Maybe You Should Study War Some More.

I get tired of hippies. Especially old hippies. They are the fucking worst.

I've casually wandered into a few protests in my day. It seems like every time there is a protest the 'old guard' of tie-dye wearing, non-profit working, pot smoking baby boomers shows up and fist pumps, "Yes! It's time for a REVOLUTION!" (smileyface)

No. No fucking (smileyface). You do not (smileyface) that.

I always derail the conversation with a dour, "Yeah, well, if a revolution breaks out, they'll probably shoot you first." Then this happens: "I meant more of a...symbolic revolution."

"I think everyone under 40 should die completely outgunned in a 50 year guerilla war with the most technologically advanced allied military the world has ever seen.
But I really mean that in a pacifist, John Lennon, Ghandi way... LOL!" 

There is no such thing as a Symbolic Revolution. There's no "Spiritual Revolution," nor are there "Social Revolutions." The civil rights movement was a movement, not a Revolution. Twirling around in a patchwork skirt with face paint while a jam band smokes weed in the face of The Man is not a Revolution. The Occupy Movement is not a Revolution. Revolutions involve guns, lots of them, and you damn well better hope you have the most.

Fuck. Throw in some 10 year olds on LSD and I just don't know anymore. They both look horrible.

First, there are certain prerequisites for a revolution, the main being starvation. People will take a lot of shit. But when it gets to a point where they're going to die anyway, then they will take up pitchforks and roll out some guillotines. Hey, why not?

The next case against revolution is this: They don't work. What usually happens is another superpower smells weakness and swoops in like a vulture to pick at the country's borders. I've heard a lot of "Give Congress the guillotine!", and no talk about how history clearly teaches that Austria immediately started a border war and almost ruined France. These types of revolutions inevitably turn into a shit-show that drags on for another 50 years before the people willingly submit to the first iron-fisted dictator who promises a shred of stability. Take a good look at Napoleon I and Stalin.

How close are we to revolution in America, anyway?

Let's compare the current state with the French Revolution of 1789.

1. Opulent, rich assholes in charge? check.
2. A worthless nobility/upper class with a political majority that refuses to be taxed? check.
3. A farce of a legislative government that gives an unfair veto advantage to the wealthy, and no willingness to compel them by force to help the rest of society? check.
4. High unemployment and an economy chipped by outsourcing and trade imbalances? check.
5. Strong barriers to entry for small businesses, such as excessive taxes and fees? check.
6. Inflammatory pundits on both sides? check.
7. An over-drawn military, running at a bankruptcy for unpopular foreign wars? check.
8. Insane inflation, to the point that food becomes inaccessible? Nope.
9. Crop failure, leading to mass starvation? Nope.
10. Foreign influence, or worse, foreign occupation? Nope.

There you have it. If you had a Big Mac today, then we are not heading towards a revolution. (Though I heard Monsanto really screwed the pooch and now we have some kind of terrifying corn weevil problem, so you hippies just might get your wish).

The next question is this: If revolution should magically break out, who will win?

Here are some thoughts: The government has the Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, National Guard, Coast Guard, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, and local police. Now imagine dealing with them, and then setting the reset button and dealing with the next vulture power that decides to "help"... say, the EU or China. By the way, they all have an unprecedented surveillance network, complete with robot drones and satellites.

And in the people's corner, we'll have a morbidly obese, aging, increasingly disabled proletariat class, a small, yet hyper-paranoid right-wing militia subculture, and a completely unarmed, spoiled youth class who are morally opposed to violence. I was watching an Occupy live video feed, and the kid with the camera was surprised the police had live ammo. Damn, skippy.

So maybe everyone from the 'I ain't gonna study war no more' generation should STFU and study some wars before you go web flaming in support of a revolution. And maybe watch the Matrix or Star Wars a few times for good measure.

One final thought? Zach dela Rocha? There's a motherfucker who's on board for a Revolution.

He probably slaps like a girl. At the very least, he has the correct shirt. 

One Man's Trash...

Whilst brushing my teeth, I had the best idea ever to fix the economy. An idea so counter-revolutionary, so very cyclically backwards in its inception, that it practically defies logic.


Let's cancel the election, make congressional service a voluntary activity for the next 8 years, seize a few evil corporations, and rebuild an American replica of the Royal Palace at Versailles...in every state!

Things are so weird, this is what moderation looks like.

Stay with me here...I already have this financed.


Congress has become worthless, a cesspool of wealthy morons who make terrible financial decisions. Anything in its place that could just sit still and not touch anything (like a half-eaten burrito) would be an improvement at this point.  What about democracy? Congressional volunteerism. Ben Franklin was in favor of it. If you love democracy so much, why don't you show up for free?

1. Each senator makes between $170,000 and $200,000 per year, with additional per diem and health insurance perks. That's $107mil per year. Remember-this is an 8 year project. My budget now has $856mil.
2. Past congressional pensions for retired congressmen? C'mon, we all know they were filthy rich to begin with. They don't need that retirement money. That frees up $17mil. 
3. Cancel elections. Seriously. Every 4 years our country dumps out 5.3 BILLION dollars on presidential elections, and for what? We get to watch rich, racist people throw hissy fits on tv while skeletal women parade around in shoulder padded suits? 

Women's business suits,  aka "boner kryptonite".

Fuck that. No elections during construction. New Versailles will probably take about 8 years to finish, so there's another $11bil.

Good... I already found about $12 billion.

We will need the following per site:

2,014 Acres= $3 million (if we raze Detroit, it would probably be free!)

A zoo= $50 million 

721,206 square feet of floor space. Let's go nuts and say we'll spend $1,000 per square foot= $721mil

977 acres of gardens= $54mil

How about an even billion for art? That seems reasonable.

Alright.  Let's round this up to $2bil, for incidentals & such.

A vomiting bronze dog fountain? Build me 20, sir!

$2 billion per New Versailles, per state. That's all I need. I've already funded six!

It's not fair that only six states should get a New Versailles. I need to find another $88 billion.

1. $1bil.-the personal cash we could theoretically seize from the ousted congress.
2. $1bil.- the funds we'll get by seizing just the 2012 presidential candidates' net worth.
3. $20bil. from Michael Bloomberg. That fucker is worth $20 billion. Eliminate him alone, and we could build 10 New Versailles!
4. $3.5bil in back taxes from GE. Those fuckers not only don't pay taxes, they got a credit of $3.5 billion in 2010.  
5. $2-11bil. I hear Monsanto rakes in at least this, bare minimum. Let's do the world a favor and shut those fuckers down too.
6. $57bil. -Get rid of the Department of Homeland Security. They've stopped what, 5 half-assed terrorist plots since their inception? Not worth it. 
7. $8bil. - Get rid of TSA. I think we'd all rather stroll around some fountains and listen to cello music than get irradiated and raped at the airport. 

Are we at $88 billion yet? $92?! Excellent. All 50 states can now have their own!


Here are some reasons why we should rebuild 50 New Versailles.

1. The seething, no holds barred, 'in your fucking face' irony.
2. Versailles at its height housed and employed 3,000 people; Congress houses no one, and only has 535 d-bags who never show up.
3. Jobs! There are all kinds of jobs to be had. Construction, mining, furniture design, landscaping, plumbing, painting, caterers, tour guides, zookeepers, musicians, fashion designers, hair stylists. And probably some neat jobs, like solar engineering (we'll modernize this shit, yo'!).
4. Public housing. Versailles didn't just hold the royalty; it had over 300 apartments. Hell, the Bellagio hotel has 4,000 rooms, so maybe we can finally house some of the people Congress dumped on their asses.
5. Unlike Congress, it's self-funding. We'll charge for restaurant service, weddings, film series, and concerts. I claim dibs on rave production in the gardens!
6. Versailles had a lot going for it, including fresh water, a zoo, and an organic fruit orchard. We're going to need these things when Monsanto completes its poisoning of our food supply.
7. The amount of antique art, and opulent gold and silver. Think about it; all of our money is currently theoretical, and in the hands of fucking idiots who blow it promoting themselves. At least with several tons of solid gold bannisters and some appreciating paintings, our currency would be safe. This will actually prevent inflation when the economy finally crashes and burns.
8. Gambling. Real Versailles was hated for its wasteful gambling. Gambling will not only generate revenue, it will also add even more jobs. The Bellagio makes like, $50 million in profit. This shit will be like the Bellagio, but real. None of that hollow fiberglass and plaster crap they have all over Vegas.
9. The pleasantness of it. Nice jogging trails, some good art museums, some vineyards and live-work studios on the back acres. Lord knows our citizens need to get up and take a walk. I estimate we'll save at least $1mil in health care costs per state.
10. National pride and tourism. Congress wastes enough every year on war to build... 100 fucking Versailles, every year. Maybe if we have a sweet monument to show off, and stop blowing people up for oil, we can get some much needed tourism cash flowing. 

This idea is sounding better and better, isn't it?

Education, American Style.

Americans. We have a global reputation as being dumb, arrogant, and fat. I won't deny it, as I am constantly baffled by my own ignorance.

Our national nutritionist.

Baffled, yet I graduated in the top 5% of my high school class with a 3.96 GPA. I was on the list for valedictorian. I then completed two bachelor's degrees. I was awarded 'Outstanding Something or Other' by my college department (the kind of crap that gets you a special mention in the graduation program, and an $8 plaque which you threw away out of disgust with your life at age 28).

I consider myself highly literate and fairly good at research (though a Ph.D. dissertation might shame my grammar skills). I am functional in 3 foreign languages. I have specialized art education. My world geography skills are well above average. I keep up on science and tech news. I will admit that I blow at math. If I had to guess at my IQ, I would place it in the 130's.

I am what you get if you are looking for a properly educated American.

Here are some more facts:

1. In 6th grade we memorized all the countries of the world... except those on the entire continent of Africa. The reasons? "They aren't that important." and "They are all(!) at war right now."

2. I did not know Russia took part in WWII until I was 26. That's right. I'm sure you Europeans just choked on your croissants. No, seriously. I have a similarly educated friend who asked if socialists were the same as Nazis. I also have a friend convinced that The Philippines are occupied by Japan, and another that thought that Ireland was France on a map.

3. I was never required to take a World History class, neither in middle school, high school, nor college. World History was full, I was busy, and a class on tornados filled the same social science requirement. We spent the whole class watching videos of tornados wrecking shit.

Your world history textbook won't save your sorry ass when this beast rips through your house.

4. Interest calculation (you know...that thing that fucks you on your credit card and mortgage?). Well, I was in a senior level arts finance class my last quarter of college. This was no 'Intro 101' course! The catalog number was like, 'Finance for Entertainment 400000060001', with 12 prerequisites. Our homework quality was so, so consistently bad that we collectively made the elderly guest professor cry. He could not believe that 23 year olds were so godawful fucking bad at financial math. They had to grade the entire class on a curve, where the highest grade was a D. The dean of the department let us write essays instead of doing our compound interest calculations. It was such a fiasco they removed it from the course catalog. Oh, yeah... at that point in my life I was already 5 years and $14,000 into default on credit cards I got from tables in the campus quad.

Uh-oh. They finally figured out that 35% compound interest over 30 years is a fucking scam, and told the rest of them.

5. I spent several (required!) semesters, if not years, of college taking duplicate classes that I had already taken in high school. College algebra? Same as high school algebra. 12 credits of college Spanish? Worse than high school Spanish (the classroom looked like a kindergarten, had piñatas, and we watched Disney movies). I took Biological Anthropology twice, with the same text book, for different credit requirements. Literature classes where I re-read books I'd read in middle school, then watched movies. I've taken the same psychology class 3 times.

6. Nutrition? You jest!

7. My high school US History class was taught by the football coach. On a late road trip back from a concert, I sarcastically wrote an essay titled, "Why Bono is the Most Important Person in American History," expecting to get a D for effort. I got an A+. We were also supposed to wear costumes for our presentation. That's right. Costumes. I wore a U2 t-shirt, and claimed I was Bono. Your kids in Europe are busy learning engineering math and perfect English, and we're prancing around in Halloween costumes.

8. I shit you not, I clearly remember watching both Die Hard and Terminator II in a high-school lab science class.

Photosynthesis, American style!

9. And finally, I had a college business professor posit, "If too many people die from AIDS in Africa, could all the groundwater in Africa be permanently contaminated with AIDS? We just can't know these things."

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Is it any wonder the US is full of fucking idiots? You can sink $40,000 into your education, and you still end up a fucking idiot! I've engaged in decades of independent research, PBS viewing, world travel, conversations with educated friends, foreign newspapers, and library books in an attempt to erase the incompetence of our higher education system.

I think it's by design. The government doesn't want us to know the native culture or history of the next country we bomb. They don't want us to know anything about communist countries other than, "It's really hard to get Levi's there!" I point toward the disastrous housing crash, and ask if it isn't by design that no one here can figure out the life-ruining math on interest rates.

Oh, yeah. The reason for this tangent. This happened.
Kentucky Cuts Education Funding, Builds Bible Theme Park

'Lynching' is the new 'Resisting Arrest'

What's that thing? You know, that thing...when you're out protesting, or happen to be black on some MLK Jr. Parkway in some random urban city, and you see the cops beating the shit out of some homeless schizophrenic, so you jump in and stop the beating even though you know you'll probably get charged with interfering...what's the word for that again?

a). Obstruction of justice?
b). Assault on a police officer?
c). Resisting arrest?
d). Lynching?

The answer is... d). Lynching!

When a fat white cop is beating the ever-living shit out of someone on the street and you step in, you are apparently no better than some 1950's Alabama inbred in a white hood, getting ready to string up a noose.

Occupy Protesters to be Charged With Felony Lynching

Sergio Ballesteros, 30, has been involved in Occupy LA since the movement had its California launch in October. But this week, his activism took an abrupt turn when he was arrested on a felony charge — lynching. 

Under the California penal code, lynching is “taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer," where "riot" is defined as two or more people threatening violence or disturbing the peace. The original purpose of the legal code section 405(a) was to protect defendants in police custody from vigilante mobs — especially black defendants from racist groups. (Kari Huss, msnbc.com)

My new goal for the year is to get another bus lane violation in hopes that I get charged with felony cross-burning!