No Class

Class system is when an insignificant but arrogant front desk clerk at the Grand Hotel in Berlin, dressed like a diplomat, patronizes a bell hop who calls him Sir, but is twice his age.

And anyway 70 year bell hops should have been graced with a small promotion somewhere along the line. I find nothing endearingly old world about them or their wooden smiles.

Meteo

The Dutch word for ‘weather’ is the ‘again’! And now for tomorrow’s again… It’ll be awful again again…according to the againman

Heat

On strolling through Hong Kong, then Singapore one summer, at 99º degrees Fahrenheit and 99º Relative Humidity: this is not weather, this is soup!! Whereupon, and feeling like the walking drowned, not knowing where to turn or go, I drifted back to my hotel, and air-conditioned daiquiries. Now, this to me… is liquid.

Shakespeare?

Just when Desdemona started singing ‘For he’s a jolly Othello, he’s a jolly Othello…!’, the delinquent Iago walked in.

Civics for Dummies*

On the one hand, people smart enough to make a bomb, use a computer or fly an airplane, on the other dumb enough to think destruction gets results, the proportioning of death the be all of everything and believing there’s a god up there applauding their every move. Sad, XII Century stuff with the help of ill-gained XXI Century know-how, supplied of course by the same god, who, apparently, has a brother in California, where they make the stuff.

Next the plodders who do want a life, but allowed themselves to be miserably intimidated in the hope of gaining not only prosperity but glory, power and superiority and waking up one morning coming to the horrible realization that those magnificent armies they thought were there to protect them and bring them the good life, in fact were there to imprison them, one generation after another, kept in line by lies, accusations, torture, execution, censorship, by the warped and the powerful and a justice system always condemning, never there to acquit.

But both groups attacking, despising, hating a third group, one having it all, one completely free and confident and while not without faults or defeats seemingly winning at everything. Even after attacked and subsequently forced to close its borders, or beginning to restrict civil freedoms it would much rather stay away from, knowing the misery these curtailments are representative of.

So why don’t people function more on their own, disallowing others to make the same stupid or cynical mistakes again and again, and either way keeping them down? For capitalism and democracy do go hand in hand, but consider capitalism like a beautiful wild colt. It’s one thing to break it in, disciplining it while caring for it, putting it to exquisite use, but always letting it roam, never breaking its spirit even while bringing it to the corral for some disciplining once in a while.

But it’s quite another to lock a beautiful, lively equine up in a dark stable on minimum food and water, night and day, weeks, months, years and years on end, then expect it to gallop you to safety if the building, where it and you reside, burns down.

And of course it’s even dumber to try and kill that first wild colt, so a locked up one doesn’t ‘feel bad’ or gets ‘bad’ ideas. Besides, where must healthy new horses come from, cloning not working and inbreeding ultimately creating idiots?!

Making there are lots of nations out there in search of founding fathers, but also in need of citizens with balls.

* Tongue-in-cheek title, in the same spirit as Windows or Chess for Dummies.

Birds & Words

A murder most fowl, is a murder most chicken…

Could You Tell Us: Morning or Afternoon?

At an economic forum here Prof Dr José Luis Escriva, chief economist of the BBV Bank, consultant to the IMF, UN, PIB, POOB, BABABALUBA, IGOTTAGO, YEAH let the Spanish public know that six years from now the housing market will have regained its health, and with it the economy of the country.

Here’s my question. Where was Mr Escriva in 2007 and 2008, when he didn’t have a clue what was coming, what was going on or what to do about it? When the country was collapsing before his eyes and he couldn’t utter or offer warning, advice, or solution to the same public he was addressing just now?

In other words, why should anyone pay attention or listen to a fat-cat functionary who knew nothing yesterday, not even what was happening in front of his nose, yet suddenly having the balls to forecast with exactitude what will happen six years from now.

I’ll always remember John Kenneth Galbraith’s story of two balloonists trying to cross the ocean, hitting a sudden storm and losing altitude perilously quickly, but a the last possible minute, in near dark, spotting a green stretch of land with a sheppard leading his flock to their stables, shouting, panick stricken, but somewhat relieved, ‘ Hello, Sir! Could you tell us where we are?! And the peasant shouting back up ‘ Yes! You’re in a balloon!’.

With the one balloonist telling his companion ‘ Fucking great! We had to run into an economist!’

So thanks to Bank and Newspaper sponsored economic forums, but no thanks. The way to get out of a crisis is by stopping to spout ridiculous, alarmist forecasts by charlatans. And worst of all, publishing them…
.

Words

A filibuster is not a Philadelphian

Virgins

Subtitle: Sonny, one day all those corpses will be yours!

On the news Bin Laden’s son was killed in action: What a shame, Dad prepared such a wonderful future for him, all the while courageously hiding in a manhole some place, creating a world where murder in the service of the Almighty is not murder, one where bombs and blades settle everything. A place above which He sits approvingly clapping away, having created precious life only to make sure it gets destroyed. Almost like plucking daisy petals, contemptuously throwing them away by the millions, but if at all possible, one by bloody one.

Well the Bin Laden kid’s home now, but what’s keeping his old man? Or what about those virgins, are they martyrs, too? And what happens to them after they get gang raped and are no longer virgins? Do they have anything to say, in Osama’a ridiculous and cruel tale?

Teachings

Whereas most teach to fight ignorance, others seem only too glad to simply teach ignorance.