SERVICE PROVIDER

I'll steal your world from you and you'll rent it back. You'll appreciate it more because it has a price. You'll earn the money to pay for your keep by working for me. I'll pay you almost as much as you pay me. You can borrow the rest you need from me so you don't fall behind on the payments but you'll have to pay me interest. It's my world after all. You owe me, in perpetuity.

I'll do the same with your peace of mind. I'll rob your self-esteem and flog you placebos. I'll tell you that you are ill and sell you pills if you become fatigued. You are unwell. The world is well, that's why you pay for it. If you can't pay for it you are not fit for it. You are too weak to be part of the world. You are aberrant, a malcontent, a criminal, a skiver or sick. Take your pick.

I'll make you feel ashamed of being poor or poorly or too fat or too thin. I'll make you hate yourself, outside and in. I'll be the sole gatekeeper of your self-approval. I'll be your self-improver. I'll sell you books that tell you how to get by but they won't tell you how to get by so you'll have to buy more. Then I'll get you to pay me for an army and I'll send it to war against another army that you also paid for.

When the fighting is done, I'll charge you for reparations and get you to pay me to pay you to clean up the devastation. You'll pay me for the monuments that you'll build in my honour. If you died in my name, I'll say you were a martyr. I'll sell you a coffin and pass your debts to you kids. I'll be the one who decides where you spend the life after this. Heaven or Hell, I'll own you even in death and you'll thank me because it was too much responsibility to own yourself.

THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

Inequality is a good thing because it ‘incentivizes’ people to try harder. I have big house and you have no house. You should look at my big house and want a big house and try harder to get a big house. You can start by getting a little house. How you do this is by working for me and helping me generate wealth. My house will get bigger but so will yours until it is the size mine was when you first saw it and wanted it. However, seeing as my house is now even bigger again, you will want yours to be even bigger. You will not rest until your house is as big as my house which it will never be because I had a head start but this inequality is not a bad thing because it will ‘incentivize’ you to keep trying and God loves a trier. Everyone wants to be loved by God so, you see, inequality is not just a good thing but a spiritual thing too.

You can get closer to God by working hard for a bigger house. Your house will grow in direct proportion to the favour with which God regards you. Unless, that is, I get you involved in some kind of crazy crypto-Ponzi scheme and you completely lose your house in your effort to make it bigger. If this happens don’t worry. You’ll be back to square one and you’ll try even harder and God will like you even more when you get back to where you were, going forward.

Of course, eventually our houses will grow to such enormous sizes that there will only be room for one. Mine. My house will be so massive that there will be no more room on the planet for yours or anyone else’s but don’t worry about this either. By this stage my house will be so heavy it will cause the Earth to tip over and spin into a polar shift. Our species will be wiped out but another will eventually evolve and emerge from the debris and start the whole routine all over again as we watch from above, dwelling together in the largest house of them all - the house of the Lord.

ANIMALS DOWN THE SHOPS

Animals, what good are they? They just hang around making noises and doing shits on things. Let's put them to some use. Let's get them spending. Let's get animals down the shops. Let's train animals to buy and get them contributing to the economy. They aren't contributing in their own trivial little ecosystem so it's time to get them involved in the real system. Train them to work and earn and consume. They'll learn to love it. Magpies already like shiny things.

Just think of the business we could drum up: furniture for bird nests, shoes for spiders, wigs for bald eagles, contact lenses for bats, mittens for lobsters, lingerie for dogs. Enough with the feral, let's get financial! Creature consumers consuming creature comforts! I can see the cash flooding into our pockets now!

Let's make animals hate themselves so they'll buy stuff to like themselves more. Let's make birds ashamed of their wings. We'll make birds believe that flying is a lot of exertion and embarrassingly old fashioned. We'll get them to see their wings as ugly twitchy flaps. That way we can sell them airplane tickets and specially designed jackets that hide their foul feathery appendages. Let's make it so ants want to be individuals. We could make hats for ants and they could all get different types so that they feel unique - cowboy hats, bowler hats, baseball caps. They'll probably still behave the same way, all regimented and routined, but they'll perceive themselves to be free spirits and perception is all that matters in this post-reality age.

'Rhinos, reindeer and gnus of the wild, what are those horns and antlers upon your heads but elaborate head warts and cranial verrucas? Worry not, a pricy yet inexpensive procedure will be made available so you can be shorn of your unsightly shame.' 

That's the way we should be talking to beasts. The animal kingdom is an untapped market. The way to get them shopping is to make them ashamed of their fur and beaks and primitive abodes. We'll have them eating out of our hands and filling our bank accounts.

I think it's a great idea and I've been trying to get things up and running for a while now. Ten years ago I had a goldfish and I convinced it that it really should be silver, like other normal fish. I made him really ashamed of his crass and flashy colouring so he set about earning money to buy a form of scale dye I'd developed. He earned his money by doing tricks, allowing Steve-O from Jackass drink him and puke him back out into his bowl, that kind of thing. Sadly the acclaim the fish received went to his head. The combination of adulation and self-loathing made him a very confused little fish. He ended up spending all his money on drugs and passed away in a motel room. That's the danger of excess. What a waste of life. A potential consumer no more. I didn't know what to do with all the bottles of scale dye I was left with but then I had a bright idea and sold the stuff to chameleons. I told them they needed it to get themselves 'noticed'.

Oh yeah, and another time I sold a rasher sandwich to a pig. He didn't really enjoy it but apparently eating it made him feel more 'human'.

BEN WEST

The painting above is called The Treaty of Penn with the Indians. Click to enlarge and have a proper look at it. It's wonderful. It depicts the coming together of early Anglo settlers with indigenous types in North America. The painting was done by the artist Benjamin West, who claimed he was taught how to paint with pigments by natives. Ben's is a wonderful origin story. It's like the origin story of a comic superhero. Ben was an American art superhero in a way. I love his surname too. You can't get much better than West can you? It's tremendously Occidental. Ben West, The Man Who Painted America. Sounds like a comic doesn't it? So much history does really. It's all just an exciting story.

The painting is almost like the cover of a comic too. The United States #2 - $1. Have you noticed the way the focus is on the linen or whatever it is that the genuflecting trader is offering the injuns? It's central to the composition. The light falls upon the offering. This is the first act of trade, the thing that civilised and defined North America. The way the roll of material is portrayed puts me in mind of the infant Christ in Ruebens' Adoration of the Shepherds. Have a gander at the detail below and see if you agree.

Christ means 'saviour'. The first superhero, Christ, saved us all just as trade saved North America. That's the story of Ben's comic cover, I mean the painting. The linen is trade in its infancy just like Christ is an infant in the Adoration. It's a good story. We like our stories don't we?

People are still telling this story today, evangelising about it, going from door to door, or at least from plush resort to plush resort, in various parts of the world. Have you heard the story? It's like the story involving the twelve apostles but it's a newer story involving the G8. It's a good story. A satisfying myth. It could be the story in the comic with Ben's painting on the cover featuring the baby Jesus like linen. The only difference between the baby Jesus and the linen being that the baby Jesus wasn't purposefully riddled with a genocidal dose of fuckin smallpox. LOL!

I THINK I WILL GO SHOPPING

Compliant revenue and data providing labour units, that's what we want. That is what we want you, the citizen, to be and that is what you, the citizen, should aspire to be. It's better for us, it's better for you, it's better for everyone . . .but . . .it's not that simple to achieve.

The trouble seems to be twofold. Firstly, you are not readily and constantly visible and could be up to anything at anytime. This hinders our ability to provide services. How can we help you live the life you want to live if we don't know what kind of life you are living? The more we know the better. Secondly, you keep secrets and these secrets are stored in your brain which is in your head and difficult for us to access. We can't get access to your head and so remain ignorant of what potential revenue generating desires reside there. Imagine it this way - the world is a shop, you are in that shop but you will not tell the shopkeeper what you want, which means he doesn't know what to put on the shelves. It is better for you if the shopkeeper knows what you want at all times. The ideal scenario would be if the shopkeeper knew you so well as to practically be able to read your mind. Imagine the super shop we could all live in if the shopkeeper could read your mind.

So, in order to make the world a super shop we need to be able to practically read your mind. For us to be able to practically read your mind we need to know EVERYTHING about you. Where you are at all times and what you are thinking at all times. To do this we need to build a profile so we can meet the needs of that profile because that is what you will ultimately be - you will be a profile.

To help you become a profile (thereby helping us make your world a super shop) we suggest the removal of the human head and its replacement with a CCTV camera. A population of CCTV camera headed people recording themselves and each other at all times will ensure that we know where you are and what you are doing. We will also know what you are thinking. You will be thinking nothing because your head will no longer have a brain and just have camera bits. Do not worry though. Thoughts will be provided for a reasonable price. You will be able to purchase these thoughts in the super shop the world will become and to which you will provide both custom and security footage. These thoughts will be transmitted straight to your CCTV head and will probably go something like: 'I think I will go shopping'.

Irresistibly yours,

G.I.T.T. (Global Initiatives Think Tank)

In other news, here's some footage of what happened in Dundrum 'Town' Centre yesterday...

 

MONEYMONEYMONEYMONEYMONEYMONEY

We need some money. Have you got any money? We've run out of money. If we have no money we can't give you money so give us some money. Have you got any money? We're nothing without money. If we have no money then you'll have no money and you're nothing without money. You can't have a home without money. You can't have a family without money. You have no shoes on your feet without money. Education costs money. Health costs money. Justice costs money. You have no rights without money. You are not a proper person without money. If you want to have money you'll have to give us your money. I mean, can you imagine a world without money? There would be no money. You can't have anything without money. Everything costs money. Ideas cost money. Innovation costs money. Self-expression costs money. Art costs money, lots and lots of money. Work costs money and leisure costs money. War costs money and peace costs money. Even air costs money. We have to clean the air by spending money because we made it dirty while we were making money so now even air costs money. Money doesn't make sense so to make money make sense we need to spend money. The problem is money but the solution is money so give us some money because we ran out of money when we were trying to make more money and we need money to make more money to get back the money we lost making money. So it's all about money. We need some money. Have you got any money?

BACKWARDS FORWARDS

and now I'm here again, yes, I'm back and I'll tell you how I came to be back in the next post but for this post I want to tell you about something I witnessed on my way back. On my way back (from a place that defies description because it isn't even there) I passed through several planes that contained possible realities that could have come to be if it wasn't for the fact that they didn't. One such reality caught my attention. A reality where the following took place...

This wealthy corporation invented rear view mirrors for pedestrians but pedestrians didn't want them because pedestrians didn't need them so then the corporation made ads and movies with 'cool' and 'glamorous' people walking backwards and made the ability to walk backwards a bit of a cultural status symbol and the inability to walk backwards a bit of a social stigma so, after a time, not too long a time, everyone wanted to walk backwards and then, to help them do it safely, the corporation sold everyone rear view mirrors.

Sales were staggeringly good. Shares in the corporation shot up and people were employed in the production, the selling, and the exportation and importation of rear view mirrors for pedestrians - and related products. In short: walking backwards was good for the economy and made fiscal sense. Everyone was happily walking backwards to work and then happily walking backwards to shops to spend their wages on rear view mirrors and rear view mirror paraphernalia - like rear view mirror polish and rear view mirror ornamentation. (People liked to decorate their rear view mirrors in different ways in order to express their individuality. Having said that, only a handful of decoration designs were considered desirable. The rest were considered to be lacking 'that certain something' required by the vast majority of people. So, the vast majority of people all expressed their individuality by purchasing the same select handful of decoration designs. Maybe it was belonging they were after and not individuality. Who knows? People eh? They're a funny lot.)

Anyway, everyone was happy and after a generation or two they all forgot how to walk forwards. They even forgot why anyone would want to walk forwards and actually considered walking backwards to be walking forwards. To these people, not walking backwards would be a perverse and/or insane thing to do. Rear view mirror sales never abated. The economy thrived. Going forward.

So, what do you think of that? Seem familiar? Surely not. Such batty fuckin behaviour could never become the norm in our reality. Heaven forbid! Heavens to Betsy! And who is Betsy anyway?

...So many questions. We shall answer all of them together or die in the attempt. I'll start by answering a question no one asked. The question is: 'what happened to Fugger after last time?' But I've run out of time so to find out what happened to Fugger after last time join Fugger next time.

FACTORY

I opened a factory once. It didn’t make anything but people invested in it because they speculated that one day it would make something. They thought it was good factory, with its big conveyer belts and large delivery depot and all of that. The investors thought whatever the factory ended up making would be well made so they bought shares.

After a while, the investors noticed that the factory wasn’t making anything and they panicked and started to sell their shares so I sent out a press release saying that the factory was about to start making something and that it would be great. After the word went out, people started investing in the factory again. The press release got the factory over a difficult bump in the road but the factory never made anything. I wasn’t really interested in that side of the business.

I’m sure you saw my factory. It was on the road to your cousin’s house. Do you remember? It was in the big muddy field. Like a giant tombstone. It had a word written on it. Emblazoned across it. But you can’t remember what the word was. Neither can I to be honest. It was probably a word like ‘Paradigm’ or ‘Optimum’ or ‘Ventron’ (whatever that means). Or maybe it was the name of something from Greek or Norse mythology. Or maybe nothing was written on it or maybe the actual word ‘Nothing’ was written on it. Or maybe there was just a symbol on it, like an astrological thing or maybe a big question mark. Who knows?

Anyway, I eventually sold the factory to someone who sold it someone else who burned it down for the insurance money so there is nothing in that big muddy field anymore except for a strange smell, like melted plastic. But you won’t smell it because you won’t be passing that way. You don’t visit your cousin anymore and haven’t for a long long time. Not since your cousin got drunk and made that cruel observation about you that hurt because it was true or at least kind of true. You rang a taxi from the house and left on polite terms but you both knew you’d never see each other again. You didn’t say a word to the driver the whole way home. You just looked out the window. Lost in your thoughts. You passed my factory. It didn’t even register.

We are an industrious species. The human capacity for invention is limitless as is the human imagination. Even where there is nothing we see something. Well, some of us do. Some of us see opportunity where others just see a big muddy field with an empty factory in it with something written on the factory but it’s hard to say for certain what exactly it says and it doesn’t matter anyway because the factory is on fire.

There is NO other way! A Brief History of Capitalism.

Capitalism was invented 17 years ago by Reginald Capitalism. When attending a barter market, Reginald happened upon a gentleman who wanted to exchange two piglets for eleven yarns of Reginald's celebrated wool. Instead of this, Reginald proposed that the gentleman give him several circular pieces of brass (that would be provided to the gentleman by Reginald himself at a fixed rate of interest) in exchange for the wool and that Reginald return the pieces of brass for the piglets. Confused and somewhat put off, the gentleman declined to partake of this new form of exchange. However, Reginald's idea eventually caught on and the value of things have since become increasingly free form and experimental, like a kind of economic Bee Bop improvisation by a particularly demented saxophonist who is tripping off his head on acid and trying to exorcise the monkey on his back.

In some quarters, thanks to capitalism, the value of things and the transactions of those things have become so avant-garde that things that don't exist are being bought and sold with imaginary pieces of brass.

There are said to be whirling dervishes in Wall street, ensuring that faith triumphs over reality. Let's hear it for Capitalism!