I despair when I think of the intellectual treasure that humanity has wasted over the millennia to keep unimportant sociopaths and their descendants in incomprehensibly insane riches and privileges, whose appetite for more and more can never be satisfied.

Centuries have tick-tocked by while a trove of lives and aspirations has been lost to an effort to keep civilisations in almost the same retarded spot by a small number of those amoral individuals trapped by grand delusions fed by their insane wealth accumulated at the price of millions of other lives just as precious, smart and gifted. This has to be the most egregious crime against humanity ever, yet no one will suggest that the never-can-be-rich-enough have a serious medical problem. Psychologists shrink away from identifying the malaise and society prefers to think about over-the-top plenitude as an accomplishment worthy of respect, even submissive deference.

Hearing one of those terminally afflicted über-rich trapped in a moment of blunt honesty made me realise the depth of the inanity of the insatiable pursuit for ever more, moRE, MORE. In that moment that passed too quickly, the pitiful soul expressed the seldom-heard truth about his life as a bottomless pit that could never be filled no matter how hard and how fast he shoveled wealth into it.

One of the saddest moments was hearing a man who had so much more than everything sigh and admit that once he got on the wealth acquisition treadmill, when stuff started to roll in his direction, once he had attained the status that allowed him to successfully pursue yet MORE stuff at an exponentially growing pace and volume – he was stunned to realise that none of it meant anything. Once he recognised that his dream for MORE had become a reality, he was surprised that it didn’t satisfy any of his expectations. In spite of having zero need for MORE, he just could not stop himself to demand and receive yet more. Nor could he bring himself to atone at least to those whom he had fleeced to attain his absurdly obscene wealth. Even as he understood that his dream had metastasized into a nightmare, a terminal disease that, paradoxically, had corrupted his own life into a demented joke, an insanity that I call the Croesus Syndrome.

A person with a need to frequently wash his/her hands, or who will go to absurd lengths to not step on a crack in the pavement, will very likely be diagnosed with an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The obsessive-compulsive accumulation of wealth is a degenerative disease that corrupts the hoarder and his/her descendants with profligate and useless lives and an obsession with wealth for wealth’s sake. The ultimate definition of a wasted existence.

The Croesus Syndrome, were it ever recognised as a serious psychological disorder, contaminates entire societies. Attaining massive riches is often elevated to the status of a religion whose adherents worship at the macabre altar of the Almighty (here insert your most revered currency) and most depressing of all, who choose to idolize the ultra rich parasites and tolerate their criminal endeavours that rob societies of a chance to pursue one’s innate gifts.

In the end, Croesus, who seemingly had lost the ability for self-criticism, misread an oracle, lost a war and his kingdom, and paid for it by being immolated atop a burning pyre.

The longer the 21st century croesuses and their enablers are allowed to impose their limitations on our civilisation, the greater the chance for the glorified bean-counters, made rich by unconscionable and legally sanctioned fraud, to turn our world into a massive pyre, a conflagration that could be initiated by a nuclear reactor whose corporate owners cut corners, lie and bribe supine politicians in the name of Holy Profit. (sarcasm)

As I contemplate in disbelief the nightmare that the citizens of Japan have just lived through, first the massive earthquake, then the tsunami, and now the destruction of, and by, the nuclear reactors, I think about the massive losses throughout history of the lives, talent and hopes caused by something that could have, and should have, been avoided had humanity elected a different, and very likely, a more equitably profitable path.

Instead we have chosen to invest in Death. Death by war, hunger, poverty and diseases caused by Man’s disregard, even contempt, for the environment and fellow Living Beings, whatever the species. All in the name of the Ble$$ed Billion$. (more sarcasm)

I cannot be the only person with acquaintances who had devoted their entire lives to serving an illusion of becoming an “important” person, only to die too early for lack of purpose once sidelined, a/k/a retired. The once-paragons who allowed their jobs to define them, who confused brown-nosing lackeys with friends, who likely will not get the truth about themselves until shortly before their death.

Hearing a man admit that his entire existence has been wasted on chasing a golden mirage that he never really possessed is probably what killed him shortly after our last encounter. He was too far gone to even try to learn to do something other than acquire companies, screw his employees out of decent salaries and recognition, game the stock market and sacrifice his children to the snobby world of the idle rich. Cultivating roses in one’s garden and contemplating a beautiful lake teaming with life above and below the water table, apparently, just doesn’t cut it.

* * *

Until we get it right or are wiped out of existence by our own stupidity, we will read about, hear and see tragedies that should have been arrested a long, long time ago: wars, poverty, hunger and illnesses created and proliferated by humanity’s idea of “progress” for a few pieces of gold that will never tell you how well-loved you are, how good your are, how smart and important you are to somebody. Progress defined as turning a spear into a gun that will spew flechettes dipped in depleted uranium, seeds that will not reproduce, medicine with gross side effects, mountains of plastic packaging designed to create an illusion of plentiful content, pricey energy whose waste requires eons to reach a half-life…

I am sometimes kept wide awake gripped by heart-stopping thoughts about the world that we could have created for ourselves. A world that has had more than enough time to learn how to anticipate and guard against earthquakes, protect against tsunamis, floods and droughts. A world where humanity’s well-being should have been foremost in everyone’s mind because wealth does not determine one’s ability to come up with brilliant ideas. A world where Death Machines like the nuclear plants and the pointless absurdity of wars, both ultimate manifestations of the Croesus Syndrome, should have been rejected as criminally unacceptable evil. A world that would treat junkie$ afflicted with the $yndrome with care and compassion and return to them the chance to really… live.

© 2011

That quote perfectly summarizes a strange journey that had started as a pedestrian, once-a-week, trip to the store to restock the pantry.

With the well-oiled and balanced wheels of the shopping cart turning smoothly in front of me, I was somewhere between flour and tomato sauce looking for pasta, my preferred ingredient for those days when spending more than ten minutes in the kitchen is more than I care to endure.

I was deep in thoughts mulling over the fact that the store was out of molasses, the key ingredient needed to make my favourite, Turkish, bread. Wallowing in disappointment and just-stirred up hunger pangs, I landed in Aisle Six. Or was it Aisle Seven?

Whatever…

Several turns of the cart’s wheels later, my thoughts switched to a contemplation of a nice heap of steaming pasta di Gragnano presso Napoli, made by the storico pastificio Garofalo, served with tomato sauce enhanced by a fair complement of Salsa Picante for a little edge and a generous heaping of freshly shredded pecorino romano under a black cloud of just as freshly ground black pepper. All of this did nothing to lessen the hunger pangs, but at least it put a spring into my step.

That’s when She appeared, sailing through the imaginary vapours of my much-delayed if, by now, well-defined lunch, without a moment given to thoughts of a nice bottle of Chianti.

“Hi”, She said with a nice smile that brightened her pleasantly forgettable face.

“Hi”, I returned the courtesy, as the image of my soon-to-be meal quickly paled, until – poof! – it was gone.

“How are you?” The apparition-no-longer enquired.

“No complaints. How you?” I replied.

“Oh, I’m doing good”, She said, as She launched into a quick spiel about a just-opened spa, not far away from the store of our encounter, located between two instantly identifiable streets.

“Oh, how nice”, reacted my automatic pilot from the depths of civilisation’s storage of inane pleasantries.

“Oh, sure. And we’re offering a special to attract new customers. You know, the economy being what it is, advertising takes too long and it’s way too expensive to depend on a slow client build-up.”

“No kidding”, burped Auto Pilot.

“Yeah. And, so, like, we’ve decided to offer 90% off of four of our treatments to attract people who, we hope, will be our social marketers spreading the word among their friends and, you know, like, maybe, co-workers and such. Have you ever been to a spa?” – She ever-so-gently nudged me from my indifferent stupor.

“On occasion”, I lied, intrigued by her peculiar, if warmly engaging, insistence.

No, spas do not cut it for me. I am rather attached to the amenities in my own bathroom: the self-made aromatherapeutically enhanced candles. (Lavender and ylang-ylang are just two of my favourite scents. Which one is yours?) and soaps also made by moi with ingredients devoid of chemicals but with a choice of aromh-mh-mmmh-ahh… oils. The soak is followed by the lovely ritual of a self-inflicted massage using creams, lotions and potions made with yet more chemical-free goodies from my favourite supplier. The goodies’ aromatic benefits are further enhanced by the action of warm steam. But I digress…

She smiled: “Our spa offers a full range of treatments: haircut and colour, mani/pedicure and foot massage, deep full body massage, brow arching… yadda, yadda.”

Brow arching?

“That’s lovely”, responded I, gently prodded by Auto P.

“And, like, can you believe that the full treatment goes for $450, and we’re promoting it for just-only 49 dollars?”

I felt it would be petty of me were I to point out that 90% off $450 is $45, so I resisted the rude urge.

“Wow, that’s amazing”, I felt compelled to say.

“No kidding”, She acknowledged. Then She said something quickly in a somewhat different tone of voice which escaped my hearing powers. However, before I managed to open my mouth to ask what it was that had just eluded me, She enquired if I would be interested in taking advantage of this unique opportunity. By the end of that last sentence that was actually a somewhat longer sales pitch, She asked me, again, if I’d like to give the spa a try.

“Why not?”, I replied obligingly. “Do you have a business card to help me remember the address?”, I asked.

“Oh, sure.” She replied, as She dipped her hand into a large bag dangling off her right shoulder to bring out a 3×5 card with a purple and gold colour scheme, suggesting a très royale treatment, with a boring black and white 1×3 attached to it with a perforation. She then launched, casually and calmly, into a non-threatening, almost-monotone, brief pitch with the details of how the thing worked. As Her finger was pointing to the pictures and She spoke of this-and-that, I noticed that the B/W appendant’s markings enquired after my full name (why would they need to know if Ms, Mr., Mrs.?), address (what for?) , email and phone. I thought it strange but, again, I was distracted.

My attention was engaged by three rats that had jumped from behind the shelves stacked with sacks of flour. They were dancing rats: one was wearing a pink tutu, the second one wore an orange number, while the middle one boasted a green skirt with a silver trim along the hem and a matching sash across its chest. At the end of their pas des trois they unfurled a banner with some writing on it with animated flames, but something She said turned my attention away from the trio in tutus. Pink, orange, and…

“So that’s how it works. Do you think you’d like to give the spa a try?”, She asked again with that same gentle insistence.

Still dazed, “Oh, why not”, I replied with my brain on “idle”.

Again, the hand dipped into Her plain bag of an undefinable colour. I could not help but notice that the gesture accompanied a genuinely warm, even slightly victorious, smile, so different from her earlier smiles that seemed almost perfunctory by comparison. Inexplicably, it made me think, again, of the Dancing Trio. What the hell was on that banner? I couldn’t help but wonder.

Her hand emerged from the bag with what looked like a hand-held calculator with a tape.

That’s when it hit me. “So you want me to pay you the full price of the 90% off now?”

“Oh, like, yeah, for sure. You just fill out this card”, she pointed to the dull, black and white, tear-off part of the otherwise colourful  card, “and call us whenever you’d like to make an appointment”.

Just then I recalled what the vibrant red flames spelled on that banner: “Remember!”

I did. I remembered the burning, red-hot fury and anguish that followed the two separate occasions when I got the letters, one from my now ex-bank, the other from a previous employer, informing me that I was one of a few thousand victims of their enterprising, now ex-employees who had expropriated our personal information. Since that experience nothing will compel me to part with my particulars unless absolutely necessary. As in dire emergency. And that Emergency had better be wearing an ID badge.

This was not an emergency. The occasion did not have a badge, not even a name tag. In fact, no name was ever offered.

I delved deep into my repertoire of mea culpas, selected a medium-to-richly profound one, and told Her that having had been previously slammed with ID theft, I do not part with my personal info unless…

She was visibly upset. I started to feel bad.

She rested the “calculator” on top of my just-bought pecorino romano, then dipped Her arm into the spacious bag one more time. This time at the end of Her extremity dangled a wallet. She opened the wallet. In it was a stack of receipts. Each one with the sole figure of $49 on each bill. She pointed to a horizontal line of several asterisks ending in four digits.

“Oh, we don’t keep your credit card number”, She said with growing anxiety in her voice. Now I started to feel really guilty.

“See, we just save the last four digits”. Really? She has never heard of ID theft? Or was I being played?

The Rats in their compelling colourful dancing attire flew atop the flour sacks, again. This time with Harvey as their solo artist. Their short act ended with a flourish in the form a rats-on-rabbit pyramid, all extending their arms in a final “Ta-dah!”. It got no reaction from Her. She would spare not even a quick glance at the sight of the pink-white Rabbit holding up the Trio of Rodents in tutus.

At this time, the haze of the bizarre encounter started to fade.

“So you want me to pay the $49, here and now?”, I asked, again.

“Oh, sure”. She said, with the faintest glimmer of hope fleeting across her face.

“And you want my full name, marital status, phone AND email address?”

“Oh, yeah. Like, for sure”.

“I’m sorry”, I said with polite insincerity for good manners. “I don’t give out this kind of information to anyone, unless I absolutely have to. I’m really sorry.”

I couldn’t bear to part with Her on a sour note, though. “Could I have the card, anyway? Why don’t you put your name on it to secure your commission and I get to take advantage of the offer? It would also be helpful to let me remember all the enticing stuff you have just told me about and maybe I could get some of my friends interested.”

The eager to please look on Her face started to fade. In a last-ditch tone and effort, tinged with desperate sadness that once again tripped my guilty feelings, She told me that this was a one-time, one-day offer only.

“I’m sorry”, I lied. “I don’t do spontaneous decisions that involve credit cards. Call me paranoid. Ha-ha”, I lied some more.

The Trio and Harvey popped the cork off a pint-sized magnum of champagne and tipped their glasses in my direction. As their last act, they floated off, stage-right, between the sacks of flour and rice, on the tips of the points of their tiny ballet slippers colour-coordinated with their tutus, circling their sparkling champagne glasses above their heads, without taking a final bow. Weird. I was so ready to reward them with enthusiastic applause to get a hoped-for encore.

She and I were done with our encounter. I expressed my phony regrets and wished Her well, as she packed Her act: the wallet, the “calculator” and the card. No, she would not let me have the card. Strange… Nowhere, I suddenly recalled, did the card show the 90% off price. Another thought flashed through my mind recalling how skillfully She had avoided letting me take the card for a closer look.

That’s when I realised how banal the entire show was (excluding The Rabbit et Rodent Act). Her pitch – so well delivered, the script so well-timed in its anticipation of the predictable responses, the masterful manipulation of my emotions and social conditioning. I almost fell for it. Well, the “almost” part got its first nudge with the way-too-good-to-be-true line of 90% off.

As I wheeled the well-maintained cart across the parking lot towards the car, I considered just how skillfully I had been guilt-tripped into submitting to the many opportunities created by Her script to hand over my credit card.

Once home, as I waited for the pasta to attain that elusive al dente quality, I plugged the name of the spa into a search engine. Yup. The name checked out. The establishment is indeed located between the streets that She had mentioned. It is, however, a hair and nails emporium. Not a spa. It is not new. According to the website it has been at that address for more than a few years. Not that it makes one whit of difference. The years, not the absence of the spa part.

Caveat emptor, anyone?

©2011

Not that long ago I had written a blog about insecure employers who check their employees’ and applicants’ postings on social websites to decide the applicants’ “suitability” for job consideration. It’s no longer a secret that your online life can and will be used against you.

Well, it turns out that this insidious obsession with one’s perfectly legal activities is now escalated to a new and “improved” level of creepy invigilation. You just have to read this article. Reading it revived memories from the past I so wanted to forget.

Through no fault of my own, I had spent some time growing up in a country occupied for some decades by Soviet Russia whose government owed its loyalty to the party aparatchiks with an HQ in Moscow.

Life in some countries within the communist bloc was not quite the nightmare depicted by George Orwell in his seminal “1984″. But it wasn’t too far removed from it, either.

If you’d had the dubious fortune of being born in a country without said bloc, you were a marked man, woman or child for life. If you had spent any time away from the workers’ paradise, you were branded a traitor to the People. If you had any talent, if you had learned anything that could benefit your countrywo/men beyond the pedestrian basic beige, you were treated as a renegade for wanting your compadres to live in nice homes, with amenities beyond the ultra drab grey, to have nice clothes, to try a foreign cuisine, to travel and meet people with different histories, to exchange ideas and experiences – all that and much more was seen as evil, decadent. Dangerous.

The Peoples of the Communist Republics, you were told, would not tolerate such an aberration. Better yet, the People, i.e., your neighbours, friends and associates were encouraged, for their own good, to keep a watchful eye on the decadents. Today the the Land of the Free is promoting much the of the same with the slogan “See something, say something”.

Schools were advised to double the punishment for anything that could be labelled a transgression. Ridiculing and failing a child was seen as a good way to break said child into seeing the world according to the Party’s dictum. Basic education was the most that such a child was expected to achieve. If the child had parents who would push the child, despite the daily nightmare, to excel and be admitted to a school of higher learning, every effort was made to persuade the members of the committee supervising the entrance exam to fail the student.  If the student managed to graduate with above average grades, work was available only if the graduate would sign an oath of loyalty to the People and to the Party. If you refused to sign, work was very hard to find, most of it of the menial kind, but it was there if you elected to live according to your convictions.

A government appointed minder would enter your home, while there was no one in the apartment, to go through your family’s photographs, books, clothes, looking for non-existing incriminating evidence of a decadent, even traitorous, life. Yes, indeed, beautiful things and ideas corrupt. Even our minder liked the little luxury, like the beautiful, as delicate as a butterfly’s breath, silk shawl you may have been given by your proud Dad for good grades, so one day the shawl would disappear from amongst your belongings.

Your foreign contacts were seen as a threat to the People’s paradise. So all letters were intercepted and never returned.

Then one day, a child no longer, you are able to fly away, with the knowledge that you may never be allowed to see your family again.

Well, that system did collapse. I, and many others like me, could return to visit our families. During one such visit, Mum told me about the minder who had intercepted letters addressed to me. Some offering work I so very much would’ve liked to have accepted. By then, however, it was too late. The price I paid for not wanting to submit to the tyranny of mediocrity.

Mediocrity runs on lies, oppression and subjugation – it is terror, really. Mediocrity promotes more of the same mediocrity. It is terrified of originality, the courage to think independent ideas, to speak freely and frankly with anyone and argue with opponents in the hope of reaching a mutual higher ground where everyone can live together, regardless of one’s background, religion (or lack thereof), affiliation of the whatever kind, to buy books that suit, even further, one’s interests, to be critical of one’s government, should one be of a dissenting mind that believes that there is a higher purpose and a better life possible. To protest against injustices and cruelty. Even to dislike one’s job, if the working environment is abusive, cruel and/or mendacious. Or mind-numbingly beige.

Employers who apply Deep Searches to one’s candidates are like the moronic mediocrity from a time I wish I could forget. Mediocrity hires and promotes more of the same. It’s a cancer that festers and feeds on its host until it kills and dies with its victim.

From the article: “Peter Gillespie, an employment lawyer at Fisher & Phillips in Chicago, discourages his corporate clients from deep Web diving. Why? (…) “(B)ear in mind that employers were somehow able to make perfectly good hiring decisions before the Internet even existed.”" Amen to that Counsellor.

Will anyone pay attention to this simple piece of free legal advice? No! Fear and insecurity is the response by a great many to the insecurity of management whose number one motivation is CYA. If the source can be plumbed, it will be. Like attracts like: mediocrity attracts “safe”, if uninspiring, beige.

What is happening to this country? where a legal, if  risqué photograph on one’s social website can destroy one’s chance for employment. Or an adult toy meant to enhance one’s PRIVATE sex life, or a book bought online, or an opinion in response to a blog – can be seen as detrimental to the employer’s party line.

Are you really looking for employees as bland as you are, devoid of original thought and ideas about anything, afraid to have an opinion, fearful of pursuing the unheard of, untried, new, even controversial? How do you think we got the internet?  Take a cue from the Super Geek, Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs is no shrinking violet with a temper to match (or so I’m told). To go up against this man, the raison d’être and principal engine for Apple’s massive success, requires serious nerve. Oh, yes! Show up and speak out without having given your idea serious thought, and the Man will put you thru the third degree for wasting his and his crew’s time, for being unprofessional and unprepared. That’s just it: good, innovative ideas come from people who have well thought-out opinions and who are ready to engage in a challenging serious constructive dialogue.

Once you self-censor yourself, you’re doomed to join the bland beige masses obediently shuffling in and out of your place of business in tedious silence, eventually to be put out to pasture by the prickly, hungry, ambitious and opinionated smart people in India, China and other countries where business is booming, who want the toys that fewer and fewer can afford in the USofA. Sic transit gloria mundi…

Contradictory vocal opinions, freedom to disagree, to be openly and constructively critical, all are essential in a thriving society. Being controlled by omnipresent cameras, microphones that record office telephone calls, being dismissed over a tweet about one’s disliked boss or refusal to commit perjury to save a boss’s posterior – these are all signs of organised dumbing down into mediocrity of a society once catapulted into unprecedented  prosperity by progressive ideas, for decades envied by the world at large.

Mediocrity is a truly ugly place. It breeds ugliness. It lives in eternal fear of being found out. It brainwashes its victims by insisting that ugly is the new beautiful.

I have paid a high price for fighting mediocrity. It looks like I’m not yet done. This blog will no help me get a job, but I refuse to back down and recite: “black is white, up is down, beige is beautiful…” I’ve witnessed an equally paranoid system, albeit with a different label, destroy my parents and a great many of their friends. It is in their most sacred memory that I will keep speaking out against stupidity, cruelty, wars, prejudice… and paranoid poverty of pedestrian banality.

Whatever-the-ism – they all suck. They are designed to clip wings, to force the majority to submit to the rule of a petty minority that rules by fear, because that minority understands and is motivated by fear itself.

FDR once said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Amen to that Mr. President.

Oh, and fear doesn’t work long-term. Have you heard about the recent events in the Middle East? Walk like the Egyptians, anyone?

Update: If you value your privacy beyond the price of $2.99-$4.99 assessed by data mining companies, consider giving your support to Jackie’s Speier’s Do Not Track Bill, recently introduced in Congress.

©2011

The novel’s wide array of mundane personalities, calculating opportunists and manipulators, men and women looking to latch onto a figure that may become a vehicle for their own peculiar social ambitions, have their modern-day replications in our own world.

There is the desperately lonely world of the older members of society, their maddening mirage of a life spent on chasing illusory achievements that ultimately no one cares about. Can anyone wonder that so many sought then, as they do now, an escape in booze? Even suicide?

Daughters trapped in a loving home which, nevertheless, makes them into neurotic victims within their parents’ boundaries of obsessive control in fear of a cruel society that is so quick to demonize a girl or woman who would dare challenge the social mores. Society’s desire to control women may have been relaxed somewhat during the intervening century, but not for those with strong views and willing to upset the apple cart stuck in a rut. Most women in our society still have to trade their femininity for butch toughness to prove themselves as strong and decisive individuals. I do, however, have high hopes for the incoming generation who, hopefully, have paid attention to the generation of their mothers and will build on that capital.

And then there is the novel’s eponymous young, naïve hero, clueless to the world of adults into which he is thrown having had spent most of his life away from the maddening crowd of adult intrigue and hypocritical customs and conventions; who never learned the “art” of lies, connivance and underhanded game-playing with the lives of others.

Much of the world described in the compelling novel is mostly long gone. Girls and women need no longer fear their sexuality. A smart and enterprising person need no longer depend solely on powerful and privileged members of society to realise his/her own ambitions. There remains, however, to this day, the need to hide one’s true persona. Very likely even more so today than 130 years ago. Our omnipresent parallel world of the fishbowl of social websites and the gradually disappearing respect for one’s privacy is insidiously corrupting the population of its users into two-faced actors:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts (…)
(Will Shakespeare, As You Like It)

The play’s monologue refers to the seven stages in a person’s life and how they shape one’s personality. Living simultaneously in the two divergent worlds requires quick personality changes. At which point does it warp the performers for whom the act is a relentless, daily, 24-hour routine?

I wonder what Will would have said today of the Idiots who would rather see themselves just as they are, and not a reflection of society’s expectations?

I also wonder, had Fyodor Mikhailovich written his story in our time, would have he retired his reluctant hero into an asylum for gamers rather than the one for the mentally impaired? Into the solitude of a world crowded with invisible players living in their own fantasy worlds?

©2011

That some US companies disavow their grown up compatriots the ability to discern between their armpit and that certain rear asspect, is not surprising. That a Japanese company, specifically Toyota, would embrace condescension as humour, is sad.

What am I on about, you ask?

Have you seen Toyota’s ads exhorting American adults, the lucky ones who still have jobs, to buy Toyota’s Highlander SUV? Those ads that feature an obnoxious 8-year old snobby kid, the malcontent and misanthrope in the making? The nasty piece of work full of contempt for his “idiot” Dad, and schoolmate whose parents do not drive a chi-chi car? Chi-chi, i.e., Toyota Motor’s latest in auto manufacturing, of course.

Nor do I understand American advertisers who have zero compassion or respect for their fellow wo/man. We also get it daily from our politicians, business “leaders” and their sycophants. Now Mr. Toyoda is piling on with an ad campaign that is supposed to be buy-buy “funny”. In reality more like bye-bye offensive.

Toyoda san, I’m confused. If adults are such cretins, where do you get the idea said adults will want to part with a lot of money in order to earn praise from their own kid? If that is too complicated an idea, let me ask you a simpler question. If the “Dad” of the “genius kid” (in the ad) is such a moron, why would you trust this “imbecile” with a potential weapon of death and destruction where the occasional left turn (right turn in Japan) is part of the obstacle course known as the daily commute or summer cross-country trip?

Better yet, why should I consider your product? Your ads seem to imply that I’m too much of an idiot to ask about, let along comprehend, a few tech details around which I might want to wrap the feeble neurons in my cerebellum? (sarcasm)

To be fair, it looks like most car manufacturers submit the advertising reins to flash-in-the-pan Madison Avenue, NY, and gee-whizz wanna-be action film directors gunning for that tent-pole, multi-million dollar job in Hollywood. You know, the one with … car crashes.

Has anyone bought his/her car on the strength of a 15-second ad with a car spinout? Indeed, a situation no one ever wants to experience while inside their own car? Those filmed spin-outs  performed by stunt drivers according to a carefully choreographed and well-rehearsed plan, then edited to perfection by yet another movie professional with the ability to cut and splice multiple takes into a va-va-va-voom second or two?

Instead, what I would rather see in car ads, is where Toyota, Mercedes or (here your favourite brand) have spent their R&D budget. Gizmos like video screens and GPS devices are a nice touch and expensive add-ons. The former are indispensable for people who don’t know how to talk to their kids, the latter for the itinerant sales force and/or the growing army of those who do not know how to read maps.

One idea might be to turn the ads into a mini mini-series touting, e.g., the dashboard features, the under the bonnet/hood goodies, the boot/trunk possibilities. For those who face ice-covered roads: how to, with proper handling, avert a nasty crash (a wee teaching moment, anyone?)

Show me how your product will handle hydroplaning on water-logged streets. Challenge the editor to make a slo-mo clip clearly showing the interaction between the driver and the motor car’s breaking mechanism. Your engineers have worked hard on that feature – so, flaunt it. Aren’t you proud of the smart guys who work so hard to keep us safe in a vehicle that is a pleasure to drive?

Show off the features that’ll pry the cash from a bank account. I’m sure you know that wives usually accompany the men to the showrooms. Women are the ones who hold the purse strings in their tightly clenched fists and are not impressed with cars racing on streets, spinning out in empty parking lots or roaring around a curve, on two wheels. That is for teenagers who conflate driving with a death wish. I rather doubt any carmaker will accept a wide-eyed “Wow” as payment for its product; not even as first installment.

Oh, and for those who like entertaining ads: consider the subtle yet amusing absurdities known and loved by the entire world, i.e., British humour that laughs with you as it giggles at itself.  Just ask Alexandr Orlov. Seemples, no?

©2011

Have you seen the movie that started the hoopla? I haven’t, but I’ve seen a lot of stills and some outtakes. A friend’s tearful recounting of drowning polar bears was a further discouragement. I’m a long-time fan of movies about the natural world and I’ve seen enough of those to know that the ursus maritimus is no wimp whether in the water or on land. Exceptions and my concern for the chained dogs notwithstanding. Do polar bears drown? Yes. So do human divers who don’t pay attention to their abilities, surroundings and air supply during the pursuit of a sensationally juicy underwater subject.

A film shot in the Arctic summer will show lots and lots of chunks of ice floating atop the water. “July temperatures range from about −10 to +10°C (14 to 50°F)”. Even with a plus, 10°C/50°F is unconscionably cold to a lot of people, including moi. It could even make one forget that melting ice is part of the annual cycle known as the Summer.

I wonder about some of the stills that show forlorn bears on scraps of ice. The pictures show only one angle which made me do a Virginia Woolf-like mental detour towards the Dubya-as-pilot stunt. Remember the now ex-president in his flight get-up exiting from the aircraft that landed on board the USS Abraham Lincoln? He later claimed that he piloted the plane. Perhaps. (But I digress…)

Do you remember the original pictures from the ship that suggested a long and cool flight across an open expanse of water? Later we saw pictures taken at that same time from a different angle of the massive ship anchored a few miles from land-ho and the crew’s land base in the background.

It’s that same thought of a different camera angle that made me think about those bears marooned (or not) on scraps of ice. Some time ago, on the  intertubes, you could find outtakes of a film crew chasing a group of bears off the frozen land into the water to support the point of quickly melting ice that sends bears to their watery graves. (Tsk, tsk. Not nice.)

Is carbon dioxide (CO2) the problem as supporters of global warming suggest? Perhaps. But then CO2 is critically important to photosynthesis. Nature needs, wants, desires and devours CO2. Is there a limit to how much a plant can consume or is the surplus a resource to produce more green stuff?

Again I ask: is CO2 the problem or is it the poisonous gases emitted by the smokestacks and tailpipes, as well as methane produced by agribusiness’ massive meat industry?

The exponential growth of the number of cars clogging up the streets in developing countries produce images once synonymous with mega-cities in the developed world. The no-longer poor want access to the same status symbols created by denizens of the first world, including a vroom-vroom all their own. The pictures of India’s and China’s large cities at the height of rush hour make my blood boil in anger and freeze it in abject horror – all at the same time. I hope that those countries will switch to cleaner options very soon, lest they go broke providing healthcare to their citizens overwhelmed with pulmonary diseases. If they don’t, the problem of overpopulation will be eradicated the painful way.

We’re told that we have a global warming, a/k/a climate change, problem. Let’s call it what it really is: a massive and growing dilemma that is caused by the second most egregious source of pollution, i.e.,  cars driven by commuters. If unchecked, and coupled with the runaway population explosion, it will kill us and the polar bears long before any real climate change takes place.

What boggles my mind is that, amid all the talk about electric cars and the abomination of converting food into fuel, almost no one is talking about raising the telecommuting ante! We’re inundated with tech gizmos of every kind that can cut the daily commute to almost none. Why are corporations so slow to implement this technology?

The benefits of telecommuting are obvious and many, including saving much of the fossil fuels underground for the benefit of posterity. The biggest obstacle may be the concern for trade secrets. Let’s not forget, however, that industrial espionage is as old as humanity. Just put “industrial spying” into any search engine and note the number of results! Business spies have been plying their trade since long before computers became a part of the workplace. Let’s not forget that Wikileaks got its goods from inside the Pentagon! My personal data was stolen by ID thieves: first from a major bank, then, again, from a very successful corporation. The Achilles Heels came from the IT rooms. So, like, doh!

Consider the massive amounts that corporations set aside to pay for real properties as-business-place and their maintenance, including garages and THEIR clean-up, as well as the cost of the workforce during downtime: socializing, surfing, also including the visits by some to those certain websites that make many a guy a very happy emplo…. umm… internet browser.

Commuter cars that produce the deadly emissions coming from the tailpipes of gazillions of cars often carry only one person to his/her place of employment. Most of the drivers haul themselves daily to an office job that can be done from home. The Glorious Geeks have created all that we need to get the job done from home. Consider the inanity of the trek to a distant location to… telecommunicate with one’s business partners across the corridor, town, country or planet via computer and/or phone. (sigh)

A conveniently located office made sense in a time when a one-stop address for the clients was a necessity, when the telephone and car was not even a futuristic fantasy. A time when discharges from horse-powered vehicles were eagerly snatched from the streets and lovingly deposited in gardens.

Oh, and global warming is caused by solar cycles. So let’s reconsider this highly disputed subject and focus on the other incontrovertible hazard to humanity: the catastrophic worldwide proliferation of landfills that have been leaching deadly poisons into underground aquifers for almost a century. Our health and survival as a species depends on food derived from sources that are not contaminated by deadly toxins leaching from civilization’s detritus rotting in garbage dumps. I rather prefer to take my food without rare earth elements such as uranium.

There are more pleasurable ways to achieve the glow in the dark…

©2011

I don’t care for letters, emails or phone calls from people I don’t know and, by extension, I have no interest in somebody’s bathroom habits described in 140 characters, or the fact that a Twit is stuck on a freeway’s gigantic parking lot.  (Didn’t I tell you to take surface streets during rush hour?) By that same token, why would I want to receive tweets from people I don’t know, whom I wish well while on the porcelain throne or in the driver’s seat, but whose such-like activities do not make my day?

I have learned my lesson well with emails. Like a good many people, I have a number of email accounts, each with its own purpose and parked in its own Space (if you have a Mac, and with thanks to Mr. Jobs! May you live long and in good health, Sir! My computer habits depends on your genius, mens sana in corpore sano and longevity!)

I have applied the same logic of multiple-but-individuated to Tweetdeck: http://www.tweetdeck.com –  that can, and does, accommodate accounts with assigned purposes. Tweetdeck’s functionality is further enhanced by  Growl: http://growl.info. (Mac only). Growl tells me in a manner, duration, colour, shape and size – all selected to suit my own likings, that an email or tweet has just arrived, with a brief clue about the sender and subject matter.

So what does all this have to do with a magic ride through the Universe? Plenty!

A short while ago, Growl had found me browsing  Firefox apps and announced the arrival of a tweet from one of those few interesting persons whom I have never met and know only by his awesome reputation and shared interest in astrophysics: I – as a fan of the allure of the Universe, he – by virtue of being an astrogeek.

He – is Neil deGrasse Tyson to whom The Massive Out-There owes a sizeable debt of gratitude for making Space easy to understand and almost as familiar as one’s own back yard or local park (if you live in a flat).

Dr. Tyson’s achievements are many and truly worth checking out: http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson

So, where was I before I got involved with the preamble set-up and side-trips? Ah, the magical ride thru the Universe. Well, this particular “invitation” came courtesy of Dr. Tyson’s tweet with a link to: http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/blog/abbott/2010/12/15/the-known-universe-one-year-later

Check it out. Be sure to click the full screen view. Six minutes and 31 seconds that will take you on a unique trip that puts just about everything in its proper perspective: physical and metaphysical, on a micro and macro level.

The first viewing made me think of our planet as a drop of water with seven billion cells being busy cooking, shopping, plowing, nurturing, wasting time on wars. Loving and hating. Being born and dying.

Then I considered the cell that is writing this blog. Cell had had a few rough days contemplating other cells; cancerous cells of the type that use their prominence and mundane illusions of power to cause trouble and strife that will award them with lots of pieces of colourful paper with which to trade for toys for grown ups, services of people who will clean up their messes, do their bidding in far away places and/or buy influence.

Some time ago, Cell had come to suffer the indignity of an encounter with such an eminence noir (EN). During the Magical Ride, Cell had come to realise that we both, EN and Cell, are less than specks in the vast domain that no amount of colourful pieces of paper can ever buy and/or influence. EN may have fouled up the micro-bubble where it dwells, but it’s not my bubble. Ultimately, EN, and Cell, will die and none of this will have any impact on the Universe, not even in the mini micro smallest way. Cell has always known this. EN will find out the hard way the waste that is its existence.

Then Cell remembered an unsolicited “just because” kindness offered by a total stranger and the good cheer that it had generated which, in turn, empowered Cell to pay it forward. Suddenly, a ray of Sunshine pierced the shared Drop Of Water muddied by EN’s stirrings. Yup, the crap had settled and, once again, if only for a moment, all was well with Cell, its very own space-bubble and the Drop of Water.

By paying it forward, Cell renewed its hopes that the energy of the kindness wafting along on that ray of light and warmth will spark something lasting that will cause all Cells of Good Will to connect and clean up our Drop of Water. Cell believes that it will be that combined and shared energy of Light and Compassionate Concern that will impact the Universe. Not least of all because it will create the possibility for future Cells to reach out to connect with other Flecks in the Magical Massive Continuum. No?

Oh, and lest I forget… This is as good a time and place as any to thank all those who made the Magical Ride, whether into the exosphere or introspection, possible: from Dr. Tyson and his posse of astrophysicists, to the computer scientists and programmers who have enhanced Cell’s quality of life and spirit beyond Cell’s wildest expectations with that Ride across the Universe and the many other rides throughout the Drop of Water. Namaste!

[Note to the Glorious Nerds: tweet when and I'll be sure to catch the next Ride.]

©2011

What is life about really: destiny? lifetime goals? a chain gang?  the rat race? Is it really about what one bumper sticker professes: “The one who dies with the most money wins”?

To this day, I detest large gatherings. And not just because I suck at small talk. It’s just too much work. The only up-side, if you’re lucky, is the food layout which, if good enough, compensates for the dutiful schlep to deliver the gift and sing “Happy birthday”, throw rice, or whatever.

Small parties also help to quickly thaw the preliminary iceberg off the stiff formalities and allow all to get down to a nice, even fabulous, time that lasts long into the night. Every person has his/her own way to break that ice. My favourite party trick is to get willing couples to talk about how they met and about their courtship.

One such story emerged when, many years ago, and because of an irrelevant set of circumstances, I was stuck with a group of total strangers in the middle of nowhere and a whole night to kill.

Before too long, I decided to try to bring together the dozen or so people strewn all over the cafeteria. So I got up on one of the tables, loudly announced that I was bored, out of options and getting lonely and invited all to come together around a huddle of tables and spend the time making the best of our predicament. Or die trying. Shortly afterwards, there we were, introducing ourselves to each other.

Then came the inevitable gawdawful moment when everyone fell silent again. That’s when I called on my party trick. Most of the people had already revealed that they were in some sort of relationship, but I made it clear that it didn’t have to be a current relationship. After all this was an extended soirée with captives of the moment and circumstances, not a discovery hearing.

I’ve heard many unusual and funny courtship stories, but the one that blew us away was a strangely moving story told by Gwen, a quietly pretty petite blonde in her mid-40s, who was traveling with her niece.

Gwen was about 26, when her job had caused her to move from one part of the country to another where she knew almost no one. In order to make her welcome in an unfamiliar place, Arthur, one of the co-workers at the new office, offered to help her become acquainted with the town and its amenities.

Gwen was entirely unlike any of the women that Arthur had known until then. Before the end of the week he was positively under Gwen’s spell. He tried a couple of old routines to get Gwen’s attention, hoping to advance from casual friendship, but Gwen just wasn’t that into Arthur.

As time went on, more and more people were drawn to Gwen’s quiet charm. Arthur was getting desperate, so he embarked on a daring plan.

During one of the office lunch breaks he casually asked Gwen if she would mind help him assemble a trousseau for his bride-to-be who just happened to be Gwen’s size, and anyway she was away at college preparing for her finals and wasn’t expected home before graduation, a few months away. The “fiancée” wanted to combine the well-deserved vacation with the wedding and honeymoon. Would Gwen, please, help? Gwen, of course, didn’t mind. She viewed this as a unique opportunity to figure out what’s what in the wedding game, without the pressure of her own emotional involvement. Yes, she did ask about his intended’s family, only to learn that both Arthur and the “fiancée” were orphans, and that his betrothed had left him in charge of the show. Gwen thought the story a little odd, but her own student years and final thesis were still fresh in her mind, so she agreed to become the stand-in. Any lingering doubts were disaposed off when Arthur had asked that Gwen be his bride’s Matron of Honour. Gwen was happy to accommodate.

The shopping, bookings, arrangements, invitations and much more went on for a couple or so months, all the way up to organising the actual wedding and reception, with Gwen doubling as the bride during the wedding rehearsals.

Naturally, this meant that Gwen and Arthur spent a lot of time together and as a result had become very good friends. Gwen was endlessly amused with Arthur’s cluelessness about the female fusses. Arthur was just… happy.

The day before the wedding, as usual, Arthur drove Gwen back to her flat, and just before she opened the door to enter the building, Arthur dropped on one knee, flashed a beautiful ring she hadn’t seen before, and asked for her hand in marriage. “And whatever you say, please don’t say no.”

Arthur died a few short years later of a sudden heart attack just before he turned the key in the ignition, on his way to work.

Gwen told us that she eventually fell in love with this sweet, gentle and funny soul and never had to doubt the wisdom of the blurted out – “yes”.

(With thanks to Paul for suggesting that I blog this story.)
© 2010