on the freakin' planet, it was inevitable that I got nominated for this whole "ALS Ice Bucket Challenge" thingie by at least a half-dozen people .

Which is kinda crazy 'cuz if y'all knew me then you'd know that I'm not motivated at all by public humiliation, guilt, peer pressure, grandstanding, unquestioning acquiescence or chain-style obligatory emails.

Now, even though I would never, ever voluntarily film myself dumping a bucket of freezing-cold (not to mention precious) ice-water over my head and then post it on the innerwebz, I do think that this is an incredibly important cause which deserves as much exposure as possible. 

But unlike the average lemming I decided to do some research before I blindly submitted my donation. That's when I discovered that the ALSA only directs about 7.71% of its budget to Research: I.E. finding a friggin' treatment.

So here's the thing: I need someone, anyone out there who has experience working with not-for-profit organizations to justify this to me because, at face value, this seems woefully low.

Even more baffling is the amount of money the group's administrators make:

Jane H. Gilbert – President and CEO – $339,475.00
Daniel M. Reznikov – Chief Financial Officer – $201,260.00
Steve Gibson – Chief Public Policy Officer – $182,862.00
Kimberly Maginnis - Chief of Care Services Officer – $160,646.00
Lance Slaughter - Chief Chapter Relations and Development Officer – $152,692.00
Michelle Keegan – Chief Development Officer – $178,744.00
John Applegate – Association Finance Officer – $118.726.00
David Moses – Director of Planned Giving – $112,509.00
Carrie Munk – Chief Communications and Marketing Officer – $142,875.00
Patrick Wildman – Director of Public Policy – $112,358.00
Kathi Kromer – Director of State Advocacy – $110,661.00

Now I'm not saying that these people don't do some great work, but do they honestly deserve a "one for you, one for me" kind of arrangement? 

Sorry to be the bucket of ice water cast haphazardly upon this mindless viral phenomenon, but I've never been one to blindly follow groupthink without doing some research first. And, let me tell ya folks, what I discovered really has me scratching my head. In fact, based on their own tax returns, over half the money the ALSA takes in goes directly into the pockets of the people who run the thing.  

Who knows, maybe this is the model for every single non-profit organization on the planet. Maybe the CEO's for the Cancer Society, the Alzheimer's Association and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation all drive sick rides, no pun intended. But even if that's the case, is is right? Maybe it's time to take a long hard look at the way these massive administrative bodies operate and start asking some tough questions.

Even after my research I went ahead and gave a donation anyway, preferring to think that the lion's share of my money will go directly to helping people with ALS, supporting their families and/or finding a cure for this terrible disease.

'Cuz even more daunting then the prospects of publicly embarrassing myself by dumping ice water on my head is the horrible thought that I just paid for some rich asshole's venti mocha cookie frappuccino.

EPIC RANT  Leave it to acerbic comedian Bill Burr to sum up my thoughts on this whole thing. Not even slightly suitable for work, BTW.

VIRAL FAIL Yes, the videos are doing a great job increasing awareness for ALS but it seems to me that a lot of people are doing them for attention or to see their friends and family members humiliate themselves on-line.

THE "YOU HAD ONE JOB" FAIL  And this is what I was afraid of...

Words Fail...But These Will Have To Do

Ever since Robin Williams took his own life on Monday August 11'th I've been struggling, rather vainly, to process this. Not since we lost Jim Henson have I been so completely and utterly crushed by a celebrity death.

Like so many other people my age, I first became aware of Robin Williams back in 1978 via Mork & Mindy. I was only eight years old at the time. To a kid, Robin was a hyperactive genius. Kids like THINGS THAT GO FAST and Robin was the Speedy Gonzalez of comedy. Often you'd find yourself laughing hysterically at one of his shticks, scarcely able to breathe before you realized that he'd already said three or four other impossibly funny things. Every time I sat down to watch a new episode of the show I took my young life in my hands.

My parents were immediately put off my him, probably because they thought that all of that energy couldn't possibly be generated by one human being without the aid of chemicals. But to me he was always the alpha and omega of funny.

His first lead role in a film, as the squinty, spinach-obsessed titular hero in Popeye, didn't exactly endear him to critics. As far as I was concerned it was a box office smash. I can distinctly remember going to see it at our local Harmon Theatre and being tuned away because the lineup was too long. I never did go back to the cinema, and to this day I've never seen it from start to finish. This is a personal deficit that I will endeavor to  rectifying post-haste.

His next two films, specifically Moscow on the Hudson and The World According to Garp polarized fans and critics alike. As a Juilliard-trained actor, it was pretty clear that Robin was trying to make smart choices and expand his repertoire. Unfortunately, for the average slack-jawed troglodyte who just wanted to see Mork copied and pasted into everything Williams did, they didn't want to see him do anything "different" or "serious". Jim Carey would suffer from the same pall years later.

Mercifully Robin managed to strike the perfect balance in 1987 with Good Morning Vietnam.

This was the ideal cinematic venture for Williams. Bringing his own manic interpretation to his portrayal of real-life U.S Armed Forces Radio Services D.J. Adrian Cronauer, the film also mined plenty of social commentary inherent in the spate of Vietnam War movies which were in vogue at the time. All of a sudden Williams was THE HOTNESS again.

Now on the top of the world, Robin had the pick of the litter when it came to scripts. His next film, Dead Poet's Society, was undoubtedly one of the best roles:

Thanks to a brief but memorable appearance as The King of the Moon in The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen just two years prior, Robin forged a timely relationship with former Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam. Partnered with the perfect straight man in the form of Jeff Bridges, the three delivered Gilliam's most even and satisfying movie to date: The Fisher King.

Williams was so popular with moviegoers his career seemed insulated against failure. Even when Steven Spielberg's Hook famously bombed in 1991 he rebounded one short year later with a characteristically improv-a-licious vocal performance as the Genie in Aladdin.

Robin was still being offered plenty of A-list material so he had no problems bouncing back from the occasional dud. For every Toys, Jack or Flubber there was an Awakenings, a Jumanji, a Mrs. Doubtfire or a Birdcage. In 1997 wunderkind screenwriters Ben Affleck and Matt Damon saw their script for Good Will Hunting get fast-tracked when Williams signed on to play Dr. Sean McGuire. This proved to be a shrewd move for Williams since his performance in that film earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

But just like everything else in Hollywood, what goes up must invariably come down. After his Oscar win, things seem to peter out a bit for Williams with a string of forgettable movies. As if sensing that he had nothing to lose, Robin took on his most daring and challenging role to date: that of the socially-crippled stalker Seymour "Sy" Parrish in the tremendously unsettling One Hour Photo.

Except for a memorable supporting role in Night at the Museum as Teddy Roosevelt, from that point on Williams was largely relegated to a string of disposable "comedies" like RV, Father's Day, License To Wed and The Big Wedding. His constant breakneck pace of making anywhere from one to six (!) movies a year seems rather telling to me. Was he a slave to public attention? Did he have addictions to feed? Was he a chronic workaholic? Did he fear obscurity if he didn't keep cranking out at least one movie a year, regardless of quality? Or he just feel as if he was running out of time?

Considering the high quality of his previous roles, I'm sure that Robin must have looked at the scripts he was being offered as a fifty / sixty year old actor as a step backwards. A recent failed trip back into the ghetto of mediocre network television must have been particularly galling.

On the surface Robin was such a happy, ebullient and positive person critics probably though that he was completely immune to their barbs. Whenever one of his films didn't live up to expectations, Robin often bore the brunt of critical wrath. Here's a particularly catty review by Peter Debruge in Variety for The Angriest Man in Brooklyn: 

"It’s movie night, and you can choose between crazy-shouty Robin Williams (think The Fisher King) and blubbering feel-good Robin Williams (like the one who discovers his son, dead from autoerotic asphyxiation, in World’s Greatest Dad). Which would you prefer? Trick question! In The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, you can have it both ways, as Williams plays the human equivalent of a bulging forehead vein who learns he has 90 minutes to live and spends the rest of the movie making amends, like Ebenezer Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol. Most auds will prefer have no Robin Williams at all."

But it wasn't just a career dip that killed the comedy genius. He'd been down many times before and stormed back from darker places. No, I think that the reason he's no longer with us is a lot more clinical and chronic then that.

As a kid the very concept of suicide never once crossed my mind. Even during my loneliest, most awkward times I could derive a tremendous amount of happiness from the simplest things in life. Plus, I always felt surrounded by people who loved and supported me, people who would be gutted if I were suddenly gone. But the older I get the more the concept of voluntarily opting out starts to make the tiniest smidgen of sense.

In the movie The Weatherman (not starring Robin Williams, co-incidentally, but Nick Cage back when he obviously had more discriminating taste in scripts) the main character of David (!) Spritz (!!!) is a frustrated writer who falls back into a lingering, unwanted career as a locally-derided weatherman. At one point he observes:

"I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few ever became any qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer. Until finally they got reduced to one, to who I am. And that's who I am, the weather man." 

Now, depending on your outlook on life this is either very life-affirming or one of the most depressing things you'll ever read. I tend to subscribe to the later interpretation, especially in light of this particular quote by Tyler Durden in Fight Club:

"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." 

This life-long process of disappointment begins as soon as we hit adulthood and the realistic options of what we can be and do immediately starts to shrink. Then, as soon as we hit age thirty, the options get pared down again. Then, with each and every passing decade, our modern society tells us that the seemingly infinite number of choices we had as kids has now been whittled down to just a few. Or worse: only one.

I've written before about how society is less then kind to people of seniority. We live in a culture that worships youth and age discrimination is the last bastion of socially acceptable discrimination. On his current press junket for The Expendables 3, Sylvester Stallone seems to be getting an inordinate amount of "Hey, aren't you too old for this?" or "Why the fuck haven't you retired already?" questions. Who gives a shit, I say? If you don't want to watch a film starring a bunch of older actors then don't go see it. Why question his right to keep doing what he wants to do?

Robin endured a birthday recently just one day after my own and I can tell you right now: nothing makes a person more depressed than society as a whole trying to convince you that your best days are behind you. The really scary thing is that, in my estimation, Robin is one of the lucky few who "made it". He appeared to be financially solvent and he'd obviously made a slew of memorable movies that made him universally adored and effectively immortal.

Which inspires the scariest question of them all: if someone like Robin Williams can't survive seniority then what hope do any of us have?

Which is why I want to ensure that everyone who reads this doesn't harbor such thoughts for even so much as a second.

The bottom line is that Robin was struggling with illness, both mental and (as we just learned a few days ago) physical as well. Clearly he wasn't healthy and all of his high-profile connections and financial resources couldn't help him. If you've ever been unfortunate enough to lose someone to suicide you know how inevitable it can feel sometimes. A constant battery of support and treatment is needed just to keep these people alive, let alone permanently banish thoughts of self-harm from their heads. Which inspires another question: did Robin's chemical dependency deepen because of depression or was it just an effort to self medicate the chemical imbalance out of his own brain?

But here's the real truth: most of us arrive at age sixty-three or some other major milestone feeling challenged and sanguine but otherwise fairly upbeat. If you, Gentle Reader, like Robin, find yourself constantly wrestling with inescapable thoughts of downward spirals or a sense of inevitable finality that you can't overcome, then seek help now.

Remember: as dark as things look right right now the paradigm can shift and with it comes new and exciting possibilities.

Because even one new option is better then none.

EPIC HELP   There are a lot of great organizations out there to help people in crisis. S.A.V.E. (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education) is looking for a silver lining in this tragedy by trying to increase awareness about this very serious mental health epidemic.

EPIC DOC  If you don't believe that suicidal folks feel crushed by constant feelings of inevitability then you need to watch this amazing documentary. Then again, you may not if only because it's incredibly heart-breaking.

EPIC CLIP  For me, nothing encapsulates Robin's amazing gifts quite like his ability to entertain a live audience.

FAIL-URE OF WORDS   This short poem I wrote a few years ago seems to apply. But only just so...

Scouting Party

It is a wise invention
          that we leave in generations.
Heroes and icons we come to regard as immortal
                  age and blaze a trail for us.
And make the inevitable passing
                                     a little more tolerable.         

The Same Page

Pozdrowienia, Media Magnates!

Take a look at this photo:

Okay, now have a gander at this one:

Similar-looking photos have inspired the following meme:

But actually there is a difference. There's a helluva big f#@king difference.

In the first olde-timey photo, commuters are being informed about what's important by a horde of independent, muck-raking journalists. Literally everyone is on the same page. In the second photo it's much more likely that people are texting their lunch plans, watching cat videos or playing Candy Crush.

'C'mon, Dave,' I can hear you saying, 'Isn't that just a wee bit cynical?'

Okay, fine, then. Let's just say for argument's sake that everyone in the second photo is doing some independent research - *Pffffttt!!!* - on climate change. The question then becomes are they watching this:

Or this:

Let's look at another example. Say I wanna investigate the income gap in the United States. Do I go watch this:

Or do I watch a report that tries to re-brand the issue as "class warfare":

Maybe I want to check out a retrospective on the Iraq War. I could go with a learned, well-researched documentary featuring expert testimony:

Or watch an op-ed segment featuring a moron who can barely read a teleprompter:

If I'm keen to understand the current strife between the Israelis and the Palestinians I could scope out this reasonably well-balanced animated summary:

Or I could listen to a platoon of hyperbole-spewing tub-thumpers regurgitate theie politically-motivated marching orders:

Speaking of Obama, how's his new Affordable Care Act doing? Well, here's an opinion piece which features the increasingly-rare use of something called "facts":

Or I could subscribe to landed immigrant / professional contrarian Stuart Varney's view and throw the public health care baby out with the President's bathwater simply because the "progressive" ("Ewwwww!!!") desire to improve a country's standard of living should always be rejected wholesale as rank "socialism":

And herein lies the big difference.

In the first photo a clutch of well-informed citizens arrive at work, gather around the lunch table and engage in rabble-rousing conversations about society's genuine ills. In the second photo everyone is cherry-picking whatever re-enforces their own myopic view of the world, even if it's flat-out wrong.

So, until most of us get back on the same page together and the concept of "liberal" and "conservative" are abandoned in favor of the much more sensible paradigm of "right" and "wrong", the divide will continue to grow between us.

And not much of anything is gonna get done. 

EPIC NEW RULE  Leave it to Bill Maher to summarize this concept very nicely.

A "FAIL"-URE TO COMMUNICATE  So close yet so far away.

L'il Shooters

 
I've already talked about the process by which yours truly woke up one day only to discover that I'd inadvertently been transformed into a card-carrying nerd. As such, you'd do well to assume that my pre-University love life was virtually non-existent and can easily be summarized thusly:

• At around age five or six my heterosexuality was presaged by an episode of Wonder Woman starring Lynda Carter. This was confirmed several years later thanks to Erin Gray as Wilma Deering in Buck Rogers.
• In Grade Two I became smitten with a scrawny, dark-haired girl named Ann who was missing her two front teeth. So enraptured was I by this siren that I invited her over to my place one day after school to help me color my favorite Batman coloring book page. Unfortunately no sooner then we'd both sprawled out on my bedroom floor she began to willfully and almost maliciously color outside of the lines. Then, when she proceeded to render the Dark Knight's tights in a day-glo orange, I put my hand on hers, lowered her crayon and then politely asked her to leave. With that our whirlwind love affair was over and our relationship from that point on was "chilly" at best.
• Around Grade Five I developed a crush on a girl who shared her first name (if not the exact spelling) with a certain Star Wars Princess. Now, I don't know if it was her nebulous connection to "a galaxy far, far away" or the fact that she was legitimately cute, but I was enamored with her at first sight. Even though she was always polite and kind to me I'm pretty sure her feelings weren't mutual. The point is moot anyway since I was far too chickenshit to ever express my feelings to her.
• In Grade Six a girl told me that another girl "likes me". I didn't act on this hot tip either because I was too scared, too stupid or too "m'eh" to follow up on it. Many years later I'd be faced with a similar situation and my reaction then would indeed be telling.    
• Around this same time I started lugging around a massive torch for the daughter of some family friends. I remember my distinct horror when she spontaneously walked into my room and saw that I still kept my stuffed Snoopy, Garfield and Papa Smurf proudly displayed on my bed. MACHISMO FAIL.
• In Grade 11 the old "wrong girl likes me" scenario reared its addle-brained head again. An aggressive-but-cute, mini-skirt-wearing Cadet started hanging out by my locker every morning and calling my house. This really did scare the crap outta me because prior to this I'd been brainwashed to think that (A) Only guys are supposed to ask girls out (B) Girls who break this taboo must be "loose" (as if that's a bad thing) (3) You shouldn't get involved with someone unless you really, really like them. Yes, I know how idiotic this sounds. Trust me, if I could go back in time and set young me straight, I would. For starters, I'd debunk all of this bullshit Puritan / Victorian / Catholic crap I'd inherited from my parent's sexually-frustrated generation. "Go ahead, have some fun, you crazy kids!" I'd opine to younger me. "Just be careful, set realistic expectations and, for the love of everything holy, DO...NOT...HURT...HER. If you hurt her, I'll kill you myself." Honestly, this small piece of advice would have done me a world of good. 
• The real girl of my dreams in High School was a smart, sassy, no-nonsense chick with a shock of Captain Caveman hair and a penchant for playing the drums ("SQUEEEEE!!!"). In a blatant attempt to spend more time with her I offered to drive her home from school every day but even with these numerous chances I never drummed (Hah! "Drum", geddit?) up the courage to ask her out. In fact, all I could come up with were stupid music-related questions like "Sooooo...do you think that Terence Trent D'Arby could be the next, um... Michael Jackson?" What an idiot. Anyway, by the time I did screw up the courage to ask her out she was already going out with some other putz. *cue sad trombone sound* 

During all these trials and tribulations I never once thought that it was the girl's failing for not liking me. I knew that, at best, my appeal was limited. I was scrawny, nonathletic, bespectacled, geeky and had appallingly-uninspired fashion sense. Worst still: I was a sheltered and insular only child with woefully inadequate social skills. Again, I always recognized these as my own personal failings, not anyone else's.

In fact, I didn't get bitter about this until my woefully-poor track record with the opposite sex followed me  into my first year of University. This was clearly evidenced in the following heavy-handed poem that I wrote around that time:

Subtle Observation

I am content in the knowledge
   That the one you have chosen
           Has brought so much amusement
                  To so many.

(shaken heads)
(pointed fingers)
(suppressed laughter)

So it stands revealed:

You were not perfect after all.

Sure, I wasn't the best conversationalist in the world, but I was still a decent, nice person. In the immortal words of Roger A. Graham:

I'm so sad and lonely
Sad and lonely, sad and lonely
Won't some sweet mama come and take a chance with me?
'Cause I ain't so bad.

I started to get angry, depressed and kinda resentful as I watched one pretty, sweet, smart girl after another debase herself in a desperate attempt to snag the fleeting attentions of some rampant douchebag. 'I don't get it,' I'd lament to myself, usually while overdosing on depressingly-toxic levels of Leonard Cohen albums, 'I'd treat her like gold. Why would she pick him over me?'

Deep down I still knew that the onus was on me. Whatever you wanted to say about those guys, they were supremely confident or gave the air of supreme confidence. I had all the charisma of Eeyore and that followed me around like a permanent raincloud. Eventually my solitude became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But even at my lowest point the concept of violently lashing out at another human being never once crossed my mind. Which begs the question: what was the difference between me at that age and a kid like Elliot Rodger who, back on May 23'rd, totally snapped and killed six people and injured thirteen more before finally turning the gun on himself.

Well, this is only guesswork but let's see if I can inventory some the things that I had going for me that maybe Elliot didn't:

(1) I had absolutely amazing parents who were never in absentia. They were always there for me and everything I said and did was influenced by their powerful moral barometer. No matter how busy they were they'd always take the time to check in on me, to ask me how my day went even though my responses were fleeting. The unspoken message was always clear: these people actually give a shit about me.

(2) Even though my parents were really cool people and I usually got along fine with them they were never my "friends". It wasn't their goal to be "buddies" with me and seek out my approbation and approval. Quite the opposite: they were keen disciplinarians who I feared, respected and was always loathe to cross. Since there was always one or more of them around they never felt the need to overcompensate for chronic absence. Having said that, they were supremely generous and giving people, likely because they wanted to make up for all the creature comforts they didn't have as kids.

(3) As a kid, the burden of guilt was always on me. One time back in Junior High I didn't feel like doing a project so my teacher actually picked up the phone and called my parents. Even though I could only hear half of the conversation I knew that, like Lucy, I'd have some serious splainin' to do when that phone hung up. My parents didn't get defensive and push back against the teacher or demand to know why he'd failed to motivate me. Nope, they sided, rather logically, with the educated adult professional and not the cocky, self-centered kid who somehow thought that he could get away with it. Now, they didn't always assume that I was lying or that all adults were infallible but they knew me well enough to recognize my own unique brand of bullshittery and call me out on it. There were always consequences. It's called tough love, modern day parents. Look into it.

(4) My dedicated, omnipresent parental units made sure to impart in me an empathy for everyone and everything. I couldn't even hurt a fly. Like literally, if I found a fly indoors I'd capture it, take it outside and release it. This dovetailed with an almost pathological desire to be liked. Rarely would I ever lose my temper with another human being, almost to a fault. To this day, I'll never go aggo on another person. Instead, my frustration towards idiots tend to manifest itself in the random destruction of some uncooperative inanimate object. I get this directly from my mom who used to verbally lash out at things by saying "Look, look! The Devil's in that now!"

Okay, that sounded kinda bad. For the record, Mom didn't actually believe that stubborn door locks or malfunctioning toasters were actually possessed by Satan. Or, at least I don't think she did. Hmmmm...

(5) Related to this last point, the cold, antiseptic interface of social media didn't exist when I was a kid. If you wanted to be an asshole to someone you either had to do it right to their face, bitch 'em out over the phone or talk shit about them behind their back to whoever was within earshot. Nowadays you can easily annihilate someone's reputation via a series of malicious texts, Facebook posts or Tweets. And the scariest thing about this is that you never have to witness first hand the pain and misery you cause to your intended target. In fact, if you're particularly bloodless bastard, your conscience won't even feel a twinge. Indeed, inflicting anonymous digital harm on someone isn't just cruelly effective it's virtually consequence-free. Which leads me to believe that the first victim in a technology-obsessed world is empathy. 

(6) Sadly, mine was a gentler, more naive time. Not by much, mind you, but by just enough. It's almost comical to look back on alarmist Eighties-era news report claiming that the action movies I watched or the abstract, pixelated video games I played were "too violent". This is especially true when you compare those  antiquated, almost quaint pursuits to the today's cinematic torture porn or console-based killing simulators. Now, don't get me wrong, I would never, ever blame a mass shootings on violent media but I am calling out dumb, permissive, soft-as-shit parents who let their kids marinate in solution-based violence as soon as they can hold their heads upright. I'm no child psychologist but I can't imagine how exposure to this at a tender and formative age could do anything but irreparable harm yo your kid's psyche. Yet time and time again I hear stories of numb-nut, trying-too-hard parents unquestionably giving their kids the latest Grand Theft Auto or obliviously taking them to see Silent Hill: Revelation 3-D. Cripes, people like that need to be sterilized.

(7) "Guns? Where? Where!?!" In the United States, where firearms are more commonplace then Pokemon cards, a whole lotta folks are pretty durned obsessed with an antiquated Second Amendment which they believe gives them the right to pack more heat then Neo in The Matrix. After some independent research, I discovered to my shock and awe that a lot of these people maintain an over-compensatory stockpile of military hardware not for hunting or home defense but in case they need to overthrow the freakin' government if and when it gets too corrupt. Notwithstanding the compelling case that the government actually is totally corrupt, this still doesn't explain how a bunch of camo-wearing yahoos are supposed to go toe-to-toe with F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets, M1 Abrams tanks and highly-trained troops armed with frikkin' lasers. Which begs the question: is this sort of rampant paranoia worth the sheer proliferation and easy accessibility that kids seem to have to guns? Sure, NRA types like to cite the odd, rare example where a "good guy" with a gun stops a "bad guy" with a gun but are these same people aware of just how many "bad guys" out there apparently don't give a shit (see SOCIETAL FAIL below). Sure, we've got a bunch of penis-deprived neckbeards exercising their "open-carry" rights by "guarding" department stores, restaurants and coffee shops with AR-15's strapped to their backs but do they realize how many normal people they're terrorizing by doing this? Sorry, but until you can guarantee the mental health of every single private sector gun owner in the United States, hardware like this should only be the possession of the military or law enforcement. Personally speaking, the only weapons I ever saw as a kid were BB guns and my dad's 10-gauge shotgun which was permanently ensconced on the basement wall. For all intents and purposes, that sucker was purely ornamental.

***

I really wanted to write this entry from a positive perspective. I didn't want to point fingers at Elliot Rodger, shine a light on his self-absorbed "manifesto" or turn his clearly-suffering parents into pariahs. I also didn't want to speculate about our own recent regional rampage or give that particular nut any more publicity. Instead I really wanted pay homage to the resources that were there me me as a kid. Resources that allowed me to turn out reasonably well-adjusted despite growing up under vaguely similar circumstances.

I'll leave it up to you, Gentle Reader, to discern the lessons inherent in my story and determine what if any of it still applies to our wacky modern-day world.

EPIC OBSERVATION Louis C.K. explains in his own inimitable and characteristically-hilarious way why we're all becoming emotionally dead inside and and increasingly callous to our fellow human beings.

EPIC LOGIC  Some mo' science, courtesy of political comedian John Oliver:

SOCIETAL FAIL There have been one-hundred and twenty five mass shootings in the U.S. since the start of the year, including one that just happened two days ago in Miami. Nope, no problems here.

The Quotable Harper

Hail, Fellow Stand-On-Guardians!

I've always been adamantly opposed to the concept of Steven Joseph Harper as our Prime Minister primarily because my memory extends back further then ten years. I still remember when Harper was a card-carrying member of the ultra-right-wing Reform Party, which gave him the political solidarity to say the following idiotic things regarding:

• The Unemployed - "I don't feel particularly bad for many of these people."
• Human Rights Commissions - "An attack o­n our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society."
• Social Assistance for Child Poverty - "I was sought out as a rare public figure to oppose such projects" and “providing for the poor is a provincial, not a federal responsibility."
• Our Free Universal Health Care - "The best system means having a system where you have as many tiers as possible and you bring in as many health-care dollars into this country as possible." 
• A Proposal by the Progressive Conservative Party Advocating Spousal Benefits for Same-Sex Couples - "What I hope they learn is not to get into it."

Mercifully, the Reformers never achieved national traction, partly because it was led by walking punchline and Howdy Doody impersonator Preston Manning but mainly because most Canadians found their ideals to be completely and utterly repugnant. On January 14'th 1997 Harper jumped off this sinking ship and landed in a comfy Vice Presidential lifeboat provided by the National Citizen's Coalition, an ultra-conservative think tank. Within a year he was the organization's President.

During this time, Harper revealed even more of his Objectivist / Neo-Con / Ayn Randian leanings. In June of 1997 he was invited by the the American equivalent of the N.C.C., the Council for National Policy, to give a presentation in Montreal. Here are just a few choice tidbits from that notorious screed:

• "Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it."
• The United States and the growing Neo-Con movement "is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world."
• "It may not be true, but it's legendary that if you're like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians."
• "The Liberal party is a moderate Democrat, a type of Clinton-pragmatic Democrat. It's moved in the last few years very much to the right on fiscal and economic concerns, but still believes in government intrusion in the economy where possible, and does, in its majority, believe in fairly liberal social values.
  In the last Parliament, [the Liberal Party] enacted comprehensive gun control. There is an important caveat to its liberal social values. For historic reasons that I won't get into, the Liberal party gets the votes of most Catholics in the country, including many practicing Catholics."
• "The NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men."

But it's what Harper had to say about the Progressive Conservative party that's the most telling:

"Then there is the Progressive Conservative party, the PC party, which won only 20 seats. Now, the term Progressive Conservative will immediately raise suspicions in all of your minds. It should. It's obviously kind of an oxymoron. But the Progressive Conservative is very definitely liberal Republican. These are people who are moderately conservative on economic matters, and in the past have been moderately liberal, even sometimes quite liberal on social policy matters. They were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. This explains one of the reasons why the Reform party has become such a power."

Nothing better illustrates the differences between the original PC party and the current "Harper-ized" version of it. In other words, if you've been voting for Harper's "Conservatives" just because yer Daddy and yer Daddy's Daddy voted PC, then STAHP already! They have nothing to do with one another.

During this time, Harper had a really prolific period of running on at the mouth. Here are just a few more verbal droppings:

• "I, too, am one of these angry westerners. We may love Canada but Canada does not love us. Let's make (Alberta) strong enough that the rest of the country is afraid to threaten us."
• "You've got to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from eastern Canada: people who live in ghettoes and who are not integrated into western Canadian society."
• "Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status."

With their national brand permanently damaged, the Reform Party was rebooted in 2000 as the Alliance Party. But within one short year, these wannabe Republicans were already in trouble. Under the volatile leadership of grinning mannequin / creationist blockhead / outspoken loose cannon Stockwell Day, the fledgeling party quickly stumbled out of the gate.

These Alliance goons probably would have gone the same way as their predecessors if it hadn't been for the intervention of former Reform MP Ian McClelland who initiated what amounts to a leadership coup in June of 2001. In order to get things back on track, McClelland needed to install the perfect candidate: someone so completely and boringly milquetoast, someone so incredibly dull that he provoked absolutely no emotional response from anyone who looked at him. Someone who was a veritable black hole of banality. 

"My cat's breath smells like cat food."

Ergo, Stephen Harper was lured back onto the political spotlight in August of 2001. Despite the fact that he was perceived as a measured moderate when compared to Stockwell Day, he floated some pretty nutbar  ideas at the time:

• Even though, just a few short years earlier, he expressed concern that Stockwell Day was alienating voters due to his ultra-right-wing position on social issues, in March of 2002 Harper hoped to drum up a support base "similar to what George Bush tapped".
• On May 29, 2002 Harper famously uttered: "I think in Atlantic Canada, because of what happened in the decades following Confederation, there is a culture of defeat that we have to overcome. Atlantic Canada's culture of defeat will be hard to overcome as long as Atlantic Canada is actually physically trailing the rest of the country."
• Also from 2002: “I'm not ashamed to say that, in caucus, I have more pro-life M.P.s supporting me than supporting Stockwell Day.”
• He also kept hammering away at his distaste for our non-corporate health care system: “The private provision of publicly insured (health care) services should be permitted. The monopoly of provision of services is not a value that, in and of itself, is worth preserving.” He also continued to attack the Canada Health Act by saying that it “rules out private, public-delivery options. It rules out co-payment, pre-payment and all kinds of options that are frankly going to have to be looked at if we're going to deal with the challenges that the system faces.”

As we all well know, McClelland's gambit hoodwinked everyone and in May of 2002 Harper became the official Leader of the Opposition.

During this time, war-mongering chickenhawks like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell were tub-thumping for an illegal war in Iraq. Pretty soon both Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day were united in their mutual appreciation for American-flavored backside. Here are a few particularly scary quotes from those chaotic days:

• From January 2003: "This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based o­n focus groups. We will not take a stand based o­n phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of public opinion. In my judgment Canada will eventually join with the allied coalition if war on Iraq comes to pass. The government will join, notwithstanding its failure to prepare, its neglect in co-operating with its allies, or its inability to contribute. In the end it will join out of the necessity created by a pattern of uncertainty and indecision. It will not join as a leader but unnoticed at the back of the parade."
• From April 2003: "We support the war effort and believe we should be supporting our troops and our allies and be there with them doing everything necessary to win." 
• Later that same month: "We should have been there shoulder to shoulder with our allies. Our concern is the instability of our government as an ally. We are playing again with national and global security matters."
• Also that same month: "(referring to a fellow M.P. as an 'Idiot') was probably not an appropriate term, but we support the war effort and believe we should be supporting our troops and our allies and be there with them doing everything necessary to win."
• In May of 2003: "The world is now unipolar and contains o­nly o­ne superpower. Canada shares a continent with that superpower. In this context, given our common values and the political, economic and security interests that we share with the United States, there is now no more important foreign policy interest for Canada than maintaining the ability to exercise effective influence in Washington so as to advance unique Canadian policy objectives."
• Even after some perspective on the issue had been gleaned by August of 2003, Harper remained adamantly pro-war: "On the justification for the war, it wasn't related to finding any particular weapon of mass destruction. In our judgment, it was much more fundamental. It was the removing of a regime that was hostile, that clearly had the intention of constructing weapons systems. I think, frankly, that everybody knew the post-war situation was probably going to be more difficult than the war itself. Canada remains alienated from its allies, shut out of the reconstruction process to some degree, unable to influence events. There is no upside to the position Canada took."

No upside, huh? How 'bout preserving our international reputation as humanitarians and peacemakers? How 'bout making sure that our sons and daughters didn't needlessly perish in a completely illegal war of occupation? How 'bout not contributing to an economy based on war profiteering?

Sorry, but this wahoo is so far removed from my definition traditional Canadian values, it makes my friggin' head spin.

Harper soon realized that the Alliance Party held very limited appeal for most rational-thinking Canadians and vote-splitting between two right-leaning parties would certainly jeopardize his chances. As such, a Frankensteinian marriage was proposed between the Alliance and the nigh-comatose Progressive Conservative party, which had been devastated under the arrogant watch of Brian Mulrooney.

So, on January 12, 2004, Harper stepped down as Leader of the Opposition and two months later he became the inaugural chief of the newly re-christened Conservative Party of Canada. And just like that, the PC party of yore was gone, replaced by the political equivalent of a pod person from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Despite the fact that Finance Minister Paul Martin had inherited a Liberal Party fractured by internal conflict, Harper couldn't quite seal the deal in the federal election of June 2004.

Around this time he also served up the following tasty soundbites:

• In March of 2004 he described himself as a "libertarian", which is how most Tea Party members in the U.S. self-identify. Even though I agree with Harper in that government shouldn't impose its values upon its citizenry, I do think that the federal government has a pivotal role to play in safeguarding people from the creeping abuses of crony capitalism. For example, if a single working mom who can't afford privatized health insurance gets plowed down in the street by Stephen Harper's campaign tour bus only a greedy, cruel asshole would deny her free emergency medical treatment. And so long as there's even one unethical corporation out there making harmful products, poisoning the environment or screwing over their employees for a few extra profit points then we need a higher authority in the form of government to step in, investigate, punish and legislate some ethics if need be. Harper's desire to remove corporate regulations is like getting rid of all parole officers.
• To qualify his position, one month later Harper stated that "We must aim to make [Canada] a lower tax jurisdiction than the United States". Of course, in more recent years we've painfully familiar with his strategy to enact this madness: by completely gutting the sort of critically helpful social programs that improve our quality of life and keep us all safe. 
• In February of 2005 he publicly stated: "Same sex marriage is not a human right. (Undermining) the traditional definition of marriage is an assault on multiculturalism and the practices in those communities." Wow, hyperbole much?

Ol' Stevie Boy finally got his big break when the Sponsorship Scandal broke wide open. Now, keep in mind this was back in 2006, when the media still had fangs and people were engaged in reality and apparently gave a shit. Harper manged to parlay this into his very own Reichstag Fire and pretty soon the once-mighty Liberal Party was in shambles.

So it came to pass that on January 24th Paul Martin conceded defeat to Harper in the 2006 Federal Election and two weeks later he was sworn in as the twenty-second Prime Minister of Canada. His first address to Parliament in April was a major sneak preview of coming attractions:

"I would like to acknowledge and thank a number of people. First, I would like to pay tribute to our head of state, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, whose lifelong dedication to duty and self-sacrifice have been a source of inspiration and encouragement to the many countries that make up the Commonwealth and to the people of Canada."

This prompted Toronto Star journalist Graham Fraser to observe that Harper's presentation was "one of the most monarchist speeches a Canadian prime minister has given since John Diefenbaker."

The message was crystal clear: Canada is intrinsically British and y'all better be ready for some olde-skool Margaret Thatcher-style Conservatism.   


EPIC SHOWDOWN  Can you image the shape we'd be in if Harper was in power back then? Just thinking about it terrifies me...

 
A FAILURE OF CON-MUNICATION   In 2011 a legion of Conservative drones were tasked to assemble all of Harper's most controversial quotes in one five-hundred page document. This was then used to formulate rebuttal strategies, a catch-all contingency plan if the press or political rivals tried to expose his true colors.  

Downer

 
Just over twenty years ago today, I returned to the communal flophouse I was living in at the time after a particularly stressful day at school only to be told that my favorite musician was dead.

"Yeah, it's all over the news," Mike said, pointing a lit cigarette towards the twenty-five-inch cathode ray beast propped up on our milk-crate entertainment center.

I hadn't even had a chance to take off my coat and backpack yet. For a while I just stood there, gaping dimly at the lurid, flickering images on the T.V. screen: police crawling all over a nondescript gray garage/greenhouse, all-too-familiar videos in heavy rotation, interviews with tearful fans, a grassroots gathering of lost souls in Seattle Center Park which would eventually coalesce into a massive candlelight vigil and then culminate with a stirring public address. It didn't make sense yet it made perfect sense.

Eventually I became aware of several sets of eyes trained on me, waiting for some sort of reaction.

"Mmmm, yeah...whatever," I shrugged, then turned on my heel and trudged slowly upstairs to my room. I was exhausted and needed sleep desperately.

As written these words look bitter. Or jaded. Or angry. But nothing could be further from the truth. I just recognized this latest dollop of bad news for what it was: the purest example of inevitability you could possible conceive of.

I've always had a really hard time recognizing when something good is well and truly over. When we moved away from Sydney I couldn't cope with the idea of never seeing my friends again. When High School was over the thought of permanently losing contact with my core group of hometown peeps was totally inconceivable. But thanks in some weird way to the grimly-decisive action of a chronically-depressed and blatantly-suicidal rock star, the permanence of change was finally beaten into my thick skull.

Indeed this was mutability's finishing move on my naive consciousness. Back then I was just weeks away from polishing off my final exams and in another three short months I'd be faced with convocation. At that moment I was finally forced to realize that nothing lasts forever. My third wave of friends would soon be scattering to the wind like matchsticks and, once again, I'd find myself virtually alone. But at least this time I'd be ready for it.

Now, before I go on, I must confess that I wasn't enough of a music nerd at the time to have already heard Nirvana's debut album Bleach. Indeed, like so many others, my first exposure to the band came with their album Nevermind. I distinctly remember sitting in my dorm room sometime in 1991, trying to make some headway on a massive term paper while "Good Rockin' Tonight" dangled the tantalizing and anarchic imagery of the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in front of me. It immediately hijacked my attentions and then kept me permanently distracted for the rest of the night.

Not long after Nevermind went into heavy rotation in residence, played incessantly by my floor-mates Rod and Mike. I didn't rush out and buy the album right away; why would I? If I ever wanted to listen to it all I need to do was open my door.

To be brutally honest, I really didn't know what to make of it at first. Kurt's own admission that "we sound like the Knack and the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath" was actually a fair description. It sounded a bit too poppy and overproduced to me. Thanks to my narrow-minded definition of music at the time, warped by a small-town alpha/omega audio bath which consisted exclusively of heavy metal and classic rock, I was much more apt to gravitate towards Temple of the Dog and Soundgarden at the time.

Forced to return to Stephenville for economic reasons, I bought Nevermind as a consolation prize for myself in the summer of 1991. I then proceeded to play the ever-lovin' bejesus out of it. Loneliness and isolation was a major theme in Kurt Cobain's music and my exile back home and separation from my newfound brethren was just one of many reasons why I loved it so much. That and the fact that it kicked Herculean amounts of ass.  

During the following academic year it continued to be the omnipresent soundtrack for everything we did, whether it was eleventh-hour compositions, besotted four-day benders, road trips, or as an alternative score for our 16-bit video games. Just about the only way I could be lured onto a dance floor is with the promise of slam-dancing to a Nirvana track. With Mike's assistance I soon discovered their first album Bleach and my transformation from disillusioned metal-head to indie punk music snob was complete.

Now, I've already talked about the incendiary effect that Nirvana had on pop music here and here so I won't presume to rehash that. Just suffice to say that even back then we had the distinct impression that Nevermind didn't get released, it escaped. By my estimation it was the last time a genuine voice for youth was properly represented in the Zeitgeist of pop-culture, as opposed to the industry-approved swill that gets served up to kids today.

I wish I'd had more money back then. Or, more accurately, I wish that I knew that I had enough money to travel to Toronto or Montreal to see them live. Then again, at the time I thought I'd have an entire lifetime to do that.

Regardless, I just wanna say: thanks, Kurt, wherever you are. First off, thanks for the obvious: for all of the amazing music that affected a positive change in me.

But also thanks for a darker, more inadvertent reason.

Thanks for finally convincing me that change is very, very permanent.

EPIC TUNE  No, my favorite Nirvana song is not "Smells Like Teen F#@king Spirit", thank you very much. In fact, it could very well be this hauntingly-beautiful unreleased track called "Do Re Mi", which was included on the With The Lights Out boxed set. Apparently the song was earmarked for Nirvana's next record. No words can describe how sad that makes me feel.

EPIC HOPE FOR THE FUTURE  Dear industry pin-heads: please start giving kids more music of their own that they'll want to listen to past the age of twenty!

EXPLOITATIVE FAIL Really? Does every single thing have to be a conspiracy now? Cripes.

A B.L.E.S.S.-ing For Humanity

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Wènhòu, Faithful Readers!

Okay, so imagine if the government started paying every adult in Canada a living wage of $2000.00 a month just so they could spend their lives doing what they wanted instead of slaving away at some job they don't care about in order to avoid freezing and / or starving to death? Well, that's exactly that the Swiss are thinking about doing right now.

Depending on where you are (both mentally and physically) this either sounds like emancipation from modern capitalist serfdom or the rankest form of SOCIALISM. Ewwwww.

If anything else, it illustrates the philosophical gulf between Europeans and North Americans. In Europe this proposal could be regarded as the next logical extension of the social safety net that's already set in place. In the United States just voicing this idea in a public forum would probably get you run out of town by a mob of yahoos armed with torches and pitchforks.

Now, I'm not sure what Americans think socialism is but many of them pronounce it with same sort of distaste a literate person would use if they were forced to say the word "coprophagia". Maybe they just assume that its evil because it ends with "-ism" like "fascism". Notwithstanding the the fact that capitalism also ends with the same three letters, I really want to ask these people what they think farming assistance, unemployment benefits,Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is. You like those programs, right?

"Wrong!" comes the obstinate reply.

Um, o-o-o-o-kay, why not?

"Givin' people a free lunch makes 'em weak, unmotivated an' dependent. And I don't wanna give a red cent to anybody who ain't gonna pull their own weight!"

Okay, but what if the shoe was on the other foot? What if the cracker factory you work at in Frog Balls Arkansas suddenly gets bought out by some wealthy conglomerate who then decide to move the whole operation lock, stock and barrel down to Bogata in order to wring a bit more profit out of it and give their shareholders a money-boner™? Suddenly the job you held down for the past eighty-four years is gone, you find yourself unceremoniously dumped out into a ruinous economy with barely any contemporary skills and you've gotta turn to Food Stamps to support your family.

Lemme give you another scenario: what if you're a single mom who works two jobs and can't afford health insurance and one day you get plowed down in the crosswalk of a four-way intersection because someone's idea of "multi-tasking" is texting, putting on makeup, eating a McGriddle and driving all at the same time? Well, if you have the misfortune of surviving, it's very likely that you'll be buried under an insurmountable crush of medical bills that you may never be able to extricate yourself from.

Since there's clearly a victim in both of these scenarios, wouldn't it make sense if society as whole chipped in a little bit to help mitigate this misfortune? And if you decided to accept this help would you see it as badly-needed assistance in a time of need or the start of your unending spiral towards becoming an entitlement junkie?

Or, to put it in the inexplicable words of actor / Republican / oblivious chowderhead Craig T. Nelson:

Wow, just...wow. Even Glenn Beck looks like he's thinking 'Oh, God, did he just say what I think he said? Who booked this (oxy)moron?'  

For a bunch of self-righteous blowhards who constantly rail against "takers" who exist only to score their next government handout, many star Republicans seem pretty durned quick to snatch up these benefits themselves when given half the chance. Take fiscally-conservative tub-thumper / unblinking Skeletor understudy Michelle Bachmann. Despite decrying Obama for foisting "socialism" on a weakened American populace like a drug pusher, her family farming operation leeched almost two hundred and fifty-two thousand dollars from American taxpayers between 1995 and 2006. And, trust me, she's not the only hypocrite.  

In fact, all Republicans and Conservatives want us drones to unquestioningly worship at the feet of whatever corporate golden calves that are kind enough to grant us a future. Well, if we're to believe that corporations are people now and we should look up to them, shouldn't they all be paragons of fiscal responsibility and independence? 

Nope. Wait, let me double ch...ah, nope.

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And that's why I think the Swiss are on to something.

"But Dave!" I miraculously hear some of you out there saying, "If you give people a free basic living allowance they'll never do anything productive. People are inherently lazy and, if given half a choice, they won't work a day in their lives!"

To which I reply:

1. You must be hanging around the wrong people! Everybody in my circle would go totally batshit nuts if they remained idle for too long, present company included. 
2. Eventually automation and technology will force this issue and there'll too many people and not enough crappy McJobs. 
3. Honestly, who cares if some people don't want to work? If humanity applied itself, only about five to ten percent of the world's population would need to work in order to keep this wacky globe a-spinnin'.

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So, what if we could set up a system that both generous humanitarians and selfish assholes could both get behind? Welp, here's what I'd institute if I was ever voted Emperor of the Planet:

1. "People need food, water, shelter and access to basic healthcare in order to live. Okay, with that truism established, I'm just gonna give every legal adult $2000.00 a month just fer bein' you! I call it the B.L.E.S.S. or the Basic Living Expense Survival Supplement. Now, don't spend it all in once place; I'll be back in about a month or so to check up on ya!"
2. "Hey, how're you doin'? Man, I can't believe that it's already been four weeks since I gave you your first B.L.E.S.S. so I just wanted to pop by and see what you've been up to! What's that you say? You've been doing nothing? Just sittin' there watching one Vanderpump Rules marathon after another, huh? Well, um, okay, but if you really want the full experience of watching a snooty British entrepreneur berate her pretty-but-dumb-as-a-bag-of-hammers waitstaff on a high def T.V. then you might wanna go out and get a job. But, hey, whatevs."
3. *knock, knock* Yo, Jessie I'm here to...OH MY GOD!!! What the hell did you do?!? Okay, okay, lemme get this straight...you took all of the money I wanted you to spend on bread, milk and pizza and blew it on meth?!? Okay...no...no, relax, dude, chill out...stop crying...no, we're not gonna throw you in jail. And no, we're not going to cut off, alright? Clearly you've got a problem so we're just run  you through the same drug treatment program that Portugal's been using to good effect. Even if it takes more then a month, don't worry dude: we've got an endless supply of opportunities to get your head screwed on straight! Eventually I know you'll come around...
4. Good day, random flaky artsy person! I just wanted to see what you've been doing with your B.L.E.S.S. money and all of that free time! Well, well, looky that...I see that you've painted a picture / written a story / made a movie and / or composed and then learned how to perform an original dubstep song on the theremin! Well, here's this month's B.L.E.S.S. and, remember: if you manage to make some cheddar from your creation, it's all pure profit! That's right, you can cash that royalty check knowing that it's not just gonna get swallowed up by the inexorable rent monster! 
5. So, you say you want to live in something larger then your basic domicile? You want clothes with some stupid brand name printed on it? Enough kids to start up your own basketball team? A fancy new motorcar? A timeshare in Lisbon? Do you have an irrational desire to habitually dine at an expensive restaurant named SUR? Well, then you better keep your job at the cracker factory, pal! Now, don't worry, if you decide to keep working I'm not gonna claw back your B.L.E.S.S.! To the contrary, all of the money you bank from work will be pure, unadulterated profit my covetous friend!
6. Wow, hey, check you out! Through your hard work, discipline, initiative and perseverance you've become an entrepreneur / brain doctor / atom-smasher / star of a series of oddly profitable direct-to-pay-cable-giant-shark-based-monster-movies! Oh, but what's that you say: you don't want to share your tax dollars with "deadbeats" who don't work as "hard" as you do? Hmmmm, well, I can see by our records that that this stance of yours certainly hasn't precluded you from cashing those B.L.E.S.S. checks every month. Remember how that money paid your power bill while you were putting together your business plan? Do you recall how many text books it paid for? What gave you the chance to really drill down on that Sharkaconda vs. Gorillarantula script instead of bussing tables at Spagos? And, yes, I'm referring to the Spago in Windsor Ontario, by the way.  
7. As long as you keep living fairly frugally then you won't have to pay a lot of taxes. But if you start buying yachts, Ferraris, forty-thousand dollar bottles of wine or island in the Cyclades like a dee-bag, then yer gonna get dinged for some mondo sales tax.

***

So, is my system perfect? Hardly. Switzerland might be able to pull this off but that's just because of their shady-but-undeniably-strong international banking economy. Oh, and they also have a population of only about eight million people, who are already predisposed to the notion that social programs can actually improve the quality of life instead of signalling inevitable imprisonment on a work collective.

Even though it would be a lot harder to institute a paradigm shift in North America and you'd get a lot of push back from hordes of uninformed morons who erroneously equate socialism with communism, I still dream that one day we'll all come to our collective senses and actually try something new.

'Cuz, let's face it folks, the system that we're using right now is just plain broken.

EPIC DOC   You think that I'm a dreamer? Check out futurist / social engineer Jacques Fresco's proposals for The Venus Project. Pity that there's no chance in hell that the whole of humanity will ever rally behind this great idea because reasons.

EPIC INTERVIEW Our very own George Stroumboulopoulos gets some great observations out of comedian and political satirist Bill Maher. Pay particular attention to what he says at the six minute mark and beyond.  

REALITY FAIL  Fox News continues to be the "news" equivalent of that drunk racist uncle of yours who's always ranting and raving about the "moocher class" at family dinners. Seriously, if you hitch your wagon to these idiots then you deserve to work sixty hours a week at two jobs in perpetuity and have the same quality of life as a medieval serf.  

REALITY FAIL: PART DEUX  "Have you seen some of the movies I've done? Did you think I wanted to do all of those movies? I'm gonna be honest, sometimes you have to go to work...and then get paid an exorbitant amount of money to run around and play pretend."