Wednesday, December 19, 2007

HOLY FUCKING SHIT DUDE

Katelyn and I are engaged. Its true, I swear. Now we are destined to become likeone of those sitcom couples; the really hot wife with the schlubby, borderline retarded husband. You know, like on the simpsons or the honeymooners or king of queens. Just dont tell katelyn.

I realized today that i havent even posted on this thing for over a month, and judging by the number of responses ive gotten in the history of this blog, i have one reader. ONE. And, she doesnt even count, because she is a friend of mine who probably reads it out of pitty, and she has her own blog which is more than slightly better than this one. It doesnt even pretend to be all radical and shit, and its about a BABY, which no one can argue with unless they are hitler or some shit.

So yeah, this blog is shit. Im going to revamp it. I say that now. But maybe it will really happen; who knows? Ill start tonight if i get some work done in the next hour. No one is even reading this. This is hilarious.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

call me unreliable

but yeah, obviously i wasnt going to finish that post. So solly.

So the news as such; things are progressing well around here. By which i mean that neither one of us is sick and we are both employed. Also, the Red Sox won the world series again, which feels like it should be rediculous and insane and fucking batshit awesome, but for some reason was kinda expected. Also, the fact that they won with a sweep was a bit disapointing ot me; i was really hoping to be able to watch more games. Oh well.

stay tuned; ill write more tomorrow. No really.

What a shitty blog.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

hmm.

so jess (lazukahouse.blogspot.com) read all about my bad dreams and told me that

"That little baby thing is freaky. I looked it up though and here is one interpretation:'To see a baby in your dream, signifies innocence, warmth and new beginnings. Babies may symbolize something in your own inner nature which is pure, vulnerable, and/or uncorrupted. To dream of an extremely small baby, symbolizes your helplessness and your fears of letting others become aware of your vulnerabilities and incompetence. You may be afraid to ask for help and as a result tend to take matters into your own hands."

nobody likes to admit their own vulnerability, but obviously if im having nightmared about it i should perhaps look into it. i gues it might be best to start by making a list of real or percieved vulnerabilities. so here goes.

VULNERABILITIES:
-death (real)
-financial ruin (real)
-aliens (perceived...or IS it?)
-insanity (perceived)
-tendency toward pacifism (real)
-tendency toward overindulgence (real)
-tendency toward irresponsibility (real)
-tendency toward addiction (not sure but probably real)

now, of these things (and this is by no means an exhaustive list), which could cause the kind of mind-torching anxiety that fuels the dreams i have? I will categorically eliminate the first two since both are a part of the natural (the former) or artificial (the latter) human condition and must therefore be accepted as a constant. that leaves us with my phobias of aliens and insanity on the percieved side, and my instinctive avoidance of conflict and various other self-destructive tendencies on the real side. might as well start with whats real and work through to what is percieved, since going backwards amuses me.

1- tendency towards pacifism.

this one is a real bitch. i have had this problem my whole life and have only been able to begin to overcome it in the last five years or so. for example, as a child i woud alow someone to stand on my foot in line rather than confront them about something they most likely werent even aware they were doing. On the other extreeme, i regulary endured insults, derision, and even physical assault without retaliation; often without even aknowledgement. over the years, this caused so much corrosive anger to build up in my that it eventualy turned to self loathing over never having stood up for myself or anyone else. then one day i heard a song by The Clash and realized that i am no better but certainly no lower than anyone else, and the next person who fucked with me was going to get it "three times back". even so, im like a recovering addict with pacifism. i have to remind myself that nobody alive has any right to cut me in line, insult me or my loved ones, or otherwise pull any shit over on me.

2- tendency towards overindulgence.

have we met? i dont seem to have any capacity for moderation WHATSOEVER. William Blake said that "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom". while this may or may not be true, it is the reason why the upstairs bathroom in cluster c at bradford college was known as "The Palace of Wisdom" durring my tenure there.

3- tnedency towards irresponsibility

it may not seem like it, but this has alot to do with the pacifism deal. its like i instinctively assume i do not deserve to reap the benefits of being responsible, so i set traps for myself by acting grossly irresponsibly.

4- tendency towards addiction

lets just say ive killed my share of demons. and its true what joe strummer said; you dont chase them down, youve got to grab them and pinn them to the ground. and i still smoke and drink too much, and i seem to have a problem with cough drops.

OK, im going to knock off for tonight, but ill be back tomorrow with the PERCIEVED and then some kind of summary so that reading this doesnt seem like a COMPLETE waste of time (it was, though).

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

bad dreams

last night i had horrible dreams. all night long i sweat and turned in fear and anxiety. at one point i dreamt that my sister was trying to kill me. then the usual dreams of screaming at my mother and trying to protect some kind of infant. i have this one allot; there is an "infant" that i am charged with protecting. but this infant is so small that it can sit comfortably in the palm of my hand. also, it talks. usually i have to keep this thing safe despite war, riots, zombies, or some other rediculous scenario. last night i had to keep it safe from my mother's recklessness.

so i kept waking up. i remember when i was younger i would have bad dreams and wake up scarred shitless and have trouble getting back to sleep. these days i wake up in a pitched rage, which i guess is indicative of what worries me subconsciously. im not affraid of mosters anymore. im affraid of losing control. of what? im affraid of the world spirialing into a chaos of nonsense that will make it impossible to care for the tiny speaking person in my hand. and when it happens my reaction is not one of fear but rather a boiling, frustrated rage with no possiblility of outlet, only of cyclical acceleration. thats got to be a metaphore for something. Is this some strange, preprogramed paternal fear that comes on a man of my age automatically? or am i seriously, deeply disturbed? i dont feel disturbed. not generaly anyway. its only after waking from dreams like this when i worry about this anger that aparently hides in my head somewhere.

anyway, like i said i kept waking up. and luckily katelyn was next to me, and the cats were generaly on the bed sleeping with us, and all of that is well and soothing to me, all of that is what i am and is stability for me. so i would wake up, maybe go to the toilet or the refrigerator to see if some chocolate had somehow materialized there. then i would clime back into the hot bed and mumble something to katelyn about bad dreams. she doesnt wake up, but somehow knows to roll over and put her small hand on my chest, which is the exact oposite of the fission that was only a few minutes ago causing my head to feel like it was reaching critical mass. and so i sleep and am happy for a few hours or minutes or whatever unit allows us to measure the time of sleep. but soon enought the bastards are at it again and im angry again and its not going to lest me rest, not this night.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

correction...

sorry, got the URL wrong. its http://www.wearenotbuyingit.com

avarice, hubris, and the death of the American Republic.

took this from http://www.werenotbuyingit.com/

keep in mind; ya basta.

all italics and braket comments added by yours truly.

-mr. c.

The Threat


The threats to our freedom and well being posed by the ultra-wealthy are real and dire. Already there have been moves to criminalize any dissent and preparations have been made for the mass-arrest of Americans in the event of a popular uprising. Our economy is bulked up by trillions of dollars stolen over decades from the budgets of every executive branch agency and diverted through the black budget to front companies and operatives around the world who engage in the drug trade, human trafficking, terrorism and the merciless destruction of human dignity and potential. Disgustingly those same agencies then promote the institutions of policies that call for tapping more billions from taxpayers to combat the very problems they have engineered-all the while their controlling interests get richer and richer.

"Official" organizations such as the IMF and the WTO attempt to lock poor people around the globe into slavery to multinational corporations. In America multi-nationals close their manufacturing plants, service centers and other investments and move the jobs that once provided us with a thriving middle-class to other countries-countries that allow the abuse of workers and who provide a source of greater and greater wealth for the majority shareholders in those corporations. Meanwhile the very methods by which statistics are gathered to inform and educate the public are altered to produce positive sounding reports-while hiding the true costs of these disastrous policies. For instance the term "unemployed" obviously means without a job-but over the last decade that term has been redefined time and again to reflect ONLY those few who are actually drawing unemployment benefits and actively seeking work-creating an official lie using the old GIGO method-garbage in, garbage out.

At the top of the heap, we have a handful of ultra-wealthy families who communicate within a tightly controlled network of global insiders. Controlling somewhere between 40 and 60 Trillion dollars in global assets these are the people that the Bush Administration truly represent. Their ultimate goal, behind all of the rhetoric and posturing, is to centralize the control of the world’s resources while weakening the power of any government to stand in the way of a new corporate feudalism. To do this they seek to "drown the US government in a bathtub" and at the same time seek to cripple the ability of the UN, World Court and ICC to do anything to oppose their plans.

FEAR
The primary tool that the ultra-wealthy have to control the American public is fear. Because the media are owned by the same interests who profit from conflict and bloodshed they tend to promote and exaggerate the dangers of the world while failing to examine the underlying causes. By selling FEAR on a massive scale the elites are able to ensure that a percentage of the population will become incapable of reason and will therefore accept whatever suggestions they are given by those who would control them.

DESIRE
By promoting discontent and instigating the desire for more and more goods, the elites create a demand for their useless products. By selling us all on the idea that being rich is the only goal worth having and that the world is a vicious and competitive place the elites pit us against one another as we jump through the hoops they have erected in a circle-all the while drawing their wealth from our efforts.


LAW
By rewriting the laws to their benefit the ultra-wealthy have helped to ensure that in business the biggest company will always have the advantage and will be able to destroy or absorb any competitor in time. They have also ensured that their personal wealth will continue to grow while they minimize their contributions to the maintenance of the nation. All the while the public relations teams who represent elite interests promote privatization as some kind of efficiency model-not as what it truly is-a scheme to milk trillions of dollars from the taxpayers. Trillions spent not on programs to help build a more just, sustainable and progressive society but spent on useless weapons systems or other overpriced and poor quality goods. The amount of "Welfare" that has gone to a handful of ultra-wealthy investors over the last ten years alone dwarfs all social spending-but they won't investigate and report those facts in the newspapers that they own or on the television channels that they control.


Their Plan for YOU
It is simple: first the inauguration of a forever war in which your children will be obliged to fight. In that process, they will be systematically dehumanized and traumatized into supporting any atrocity. Second, they will continue to instigate, allow or engineer increasingly dramatic "threats" in order to do away with the rule of law and institute widespread martial law and conscription. In order to bring about the conditions necessary for that they have to first ensure a global economic collapse happens on their timetable-so as to preserve their assets while plunging the global economy into a depression of the worst sort. The coming depression will create desperation for billions, who will then be ready to submit to a corporate feudal state as a necessity for survival. In short the plan that has been put into motion by the [removed so as not to pollute my goddamn blog] Administration and their allies leads to the destruction of democratic ideals, prosperity and peace-ultimately culminating in a world gripped by terror and controlled by an unimaginably wealthy class of arrogant and vain children. YOU will not be invited to their parties-but they may dangle that hope in front of you so that you devote your very life to the possibility of being included. They will make of you a slave.

The Facts:
"It's not a matter of whether the war is not real, or if it is, Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible because of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact." -George Orwell


From birth American's are perhaps the most lied to and manipulated people that the world has ever seen [this is obvious hyperbole; one need only to consider the case of the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (north korea) to understand the bizzare depths to which public consent can be drowned]. Manipulation of our behavior begins with the first cartoons we watch as children, cartoons designed to create a desire for plastic crap or unhealthy food. The lies and manipulation continue through our lives, with myths of patriotism and an idealized vision of "rugged individualists". These myths have served only to keep working and middle-class Americans pitted against one another while our bosses, politicians and the majority shareholders of American corporations sell us out.
The world's spiritual leaders have long pointed out that the root of all evil lies in selfishness. If we look around at our decaying communities, never ending warfare and rapidly dying environment with open eyes we will see that behind all of the problems, all of the ignorance and hatred, all of the waste and stupidity there lies a common cause.


GREED
Why is this so-called "war on terror" continuing long past even the duration of the Second World War?
Greed
Oil companies make billions, Arms manufacturers make billions, contractors with bloated paychecks make billions because of the drive towards "privatization" of all government duties-meaning the politicians want to make sure that their rich friends get richer by leeching off of the taxpayers. The thieves cripple the ability of our government to care for the poor and sick, educate our children and bring into being an age of compassion and productivity. Why?
Greed
Because the majority shareholders of these corporations are the same people who pay for the campaigns of the politicians and then hire their friends as lobbyists at huge salaries to continue getting more and more of YOUR money. Think about it-why does most everything you buy at Wal-Mart say 'Made in China"?
Greed
Those companies that USED to provide jobs (and tax revenue) to American's closed their plants and moved their corporate offices offshore to make more money for people who, by any reasonable estimate, already have too much. Greed has cost us our self-sufficiency as a nation and has weakened our ability to provide for our families and ourselves.
Why do the talking heads on television constantly harp about the benefits of "de-regulation", "globalization" and "privatization"?
Greed
Deregulation is like having a championship football team suddenly convince the commissioners to allow them to play without any rules at all. How nice for those few who have most of the power and money to be able to remove any protections for their workers, consumers and competitors-it creates a state of anarchy in the marketplace where only the most ruthless survive.
Privatization is nothing more than welfare for the rich. Think about it. Why do we pay a premium to companies to produce our military equipment at hugely inflated prices-prices that ensure that billionaire investors become even bigger billionaire investors? All at the expense of the taxpayers and the men and women in our military. We pay our taxes to provide for the national defense-but instead of hiring engineers and scientists directly to work in a unified department of defense with oversight and coordination we give away billions to rich people to manufacture systems that don't work and manage hospitals, bases and training that do little to help in the primary mission-but a lot to make the rich richer.


"What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base." -George [name removed so as not to pollute my goddamn blog]

q:1984?

a:1776.

dont forget.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

q: How many Llamas can you fit into a minivan?

a: at least two. seriously. yesterday Ms. Giles and i were up in new hampshire with my dad and stepmom. we were sitting on the porch of the mt. Washington lodge lookign up at the mountain. its pretty impressive, especialy for the east coast. you can see the sunlight glinting off windshields of cars way the fuck up there. if you arent from the northeast, people pay about $16 to drive their cars to the top of mt. washington, which is the tallest peak in new england and has recorded the highest wind speed on earth for some reason.

anyway, we are sitting lookingup at the mountain, and i hear my dad say "hey look, a llama...hey what the hell?!" so we look and there is a llama standing next to a red dodge minivan. and then, another llama gets out of the minivan.

wha????

next, the front doors open up and two HUGELY fat humans get out. the minivan, unburdened of teh weight of its occupants, was now at least nine inches taller.

well, we got the scoop from a ranger that these people had pulled up to the toll house, looking to climb the mountain in their minivan. the attendant was skeptical at first because of the size of the humans. due to the steep grade of the road, strict weight limits per vehicle are observed. so the attendant looked in the backseat to calculate the total load of the minivan, and there he saw two 700 pound FUCKIGN LLAMAS.

forgetting for a moment the ethical issues raised by cramming two 700 pound animals into a compartment aproximately 8feet by five feet, or the olfactory issues raised by the same, WHY THE HELL would you want to take them 4,000 feet up a goddamned mountain? in your car?

im stil confused from this one.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

goddamn

i gotta stop posting after midnight. seems i say things i cant back up and spell them wrong. i have no ideae how much the president makes "per anum". if i find out, ill let you know.

btw- im still right, and you know it.

la casa nueva

by the way i dont know why im obsessed with the spanish language recently, but ever since Colombia i have been. I was allmost fluent there, or so i thought. Of course they are known for the most bastardized corruption of castillian on earth, but hey, they play tejo and jesus, that game is mint.

My new place is awesome. also, ive never worked so hard in my life. This weekend we're going to NH to see dad's new digs in Jackson. Should be good times.

In heavier news, gonzales stepped DOWN. finaly. I mean, if you are going to lie to me, lie to me. Im fucking USED TO IT. but dont sit there and pretend like you dont "recall". Fuck you. I dont recall voting for your ass. Oh thats right, you were apointed. How is it that public officials are appointed, anyway? bullshit. I have an idea that woul dmake government, if its really necessary, actually work, and here it is in one word:

DRAFT.

not a military draft, because i am too thick blooded for canada and to pretty for jail. Im talking about a governance draft. It works on my theory that anyone who would run for office is fundamentaly unfit to serve. Think about the president. Why would someone spend 30,000,000 dollars to get a job that pays less than 100,000 per anum? um, because they are about to pull some crooked assed zero sum game and walk away allot richer while all the eggs in tehir omlet get broken and run down the side of the stove, thats why. I think it would be allot better if we drafted our officials, starting with cops and all the way up to the president.

But Mr. Conklin, you say, "what if an idiot got drafted and led us into a war and bankrupted the nation so badly that everyone would loose thier houses?"

Yep. The prosecution fucking rests. Im allways right about these things, im tellin ya.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

scars

im at work, its 1/4 to 10pm, and im bored. i started thinking about scars. ive got lots of them so i decided to list them in no particular order. i know this isnt the kind of thing that anybody gives a shit about but you know what? i dont give a shit about that. so without further ado...

MY SCARS.

1- location: right ankle

shape: crescent

size: .5''x.8"

color: white

orgin: a ceramic soapdish snapped off the wall of katelyn's old shower when i put my foot on it to wash my toes. the goddamned thing fell on my ankle and sliced it open so deep that i could clearly see my ankle bone. i didnt have insurance, so i put a bandaid on it and hoped for the best.



2-location: right shin

shape: just like Sardinia

size: 2"x1"

color: purplish

orgin: in 8th grade i tried to jump onto a lab table without using my hands. i left a wad of skin on the table edge and freaked out all the girls in the class. then i bled all over my new sox.



3- location: all over pelvic region, front and back

shape: slug shaped

size: varies, average 8"x1.5"

color: white

orgin: tried to fuck a badger. no, really. actually these are from a radical treatment for kidney disease in 99-01. you decide.

4- location: inside left bicep

shape: torpedo shaped with stitch marks visible lateraly

size: 2"x5"

color: dark purple

orgin: climbed a baseball backstop at cub scout camp (literaly the minute i got there). tried to reach over the top to grab a birds nest, and my feet slipped. the top of the chain link went into my arm and actually suspended me for a few seconds before i fell. when i got up i looked at my arm and there was fat pouring out of it, which is just disgusting if youve ever seen it. i then proceded to bleed all over the back of the scoutmasters car as he rushed me to the er, where a visible drunk orderly sewed me up. he did such a horrible job you can still see the stitch marks 20 years later. capital.

5- location: both armpits

shape: same as 4

size: same as 4

color: varies dramatically for some reason

orgin: i was in florida in 1991 and an aligator tried to eat a small puppy right in front of me. i was able to get the puppy away from the gator, but not without a fight. unfortunately, the puppy and the aligator both died, and i nearly bled to death and had to live off of rotten vegetation for a week as i dragged myself out of the swamp using only my chin. or, same as 4.


6- location left middle finger, tip

size: tiny

shape: like a tiny smile

color: barely visible.

orgin: i was building a dormer on a house in '01 and i got careless (i.e. stoned) with the nailgun and wound up with a 5" framing spike through my finger. i couldnt pull it out, so i cut the skin around it with my utility knife and it fell out. luckily, it was a brand new, galvanized nail. i didnt have insurance so i put duct tape on it and then went home, washed it out, and bandaided it. it healed suprisingly well and the scar is now so faint that i sometimes forget which hand its on.

well, thats it. i thought i had more than that. maybe i do and ive forgotten some. maybe not. the truth is i dont care, im bored. im going home in 15 minutes to drink a beer and then fall asleep so i can wake up and come back to work. god bless the republic. god damn the state.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Exhaustion, physical and mental

im nearing the end of an entire week of double shifts. 10 to 10 in front of this monitor setting up vacations for other people. the mind and spirit reel. i hallucinated today that their was a cat under my desk. felt it rub against my leg. ive been eating cold pizza thats been sitting in the breakroom since wednessday and drinking "colombian supremo" that comes in single serving pods.

katelyn has been doing the brunt of the moving in my absence and i feel horrible about it. i tell myself that when my next paycheck comes this will all be worth it. it had goddamned better be. despite my whinning, i fully intend to do this again next week. and the next. if im home alone i will lose all semblance of sanity and/or responsibility. i must push on, brave reader. i must bring home the bread.

im looking forward to monday- my cable gets installed! and internet! and i have the day off! pile of joy! unfortunately on sunday, instead of spending the day relaxing with katelyn, i spend the day moving furniture. IF i can find a truck to use for free. anybody got a truck i can use on sunday? you can use my jeep. just dont take it on the highway or it will scare the bejesus out of you...

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

New Digs: cat pee and motion detecting lights

last night was our first night in the new Watertown base. ben helped me move the bed over durring the day, and then later last night katelyn and i brought the cats. aparently one of them (i suspect doolin) had a bit of an accident in the cat carrier, and when we got to the apartment they both ran out covered in piss. as if the move wasnt traumatic enough for them, they got peed on. and then i gave them a bath in the kitchen sink, which basically consisted of me trying to hold an enraged explosion of claws and teeth under the tap while getting laccerated repeatedly about the arms and legs.

then bomba ran and hid under the bed, while doolin went exploring. he quickly found his favourite perch on top of the cupboard. bomba came out eventually and everything went pretty well from there.

aparently though katelyn got no sleep. i was snorring (allegedly), and aparently there is some goddmned motion-sensing light that kept going off all night, shining direcly into our bedroom window. so im outside in my boxers at 3am trying to figure out a way to disable the thing, and i nearly got up on the ladder, but then i realized that such a course of action would likely result in my arrest.

also, the shower is weak. i mean it feels like someone is pouring a flowerpot on you. i need to figure out a fix for both of these things soon.

everything else is great, and hopefully soon we will be having a housewarming party. ill get some pics up soon.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

i done fucked up

so a few weeks ago at the office, they are assigning schedules. I knew i was gonna get a shitty one, as the new guy. It came down to either sunday-thursday 2nd shift, or tuesday- saturday, 2nd shift. I needed that sunday off. That one sunday. Just the one. So what did i do? I erased all of my friday and saturday nights for the forseable future. Didnt even realize it until last weekend. This should teach me to not make important decisions when im sober, but it wont.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

I: In Defense of Anarchy, Mr. Conklin Presents the Articles of Frustration

This is my blog. I am not exactly sure what I'm trying to do here, with these pixels of information that don't really exist physically, but if you bear with me perhaps it will make itself obvious at some point. There is going to be some serious extrospection, some acidic political raving, some benevolent religious theory, some horrible spelling and some very, very immature humor.

Time, while in reality a completely and utterly arbitrary pretension indigenous to human hubris, is measured in this part of the word by the amount of it that has passed since the birth of a man named Christ, who said allot of extremely sensible and intelligent things, made people feel allot better about themselves and their circumstances (an interesting word that literally means "the way one stands around"), and also did some things that were downright awesome and would generally get a person locked up and/or killed by the Wolves that Run Things, which is pretty much what happened to him, and we all know that story. Right now, the record of time reads that since his birth, it has been two thousand and seven years, seven months, twenty two days, ten hours, ten minutes, and ten seconds. A second is about as long as it takes to say "mississippi". A minute is sixty of those, an hour is sixty of those, a day is twenty four of those, a month is either twenty eight, thirty, or thirty on e of those, and a year is twelve of those. You can see that this is all completely ridiculous. None of this is important in any way whatsoever.

Also, in this part of the world, we live in a state of constant frustration caused by three things, which i will now document in no particular order. The first is a desperate attempt by all parties to adhere to the regulation of Time, which of course does not exist outside of our own minds and silly constructs. We must be always "on" Time. The amount of Time that has passed since the birth of Christ is constantly announced to us; on radios, on our monitors, on our communication devices, even on watches, which some people wear about their wrists in an attempt to constantly quantify how long ago they woke up, how much Time is going to pass before they are obligated to be at a certain coordinate, and so on.

This obligation is an important part of the second Article of Frustration; Money. Money is another artificial construct that among all the sentience of the earth is observed only in humans. Money is exchanged for goods or services, and the more of it you have, the finer goods and more immoral services you will be able to procure. The basic idea is that you are completely and even criminally worthless unless you have Money. For example, if you are discovered wandering around without enough Money to exchange for permission to sleep in a bed, you will be arrested and forcibly taken to a bed made of metal in a room made of concrete (which is a mixture of silica and water that hardens quickly and can be used to construct very ugly things) and forced to sleep there under pain of death (I'm not making this up). This is much less comfortable than sleeping, say, in a field or beneath a shelter of branches and leaves, as every other occupant of this planet is entitled and free to do. We humans, because of our occupation with Money, Time, and the third Article which will be discussed shortly, are unable to enjoy such comfort. Also, once you submit and agree to sell what remaining Time you have on the Earth (the amount of which is unknown of course) in exchange for Money, you aren't even allowed to keep it. You are expected to go around exchanging it like crazy, for shelter (which you can get for yourself without too much effort), food (which you can also get for yourself, theoretically, but these days you will need money even to do that without being locked up), and various other things that only have the power of necessity once you begin to have Money. Then, because in order to "make" money one must constantly be "on" time, you have to exchange a huge amount of it for a mode of transportation, which in turn requires a constant stream of money for its fuel and maintenance. In addition to that, the Wolves that Run Things have decided that you have to give them a percentage of your money, or else they will (guess what) lock you up. Back to the old metal bed in a concrete room, but this time because you have money and aren't giving it to them. This practice is also used by organized crime syndicates, and in a startlingly similar way, as i will now illustrate.

The Third Article of Frustration is Fear, and let me tell you, brothers and sisters, it is all lies. The organised crime syndicates i just mention operate thus: they go around hurting and scaring people. Then they approach these same people and offer protection from the hurting and scaring in exchange for money. Which of course is even more harmful and terrifying, since now you have to sell even more of your Time on earth at an even higher price (and the market can bear only so much!) in order to purchase protection from what you have been led to Fear.

Does this sound familiar?

What few realize and none act upon (at least here in Estados Perdidos) is that what you Fear is merely a construct of those that want your Money. They have cleverly built up this haze of things to Fear: terrorists ( a clever name for either a freedom fighter who happens to be a Muslim or a sociopathic mass murdered with a messianic complex who also happens to be a Muslin), bird flu (did you know that ALL flu comes from birds?), "predators" (which used to mean lions and shit but now means pathetic and confused people that are supposedly everywhere, under every bush, looking to rape your children and because of this we have forced our children not to walk to school or do anything independent of their parents and now look, they are all fat and unable to figure things out for themselves), and , worst of all, running out of Money. And what do they offer as a solution to these fears? Basically, give them your Money, which you have exchanged for your Time, and they will keep your Fears at bay.

Except they cant. Because the things that we SHOULD be in Fear of, things that happen regularly and naturally like Hurricanes, Earthquakes, and the like, are completely ignored by these Wolves while they use your Money to get themselves as much free Time as possible to spend doing pointless, self promoting, even horribly immoral things, all the while assuring you that thanks to your hard work (the amount of your life that you sold at absolutely no personal gain), they are winning the War on Terror, they are keeping the things that you Fear away from you. The "terrorists" are killing someone else, far away. The bird Flu is still only in Asia (but it could mutate at any time if we don't have enough money to stop it), and the predators are living at addresses that are available on your computer, so you can have your kids avoid them, except wait, they are supposedly everywhere, keep the kids inside!

Meanwhile one day you are going to be killed because you have a bunch of confused cells in your pancreas that suddenly attacked each other, or because it rained so hard that your house filled with water and you were stuck inside, or because you startled a bear, or stepped on a venomous snake, or because you didn't see that bus coming, or because you spent so much Time making Money to alleviate your Fear that you had none left, and it was your turn to leave. Or maybe you will be struck by lightning, or maybe, just maybe, a terrorist will decide to blow up your train because he is upset that his family was slaughtered when they stopped giving their Money to the Wolves, and now hes been living in Fear for so much Time that he has become very confused about who is fucking him and who is just like him, living in Fear of running out of Money and not having enough Time to get some more.