Zombies

Greetings good citizen,

Still ‘disoriented’ by this ‘backwards schedule’ (I’m up but I haven’t had breakfast yet because coffee will keep me awake and I need to go back to bed later!)

The posts are fewer but the message remains the same, the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace.

When it finally does collapse it will be swift and (insanely enough) unstoppable…mostly due to massive stupidity…but it is really just widespread ignorance.

Talk about your ‘dangerous games’, there will be no ‘recovery’ from the downward spiral our self-professed ‘betters’ have put us in until ‘justice’ has been served/restored.

And that is the one thing the guilty have no interest in…but they need to be tracked down and eradicated all the same.

Or they will serve as an example to a new generation of thieves, just as the ‘robber barons’ of old are the ‘heroes’ of today’s plunderers.

(You see, our grandparents thought they could ‘tax’ the robbers into compliance when letting them live [while keeping their plunder] was the original mistake.)

[And] justice won’t be restored until the link between prospering personally is severed from the exploitation of what we all need to live. (Forcefully creating a huge ‘underclass’.)

But I digress, let’s have a quick peek at today’s headlines:

Sponsors Now Pay for Online Articles, Not Just Ads
By TANZINA VEGA
The strategy of advertisers sponsoring or producing content that looks much like traditional editorial content has become increasingly common as publishers try to create more sources of revenue.

Who needs ‘truth’ when you can pay to have your, er, ‘point of view’ published as the ‘truth’?

How ‘Orwellian’ (and I’m thinking Orson and not George) when we see this kind of ‘abuse’ of the system we rely upon for our information.

War of the Worlds (the radio broadcast) was an ‘example’ of the power of the media. People believe what they see or read in the media because it is our ‘trusted source’ for news.

They aren’t obliged to advise you that 99% of what they publish as fact is actually the opinion of the paper’s management/revenue department.

So, as you now know (kinda) you should only believe half of what you see and even less of what you hear (because most of it is BS.)

More disturbing was an article on one of the ‘top rated’ TV shows on cable…The Walking Dead.

Besides ‘outperforming’ almost every other major broadcast in its Sunday night time slot, the scientifically improbable event is also used as an allegory for our current political climate…if not our society’s entire political philosophy!

[Leading to my earlier comment regarding the ‘ocean of stupidity’ our civilization is being drown in…thanks to the same ‘profit driven’ media.]

Moving on we have this ‘obvious outcome’ making headlines once again:

Greek Banks Suspend Merger Talks
By NIKI KITSANTONIS 9:45 AM ET
National Bank of Greece and Eurobank said they could not raise the necessary capital under the terms of Greece’s agreement with foreign lenders.

Remember when we actually worried and fretted over how we would ‘pay’ for things?

This is that ‘revisited’. How unfortunate is it, good citizen, that the scoundrels who (and remain at large) bankrupted the global banking system (with impunity) have proven what we all only suspected, that all ‘money is ‘funny’, essentially meaningless.

Why else would Geithner’s replacement be taking this position (given the US’s new found role as being ‘on top’ of the world’s remaining fossil fuel reserves?)

U.S. Treasury Chief Talks of Growth in Europe
By ANNIE LOWREY 11:53 AM ET
On his first trip to Europe as Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew met with European officials to discuss protecting the global recovery.

Difficult for me, after two years of being unemployed, to dismiss the nascent ‘recovery’…BUT, I returned to work by virtue of a skill that has all but disappeared from these shores, manufacturing.

I’m now in the position of being one of the few that knows how to do this stuff.

So my ‘good fortune’ isn’t due to a tide that is lifting all boats. I caught a lucky niche, bully for me!

Not so good for everyone else I’m afraid.

In our final snippet, let us examine yet another inescapable fact of the ground that is rushing up to meet us…

DEALBOOK
G.E. to Buy Lufkin Industries for $3.3 Billion
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 12:27 PM ET
The deal is the latest by G.E.’s oil and natural gas unit, one of the fastest-growing parts of the conglomerate.

So Mr. Dillenger, why DO you rob banks?

And he quipped, “Because that’s where the money is!”

Now how many of you are agree with Mr. Dillenger?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

No Men

Greetings good citizen,

Today will be one of my ‘free form’ pieces where I don’t use any Corporate Owned Media reference points…although I will use topics I found in today’s online posts, both friend and foe.

Let’s start with the not too helpful observation that, to date, all ‘rampage shooters’ have been male.

So instead of outlawing guns maybe we should just outlaw men and be done with it…

No men, no killing. (Which ignores a long and tragic history of murderous women, but the author doesn’t hold woman blameless, she merely points out the obvious, that women ‘don’t prefer’ to go on shooting rampages (although they might learn to like it if they only gave it a try…)

A couple of articles later and the teachers (unionized teachers no less) are declared the ‘heroes’ of Sandy Hook…

Um, apparently tragedy provides the opportunity to drape your favorite hobby-horse in the cloak of ‘heroism’ when, at the end of the day, there were NO heroes at Sandy Hook, just frightened people doing whatever occurred to them during moments of extreme duress.

No heroes, only victims and survivors. This compulsion to glorify the participants in what was really a tragic social backlash borders on the sociopathic…

It is not the kind of behavior you need or want to encourage.

If we start celebrating ‘victim hood’ the next thing you know we will be taught to ‘cherish’ our slavery (as a proud part of who we are…in the minds of the >One Percent!)

Short hops or as the Soviets liked to call it, ‘gradualism’.

Which only belabors the obvious on my part, we must be very wary of the ‘for profit’ media.

Look at the mess they have made of the relatively benign playground politely called ‘entertainment’.

Nothing ‘too intellectual’, we don’t want them to think…or worse, ask questions! Then we don’t want them to, er, ‘dwell’ on their own wretchedness so we have to have reality shows drawn straight from the casting couch of ‘the Beverly Hillbillies.’

How ironic that most viewers of the relatively new ‘Alaska, the last frontier’ watch it with a degree of ‘envy’.

More ironic is how the show Yukon men displays what happens when too many people decide to live ‘off the grid’…

Mother Nature can’t support that many predators, which is why the farmer supplanted the hunter/gatherer.

Now we need to take farming to the next level…because we didn’t stop growing.

IF there is a second season of Yukon men it will show the ‘rugged individual’ choking on his ‘self-sufficiency’. If you watched the first season with a jaded eye you can see it is happening already.

Then there are the, er, comedic escapades of the Gold Rush crews…I wouldn’t follow Todd Hoffman across the street, never mind to the Klondike!

Like Sr. in American Chopper, apparently Fred (the claim jumper of Porcupine creek) doesn’t care how he comes across on TV.

Or maybe reality TV runs on assholes…it’s hard to tell.

I don’t think I’m alone in believing that in order to have your own ‘reality show’ you must first be a selfish jerk…which is not true on all cases. Otto on Alaska the last frontier and the rest of the Kilcher clan are not ‘full of themselves’…(although the bozoes of the Amish Mafia appear to be.)

Parker Schnaubel is the only worthwhile figure on Gold Rush (even in the throws of ‘gold fever’ he retains his sense of self and what’s important (far better than many of the so-called adults on the show! And his Grandpa is the true ‘salt of the earth’ type who is always pleasant to deal with.)

But you don’t need me to expound upon the wasteland that has become ‘primetime TV’…you see it for yourself.

And these days everybody with a keyboard is shaking the finger of shame at the corporate owned media…which is having zero effect, in case you didn’t notice.

What I find particularly disturbing is the trend of ‘off-shoring’ (so far mostly ads) to Bollywood, although there are some ‘test ballons’ flying right now of Bollywood produced ‘sitcoms’…as if they weren’t already pitiful enough!

(Take a closer look at the stars if you don’t know which ones…)

Um, the NYSE has opened since I started writing this, let’s have a peek at how the other end of the ‘entertainment industry’ is faring…

And the US market opened and headed straight for the basement…must be time for some ‘profit taking’ (given the recent irrational rise in share prices…)

Yurp is still in the green and the markets to the South of us haven’t tanked…yet, but it’s still early.

Um, this is why I don’t do ‘unscripted’ very often…it produces rambling pieces…which is not a good thing if you consider the range of my ‘normal’ posts…

Um, that said I will leave you to parse this mess as best you can,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner