The Devil's Party...

Being a little concerned about the greed and corruption that has been taking over the American body politic, I found a site where my worst fears are proven true. This site (OpenSecrets.org) provides information about where politicians get their money. Soft money, once a major percentage of the campaign funds, show individuals that drop big money into the pockets of politicians.

This site allows a person to search for donors by name to find how much they donated to whom. I looked up my own family names and found a great deal of Republican donors. For the sake of curiosity I searched for the "devil". It turns out the prince of darkness donates to the Republican party. I thought this odd, so I went to see how "God" donated his money. He also turned out to be a major Republican donor. The Lord Jesus, on the other hand falls into favor with the Democrats. While Islam donates to Republicans.

Why is it that God, Satan and Islam are at odds with Jesus on this issue of party donation? True the republicans are less tolerant and have leanings toward wrath, smiting and indulgence, so they embody the principles of both God and Satan. Democrats on the other hand are wishy washy, flip-floppers, pathetic alliterations of slug family (according to Republicans). Why is it that the Lord favors them? Is it their compassion, their turning of the other cheek each time it's smacked by Rush Limbaugh, their closeness to those like Jesus' accomplices (ie. prostitutes, the decrepit, the homeless, sickly and destitute, not to mention the Jewish population)? I think it is.

So all true Christians should follow the Lord's lead and support their local Democratic nominees. If you enjoy the company of Satan or the God of the Old Testament-flinging fireballs, turning people and cities to salt, flooding the planet to punish drunkenness, and encouraging incest- then write your checks over to the Republicans.

Me, I follow Buddha and he doesn't donate.
Oooooooommmmmmmmmmm......

Robbing the Mind...

Many months ago I sent an email to the general contact for Purell, a Pfizer company. I had a product suggestion and requested a reply so that I could go over it with a company representative. I provided a general description: single serving packets for hand sanitizer, similar to packaging for ketchup at restaurants. It was a simple idea, but there was no product like it in the marketplace and I couldn't find anything like it online. I never got any reply from Purell and gave up on the idea.

For the sake of curiosity, I recently did a search of Purell hand sanitizer and I stumbled across this image...



This was exactly my idea, and it is being advertised on a website the sells supplies to restaurants. My idea was taken and put into production. Sure, there is a possibility that over these past couple months, that some individual conceptualized this product independently, but it is rather suspicious.

This was not the first time that I have witnessed an idea of mine find it's way to production without my involvement. Years ago, the mid-nineties I presume, I came up with the idea for Styrofoam houses. I figured that Styrofoam could be recycled and used to build homes inexpensively. Since Styrofoam is resistant to decomposition, it is an ideal material for homes. Styrofoam can be heated and made stronger and reinforcement can be added to make stronger structures. I imagined the Styrofoam to be created in universal blocks that snap into one another much like legos, so that the shape of the house is bound only by structural stability and the imagination.

In 2004 the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) released an article outlining the benefits of using Styrofoam for structures that were resistant to decay. They described using recycled Styrofoam to create homes for a price of $6000 (including cement reinforcement). They are now using this idea to create housing in Afghanistan.

In 1997 I got a job where I had access to the internet. This was my first real exposure to the technology and I remember telling a coworker about an idea to provide subscribers with access to movies whenever they desired, through an internet connection. The coworker said that the connection speed is too low for most people and that the resolution for a streaming video over a modem would look like crap. I suggested a higher bandwidth medium and was certain that the idea could work.

A company in Hong Kong came up with this idea in 1990 long before I did, but it ran into the problem predicted by my coworker and the company went under. In 2000 Enron announced a partnership with Blockbuster to provide this very idea, however, like the company from the orient, their project never got off the ground. It wasn't until Cable and Satellite took to On Demand several years ago, that this idea succeeded.

So in a way I have been predicting the future with my ideas. And since I don't seem to derive any monetary benefit for any of these ideas, I suppose it will be fine to spill them out here. Let me divine some more...

Small Tesla Magnifying transmitters will wirelessly transmit energy to cell phone, radios and other moveable electronic household devices. The transmitter will plug into an outlet and only broadcast the energy when the device signals the need (probably through a bluetooth technology). The devices will be equipped with Tesla's Free Energy receiver that will recharge a battery. Cell phones will then be truly wireless.

People with ugly belly buttons will have the option of cosmetic surgery. A whole host of button designs will be available: smiley face, playboy bunny, multi-pointed stars, the Cameron Diaz and a variety of other celebrities. No longer will people walk mid drift, ashamed of their "outie," they can bare their belly with pride showing to the world their button shaped into the Volkswagen symbol.

Women will get clavicle augmentation. The accentuated clavicle has long been possessed only by the ultra-lithe and gaunt feminine physique. Women of average and generous proportions will capitalize on this symbol of anorexia and make themselves look "thinner" by augmenting their clavicles. Common procedures will be to raise, bow and protrude the clavicle by having hypoallergenic silica-based extensions screwed into the original and disappointing bone structure.

Opt-In Lobotomies will replace suicide. Those poor depressed souls that scour the internet looking for partners to join them in their self-engineered passing, will be marketed by businesses offering them lobotomy as an alternative. This will catch on once people realize that it is their brain that makes the world so unbearable. Rather than choosing to kill themselves, they can opt to simply destroy the part that causes the problem. This procedure will create a surplus of workers to fill positions that any self-respecting cognizant person would vomit over. These lobotomers will be employed by their lobotomizers making them rich and depressing scores of normal people. This process will continue until all the world's work is accomplished by the brain dead and all the fruits of their labors will be collected by the brain killers. Invasive lobotomies will be replaced with an accelerated program to deteriorate the mind. All the senses will be targeted with hypoallergenic reality entertainment.

The war on terror will be renamed the war on ideas. This will spawn a new weapon, the conscience ray. Super-sensitive long distance microphones will be targeted at individuals to record their voice patterns. Their voice patterns will be identified with their infrared biosignature. Hypersonic Sound lasers will be mounted atop cell towers, and in areas deemed "troublesome" by the government, the locals will be subject to "conscience direction" where the sound laser will transmit the person's voice into their heads with pro-agenda suggestions. An infrared camera will identify the person's biosignature, retrieve their stored voice pattern and trigger the hypersonic laser to transmit a message directly into the person's head. The hypersonic laser will make it so that no one else will be able hear the voice, and having the voice identical to that of the receiver will limit rejection of the message. The population of the troublesome areas will slowly grow docile and obedient.

Everything will become hypoallergenic. Modern biology has shown that foreign bodies are responsible for most all diseases and infections. Bioengineers will work hand in hand with all levels of manufacturing to create hypoallergenic products. To avoid all negative reaction and rejection, all products we buy will be created from our own DNA using our original stem cell line squeezed from umbilical cords. By turning on and off genes in our chromosomes while stimulating cell division, bioengineers will be able to turn our stem cells into automobiles, sofa and love seat sets, entertainment centers and even the food we eat. We will be closed systems, the Ouroboros of the consumer phylum.

Green house gases will be consumed by massive arrays of floating airborne algae. Scientists will create a strain of algae that connect to each other via long rigid flagella. They will be launched into the upper atmosphere where they will reproduce forming sprawling blankets of algae consuming all atmospheric pollutants and expelling oxygen. They will have small amounts of gold in their protoplasm to absorb cosmic radiation and keep their internal temperature above freezing. Their cell walls will keep their internal pressure at a constant, fluctuating only when bringing food (i.e.. N₂, H₂O or CO₂). With no natural predators and an ever increasing abundance of food (i.e.. human pollution) the algaculture membrane will grow until it encompasses the earth. The sky will be green instead of blue. From outer space the earth will appear a pale green dot. Layers will form upon the membranes and eventually a new human colony can exist upon the algaic surface. Those living upon that layer will evolve to have small, thin exoskeletons and large skulls with a dark colloidal covering over the eyes (protecting them from cosmic radiation). Their primary source of energy will be pollution from the original terrestrial earth. To meet their energy needs they will travel back in time and encourage the terrestrial earthlings to liberally pollute the planet. Those primitive earthlings will assume that the future algaic layer earthlings are space travelers interested only in anal probing. This reputation will prove useful to the future earthlings for the Christian right homophobes will toil ceaselessly to prevent potential probing, wasting extremely large amounts of energy and polluting the world at a geometric rate. Eventually the algaic layer will get so thick that the terrestrial earthlings will live in eternal darkness.

Letter to Jeff Tweedy

Mr. Tweedy,

I recently learned that death is inescapable. Certainly, at age 25 that would make me naive for a quarter of a century. I was always a firm believer in the resilience of life, but the truth is that we are all freak anomalies of nature. My previous belief that science would one day provide the solution to the problem of death is now proven to be a childish dream. Even if we happen to forgo all the pleasures that damage the body, and prevent all foreseeable events that would lead to our demise, there is still no escaping our debt of living. Our DNA is constantly being damaged, often irreversibly, and after sufficient damage is done we will certainly die (cancer or other diseases). Our environment favors death.

Why burden you with this all too often ignored certainty? Well, the comfort of immortality is no longer a luxury of mine. The world is blasting by, and before the debris is carried off by the wind, I wish pick up a piece of my world and maybe show it to another (even if it is only to a gatekeeper). I don't expect feedback, I've been desensitized by the ever-silent One, but I do hope that this message isn't transmitted in vain.

I don't want this to be misconstrued as flattery, that is not my intent. True, I consider you as a searcher, possibly the ultra-rare enlightened American. Your lyrics and song touch that level that most force themselves to at the detriment of their liver. But once again flattery is not my intent. Holding you as an enlightened artist I figured that you may appreciate the insight I derived, incidentally, with your assistance coupled with the certainty I mentioned earlier.

Sulking in my newfound doom, I was pacing in my garage alone, drunk, listening to music and breathing smoke. Trying to mentally uncover some loophole, some potential for life to exist eternally, I was at a loss and becoming more and more irritated with my sentence of death. No matter what penance I could perform, there was no saving me, and life itself morphed into an unwanted gift. When the horizon is black on all sides, there is little motivation to travel. The long tease seemed despicable. I never understood how those on death row could 'wait to die'. If it's going to happen, I say to hell with the foreplay. My garage has rafters and an appealing amount of smooth nylon rope. Temptation was there, but I was still a coward.

To drown out those frightening thoughts I turned the music up and your songs so happened to populate the playlist at that time. Sure, a part of me felt that the ever-silent One had finally overcame reservations, but it was your music and not a burning bush or talking ass. Certainly you've been inspired, maybe by similar experiences and communicate the symbolism through song and lyric. While your songs were in tune with my frame of reference, that only meant that we both looked in the same direction. No matter how miraculous an experience, I can always explain the miracle away.

Parents often speak about the miracle of birth. The child will not remember that event so at best it is only a spectator miracle, never anything personally witnessed. Women can observe the miracle with extreme proximity, but it is the existence from non-existence that is the miracle.

Continuing that line of thought, with birth and death being end points of our subjective realities, and since birth is not truly experienced, the only miracle we will ever be privy to personally witness is death. To that I have no doubt. Even with that promise the rope and the rafter were less appealing.

Why do I cling to this tangled knot between my ears? Why do you? Certainly you've came to the same conclusion: why live when a miracle is only a death away? There must be some enchantment with our decaying and fragile flesh that we continue to tolerate it.

We are all a created from a larger whole. Being an offspring, I will only remain such as long as I prevent my return to the source. At times I despised this gift and would've gladly returned just to admonish my maker, but I refrained with hopes that one day I'd learn to love what I've been given. I may not be completely there, but I can say with a degree of confidence that I'm close.

The act of creation nudges me closer to that goal of loving life. The act helps me feel the love from creator to creation, and it sooths me in a way. If I were to create something that touches another's spirit like you have already done, I believe that then I can no longer hate this gift of existence.

To life, love and creation,

TS

Painstakingly Obvious...

I have goals, goals that require effort. I know what is required to accomplish them, but I just won't get around to it. I procrastinate and repeatedly opt for vice when confronted with my priorities. I feel as though I am sabotaging myself and there is nothing I can do about it.

I still function. My work is unaffected but those milestones that I promised myself I'd accomplish by such-and-such year remain unfinished. It is getting to the point where I can't bullshit myself any longer. I am lazy, lack ambition, unfocused and a waste.

I hate that my desires of the intellect are usurped by those of the flesh. What did I expect? I'm not made out of some preternatural aether, spawned by some magical and benevolent deity. I am a heaping pile of decaying matter. One day I will be no more and it is that crisis that propels this mad chase towards hedonism. Enjoy your fire because everyday it is being extinguished.

This is all a mental conflict of course. My restraint, backup controls and contingency denial will never fail to prevent me from making these lascivious urges into revolting and damaging actions. Still, these thoughts plague the mind, and no matter how much I try to ignore their presence, they blare their trumpets and parade about the forefront of my mind. To defeat these impulses I find myself obsessing and attempting to convince myself of their immorality or innate disadvantage. Another level of temptation accumulates and urges the taste test so that the Devil will abandon his efforts when the offer is looked over and denied. No, no, no... The threshold lies before the offer not after acceptance.

So I will continue to circulate in my mind the reasons for my maintained status quo. Hedonism knows no end. Pleasure is relative. Therefore I need pain, the ordinary will seem more enticing. Maybe then I can set out to accomplish those goals, meet those milestones and become that person that I NEED to be. I must endure the night to seize the day.

Really, How Hard is it for a Pimp?

The award for best original song during the 78th annual Academy Awards went to Three Six Mafia's "Hard Out Here for a Pimp."  While the song may enlighten some to the personal difficulties presented to a proprietor in the prostitution industry, the lyrics were of poor quality, the structure laid waste the grammatic rules of the English language and the rhythm was unoriginal, if not uninspired. 

 

Three Six Mafia, like Randy Newman, won their Oscar far from the apex of their respective careers.  Triple Six's Oscar winning song lacked the intensity and originality of any songs from their acclaimed "World Domination" album.  And although the Oscar winning song failed to match the disrespect toward women as did "Neighborhood Hoe" it suceeded in depicting women as objects to be exploited.

 

The justification for pimping and the subsequent call for sympathy were not thoroughly thought out.  It is obvious that the writers were not pimps but rather try to represent the profession in a mythical fashion that was given to gunslingers in the old west.  There was little referencing of the true nature of maintaining a workforce of prostitutes.  One must question the deliberate ommission of a pimp beating his "bitches" and the addiction of most prostitutes to drugs.  The pimp supplies drugs to the prostitutes and they must turn tricks to pay back a never ending debt, in essence making them a slave and the pimp an abusive slave driver.  The writers and performers failed to see the similarities between a modern urban pimp and the stereotype of the white southern slave owner.  The lack of recognition of this similarity and acceptence among the black and white communities leads one to the assumption that there are no more hard feelings over the pre-civil war slave trade.

 

To a pimp, a prostitute (male or female) is a resource and requires management and control.  Pimps are often gang members and pay dues much like union members.  These dues allow them the access to resources of addictive narcotics and opiates as well as weapony.  If a potential prostitute approaches the pimp for drugs their demand is met for the price of selling their body.  The prostitute begins to rely upon the pimp to supply their addiction.  This is a lucrative business, for with only a $10 investment in crack, meth or H they can potentialy serve a dozen "john's" at $25 to $100 a piece.  Certainly a little revenue is directed toward the prostitute (just enough for food and drink for a couple days).  But even if there is an average profit of $50 per trick, the pimp stands to earn near $500 for each prostitute per visit. The great reliability of an addiction maintains a steady resource of prostitutes and therefore revenue. 

 

Ideally a pimp would prefer to house the prostitutes and exploit their addiction on a daily basis.  If these addicts ever try to better their lot, the pimp need only threaten or inflict violence to return the addict to complete submission.  And with the pimps access to weaponry, he (or she) could exploit the power of fear coupled with addiction to create a guaranteed resource that could be exploited on a full-time basis.  With only five full-time prostitutes the pimp stands to earn upwards of $12,500 per week, that is $650,000 per year.

 

Certainly the pimp would have to severe themselves from their conscience, but that supposes that they have a moral compass at all.  Many urban gangs have a reputation of donating to local spiritual leaders and they temper the outcry of the neighborhood.  They donate to elected local officials who blame economic conditions for the trends of vice.  Even with the required payouts to counter community revulsion to their presence, the pimp still manages to purchase luxury, gas guzzling SUV's, expensive jewelry, diamond, platinum or gold replacement teeth, and high-end clothing and foot wear. 

 

With a potential annual income over half a million dollars, the pimp could afford to keep a team of lawyers on retainer so that in the event of legal entanglements, the pimp could escape or at least limit prosecution.  At such a high income bracket, the money itself could be used to aleviate any and all stress that one's occupation may present.  So with that in mind I'd like to answer how hard it is to be a pimp?  Not very hard.