This is the semi-organized junk-drawer for everything not already covered (and an ounce of redundancy). Since it's my site this is where I get to post my less-focused complaints for the gratification of the literate planet, but please hold your applause until the end.

One more note, the film reviews are now on the Culture & Art page.

Book Review: My Autobiography, By Benito Mussolini,1928, Dover Publications 2006.

The title of this book is self-explanatory; it describes Mussolini’s life and events primarily between World War I and the ascension of the Fascist party as the government of Italy.

Benito Mussolini was born in 1883 in northeast Italy, the son of a blacksmith and a primary school teacher. He describes fighting in World War I against the Austrian Empire in the north of Italy, winning the war militarily but then having their national gains thrown away through post-conflict diplomatic machinations. It’s not really clear what happened but it appears that the western leaders thought they were creating some kind of happy new world where war would be abolished and that consequently Italy should just gave up all her war territory, such as portions of Yugoslavia with a long history of Italian cultural connections. After losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the war this was, not surprisingly, seen as a huge insult to the Italian people. At the same time after the war Italy was afflicted with very stupid and short-sighted government and national leadership, for instance they banned flight and aircraft development and had all airplanes dismantled!

Everyone else in Italy knew that something had to be done and soon because the country was a mess, rapidly getting worse; the established democratic government was running the country into the ground. Soon economic mismanagement created inflation, only adding fuel to the fire of discontent. Radical socialists, communists, and anarchists could smell blood in the water and taking their guidance from Lenin and the new Soviet Union set about to start a workers revolution to turn Italy into a Soviet state.

Mussolini built up his party starting with his newspaper, battled socialists and anarchists in the streets, got elected to office as part of parliament, organized his troops to march on the capital whereby the king of Italy recognized the impending civil war and preferred the conservative social leanings of the Fascists to the radical promises of the leftists so he put Mussolini in charge of the government. Mussolini assumed government responsibility and quickly set about to repair the crumbling image, infrastructure, and economy of the nation.

Fascism was not initiated to be just another political party:

I speak of movement and not of party, because my conception always was that Fascism must assume the characteristics of being anti-party. It was not to be tied to old or new schools of any kind. The name Italian Fighting Fascisti was lucky. It was most appropriate to a political action that had to face all the old parasites and programmes that had tried to deprave Italy. I felt that it was not only the anti-socialist battle we had to fight; this was only a battle on the way. There was a lot more to do. All the conceptions of the so-called historical parties seemed to be dresses out of measure, shape, style, usefulness. They had grown tawdry and insufficient—unable to keep pace with the rising tide of unexpected political exigencies, unable to adjust to the formation of new history and new conditions of modern life.

The old parties clung in vain to the rattling programmes. These parties had to make pitiful repairs and tinkerings in an attempt to adapt their theories as best they could to the new days. It was therefore not sufficient to create—as some have said superficially—an anti-altar to the altar of socialism. It was necessary to imagine a wholly new political conception, adequate to the living reality of the twentieth century, overcoming at the same time the ideological worship of liberalism, the limited horizons of various spent and exhausted democracies, and finally the violently Utopian spirit of Bolshevism.

In a word, I felt the deep necessity of an original conception capable of placing in a new period of history a more fruitful rhythm of human life.

It was necessary to lay the foundation of a new civilization. [p. 53]

According to Mussolini he built the Fascist party from the ground up from his own effort.

The Italian Bundles of Fight were now transforming themselves. They were to receive the new denomination of Fascist National party, with a central directory and supreme council over the provincial organizations and the lesser Fascist sections which were to be created in every locality. On that occasion I wanted with all my desire to strip from our party the personal character which the Fascist movement had assumed because of the stamp of my will. But the more I wished to give the party an autonomous organization and the more I tried, the more I received the conviction from the evidence of the facts that the party could not have existed and lived and could not be triumphant except under my command, my guidance, my support and my spurs. [p. 107]

Mussolini assumes responsibility in the new government:

An existence wholly new began for me. To speak about it makes it necessary for me to abandon the usual form of autobiographic style; I must consider the organic whole of my governmental activity. From now on my life identifies itself almost exclusively with thousands of acts of government. Individuality disappears. Instead, my person expresses, I sometimes feel, only measures and acts of concrete character; these do not concern a single per son; they concern the multitudes, they concern and permeate an entire people. So one's entire life is lost in the whole. ... Progressive inflation and the printing presses gave to everybody the old illusion of prosperity. It created an unstable delusion of well-being; it excited a fictitious game of interests. All this had to be expiated when faced by the severe Fascist financial policy.

Abroad our political reputation had diminished progressively. We were judged as a nation without order and discipline, unable either to prosper or produce. [p. 148]

Obviously the Communists didn’t take their defeat gracefully but their assassination attempts on Mussolini and efforts to undermine the Fascist regime were defeated because Mussolini rearranged the social and economic order to favor the workers while simultaneously assuaging existing authority’s fears of revolution with appropriately conservative platitudes. The Communists just couldn’t compete against Fascism that was better organized, offered a more popular product, and most stunning of all actually delivered what they promised. This in fact demonstrated a remarkable difference between Mussolini’s Fascism and every other political party in that his effort wasn’t just an exercise in seizing control over the resources of the nation for his clique but he actually meant what he said and aimed to organize the nation for the common good. In this regard Mussolini compares Italian Fascism with the typical selfish party interests:

Old men of the socialist and syndicalist poses and postures were amazed and perplexed at the daring new reform. Another legend fell: Fascism was not the protector of any one class, but a supreme regulator of the relations between all citizens of a state. The Labor Charter found interpreters and attracted the attention of the studious in every part of the world. It became a formidable pillar of the new consituation of the Fascist State.

As a logical consequence of the Charter of Labor and of all the social legislation and of the magistracy of labor, came the necessity of instituting the Corporations. In this institution are concentrated all the branches of national production. Work in all its complex manifestations and in all its breadth, whether of manual or of intellectual nature, requires equally protection and nourishment. The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill.

In this new conception, which has found its logical expression in our representative forms, the citizen is valuable because of his productivity, his work and his thought, and not merely because he is twenty-one years old and has the right to vote! [p. 205]

Fascism Old and New

An important distinctions that needs to be made is that today’s ‘fascism’ refers to corporate control in primacy and state as subservient helper, think of the George W. Bush administration, war profiteering, deregulation, and so on. Mussolini’s Fascism was the opposite, it held corporate business interests as second with state control in primacy and thus business was regulated to serve national interests. Now, clearly both patterns eventually produce serious distortions, today’s fascism produces massive corruption, an environment antithetic to the well-being of the vast majority of the nation’s inhabitants, and is perfect for serving special interests while stealing form everyone else. Original Fascism unifies the nation and serves the public interest when under benevolent guidance but puts enormous power in the hands of one or a few leaders who then find it all too easy to start wars of adventure or aggression.

A little further on I said: "Over all conflicts of human and legitimate interests, there is the authority of the government; the government alone is in the right position to see things from the point of view of the general welfare. This government is not at the disposition of this man or that man; it is over everybody, because it takes to itself not only the juridical conscience of the nation in the present, but also all that the nation represents for the future. The government has shown that it values at the highest the productive strength of the nation. A government which follows these principles has the right to be listened to by every one. It has a task to fulfill. It will do it. It will do it inexorably for the defense of the moral and material interests of the nation."

Little by little, the old labor structure and associations were abandoned. We were directed more and more toward the corporative conception of the state. [p. 204]

Fascism developed as a reaction to current political and economic conditions:

Fascism was not the nursling of a doctrine worked out before hand with detailed elaboration; it was born of the need for action and it was itself from the beginning practical rather than theoretical; it was not merely another political party but, even in the first two years, in opposition to all political parties as such, and itself a living movement. The name which I then gave to the organization fixed its character. And yet, if one were to re-read, in the now dusty columns of that date, the report of the meeting in which the Fasci Italiana di combattirnento were constituted, one would there find no ordered expression of doctrine, but a series of aphorisms, anticipations, and aspirations which, when refined by time from the original ore, were destined after some years to develop into an ordered series of doctrinal concepts, forming the Fascist political doctrine—different from all others either of the past or the present day. [p. 228]

Mussolini’s Fascist Italy allied with Hitler’s Germany during World War II and eventually lost against the combined military force of the Soviet Union and the western powers. In the end Italians didn’t reject Mussolini and the Fascist Party so closely associated with his personality (much to his own chagrin) because of his governance or policies, they rejected him because he was attached to a war that was lost! The winning powers enthusiastically aided the process of discrediting Mussolini and Fascism for obvious ideological reasons. To this day leftists hate Mussolini (and of course Hitler) because both leaders negated the necessity of international socialism and usurped the popular labor policies  socialism uses as their primary selling point to the public. 

In comparison to Hitler, who learned much from the struggles of Italian Fascism, Mussolini was a much more cautious leader even to the point of foot-dragging at times. While Hitler was a visionary of global proportions Mussolini seems a more parochial thinker concerned with ordering his nation and less so with ordering Europe or the rest of the world.

Benito Mussolini comes across as an articulate and educated person, hardly the stereotypical strong-man dictator. Mussolini’s demeanor throughout the book is refreshingly practical and friendly, at times bordering on conceited but in fairness his remarkable accomplishments certainly justify a measure of pride. Regardless of opinion characterizing Mussolini, My Autobiography is a fascinating book with a rare view of history and events that is well–worth reading. Unfortunately the book doesn’t cover history after about 1930, leaving a critical gap that will have to be filled by other sources. 29.06.08

African poem paying homage to the Leopard

Gentle hunter
His tail plays on the ground while he crushes a skull

Beautiful death
Who puts on a spotted robbed when he goes to his victim

Playful killer
Whose loving embrace splits the antelope’s heart

Review of the book Adam’s Curse by Bryan Sykes, paperback version, 2005.

Adam’s Curse is a fascinating book that lends some profound scientific evidence to many of the issues on human sex-based socio-biological events past, present and future that I’ve been writing about for years. Read: Biology at Holology. Sykes began by studying matrilineal mitochondrial DNA (mDNA), culminating in the best-selling book The Seven Daughters of Eve. In Adam’s Curse Sykes describes how he became intrigued by the other side in the form of the Y-chromosome that is passed from father to son. One of the things he discovered is that the X and Y-chromosomes are in a state of competition. Sykes and other researchers have discovered that the Y-chromosome is not only unstable but is actually disintegrating at a very rapid pace, by biological standards anyway. An increasingly toxic synthetic environment is exacerbating this downward trend, an ironic outcome of the Y-chromosome characteristic to recklessly abuse wealth and power in an attempt to spread itself as widely as possible.

The invention and adoption of agriculture was accompanied by new concepts with a far greater lasting consequence, concepts which were unknown before the first seed was planted or the first animal tethered to a tree. These concepts were property, wealth and power. They were entirely new and played straight into the hands of our old friend — the Y-chromosome — as a new and irresistible instrument for sexual selection. Now, at long last, there was an opportunity for Y-chromosomes that could get hold of these valuable assets to increase almost without limit; an opportunity to pursue their natural instinct for endless replication that had until then been contained. It was, in my view, men and through them the Y-chromosome that seized on this trio of property, wealth and power and pushed them to their present absolute prominence. It may even be that this seductive combination, coupled to the unstoppable force of sexual selection, was not the passive and innocent by-product of agriculture and husbandry but the driving force behind its spread around the world. Adam’s Curse, pg. 233

Many questions arise, and some have tentative answers. What will replace the Y-chromosome? How does homosexuality fit into this situation? And, do we need men at all, especially when considering the deleterious burden they place upon social cohesion as well as individual and group health? "The human Y-chromosome is crumbling before our very eyes. What can we expect to happen if things carry on like this? There is no reason to think they will improve — quite the reverse, in fact." ibid, pg. 290

Sykes describes the complex biological mechanics at work, as well as the research methods used to study them, in a clear and understandable way. Adam’s Curse is a very important book to read today because it explains so much about history and social-biology and because it puts these motive forces and world events into a quantifiable and substantive scientific context. 09.12.05

"Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstition. ... Two others facing the future with confidence, having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone." - Rod Serling narrating. Watch the 'Nick of Time' episode of the Twilight Zone (1960) to find out why.

Because there's a very real chance that no one has the answer presently, don't put artificial limits on the possible - take the limits off of natural human intellectual evolution. Perpetual contained turmoil and institutionalized chaos is the answer to the question of what kind of system of government is most desirable and strategically useful to human development. Only in this situation can valid answers and solutions appear on their own. 20.02.05

This is just an informal observation but it seems like driving abilities are a fairly accurate gauge of regional education levels. The worst drivers are located in places with the lowest education standards.

America isn't the only country Bush will be running like a business...

The Idea Store (concept)

So many people have great ideas but for a multitude of reasons they remain unable to turn them into practical products. This is both frustrating to the source and wasteful to society in general. The many obstacles in the path of would-be inventors are daunting to those unfamiliar with the process but relatively simple for ones with familiarity and experience. But few inventor start-ups have the cash to pay for a patent attorney or the legal knowledge to know how to defend their interests and not get ripped-off.

So wouldn't it be neat if you could just walk into an office with your blueprints for an invention or an outline for an ingenious solution to a contemporary problem and present it to a panel of experts? Then (if they like it) get a cash payment and royalties in perpetuity while the office takes care of everything after that, the patents, the construction, the marketing, etc. Most importantly you could be sure that the office makes every attempt to fairly assess your invention initially but also guarantee an equitable share of the eventual profits (if any); maybe even allow repurchase rights to the patent.

Basically the 'Idea Store' as I call it would collect and pay for peoples good ideas then build, license and market them. The inventors would get paid a cash amount up front for the rights to develop and a perpetual percentage in royalties if it gets built and sold. If the invention or idea later proves unmarketable the creator would still get a modest amount in cash and the store would simply shelve the idea and retain the patent to be sold later perhaps or to just fill up a patent 'library' collection, marketable in its own right.

This concept would be win-win for everyone;  it would be a services type of company with patent lawyers and copyright specialists mostly but also marketers and people that know how this system works. it would vastly simplify the process by eliminating much redundancy. In other words every person with good idea wouldn't need a lawyer a marketer and distributor, etc. but could just go to the store and have it done for them as a single package. The Idea Store would centralize these important but banal functions. Indeed this would not even have to be private company, it could theoretically be a government office, like an extension of the patent office - wouldn't that be novel? If done through a government agency they likely would not want to develop and market on their own but rather the development rights could be auctioned off like frequency bandwidth is by the FCC for instance.

Problems here include the typical legal pitfalls, attempting to valuate unusual and perhaps complicated inventions and ideas before they are publicly traded and subject to supply and demand rules. Also success itself could be a pitfall. Having 1000 people a day trying to visit or send your office ideas could overwhelm your ability to discriminate and still have funds to pay for what looks promising.

I'm not aware that anything quite like this exists today but I would be interested to know if it did; it seems very plausible and profitable so it would surprise if it didn't exist somewhere in some form. Anyone else interested in pursuing this idea, answers or questions regarding this concept, please contact the editor through the name / e-mail link located in the page footer. 01.08.03

Now accepting the Enron award for excellence...

On November 13, 2001, two weeks before Enron filed bankruptcy on December 2, the Baker Institute honored Greenspan with its Enron Prize, which the official press release said "gives recognition to outstanding individuals for their contributions to public service. The prize is made possible by a generous gift from the Enron Corp ... one of the world's leading electricity, natural-gas and communications companies. Among the previous recipients of the Enron Prize are Colin Powell, current US secretary of state; Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union; Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa; and Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. Henry C K Liu, Asia Times

On a pound for pound basis, the U$ Air Force's B-2 steatlh bomber (at $13-$15 billion apiece) is three times more expensive than an equivalent weight of gold!

"Between the US trade deficit and the huge foreign investment it has attracted for the last several years, the US needs inflow of about US$4 billion a day to pay for all its spending." 09.2002

More counterintuitive repercussions: "Ironically, the spate of carjackings [in England] has been blamed on car security systems. It's not that car alarms, improved locking systems and steering wheel locks are not working - it's that they're working too well. It's getting harder for thieves to steal cars without the keys, and more tempting for them to buy a gun on the black market and take a more direct approach. What was essentially a crime against property has become personal." - New Zealand Herald newspaper

Did you know that ...

• Retail company employees steal more than the shoplifters do?

• Statically most people survive airplane crashes, but those ones usually don't make for exciting headlines now do they?

Urban Nightmare

2003

The Words of Fools

As the Mideast situation very quickly goes from bad to worse it's important to remember that anymore not even physical distance is enough to insulate the citizens of nations from the impact of the venality and stupidity of their leaders. And in the case of America their national situation has been significantly worsened by the influential speech of the Bush administration. But don't take my word for it, let's hear from the fools themselves:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

• On Arafat: - "the enemy of the entire free world," and "an obstacle to peace in the Middle East" and "a danger to the whole region." Could you ratchet up the grandiose hyperbole any higher?

• 'Terrorism' - "We are going to take all the necessary measures to destroy the infra structure of every terror element that exists. We decided to eliminate the terror and its infrastructure."

President "I pray for peace," Bush

• Israel - "I can understand why the Israeli government takes the actions they take. Their country is under attack."

• 'Terrorism' - "The more progress we make toward achieving a cease-fire or meaningful security discussions, the more a killer organization will try to disrupt the process.''

• On Sharon: - "Israel is a democratically elected government, and the government is responding to the will of the people for there to be more security.''

• Arafat - "[Arafat] can do a lot more [to prevent terrorist attacks]" Yeah he'll communicate using telepathic rays seeing as how he's already as evil and by extension powerful as the Devil himself and he's completely cut off in a basement bunker with only a cell phone and a dead battery while being surrounded by the Israeli Army.

The diplomatic silence from America is deafening. Most illuminating of all is the noticeable lack of American reproach of Israelis duplicitous language and violent attacks against an elected leader in their illegally occupied territories. As the Lebanese foreign ministry colorfully stated "Only hours after the Arab peace initiative was adopted at the Beirut summit, Israel responded with a barbarous war and an arrogant savage aggression." But even The "dove" Colin Powell could only tell reporters that Israel had 'a right to defend itself' - "Let's be clear about what brought it to a halt, terrorism - terrorism that would target innocent civilians."

Continuing the undeniable evidence is the fact America continues to do absolutely nothing to intervene beyond the continuing farce of Zinni and despite the powerful authority U$ has in dealing with Israel to include billions in yearly aid and weapons packages. Whatever American policy actually is, the view being portrayed to the world is that America agrees and supports whatever Israel does 100%. Therefore Israel's aggression is America's and the innocent people Israeli forces slaughter are a bloodstain on all of America as well. At the moment Israeli troops have taken over Ramallah, Qalqilya and Tulkarem in the West Bank and surrounded several others with their tanks and this is just the beginning. Israeli officials now claim Arafat is hiding 'wanted men' in the few rooms he still controls at his headquarters in Ramallah.

Although the U.N. Security Council issued a resolution calling on Israel to pull out its troops from Ramallah on Saturday, there were no signs of any plan to comply. Apparently this demand has no deadline attached to it but it's still pretty convenient that Iraq has to obey UN mandates at the drop of a hat but not Israel.

Finally, concerning Israel's latest action to "isolate" Arafat, "the US ambassador to Beirut offered only that violence was no solution to political problems." I think, he missed the irony. 01.04.02

"The problem is, he's got to decide if he wants to live or die. If he wants to die, he's going to die here. Or he's going to fucking spend the rest of his short fucking life in prison. It's his decision, man. We can only help the guys who want to talk to us. We can only get the Red Cross to help so many guys." - The highly professional interrogation by CIA agent 'Dave' struggling to convey the dire nature of Walker's situation. The Mazar-i-Sharif prison subsequently was the scene of a bloody uprising culminating in U$ air-strikes on the compound and a quickly forgotten massacre.

***

2003 "The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which makes us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. They become afraid of it and begin to cause harm to themselves. Terror is the most dreaded weapon in modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people. It can add fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media is doing that. You can understand as to what will be the performance of the nation in a war, which suffers from fear and helplessness." - Usama Bin Laden, 'who claims he had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks in America.' Interview published in newspaper Ummat Karachi, 28th September, 2001.

Police serve a counterintuitive goal because by ameliorating structural social problems without solving them, in other words by treating the cancer instead of cutting it out, they only prolong the long term suffering of everyone. Their 'good intentions' allow authorities and the populace to ignore the issue(s) until it's far, far too late to rectify them easily if at all. The tactical success' of policing crime generate their own strategic failures.

If Hollywood really wants to make some bucks and perhaps reach that ever elusive lowest common denominator they should just put a series of paint drying and commercials on film, a three picture deal starring low paid no-one's but replete with eye-popping special effects and a top 40 soundtrack. The audience may complain about the poor quality of the film(s) but like trained rodents they always come back again and again plopping down another $8 because they have such asinine, tedious existences that the cinema is their most accessible (legal) escape from the perpetually droll monotony of their daily lives. The public has no scruples and no powers of discrimination because the media control the entire spectrum and defines both ends of good and bad. The audience will watch whatever garbage is shown, and pay for it too!

Why is it on the nightly news or any TV or movie program you see the military portrayed as rugged, deadly machines crawling though barbed wire in mud, firing high powered weapons, jumping out of planes, dogfighting in multi-million dollar aircraft when this perception is so completely divorced from the true reality of military life? An accurate view would feature a gaggle of bored soldiers mopping floors, scrubbing toilets, smoking, getting drunk at the local bar and puking over the toilets so they can clean them up the next day. All the while collecting a below minimum wage paycheck for 24/7 work duty and getting the unparalleled opportunity to die in some foreign country no one in your high-school geography class could hope to find on a map, all to defend American "values" such as McDonalds, Nike and/or Citigroup. You may call me cynical but I hardly believe McDonalds would ever die for YOU soldier. More likely they'd give you 24 hours notice to turn in your fry-cook uniform and toss in a few days of back pay if you're lucky.

Despite the colorful yarns of the recruiters and the pulse pounding excitement of 15 second commercials, military life is just long stretches of intense boredom (peacetime) punctuated by rare moments of sheer terror (combat). 15.08.01

For a quick but profound example highlighting the fallacy of free market righteousness or the Ayn Rand type's 'might is right' ideology think of Bill Gates who in his $100 million dollar compound consumes so much water that nearby residents are forced to curtail consumption. Local restaurants post notices, "Due to water crisis, customers will not be given water to drink unless they ask." While Mr. Gates consumes 4.7 million gallons of water in a year. It's absurd to think that the average citizen and the mega-rich can be charged equal rates and that both will have equal access to limited resources. If the free market was always right, if might is always right, than entire towns full of productive people would die of thirst while one billionaire lounged in a deck chair sipping cognac and watching the fish frolic in his artificial salmon stream.

We're told not to stereotype, yet loan administrators, rental managers, police and any number of other people in positions of authority do it on a daily basis.
We're told life has no price yet lawyers and insurance agents calculate it every day.

Life in the house of vice and virtue:

The wonderful dichotomy of the sacred and the profane, positive, negative, heaven and earth; images of the dirt floored thatch shack with a stereo and a TV. Islands gripped between natives compelled by capitalist competition and Paul Gaugin-esque urban refugees ironically seeking rudimentary lifestyles the natives don't want anymore. Human comedy, human tragedy, the endless search for the free lunch, the technology without the trouble... I think fiu from the south Pacific islands is a great concept it's when a worker becomes tired or bored they simply leave, not bothering to explain or even ask for a last paycheck.

U$ consumers spend $2.5 billion dollars on golf clubs each year.

I just love the marriage of Wal Mart and McDonald's. Truly they were made for each other!

Television is a very effective communications tool but all tools can be misused and this one is no different. TV, as it is almost always used today, is nothing more than a means of inculcating ignorance into the general populace. Television is an ignorance generator.

SIGNAL VERSUS NOISE:

Gripe #2,901 news stories that leave the reader with more questions than they had before they started reading! It's consistently amazing the poor quality of American news journalists - yeah AP I'm talkin' to you! It's as if they just take a few random paragraphs and slap them together add their name and logo to it and call it a finished news product. The international news is the worst and although the Internet wires are bad, the newspapers are terrible. I get this crap: headline, one paragraph of text about 50 words, The story doesn't even explain the headline statement but merely adds about 2 or 3 more curiosities and questions to the reader.
Its almost as if an editor took a 10 page story and hacked it down to 2 sentences. Would that produce a cogent and coherent story? You decide.

Three sure signs you have no class:

• Using swear words as adjectives
• Casual dress means not wearing a shirt in public
• Hanging body parts outside the car while driving

American Coin Tricks:

It used to be that any stingy consumer could put three cents into a Wall Street Journal newspaper machine and get themselves a copy; the secret is in the mechanical device that stacks the coins. Three cents is the equivalent to the same height as two quarters. I can't say as I've ever tried this trick simply for lack of convenient opportunity and because I have no interest in reading a WSJ. Anyhoo speaking of coins, Susan B. Anthony dollars are often marketed as being rare and/or collectible. I doubt it, but if you think so I know where you can get all the dollar coins you could possibly want. Go down to the Post Office, don't stand in line for an hour to buy your stamps, go to the vending machine and put in a say a twenty dollar bill. Buy your book for a few bucks and you'll walk away with a handful of dollar coins in change. Most of them are Susan B. Anthony dollars but increasingly you can get the new Sacajawea gold-tone (electroslag) coins.

As much as I dislike phones as the intrusive nuisance they are, one idea I had while asleep. Hey I get a lot of good ideas sleeping or rather I collect them fully formed in that halfway zone between wake and sleep. I can't be positive exactly where they come from since I'm not conscious when they originate. Incidentally sleep is the best way to cogitate.
Anyway to the point, the idea is to be able to charge personal phone usage fees. In other words let's say I want to charge .50 cents a minute on all incoming calls to my number. That would be on top of the usual fees I would have to pay to the phone service anyhow. But in this case the 50 additional cents would be credited to me and charged to the caller. Now this could burn friends but not if they had say an exemption code. But think of the money you could rake in during election season? Now you could make a few bucks of those annoying bastards that call selling you vinyl siding and telling you how to vote on measure so and so. Now I don't know an exceptional amount about the billing intricacies of phone services, so for all I know it could be possible to set something like this up already. But the best way to do it would be surreptitiously so the callers didn't know they would be charged for calling you! But I don't mean setting up a personal 1-900 number; this would just be a standard line.
Anybody out there know anything about how to set something like this up? How legal would it or could it be? What think? 05.11.00

Why is it when somebody is walking around talking to themselves in animated conversation we send them to a mental institution. Yet if that solo conversationalist holds a small hunk of plastic and circuitry to their ear they transform into a sophisticated 'on-the-go' important person?

Cute, eh?

But wait! Here's how to cure the ever growing ranks of mentally ill within our society - give them all cell phones! Now they can have a toll-free 24 hour hotline to Jesus!

The part I like is during a flight, nobody touches the built in phones, you know the ones that charge $5 a minute? But as soon as the plane lands and stops, simultaneously they fire up the cell phones. Presumably to tell everyone they know how they miraculously survived that bout of turbulence, narrowly avoiding a crash into a fiery ball of twisted metal.

Lightning burns down many of the Amish's buildings, but they refuse to put in lightning rods as they 'run counter to God's will.

Each NASA Space Shuttle launch costs $400 million dollars.

American Cheese:
The most aptly named food. Who would eat this shit but an American? (or possibly Canadian) It’s not even cheese just artificial flavorings and colorings with a horrid, rubbery texture to it. Mmmm!

The Microsoft effect: the simpler it's intended to be the more complicated it is to actually use.

The Drinking Starts Early
(for Winnie)

First you open the bottle
Clean a glass
Nice and fast
Yeah

Next you just tip that bottle
Let it pour
A little more
Cool

Into that glass from the bottle
Down the side
Whiskey glides
Smooth

Now you set down that bottle
Lick yer lips
Let ‘er rip!
Mm…

Hey, hey, hey where’s the bottle!
Drink another
And another
Ah…

Walk down the hall with the bottle
Sit right down
Stubborn frown
Stogie

You speak hanging on to the bottle
Finest hour
Nazi power
Heavy

Radio sees no bottle
London bombed
You are bombed
Uh-huh

Courage comes in a bottle
This is war
Have one more –
Belch!!

Celebrate with the bottle
It’s all done
We have won
Ooph…

Satirical poem from: timmybighands.com (now defunct)