Fifty billion dollars. That's $ 50,000,000,000. That's the alleged amount bilked from investors over the course of several decades in the Maynoff ponzi scheme. Several decades? We could probably blow that much in three months. All we'd have to do is try to occupy a previously secular nation and turn it into a breeding ground of fundamentalist terrorism. Heck if we throw in another country, filled CIA trained guerrillas hiding in caves deep within mountainous terrain then pit them against weekend warriors from Ohio who joined the US army to pay for dental school, then we could probably burn through the 50 x-large in two months. But as usual, I digress.
He is now being paraded about as the manifestation of everything that is wrong with the financial sector, capitalism, unregulated free markets, Park Avenue penthouses, wealth in general, etc.. This Bernie-guy even has a bloody yacht named Bull. We can't say he doesn't have a sharp sense of humor. Now he's going to be paraded through the streets as a nefarious thief who bankrupted charities and betrayed the trust of his community and peers. That is exactly what he is. A thief, a liar, and a crook. But, of course there's a but, he is no different from the rest of his kind, the super-rich. Balzac said that, "Behind every great fortune, there is a great crime." That's probably an exaggeration, because I'm sure most of the crimes were fairly pedestrian. Crimes, nonetheless, but they couldn't all have been great ones. Then of course there are fortunes built on things that may not have been illegal, but definitely immoral. Then again, wealth itself is immoral by nature which in turn lends itself easily to illegality.
Wealth is defined as the quality of profuse abundance. It just sounds obscene doesn't it? Profuse abundance. Quite the opposite of poor which would the the profuse abundance of nothing. Religions tend to cast a dim view of wealth. Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam all extol the virtues of living a simple life, respectful of authority and devoid of greed, avarice and attachment to material things. Sacrifice in this life in exchange for glory in the next. Who knew Ponzi was a theologian? Law, morality and religion put forth the principles by which we are all supposed to live by. But the "we all" is actually a euphemism for "you all." A select few operate outside of these stringent guidelines, they have done so since the beginning of organized societies and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
The key dichotomy is that financial inequality is inevitable and necessary. As a nation, we find ourselves in the midst of the worst financial situation since the Great Depression. However we are still fed, clothed, housed albeit in homes that are rapidly declining in value. If a homeless man collapses in Times Square, at the very least several cops and an ambulance will show up to take him to a hospital where he will be treated without hesitation. How many people are involved in this scenario? A dozen? Well there's the homeless man, the two police officers, the two emts, the police dispatcher, the emt dispatacher, the doctors and nurses in the ER, the factory workers that built the ambulance, the manufacturers of the medical equipment, the construction companies that built the hospital, the Department of Transportation that oversaw the paving of the roads that the ambulance drove on, the Department of Motor Vehicles that ensures other drivers know to make way for the sound of sirens, the siren producers, the audio engineers that design the sound the sirens make, etc. etc. etc. The network of humanity is irrevocably interconnected, but what does that have to do with financial inequality? Not everyone can be wealthy. The crux of economics is the idea of scarcity. Infinite wants, unlimited demand, must cope with very finite supply.
There is great clamor in the media about the explosive demand for Chinese consumption. The green fanatics are eager to point out that if everyone in China drove a car we'd probably all suffocate from Buick exhaust in the 30 seconds before the tidal waves from melted polar ice washed us all away. Hyperbole aside, the United States' rise to super power status was predicated upon its enormous economic capacity for production. WWII devastated Europe and we cranked out tanks, ships and planes to win that war and then retooled the factories to make cars, boats and jets to sell to our allies. Once they had enough stuff, we had to find new markets to peddle our wares, so we turned to Asia and South America. Problem is they learned how to make stuff to, so to make things a little fairer we buy their crap. The trouble nowadays is that there is just too much crap, unless we teach penguins how to get their Happy feet into a Chevy Malibu, the world is just over saturated with crap. Why is there so much crap? Because the only way to make money is to sell crap and lend money to other people to sell crap and then collect interest on the money so you can get a cut of the crap sales. Modern society is a massive pyramid scheme and we're running out of prospects who can pay for the Independent Distributor kit to get started climbing the ladder towards owning a Yacht named Bull full of supermodels and beer.
Morality is like the suggested admission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Pay the full amount if you can afford it, or if you're a tourist. Morality keeps the majority of the population chugging along nicely so that the original pyramid builders can continue enjoying the view. Every now and then they throw one of their own down the pyramid into the sacrificial volcano so that the rest of the pyramid builders believe that the system they're building will one day they'll get them the same view.
As there's increasingly less to go around, the natives will get restless and they will cry out for blood. Just a couple of days ago on the cover of the NY Post there was an "expose" on the excessive spending of a CEO's wife. $ 53,000 a week she spends on her lavish lifestyle. Why is it that her spending is a slap in the face to everyone suffering during the recession yet we still tune in heartily to MTV Cribs and celebrate the 28" rims and diamond grills? There is a brewing class war in the United States and perhaps around the world. Luckily these days the have-nots are more inclined to raise taxes and file class action lawsuits than to raise arms and file the ends of their shotguns. Because in the end they want to have someone polish the deck on their yacht.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Election Day
This Election Day has been more hyped than the last three Star Wars movies times High School Musical 3 to the power of the entire Harry Potter Series plus a couple of Super Bowls. Come Tuesday for better or worse it will be over. That is of course barring either of the two pulling a Mugabe, civil war would be quite unpleasant. For nearly two years every media outlet has relentlessly covered this damned election in every painstaking, mind numbingly irrelevant angle. We know that the bamboo floors in the Setai NYC condos was the same as the bamboo used to construct McCain's studio apartment in North Vietnam. We know that Obama used to carouse with Satan and Stalin and is conspiring with the grinch to steal Christmas and turn Commerce Bank green.
This whole mess is turning into Alien vs. Predator. Whoever wins, we all lose. I finally got some mileage out of that insanely terrible movie. The government should keep its hand out of my bank account, criminals off the street, me out of the army, keep the lights on, reduce traffic, bring back online poker, give everyone guns or take them all away, colonize space, and prevent things from blowing up except for anything that tries to interfere with our insatiable consumerist lifestyle. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is.
Freedom isn't free. That just sounds great doesn't it? Right up to the point where someone asks you to pay for freedom. So just how much does freedom cost? For most of us somewhere around 45% of your income. Casinos work off of a 5 - 20% edge and they seem to be doing just fine. STEVE WYNN 2012! The last time I checked, "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need" wasn't in the US Constitution. So when does social responsibility become socialism?
Our economic model consists primarily of charging each other a fee to do each others' laundry and we can't seem to figure out why we're all so damn deep in the hole. Our way of life is unsustainable yet we persist in finding new ways to preserve it. This note doesn't make much sense. It is very discombobulated and that's the point.
Neither the 18-25 demographic's messiah or the 75-120 demographic's maverick is going to be able to reform a world falling apart at the seams nor will they be able to rewrite 50,000 years of genetic programming. Rome isn't burning, it's in hell. Most people just don't recognize it. That was a little morbid even for me.
Point is, the world is run by big money. Plain and simple. I challenge anyone, especially those of you who are voting for CHANGE, to prove different.
But once this election nonsense is over at least we finally get a two year breather before the crap starts all over again.
Daylight savings is weird.
This whole mess is turning into Alien vs. Predator. Whoever wins, we all lose. I finally got some mileage out of that insanely terrible movie. The government should keep its hand out of my bank account, criminals off the street, me out of the army, keep the lights on, reduce traffic, bring back online poker, give everyone guns or take them all away, colonize space, and prevent things from blowing up except for anything that tries to interfere with our insatiable consumerist lifestyle. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is.
Freedom isn't free. That just sounds great doesn't it? Right up to the point where someone asks you to pay for freedom. So just how much does freedom cost? For most of us somewhere around 45% of your income. Casinos work off of a 5 - 20% edge and they seem to be doing just fine. STEVE WYNN 2012! The last time I checked, "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need" wasn't in the US Constitution. So when does social responsibility become socialism?
Our economic model consists primarily of charging each other a fee to do each others' laundry and we can't seem to figure out why we're all so damn deep in the hole. Our way of life is unsustainable yet we persist in finding new ways to preserve it. This note doesn't make much sense. It is very discombobulated and that's the point.
Neither the 18-25 demographic's messiah or the 75-120 demographic's maverick is going to be able to reform a world falling apart at the seams nor will they be able to rewrite 50,000 years of genetic programming. Rome isn't burning, it's in hell. Most people just don't recognize it. That was a little morbid even for me.
Point is, the world is run by big money. Plain and simple. I challenge anyone, especially those of you who are voting for CHANGE, to prove different.
But once this election nonsense is over at least we finally get a two year breather before the crap starts all over again.
Daylight savings is weird.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Changes...a crappy title, fitting for a Saturday night FB note
Maybe it's the sign of the economically trying times, I am spending my Saturday night entertaining myself by reading my old xanga entries. Well it's not quite that sad. There was one particular entry that I had in mind and I had to sift through almost 3 years of comments to find it. The one about careers and filial duty etc. For those of you who missed it here it is in its grammatically abhorrent entirety.
Monday, January 09, 2006
We were discussing careers yesterday. So many people are stuck in dead end jobs either by lack of ambition, lack of opportunity or lack of freedom. They make just enough to scrape by from check to check. Maybe they live above their means, or maybe they have too many mouths to feed. But whatever the reason there are plenty of people who just end up 50 years old wondering why their chance to make it big never came. There are many ways to become successful; you can hustle, grind, or just get lucky. But there are many many more ways to just settle; you can just get lazy, just get by or just get married.
It's common knowledge that Americans have the lowest average savings rate of any industrialized nation. According to a study done by Newshour with Jim Lehrer in 1995 American households on average saved 5% of their income. By 2000 that figured had dropped to 0% and American consumers owed 7.2 trillion dollars on their credit cards. That was six years ago and I don't think that has changed much since.
These figures don't usually apply to first generation Asian families (I'm using Asian for lack of a better term) because they save upwards of 90% of their income so that they can fulfill the American dream. So they break their backs to build a business, buy a house and move to the suburbs to raise their kids in good school districts. Unfortunately their kids tend to grow up drinking more Coca-cola than sorrow can see only the best quality crab while acting like paper tigers and become trapped by the rules of the game. But Joy Luck Club aside many of us 2nd generation types have far more American tendencies. How many of your parents or grandparents would spend $300 on a bottle of Grey Goose or $1000 on a bag? Why am I rambling about our financial recklessness? Because I'm a jerk who took too much for granted for too long and this is my xanga. lol
My dad bailed me out of a couple of pretty bad situations over the past couple years. In exchange I signed away my freedom and agreed to work for the family business. At first I hated it and then I grew used to it and just went through the motions. For the past 6 months or so I've actually thrown myself into it wholeheartedly. I don't wear a suit to work, I don't have a corner office with a view of midtown and I don't get saturdays or federal holidays off, I have 20 minutes for lunch and I don't get paid overtime.
I used to complain that this was a dead end job and everyone said that I should be off doing something better. But I couldn't picture myself trying to climb that corporate ladder grinding the 9-5 in my cubicle. Some people do that really well, but it's not for me. I like being a student, but I hate going to school. I want to go to law school, but I don't want to be a lawyer wierd eh?
So why do I keep working here in this little office in Brooklyn? I got a decent gig here. I'm practically the boss. I get paid in cash. I get comped for gas and food. I get to drive around to see clients. I learned how to drive forklifts and backhoe loaders. Most importantly I've learned how to haggle like a 65 year old woman buying vegetables on Market St. I don't get big bonuses, but I will inherit the whole damn thing. So what the hell am I complaining about?
It isn't really what I wanted to do. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.etc/ etc.
Sometimes I feel like I'm taking the easy way out. But every time I consider quitting to do my own thing I feel bad. Anywhere else it wouldn't really matter whether I was there or not. But here I'm actually somewhat important. My opinions and decisions have a direct impact on the day to day. So I guess staying here nurses my ego as well as my sense of security. If I were to quit things would still chug along but I would be abandoning something that my grandfather started and my dad continued. Somewhere along the way I got attached to this little operation. I look out for my workers, I actually care about my customers (the ones that aren't complete fucktards) and I want to see the company grow. We went from grossing 6 figures to 7 the past couple years. I want to get it to 8 and more...and it finally feels possible.
So what the hell is my point? The point is what I thought was a dead end job is actually not as dead end as I thought it was. Most limitations are self-imposed. I guess I felt like writing a pep talk for myself to say things are a lot better than they seem. Yea I guess this entry doesn't really do much for anyone except me.
So here's a funny tidbit for you guys.
During the race between the tortise and the hare the tortise stopped to pick up an ant who was hitchiking. A little bit further down the road the tortise sees a snail crawling by. The kindhearted tortise told the snail to hop on. The ant promptly said to the snail "Hang on tight this tortise is faaaast.!" lol
Told you this was a bad joke.
Nearly 3 years later I find myself in a very strange and new place. So many things have changed so dramatically in the past 33 months; people, places, philosophies. The next line is supposed to be, "but so much is still the same." But no things are not the same. They're actually pretty damn different.
In January of 2006 I was attending classes at Stony Brook University as a super super senior. I was seriously memorizing odds charts, card counts and comp points. I was contemplating law school as a fallback career in case the whole Pro Poker thing didn't work out. I was wholeheartedly considering gritting my teeth, putting my back into it and plowing forward with the family business as a full time career. The economy was chugging along at breakneck speed with carefree over-leveraged abandon. Words like crisis, subprime meltdown and election were still on the somewhat distant horizon. You could get a mortgage without pledging your firstborn for the next two generations. It was a heady time clouded by a thin veneer of nostalgia and a twinge of regret and it wasn't really all that long ago at all.
Somehow between there and here I got fed up. I flip flopped. I went through a lot of soul searching (being broke) and I learned how to live life again (being very not broke) and then I gained a new perspective with some real in depth introspection (being broke yet again) following which I applied that new found knowledge into a solid direction (not broke) and despite a few hiccups (periods of temporary brokeness) I've managed to stay the course, no more damned parentheses. Is it very shallow of me to frame my personal emotional growth in a financial context? Maybe, but Dick Clark says, "music is the soundtrack of our lives." Money is the scorecard of our lives, even though a high score isn't a prerequisite to victory. Growing up a fobby ABC in New York City, I am wired to unabashedly pursue money with gusto. We've covered this topic in the past. 20 years of school. 50 years of work. 20 years of incontinence. A lifetime of regret. yada yada yada. But it was in this pursuit of money that I have learned the most about myself and those around me.
Water, food, shelter. The basic necessities for human survival. Well in every part of the world that we need concern ourselves with at the moment, all 3 of those things require MONEY. Sure there's a big difference between; hydrant tap/rat meat/cardboard hut and Kona Nigari/Masa/15 CPW. Most of us capitalist drones spend our lives trying to claw our way from one end of the spectrum to the other.
So what have I learned? How am I different? You don't really want to hear that part. I'm more of an asshole. My attitude is take it or leave it, I know what I need and what I don't need, either be a positive force in my life or get out. Some might say these are the tendencies of a sociopath. They're probably right.
Given that money play such an overwhelmingly huge role in our lives I've spent the past couple of years trying to understand it. I've studied it more in depth than I have studied it more than anything in my 22 years of schooling combined. The learning continues and I doubt it will ever end. But I have analyzed and theorized hundreds of angles regarding wealth and its many evils from acquisition to disposition. I know how to make it, I know how to save it and most importantly of all I know how to spend it. Unfortunately I learned the last part first, the other two were much more difficult.
That study led me to my current career, a much reviled and underrated field. The disdain with which it is regarded is perhaps due to the fact that it is populated heavily by complete morons who don't know their ass from their elbow and would be better off scraping roadkill to sell to their grandmothers at hyper inflated prices as a 50th anniversary dinner banquet feast which they would have no compunctions about doing so long as the price was right. This noble profession is that of a real estate broker. My logic is that of the 3 basic human necessities; water,food and shelter, we wacky homo sapiens have managed to create a society where the 3rd one is the foundation of our entire civilization.
The very first city was a place where nomads decided to take a break from wandering about, plunked themselves down and brought the food and water to one place and then told their friends to come join them. It was a neolithic catered open house at the unveiling of a brand new sales center. Who needs exposed brick when you can have an entire limestone cave.
Point is, everyone needs a place to live and a place to hawk their wares. Even in our grand digital age we still need a warehouse to store those servers and those tech engineers still need at least a dorm to go back to and they still need to be fed and entertained and those people in turn etc., etc. we still need buildings and that requires land.
So I decided to embed myself in a career that is tied to a fundamental tenet of human survival. What a great way to hype up a shitty job. I do enjoy real estate, but it is definitely a shitty job. Actually that's a little redundant. Shitiness is implied in the word job, no?
I have digressed so far from the original scope of this note. I should probably go back and reorganize the I whole damn thing, but I won't. How many of you are still reading? Shouldn't you go do something more productive?
So I decided to get into real estate at the tail end of the bubble. Always a step ahead aren't I? After a small taste of the potential rewards I was hooked. I did basically the same thing that I did for the family business. I drove around, saw clients, looked at sites, gave them quotes, shook hands, smiled, haggled, filled out some forms, collected money. The only difference was that very last part involved a significantly larger amount of the good stuff. The next step of course is real estate ownership. Copiously obscene amounts of income generating, tax sheltered, appreciating while you depreciate it real estate.
Economic crisis, socialism, meltdown, credit illiquidity. It's all happened before and it'll all happen again. Thanks battlestar. There's always money to be made.
But as I delved deeper into my newfound career I learned that I could make money, but I couldn't make time. I could and I have spent my time more efficiently, but it was still all to finite. I had to divide my time between real estate and the family business on top of all of my other hooha. Work/life balance and all that psychobabble. I actually sat down with my father and told him that I would be working increasingly fewer hours at the shop. I went from 6 days a week to 4 to 3 to 2 and it's dwindling. He still introduces me as his son who just finished college and just started working there and will take over one day. Miind you, I have worked on and off for him since 1999. The hierarchy of a Chinese family owned business does not allow for innovation and changes occur at a pace that make the Mao run communist cadres melting cooking pots to make steel look like Google HQ. It's no wonder that after nearly two years my father still refuses to accept the fact that I have decided to stake out my own path. In my xanga entry of old I looked at it as an either/or proposition. But in practice, it turns out that I can do my own thing and run the family business. In fact the change has been mutually beneficial for both tasks.
The ultimate goal has always been freedom. The pursuit of happiness is a misleading phrase. Happiness tends to arrive when you stop pursuing it. But that is a story for another day. Moral is never confuse I can't with I won't.
Monday, January 09, 2006
We were discussing careers yesterday. So many people are stuck in dead end jobs either by lack of ambition, lack of opportunity or lack of freedom. They make just enough to scrape by from check to check. Maybe they live above their means, or maybe they have too many mouths to feed. But whatever the reason there are plenty of people who just end up 50 years old wondering why their chance to make it big never came. There are many ways to become successful; you can hustle, grind, or just get lucky. But there are many many more ways to just settle; you can just get lazy, just get by or just get married.
It's common knowledge that Americans have the lowest average savings rate of any industrialized nation. According to a study done by Newshour with Jim Lehrer in 1995 American households on average saved 5% of their income. By 2000 that figured had dropped to 0% and American consumers owed 7.2 trillion dollars on their credit cards. That was six years ago and I don't think that has changed much since.
These figures don't usually apply to first generation Asian families (I'm using Asian for lack of a better term) because they save upwards of 90% of their income so that they can fulfill the American dream. So they break their backs to build a business, buy a house and move to the suburbs to raise their kids in good school districts. Unfortunately their kids tend to grow up drinking more Coca-cola than sorrow can see only the best quality crab while acting like paper tigers and become trapped by the rules of the game. But Joy Luck Club aside many of us 2nd generation types have far more American tendencies. How many of your parents or grandparents would spend $300 on a bottle of Grey Goose or $1000 on a bag? Why am I rambling about our financial recklessness? Because I'm a jerk who took too much for granted for too long and this is my xanga. lol
My dad bailed me out of a couple of pretty bad situations over the past couple years. In exchange I signed away my freedom and agreed to work for the family business. At first I hated it and then I grew used to it and just went through the motions. For the past 6 months or so I've actually thrown myself into it wholeheartedly. I don't wear a suit to work, I don't have a corner office with a view of midtown and I don't get saturdays or federal holidays off, I have 20 minutes for lunch and I don't get paid overtime.
I used to complain that this was a dead end job and everyone said that I should be off doing something better. But I couldn't picture myself trying to climb that corporate ladder grinding the 9-5 in my cubicle. Some people do that really well, but it's not for me. I like being a student, but I hate going to school. I want to go to law school, but I don't want to be a lawyer wierd eh?
So why do I keep working here in this little office in Brooklyn? I got a decent gig here. I'm practically the boss. I get paid in cash. I get comped for gas and food. I get to drive around to see clients. I learned how to drive forklifts and backhoe loaders. Most importantly I've learned how to haggle like a 65 year old woman buying vegetables on Market St. I don't get big bonuses, but I will inherit the whole damn thing. So what the hell am I complaining about?
It isn't really what I wanted to do. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.etc/ etc.
Sometimes I feel like I'm taking the easy way out. But every time I consider quitting to do my own thing I feel bad. Anywhere else it wouldn't really matter whether I was there or not. But here I'm actually somewhat important. My opinions and decisions have a direct impact on the day to day. So I guess staying here nurses my ego as well as my sense of security. If I were to quit things would still chug along but I would be abandoning something that my grandfather started and my dad continued. Somewhere along the way I got attached to this little operation. I look out for my workers, I actually care about my customers (the ones that aren't complete fucktards) and I want to see the company grow. We went from grossing 6 figures to 7 the past couple years. I want to get it to 8 and more...and it finally feels possible.
So what the hell is my point? The point is what I thought was a dead end job is actually not as dead end as I thought it was. Most limitations are self-imposed. I guess I felt like writing a pep talk for myself to say things are a lot better than they seem. Yea I guess this entry doesn't really do much for anyone except me.
So here's a funny tidbit for you guys.
During the race between the tortise and the hare the tortise stopped to pick up an ant who was hitchiking. A little bit further down the road the tortise sees a snail crawling by. The kindhearted tortise told the snail to hop on. The ant promptly said to the snail "Hang on tight this tortise is faaaast.!" lol
Told you this was a bad joke.
Nearly 3 years later I find myself in a very strange and new place. So many things have changed so dramatically in the past 33 months; people, places, philosophies. The next line is supposed to be, "but so much is still the same." But no things are not the same. They're actually pretty damn different.
In January of 2006 I was attending classes at Stony Brook University as a super super senior. I was seriously memorizing odds charts, card counts and comp points. I was contemplating law school as a fallback career in case the whole Pro Poker thing didn't work out. I was wholeheartedly considering gritting my teeth, putting my back into it and plowing forward with the family business as a full time career. The economy was chugging along at breakneck speed with carefree over-leveraged abandon. Words like crisis, subprime meltdown and election were still on the somewhat distant horizon. You could get a mortgage without pledging your firstborn for the next two generations. It was a heady time clouded by a thin veneer of nostalgia and a twinge of regret and it wasn't really all that long ago at all.
Somehow between there and here I got fed up. I flip flopped. I went through a lot of soul searching (being broke) and I learned how to live life again (being very not broke) and then I gained a new perspective with some real in depth introspection (being broke yet again) following which I applied that new found knowledge into a solid direction (not broke) and despite a few hiccups (periods of temporary brokeness) I've managed to stay the course, no more damned parentheses. Is it very shallow of me to frame my personal emotional growth in a financial context? Maybe, but Dick Clark says, "music is the soundtrack of our lives." Money is the scorecard of our lives, even though a high score isn't a prerequisite to victory. Growing up a fobby ABC in New York City, I am wired to unabashedly pursue money with gusto. We've covered this topic in the past. 20 years of school. 50 years of work. 20 years of incontinence. A lifetime of regret. yada yada yada. But it was in this pursuit of money that I have learned the most about myself and those around me.
Water, food, shelter. The basic necessities for human survival. Well in every part of the world that we need concern ourselves with at the moment, all 3 of those things require MONEY. Sure there's a big difference between; hydrant tap/rat meat/cardboard hut and Kona Nigari/Masa/15 CPW. Most of us capitalist drones spend our lives trying to claw our way from one end of the spectrum to the other.
So what have I learned? How am I different? You don't really want to hear that part. I'm more of an asshole. My attitude is take it or leave it, I know what I need and what I don't need, either be a positive force in my life or get out. Some might say these are the tendencies of a sociopath. They're probably right.
Given that money play such an overwhelmingly huge role in our lives I've spent the past couple of years trying to understand it. I've studied it more in depth than I have studied it more than anything in my 22 years of schooling combined. The learning continues and I doubt it will ever end. But I have analyzed and theorized hundreds of angles regarding wealth and its many evils from acquisition to disposition. I know how to make it, I know how to save it and most importantly of all I know how to spend it. Unfortunately I learned the last part first, the other two were much more difficult.
That study led me to my current career, a much reviled and underrated field. The disdain with which it is regarded is perhaps due to the fact that it is populated heavily by complete morons who don't know their ass from their elbow and would be better off scraping roadkill to sell to their grandmothers at hyper inflated prices as a 50th anniversary dinner banquet feast which they would have no compunctions about doing so long as the price was right. This noble profession is that of a real estate broker. My logic is that of the 3 basic human necessities; water,food and shelter, we wacky homo sapiens have managed to create a society where the 3rd one is the foundation of our entire civilization.
The very first city was a place where nomads decided to take a break from wandering about, plunked themselves down and brought the food and water to one place and then told their friends to come join them. It was a neolithic catered open house at the unveiling of a brand new sales center. Who needs exposed brick when you can have an entire limestone cave.
Point is, everyone needs a place to live and a place to hawk their wares. Even in our grand digital age we still need a warehouse to store those servers and those tech engineers still need at least a dorm to go back to and they still need to be fed and entertained and those people in turn etc., etc. we still need buildings and that requires land.
So I decided to embed myself in a career that is tied to a fundamental tenet of human survival. What a great way to hype up a shitty job. I do enjoy real estate, but it is definitely a shitty job. Actually that's a little redundant. Shitiness is implied in the word job, no?
I have digressed so far from the original scope of this note. I should probably go back and reorganize the I whole damn thing, but I won't. How many of you are still reading? Shouldn't you go do something more productive?
So I decided to get into real estate at the tail end of the bubble. Always a step ahead aren't I? After a small taste of the potential rewards I was hooked. I did basically the same thing that I did for the family business. I drove around, saw clients, looked at sites, gave them quotes, shook hands, smiled, haggled, filled out some forms, collected money. The only difference was that very last part involved a significantly larger amount of the good stuff. The next step of course is real estate ownership. Copiously obscene amounts of income generating, tax sheltered, appreciating while you depreciate it real estate.
Economic crisis, socialism, meltdown, credit illiquidity. It's all happened before and it'll all happen again. Thanks battlestar. There's always money to be made.
But as I delved deeper into my newfound career I learned that I could make money, but I couldn't make time. I could and I have spent my time more efficiently, but it was still all to finite. I had to divide my time between real estate and the family business on top of all of my other hooha. Work/life balance and all that psychobabble. I actually sat down with my father and told him that I would be working increasingly fewer hours at the shop. I went from 6 days a week to 4 to 3 to 2 and it's dwindling. He still introduces me as his son who just finished college and just started working there and will take over one day. Miind you, I have worked on and off for him since 1999. The hierarchy of a Chinese family owned business does not allow for innovation and changes occur at a pace that make the Mao run communist cadres melting cooking pots to make steel look like Google HQ. It's no wonder that after nearly two years my father still refuses to accept the fact that I have decided to stake out my own path. In my xanga entry of old I looked at it as an either/or proposition. But in practice, it turns out that I can do my own thing and run the family business. In fact the change has been mutually beneficial for both tasks.
The ultimate goal has always been freedom. The pursuit of happiness is a misleading phrase. Happiness tends to arrive when you stop pursuing it. But that is a story for another day. Moral is never confuse I can't with I won't.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
MONEY
Seems to be the subject on everyone's minds these days. Despite a massive suicide attack on a Marriott in Pakistan and enough natural disasters to make you think you're trapped in a theater in the 90's, the subject of money is dominating the headlines. Except for the New York Post which has devoted its considerable journalistic talent towards covering a heinous cat murder in Manhattan.
"You don't need money to be happy." Bullshit. People who truly believe that have either too much or too little money to be given any serious consideration. Moreover the common reflexive disassociation of money from happiness also assumes that a positive emotional state is some sort of overriding biological imperative.
As usual, I digress. The point is, for anyone living in a society where they have the ability to read a facebook note written by a jaded failed academic and recovering compulsive gambler, money is an integral part of our lives. We go to school for 18+ years so we can get a job for 30+ years and then hopefully manage to enjoy 15+ years of blissful retirement, the carnival cruise, boca raton type not the clipping coupons to buy cat food for dinner type. So if life is a highway then your body is the car, money is the fuel and you pay for it with your time. The problem is that most people have to fill up 108 octane for about 40 hours a week and then get some piss poor mileage in between all too frequent stops.
You know the economy is bad when I have to make one analogy stretch so damn far. Apparently my comedic material is primarily ethanol based as well.
One of the few positive traits I can attribute to gambling would be a healthy detachment from the unholy reverence that most people place upon money. In other words I have a tendency to spend it as if it was going out of style. This freewheeling attitude towards money was fostered at an early age. I grew up in the poorest branch of a upper/middle or lower/upper income bracket extended family. My uncles had houses and a boat while my mother scraped together quarters to do laundry. I wasn't Oliver Twist by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn't exactly champagne, caviar models and bottles the whole way either. The moral of the story is I learned that there was money to be made everywhere yet I didn't have any of it. A normal person would probably develop a strong work ethic at that point and work his fingers to the bone and make something grand for himself one day. But I'm a bit abnormal to say the least.
After trading one summer for a salary as a teenager I realized that the whole dollars for hours deal just wasn't my thing. Everyone said that there's no easy way to get rich quick, but everyone around me seemed to be trying to do just that. Wishing for a windfall while grinding their lives away. I fell prey to that philosophy as well. I somehow got it into my head that I would create an endless revenue stream as a professional gambler. So casually strolling into a billion dollar casino I plunked down stack after stack of increasingly large amounts of chump change. It wasn't long before the only thing chump like about the change was the person carrying it.
Before this turns into a 300 page chronicle of my misadventures, let's summarize. I learned that our society is structured so that very few can profit very handsomely from the endless toiling of the very many. Slavery was never abolished, they just call it salary these days. Whether it's 20k a year or 20 mil a year, as long as you have to trade your time for money, it's slavery. Because so many of us are slaves to money, money is damn important. Money is a fickle and cruel master that offers your greedy little heart ever more wonders while constantly pulling the treasures away leaving a tiny trickle of baubles to give you just enough of a fix to keep plodding along like a good little donkey.
I have just wasted many words to articulate a problem that we all know. In the next note i will offer some solutions or at least a new perspective. Until then think about why you drag yourselves out of bed every morning and why you can't wait for that IV drip of morphine aka direct deposit.
"You don't need money to be happy." Bullshit. People who truly believe that have either too much or too little money to be given any serious consideration. Moreover the common reflexive disassociation of money from happiness also assumes that a positive emotional state is some sort of overriding biological imperative.
As usual, I digress. The point is, for anyone living in a society where they have the ability to read a facebook note written by a jaded failed academic and recovering compulsive gambler, money is an integral part of our lives. We go to school for 18+ years so we can get a job for 30+ years and then hopefully manage to enjoy 15+ years of blissful retirement, the carnival cruise, boca raton type not the clipping coupons to buy cat food for dinner type. So if life is a highway then your body is the car, money is the fuel and you pay for it with your time. The problem is that most people have to fill up 108 octane for about 40 hours a week and then get some piss poor mileage in between all too frequent stops.
You know the economy is bad when I have to make one analogy stretch so damn far. Apparently my comedic material is primarily ethanol based as well.
One of the few positive traits I can attribute to gambling would be a healthy detachment from the unholy reverence that most people place upon money. In other words I have a tendency to spend it as if it was going out of style. This freewheeling attitude towards money was fostered at an early age. I grew up in the poorest branch of a upper/middle or lower/upper income bracket extended family. My uncles had houses and a boat while my mother scraped together quarters to do laundry. I wasn't Oliver Twist by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn't exactly champagne, caviar models and bottles the whole way either. The moral of the story is I learned that there was money to be made everywhere yet I didn't have any of it. A normal person would probably develop a strong work ethic at that point and work his fingers to the bone and make something grand for himself one day. But I'm a bit abnormal to say the least.
After trading one summer for a salary as a teenager I realized that the whole dollars for hours deal just wasn't my thing. Everyone said that there's no easy way to get rich quick, but everyone around me seemed to be trying to do just that. Wishing for a windfall while grinding their lives away. I fell prey to that philosophy as well. I somehow got it into my head that I would create an endless revenue stream as a professional gambler. So casually strolling into a billion dollar casino I plunked down stack after stack of increasingly large amounts of chump change. It wasn't long before the only thing chump like about the change was the person carrying it.
Before this turns into a 300 page chronicle of my misadventures, let's summarize. I learned that our society is structured so that very few can profit very handsomely from the endless toiling of the very many. Slavery was never abolished, they just call it salary these days. Whether it's 20k a year or 20 mil a year, as long as you have to trade your time for money, it's slavery. Because so many of us are slaves to money, money is damn important. Money is a fickle and cruel master that offers your greedy little heart ever more wonders while constantly pulling the treasures away leaving a tiny trickle of baubles to give you just enough of a fix to keep plodding along like a good little donkey.
I have just wasted many words to articulate a problem that we all know. In the next note i will offer some solutions or at least a new perspective. Until then think about why you drag yourselves out of bed every morning and why you can't wait for that IV drip of morphine aka direct deposit.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The struggle
Perhaps I do not pay enough attention to my every day tasks or maybe I need to undertake more challenging endeavors. Whatever the case may be, I have way too much time to reflect on the human condition, more specifically, this particular human's condition. Superficially that may seem a little too self-absorbed and conceited. But given that any thought I have or any perspective I attempt to view has to be parsed through my own formative experiences and limited frames of reference, I can only theorize upon the human condition through my own experiences. Even my attempts to walk in another man's shoes has to be filtered through my own shoe walking experience. That obscenely verbose Dickensian opening has enough CYA babble in it to make an M&A attorney feel at ease.
That being said, onto "The Struggle." The Struggle aka The Hustle aka The Rat Race aka The Grind aka The soul crushing spirit breaking nihilistic black hole force compression of emptiness that fills the mournful doldrums of your meaningless existence in the spare moments when your head is allowed out of your ass feeling. The struggle.
The Struggle is our attempt to carve out some semblance of meaning in this raging nexus of chaos called life. My biology is extremely elementary, but from my understanding, the general theory is that the underlying premise of every living organism is to multiply. An organism is born, it consumes, reproduces and dies. However evolution is painting quite a different picture.
I'll skip several eons and jump right to us clever little homo sapiens. We are born, we consume, we reproduce and we die. Not quite. We are definitely born and we definitely consume, but we don't always choose to reproduce and with all of this zany nanotech and biotech one day we may not die. The overwhelming majority of the world's population still reproduces. But there is an infinitesimal minority that chooses not to reproduce or at least not to do it "naturally."
Reproduction is a byproduct of a need to preserve the species. The reproductive cycle ensures that some form of the the species will survive, rinse, repeat. What if the next stage of evolution replaces reproduction with replication. Think of the inefficiencies of reproduction. The genetic improvements crafted by our physiology is a haphazard process at best that squanders significant amounts of energy on unsatisfactory copies. Furthermore the data loss caused by our ineffectual teaching/programming systems results in even further flawed replicas. But I digress, this is not a manifesto calling for cloning or the creation of a google based hive mind.
The struggle. We struggle with life every day. We struggle with our needs, our wants, our goals and our dreams. Wading through all of these conflicting impulses, we all stumble around, trudging forward like hungry zombies towards an hypothetical future state of bliss. For example we roll out of bed every morning off to school, work or the gym to try to get smarter, richer and fitter because we believe that attainment of those goals will bring us some sort of fulfillment to combat that crushing emptiness we feel all around us. We fill that abyss with everything from love and sex to cars and money. Somehow it never seems to last.
Getting smarter only serves to reinforce how much more there is to learn. Getting richer only reminds us of how much more there is to earn and working out only tells us that there's too much more to burn. From the day we are born we enter into a binding resolution with death. That inherent contradiction fills us with struggle. The design is quite flawed or perhaps divinely brilliant. That deeply rooted genetic knowledge of a timer counting down fills us with the struggle. We struggle every day to live knowing that one day we will die. Why?
Why do we struggle so hard? The PhD candidate cramming his head full of knowledge knowing that he will never have all of the answers, the captain of industry hoarding money while growing ever more fearful of losing it all with every dollar earned, the aging gym rat who feels the unyielding grip of father time pressing down on his bench press with each passing day. Yet in spite of this knowledge we still struggle. We push forward relentlessly despite the seemingly inevitable outcome. Why?
Because for all of our madness, or rather because of our madness, somewhere deep within the recesses of our minds, we believe that we can beat the odds. We believe that somehow some way we will bridge that last barrier to divinity.
So whatever it is that you're struggling with, don't give up because we're meant for more than that. Statistically we should not exist. Our planet sustains life because of a cosmic coincidence and we were formed by one sperm out of millions. Having beaten those odds there's no reason why you can't become a billionaire. Happy struggling!
That being said, onto "The Struggle." The Struggle aka The Hustle aka The Rat Race aka The Grind aka The soul crushing spirit breaking nihilistic black hole force compression of emptiness that fills the mournful doldrums of your meaningless existence in the spare moments when your head is allowed out of your ass feeling. The struggle.
The Struggle is our attempt to carve out some semblance of meaning in this raging nexus of chaos called life. My biology is extremely elementary, but from my understanding, the general theory is that the underlying premise of every living organism is to multiply. An organism is born, it consumes, reproduces and dies. However evolution is painting quite a different picture.
I'll skip several eons and jump right to us clever little homo sapiens. We are born, we consume, we reproduce and we die. Not quite. We are definitely born and we definitely consume, but we don't always choose to reproduce and with all of this zany nanotech and biotech one day we may not die. The overwhelming majority of the world's population still reproduces. But there is an infinitesimal minority that chooses not to reproduce or at least not to do it "naturally."
Reproduction is a byproduct of a need to preserve the species. The reproductive cycle ensures that some form of the the species will survive, rinse, repeat. What if the next stage of evolution replaces reproduction with replication. Think of the inefficiencies of reproduction. The genetic improvements crafted by our physiology is a haphazard process at best that squanders significant amounts of energy on unsatisfactory copies. Furthermore the data loss caused by our ineffectual teaching/programming systems results in even further flawed replicas. But I digress, this is not a manifesto calling for cloning or the creation of a google based hive mind.
The struggle. We struggle with life every day. We struggle with our needs, our wants, our goals and our dreams. Wading through all of these conflicting impulses, we all stumble around, trudging forward like hungry zombies towards an hypothetical future state of bliss. For example we roll out of bed every morning off to school, work or the gym to try to get smarter, richer and fitter because we believe that attainment of those goals will bring us some sort of fulfillment to combat that crushing emptiness we feel all around us. We fill that abyss with everything from love and sex to cars and money. Somehow it never seems to last.
Getting smarter only serves to reinforce how much more there is to learn. Getting richer only reminds us of how much more there is to earn and working out only tells us that there's too much more to burn. From the day we are born we enter into a binding resolution with death. That inherent contradiction fills us with struggle. The design is quite flawed or perhaps divinely brilliant. That deeply rooted genetic knowledge of a timer counting down fills us with the struggle. We struggle every day to live knowing that one day we will die. Why?
Why do we struggle so hard? The PhD candidate cramming his head full of knowledge knowing that he will never have all of the answers, the captain of industry hoarding money while growing ever more fearful of losing it all with every dollar earned, the aging gym rat who feels the unyielding grip of father time pressing down on his bench press with each passing day. Yet in spite of this knowledge we still struggle. We push forward relentlessly despite the seemingly inevitable outcome. Why?
Because for all of our madness, or rather because of our madness, somewhere deep within the recesses of our minds, we believe that we can beat the odds. We believe that somehow some way we will bridge that last barrier to divinity.
So whatever it is that you're struggling with, don't give up because we're meant for more than that. Statistically we should not exist. Our planet sustains life because of a cosmic coincidence and we were formed by one sperm out of millions. Having beaten those odds there's no reason why you can't become a billionaire. Happy struggling!
Monday, July 14, 2008
Recovery
This is probably something that is a little too private for facebook. So I guess I'll leave the full version on xanga where it'll be completely anonymous. lol
My name is Antonio Wong and I'm a compulsive gambler. Actually typing that out was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Among my friends and relatives that term is thrown around lightly, even affectionately. I really wanted to type "I was a compulsive gambler." But honesty is a big part of the recovery. The easiest person to lie to is yourself and it's a habit that many of us are guilty of far too often. I've been casino clean for 10 months and 2 days. I haven't played my beloved Poker since February. I did gamble in Macau, but only in the spirit of recreation. No excuses. So my clean time is far less impressive. It's at about 87 days. Well then there was the family blackjack on July 5th. But that was only for pocket change and it was tradition. No excuses. I've been clean for 9 days. Well that's a great way to minimize an achievement. Falling off the wagon aside...
Having drastically reduced the amount of time, effort and money I used to waste on gambling I have very painfully, inexorably and slowly shift my life in the direction I want. It hasn't been easy nor has it been the glorious euphoric freedom I had imagined. Gambling has been replaced by increased partying and useless spending. Now that too will be severely curbed. But I have marshaled the growing scraps of willpower into a mildly respectable force. But first a bit of recap.
Immediately following my cold turkey break with the casinos last September I entered a period of complete abstinence from gambling. But I hung on to my poker habit because poker is a game of calculated risk and applied skill. In theory, perhaps, but for a recovering compulsive, poker is just one more place for the disease to manifest. Online I was fine, merrily clicking away at my short-handed ring games steadily growing my once pitiful bankroll. But my live game suffered horribly. I "rewarded" my good online play with sessions of "recreational" live play. It wasn't until a car accident at the end of February that I managed to begin to get a grip on myself. I was at the end of another weeklong marathon of work, poker, work, poker, 2 hours of sleep, rinse, repeat. I was on my way home for some much needed sleep after an early morning condo showing (of course I went to work in the morning, making good money is very important when you spend the rest of your time blowing it.) I was 2 blocks from home when the car in front of me stopped short and I was out of it for a moment. But in that split second of distraction I had closed too close to the car in front of me. I had just enough time to swerve to the right to dodge the baby in the backseat. BOOM. Luckily nobody was injured, but it could have been much much worse.
It has been nearly five months since that Sunday in February when I had the rude awakening. I've been making plenty of mistakes on this road to recovery, but I've finally ironed out most of the kinks. Some think this whole self-improvement/recovery angle is just a temporary phase. If that's how your feel, then fuck you. If I wanted your opinions I would look for some used toilet paper. Unsolicited advice is most unwelcome. I've always been a big fan of upgrades.
I'm going to start with myself.
Self-control and self-improvement are two very difficult tasks. I am going to undertake both at the same time and I pity the fool that stands in my way. hahaha It's going to be a long and painful process, but I'm ready for the challenge. NOPR!!!
My name is Antonio Wong and I'm a compulsive gambler. Actually typing that out was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Among my friends and relatives that term is thrown around lightly, even affectionately. I really wanted to type "I was a compulsive gambler." But honesty is a big part of the recovery. The easiest person to lie to is yourself and it's a habit that many of us are guilty of far too often. I've been casino clean for 10 months and 2 days. I haven't played my beloved Poker since February. I did gamble in Macau, but only in the spirit of recreation. No excuses. So my clean time is far less impressive. It's at about 87 days. Well then there was the family blackjack on July 5th. But that was only for pocket change and it was tradition. No excuses. I've been clean for 9 days. Well that's a great way to minimize an achievement. Falling off the wagon aside...
Having drastically reduced the amount of time, effort and money I used to waste on gambling I have very painfully, inexorably and slowly shift my life in the direction I want. It hasn't been easy nor has it been the glorious euphoric freedom I had imagined. Gambling has been replaced by increased partying and useless spending. Now that too will be severely curbed. But I have marshaled the growing scraps of willpower into a mildly respectable force. But first a bit of recap.
Immediately following my cold turkey break with the casinos last September I entered a period of complete abstinence from gambling. But I hung on to my poker habit because poker is a game of calculated risk and applied skill. In theory, perhaps, but for a recovering compulsive, poker is just one more place for the disease to manifest. Online I was fine, merrily clicking away at my short-handed ring games steadily growing my once pitiful bankroll. But my live game suffered horribly. I "rewarded" my good online play with sessions of "recreational" live play. It wasn't until a car accident at the end of February that I managed to begin to get a grip on myself. I was at the end of another weeklong marathon of work, poker, work, poker, 2 hours of sleep, rinse, repeat. I was on my way home for some much needed sleep after an early morning condo showing (of course I went to work in the morning, making good money is very important when you spend the rest of your time blowing it.) I was 2 blocks from home when the car in front of me stopped short and I was out of it for a moment. But in that split second of distraction I had closed too close to the car in front of me. I had just enough time to swerve to the right to dodge the baby in the backseat. BOOM. Luckily nobody was injured, but it could have been much much worse.
It has been nearly five months since that Sunday in February when I had the rude awakening. I've been making plenty of mistakes on this road to recovery, but I've finally ironed out most of the kinks. Some think this whole self-improvement/recovery angle is just a temporary phase. If that's how your feel, then fuck you. If I wanted your opinions I would look for some used toilet paper. Unsolicited advice is most unwelcome. I've always been a big fan of upgrades.
I'm going to start with myself.
Self-control and self-improvement are two very difficult tasks. I am going to undertake both at the same time and I pity the fool that stands in my way. hahaha It's going to be a long and painful process, but I'm ready for the challenge. NOPR!!!
Friday, July 4, 2008
FREEDOM!!!
It's a dreary 4th of July in New York City. Humid, muggy, and cloudy, quite the opposite of the beautiful weather we've been having of late. An ominous portent for the 233rd year of the empire, um, Union.
Fires rage across California, massive floods inundate hundreds of thousands of acres in the Midwest. Soaring prices for everything from milk and wheat to gas and corn are stretching already thin budgets well past the breaking point. Credit cards are maxed out, the house is leveraged to the point where that studio with no bath and four wheels, formerly known as an SUV, is beginning to look like a great housing alternative, if only there was enough gas in the tank to keep it on the road away from the repo trucks. Poverty is rising. Crime is increasing steadily. Corruption is rampant. Things look very bleak indeed and those are just the in-house troubles.
At the gates, the barbarians have amassed for decades. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, etc. etc. Why they're there is far less important than the fact that they are in fact there. So we face a war on three fronts. Foreign, domestic and against nature itself. Once again, quite bleak.
It appears as if our fearless leader has lost the mandate of heaven for some time now. Half a year more until the next Caesar and lets hope our current one is not remembered as Romulus Augustus.
So what is the point of this mini tirade?
On this venerable day, we the people, have decided that we have been unconditionally deprived of our inalienable rights for far too long. Life has become hollow, liberty is a farce, the pursuit of happiness a convoluted mirage. We have taxation without comprehension, food without nutrition, and war without definition. There are more causes which impel our separation today than if King George III himself were to rise from the grave to assume power.
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." (That declaration of independence sure is well written.)
Maybe it really is time for a change. Not the type of change exhorted by a certain attorney cum senator from Illinois who would be far more successful if he were to go state to state revitalizing the auto and housing markets. That man and his speech writers could sell sand in the desert. Instead we need real change. Change on a fundamental level. Change that could create USA 2.0. Faster, leaner, more efficient, more powerful like perfectly tuned Ferrari engine that could get 2000 mpg while towing an 18 wheeler full of corn and free range chicken with zero emissions. But to even whisper such thoughts borders on treason. To speak of...gasp...revolution is pure heresy.
To change a world you must first change a nation. To change a nation you must first change the people. To change the people you must first change the person and to change the person you must first change yourself. Yes there it is. The point. Change yourself! The tiny iota of free will that you are capable of exerting has its greatest influence on you, nothing else. Stop looking for god, fate, the government, Kiyosaki or Harry Potter to hand you that magic wand. You've been given a tool of change. If you're reading this then you have not only a better standard of living than 99% of humans who have ever lived, but you also have the intelligence (and the time) to effectively change your life. What kind of world do you want for your children? More importantly, what kind of world do you want for yourself?
So on this independence day make the change. Declare independence from the monotony, the self-imprisonment, the hopelessness and the despair. Change yourself, no one else can. Happy 4th of July!
Fires rage across California, massive floods inundate hundreds of thousands of acres in the Midwest. Soaring prices for everything from milk and wheat to gas and corn are stretching already thin budgets well past the breaking point. Credit cards are maxed out, the house is leveraged to the point where that studio with no bath and four wheels, formerly known as an SUV, is beginning to look like a great housing alternative, if only there was enough gas in the tank to keep it on the road away from the repo trucks. Poverty is rising. Crime is increasing steadily. Corruption is rampant. Things look very bleak indeed and those are just the in-house troubles.
At the gates, the barbarians have amassed for decades. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, etc. etc. Why they're there is far less important than the fact that they are in fact there. So we face a war on three fronts. Foreign, domestic and against nature itself. Once again, quite bleak.
It appears as if our fearless leader has lost the mandate of heaven for some time now. Half a year more until the next Caesar and lets hope our current one is not remembered as Romulus Augustus.
So what is the point of this mini tirade?
On this venerable day, we the people, have decided that we have been unconditionally deprived of our inalienable rights for far too long. Life has become hollow, liberty is a farce, the pursuit of happiness a convoluted mirage. We have taxation without comprehension, food without nutrition, and war without definition. There are more causes which impel our separation today than if King George III himself were to rise from the grave to assume power.
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." (That declaration of independence sure is well written.)
Maybe it really is time for a change. Not the type of change exhorted by a certain attorney cum senator from Illinois who would be far more successful if he were to go state to state revitalizing the auto and housing markets. That man and his speech writers could sell sand in the desert. Instead we need real change. Change on a fundamental level. Change that could create USA 2.0. Faster, leaner, more efficient, more powerful like perfectly tuned Ferrari engine that could get 2000 mpg while towing an 18 wheeler full of corn and free range chicken with zero emissions. But to even whisper such thoughts borders on treason. To speak of...gasp...revolution is pure heresy.
To change a world you must first change a nation. To change a nation you must first change the people. To change the people you must first change the person and to change the person you must first change yourself. Yes there it is. The point. Change yourself! The tiny iota of free will that you are capable of exerting has its greatest influence on you, nothing else. Stop looking for god, fate, the government, Kiyosaki or Harry Potter to hand you that magic wand. You've been given a tool of change. If you're reading this then you have not only a better standard of living than 99% of humans who have ever lived, but you also have the intelligence (and the time) to effectively change your life. What kind of world do you want for your children? More importantly, what kind of world do you want for yourself?
So on this independence day make the change. Declare independence from the monotony, the self-imprisonment, the hopelessness and the despair. Change yourself, no one else can. Happy 4th of July!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Warning: Grammatically atrocious political rant.
I just made the mistake of watching 10 straight minutes of CNN. I had the distinct pleasure of watching two conservative congressman who looked eerily alike pontificate about the evil tendrils of a communist menace wrapping themselves around the throat of free America. "If we are to ensure that the United States of America remains the greatest nation in the world we have to stop them (China)...their way of life (Chinese) is fundamentally incompatible with ours...they have no honor...they argue that it's their turn to have an industrial revolution with no regard to the rest of the world...sovereign wealth fund is just a euphemism for foreign government...when a foreign government buys free market assets that is socialism, it shrinks the private sector....they are a strategic, economic, and social threat and a rival model of governance just like the USSR was a strategic, economic, and social threat and a rival model of governance." Such impassioned exhortations from two men who looked as if they would be equally fiery about selling carpet cleaners. Quite stirring stuff. Behind them an oversized American Flag waves gently while the tagline reads in bold print RED STORM RISING. I like Tom Clancy as much as the next guy, but these instigators are a little too vehement for comfort. You could almost see the pitchforks and torches behind their gray suits and red ties.
In these difficult, well just plain shitty, times these burn em at the stake types will garner a strong following. As I recall the American dream is to make it big or bust. Throw a couple sticks of dynamite in your pack, strap on a shotgun and shovel, jump on the horse give her a good slap then ride off into the sunset to make your fortune come hell or high water and the injuns be damned. Problem is that the American way was a little too popular. Those injuns built palaces of positive EV and the rest of the world got busy strapping on guns and digging for gold. Now that Americans feel threatened by the very philosophies that they spread around the world, they're crying foul. The hypocrisy is overwhelming. Both the left and right wings demonize the "others" for all of the country's woes when the real tragedy is America's collective loss of spirit. Once the masses accept that the world's governments are actually controlled pharmaceutical and energy conglomerates maybe there will be far less strife. The less than 1% of the population which controls when and what we; eat, breathe, drive, sleep, work, play and die like to reinforce these artificial divisions between the general populace. As long as the puppets are busy tangling with eachother they'll never see the strings.
So rest easy as you listen to our fearless leaders espouse their convictions on NPR or watch them gesticulate mad with righteous fury on CNN. Your iPod, TV, sofa, probably even the sheetrock holding your walls up, they were all manufactured by small children who live on 2 cents a day, drive Bentleys, eat tibetan monks for lunch, get back on the assembly line after kung fu practice, hack into the pentagon after high tea at the Peninsula then munch on baby seals dipped in offshore oil spills and transfat. After all I'm sure Wal-mart and Macy's will have a great pre-WWIII sale and unbeatable post-apocalyptic blowout prices.
In these difficult, well just plain shitty, times these burn em at the stake types will garner a strong following. As I recall the American dream is to make it big or bust. Throw a couple sticks of dynamite in your pack, strap on a shotgun and shovel, jump on the horse give her a good slap then ride off into the sunset to make your fortune come hell or high water and the injuns be damned. Problem is that the American way was a little too popular. Those injuns built palaces of positive EV and the rest of the world got busy strapping on guns and digging for gold. Now that Americans feel threatened by the very philosophies that they spread around the world, they're crying foul. The hypocrisy is overwhelming. Both the left and right wings demonize the "others" for all of the country's woes when the real tragedy is America's collective loss of spirit. Once the masses accept that the world's governments are actually controlled pharmaceutical and energy conglomerates maybe there will be far less strife. The less than 1% of the population which controls when and what we; eat, breathe, drive, sleep, work, play and die like to reinforce these artificial divisions between the general populace. As long as the puppets are busy tangling with eachother they'll never see the strings.
So rest easy as you listen to our fearless leaders espouse their convictions on NPR or watch them gesticulate mad with righteous fury on CNN. Your iPod, TV, sofa, probably even the sheetrock holding your walls up, they were all manufactured by small children who live on 2 cents a day, drive Bentleys, eat tibetan monks for lunch, get back on the assembly line after kung fu practice, hack into the pentagon after high tea at the Peninsula then munch on baby seals dipped in offshore oil spills and transfat. After all I'm sure Wal-mart and Macy's will have a great pre-WWIII sale and unbeatable post-apocalyptic blowout prices.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
My first Facebook note...sorry Xanga
Xanga is going to cry itself to sleep when it finds out I'm cheating on it with this Facebook nonsense. But what can you do? Things change.
My overwhelming narcissism demands that I find a medium where my idle thoughts have at least one reader other than myself. Seeing as how that is now impossible on xanga, I will post my nonsensical blogs on facebook.
One day when an archaeologist is rummaging through the endless mind numbing drivel that we are so keen on amassing they will probably come across millions of entries like this one along with pictures of our various inane activities. The good archaeologist will spend countless hours cataloging these findings and then unfortunately die of extreme boredom. That being said, I will type more since nobody likes such wimpy archaeologists anyway.
Growing up is a rather difficult process. Laziness seems to be the most comfortable state. Just lolling around doing the absolute minimum seems to be most conducive to homeostasis. At least it seemed that way until recently. Nowadays doing nothing is increasingly uncomfortable. I have had to make a series of difficult decisions and upon making them I am faced with even more difficult decisions and trying circumstances. Am I doing the right thing? Does it matter whether or not I do the right thing? I don't know the answer to those questions.
There are always consequences. Whatever our intentions may be. Whether or not we are willing to admit it, there are and always will be consequences to our actions. They manifest themselves on the very edges of our perception slowly but surely. Every now and then they reach critical mass and turn into giant elephants in our living room.
Why yes the Pachyderm goes quite well with the parquet flooring, the seller will gladly include it in the sale price.
Remember when you were little and you dropped your ice cream on the floor? Some kids picked it up and kept eating it, others just sat there and cried, a few would steal someone else's, a couple lucky ones would get another one. But no matter what they did that original ice cream was forever tainted or gone forever. Don't stress you're probably lactose intolerant anyway.
The point of this madness? Freedom.
Freedom isn't free.
Buy more real estate.
Eminent domain will save the nation.
I am probably losing my blooming mind.
Good night.
My overwhelming narcissism demands that I find a medium where my idle thoughts have at least one reader other than myself. Seeing as how that is now impossible on xanga, I will post my nonsensical blogs on facebook.
One day when an archaeologist is rummaging through the endless mind numbing drivel that we are so keen on amassing they will probably come across millions of entries like this one along with pictures of our various inane activities. The good archaeologist will spend countless hours cataloging these findings and then unfortunately die of extreme boredom. That being said, I will type more since nobody likes such wimpy archaeologists anyway.
Growing up is a rather difficult process. Laziness seems to be the most comfortable state. Just lolling around doing the absolute minimum seems to be most conducive to homeostasis. At least it seemed that way until recently. Nowadays doing nothing is increasingly uncomfortable. I have had to make a series of difficult decisions and upon making them I am faced with even more difficult decisions and trying circumstances. Am I doing the right thing? Does it matter whether or not I do the right thing? I don't know the answer to those questions.
There are always consequences. Whatever our intentions may be. Whether or not we are willing to admit it, there are and always will be consequences to our actions. They manifest themselves on the very edges of our perception slowly but surely. Every now and then they reach critical mass and turn into giant elephants in our living room.
Why yes the Pachyderm goes quite well with the parquet flooring, the seller will gladly include it in the sale price.
Remember when you were little and you dropped your ice cream on the floor? Some kids picked it up and kept eating it, others just sat there and cried, a few would steal someone else's, a couple lucky ones would get another one. But no matter what they did that original ice cream was forever tainted or gone forever. Don't stress you're probably lactose intolerant anyway.
The point of this madness? Freedom.
Freedom isn't free.
Buy more real estate.
Eminent domain will save the nation.
I am probably losing my blooming mind.
Good night.
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