In Tom Sawyer Mark Twain used words to the effect “Time had ceased, eternity had begun”.

So—?

So he triggered this short story in my mind—that, coupled with endless blasted religiosos banging on my door in the name of God (which God? Only theirs of course; you know … the One and Only Good Guy who is going to rapture us all to Eternal Bliss). I liked that ‘eternal’, it has a certain simplistic appeal about it.

Anyway, on with the show and I hope you hate it:

____________________________________________________________________________

THE BLESSING

He called me a vindictive witch just once too often.

Vindictive? Never! Possessed of a well-developed sense of justice, maybe, but never vindictive.

All I want from life is a fair shake of the dice. Cheats make my stomach hurt. Seeing a rat like him pervert the system to ruin innocent people made me want to spit. Having him use the system against me was much worse.

The biggest mistake of my life was marrying him.

The second biggest mistake was expecting a fair deal in the divorce, he is a lawyer. Sure, I fought tooth and nail for my rights, and fell right on my face. There was nothing I could do—the final ruling wrapped me up so tight I squeaked and left me with nothing. I had to go to him cap-in-hand and beg. It’s hard to be vindictive when you’re on your knees.

Vindictive? No, definitely no.

Witch?

Oh, yes.

I’m a witch. Not your traditional ‘black cat and broomstick’ witch, more your 21st century witch, high-tech and hold the eye of newt.

I do have a cat, though. She is my beloved pet and has been with me since I was a little girl. She is my family, my darling, and now my whole world.

As far as witches go I’m successful despite the big mistake in choice of husband (even a witch can be blind sometimes).

He knew, of course—the slime knew I was a witch, right from our wedding night. There were some things that had to be explained, and of course he wanted proof.

Well, one thing led to another, and his wealth multiplied as a result. Not that I minded. What witch wouldn’t want to be married to a highly successful lawyer, pinnacle of his field? But as time went by his demands grew, and grew, taking over until he was utterly obsessed by ambition. And the more he prospered by my efforts the more I saw him for what he was and the more I grew to despise him.

But there was one thing I always denied him, the one thing he coveted above all else. There was this one thing he craved, for which he pleaded, threatened, bullied, and begged. This I would never grant, no matter how much he groveled or blustered. Sure, it was within my power, and his desperate efforts to force it became the final nails in our marital coffin.

So, just as he’d planned, I went to him on my knees, begging.

He was munificence itself.

Sure, I could have access to the house. Sure, I could take my things away—my Book of Shadows, my waxes, my herbs, my robes and iron dagger. Sure, I could even have the house itself, if I wanted. I could have the house and pool, the garages and buildings, the trees and gardens, the stables and fields and woods and beach. Sure, I could have the cars and bank accounts and investments, he would relinquish all claims to everything … if only …  if only I would make him immortal.

Of course I said no.

So he called me a vindictive witch.

Vindictive I have never been. But I, too, have a limit, and can be pushed only so far. He pushed me too far with those words, on top of everything else, like planning to starve my cat to death.

So I gave him what he wanted.

He was over the moon with my decision. Overcome with emotion, tears streaming down his face, blubbering with gratitude—he gave me everything. Lock, stock, barrel and bolt.

The fool!

It cleaned him out. But he knew, and I knew, that even if it took  a lifetime he would recoup his losses. In three lifetimes he could be the richest man in the world. In four lifetimes he might be ruling the world. We both knew that.

The imbecile!

He’d thought that by withholding immortality I was being vindictive. But vindictive didn’t come into it — not until he’d pushed me that little bit too far. Vindictive only began once I’d given him what he wanted.

He wanted immortality, “the same as you witches”.

Immortal? I’m not immortal. No witch is immortal.

We could be, we can choose to live for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years, but no witch would ever be immortal. Given the choice of immortality or instant death every witch in the world would opt for death at once, without hesitation, even by the blessed holy fires of the stake.

Immortality, the ancient dream of mankind — and this numb-skull thought I’d withheld it from spite—? Hell, I wouldn’t wish that dream on my worst enemy. Not even on him. Not until he threatened to let my cat starve slowly to death, locked in his house … then I saw red.

So I granted his wish.

Certainly, he will prosper.

He is much too clever to fall in love. He will enjoy thousands of years of affairs and adventures, but never be fool enough to love. In a hundred years, lonely or otherwise, he will be one of the wealthiest men on earth. His personal accounts will rival those of sovereign nations; and centuries of endless success and adulation will never tire him.

He will be enjoying the fruits of my labours aeons after I am gratefully dust myself. Millennia after I have shuffled off this mortal coil he will be drinking the finest wines and sleeping with the cream of the world’s women. Long after my atoms have dispersed on the winds of time and change, he will be fearlessly conquering everything anyone can throw at him. And why not?

He is immortal. As part of the package I made him invulnerable as well. Nothing in the universe can harm him. He stands at the very peak of development, physical and mental. His brain is razor sharp, perceptive, brilliant; and he is the perfect specimen of manhood. He has it all.

The idiot.

He won’t begin to see the cracks until several thousand million years have passed. By then he won’t even remember my name, but my atoms will be laughing, laughing, laughing.

Laughing as the sun slows down, expanding as it cools. Laughing as our friendly little star becomes a swollen red giant, drying up the waters of this planet, killing off all life.

All life-forms, that is, except one.

The surviving perfect specimen of Homo Sapiens will be able to reach out his lonely arm from the seared surface of our planet and touch the face of the sun itself, so obscenely large will it have grown as it dies.

His agonies will last for billions of years more, then billions of aeons, until in about three trillion trillion years the universe collapses inwards on itself in a reversal of the Big Bang from whence it sprang. Eventually it will collapse into a singularity, a dimensionless point of timeless infinite mass. Somewhere in that nowhere will be a demented yet perfectly formed human being, alone and endlessly screaming in the midst of an eternal non-existence.

Vindictive witch, he’d called me.

Witch—yes.

But hardly vindictive …

— END —

A shop going out of business in our town has an ‘infinity box’ for sale. The box is glass fronted and electrically illuminated, you can peer in and without seeing yourself at all you see multiples of whatever you’ve put in there fading off into the far, far distance.

As a child, on my back on hilltops far from light pollution on frosty moonless nights (I used to sneak out when all the house was mute) I would contemplate the shivering stars and ponder infinity. I still do. Contemplate, that is, I no longer sneak out—but I’m no closer now to any answers than all those years ago. Okay then, Einstein, if you’re so clever—

A traveller, footsore and weary happens fortuitously upon an inn just as night is falling and a terrible storm about to break. But (there’s always a ‘but’ in these things, ever notice?) the receptionist smiles sweetly says without regret, “Sorry! We’re all full up! Hard luck!”

And after going through (and being repulsed on) all the usual suggestions like double up? laundry? shed? kitchen? share with the dog? doss down in the lounge/cellar/attic? it finally occurs to our clever traveller to ask “How many rooms do you have in this truly magnificent hostelry?”

To which the smirking reply is “Infinite, Sir! This is an ‘infinity Inn’ — we have an infinite number of rooms and all of them are occupied. Full. Taken. So very sorry.”

To cut to the chase our weary traveller makes a suggestion, which after ghasting the young lady’s flabbers scores him a room for the night without having to bunk in with anyone else. How so?

BELOW THE INFINITE

We think of infinite as being towards the larger end of the sizing scale: big, bigger, bigger still, even more bigger, even more bigger yet etc etc on to infinity. But does the converse hold true? Can we have infinitely small? (WARNING: Don’t go there. Like the Ancient nautical charts that territory is marked with a red line and ‘Beyond here be monsters‘.)

Now here’s a thought——taken from my library book (“Wonders of the Universe” Prof Brian Cox) which is a summation of four recent documentary shows by the BBC on the universe. I think the quote purports to be the current word of science and who would we mere mortals be to argue? I tend to … plough on:

BIG BANG in the Great Scheme

That ‘far smaller than an atom’ thing has been given names ranging from Primordial Atom (PA) to Singularity.

The scientists are clever: having created an infinitely dense infinitely small PA floating all by itself in the middle of a non-existent nothing, they then blow it up and so create the universe. According to the good book (BBC) the Bang happened almost 14 billion years ago, creating a universe which is now about 45 billion light years across. Oops … something not quite right there …

Anyway, if it were me had to explain it all I’d have taken the Occam’s razor approach and gone for simplicity. Somehow God is tidier, and infinitely neater, than their blasted Primordial Atom. Either way it’s a giant leap of faith but the evidence is on a par.

The same old questions questions linger—

• Out of what exactly, in a vast empty nothingness, did God create Himself before there was a beginning? Then having created Himself, out of what did He create Creation? Or did a bigger better previous Goddier God create Him?
• Or—how long did the timeless Primordial Atom seethe and fester before deciding to go POP and liberate those “thousands of trillions of suns” to go forth and multiply in the heavens?
•  And—what could possibly have changed inside that timeless Primordial Atom/Singularity/cosmic Egg/Thing … given that any form of change is a function of time?
•  And—if it did change enough to make it Big Bang the universe into existence—what the hell took it so long?

MY POINT IS THAT both science and superstition (into which I also classify ‘religions’) require the same amount of faith, based effectively on similar ‘evidences’ (which too often are statements by the initiated). I suggest that for ‘evidence’ we should insert Supposition, as in Flavour Of The Day—seeing that yesterday’s science is always today’s Barrel Of Laughs (as will be today’s science tomorrow, but none of them can see that).

My case here is the Big Bang. The terms ‘Big Bang’ and ‘God, the Creator’ are identical and interchangeable—it takes the same kind of religious faith to believe in either, and once believing, so dismiss the other out of hand. Some lucky souls can believe in both at the same time—I salute them.

In the meantime that damned Infinity Box is still priced waaaaay too high, I don’t have the infinite wealth to match my infinite curiosity and desires; perhaps I can create one, but my skill with electricity would guarantee a Big Bang of my own.

.

KISMET

My computer’s onboard dictionary defines it as:

telepathy |tɪˈlɛpəθi|

noun

the supposed communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses.

Succinct, but somehow a bit unsatisfying.

The conventional scientific notion is that telepathy
… simply isn’t. But not all science, to be fair—some universities are quietly conducting research. But given that contradictions cannot exist, and given that I have done it:  either conventional science is mistaken or I am. When I’ve done something myself I can’t doubt that it is possible, even though I haven’t a clue how it works.

Years ago whilst working for the government, for an hour each day I had a very boring role, so whilst staying alert and doing my job I doodled. The image below is of a photocopy of one of my doodles—it was lunch time, I was peckish, I was bored, I doodled. Sue me.

My one ...

Note if you will that Spouse isn’t normally given to doodling. And my pet name for her at that time (as it had been for years, and actually still is) was “House-mouse”.  So—?

My drawing is to our left … meanwhile some forty kilometres away by road (I hated that commute!) Spouse was wrapping up for her own lunch; had a sudden out-of-the-blue notion to doodle before going off to nibble whatever it is that artists have for their lunches … see drawing over to our right:

Her one ...

This of course is easily written off as pure coincidence. Or not, but wait, it gets even more better yet—

—part of my commute involved Auckland’s western motorway. Unconventional hours, I was on my way in to work for a two o’clock (afternoon) start; minding my own business on a virtually empty 2-lane motorway (it couldn’t happen now).

No cars behind, just one nondescript car dawdling along in front. I pulled over to the fast lane and passed. Tried to pass, just as I was parallel the guy—for no apparent reason—decided to change lanes.

It was one helluva bang, completely unjustified in the amount of damage caused (merely bent a door handle) but the guy’s head whipped round and the look on his face almost made up for what he’d done. Life is full of rude awakenings, I hope he spilled his coffee for weeks.

I pulled over to the side of the road to discuss his efforts but he just planted his boot and roared off. I waited till the effects of adrenalin spent themselves then carried on to work, completely unaware that my beloved fiancée (Spouse today) was now frantically wondering how to get hold of me (pre cellphone days and she was under strict instructions to never contact me at work).

At the same time I had my unexpected shot of adrenalin she had one too, whilst quietly doing whatever it is that artists do with pens and pencils and things—she said afterwards that she just knew that something terrible had happened to me on my way in, and she’d been fretting the rest of the day until I got home around midnight (at which point I was met at the door and copped the full broadside that only worry and frustration can deliver). Nothing terrible, just a fright and minor damage (the collision, that is, the welcome home made up for everything).

I now cut to the chase and put it down to telepathy and won’t even begin to list all the ‘scientific’ explanations. Coincidence? Yeah … certainly, if it makes you happy.

WE (SPOUSE AND I) HAVE DONE TELEPATHY but we can not do telepathy. Not to order, try as we might and we have tried, mightily. But far too often to be coincidence we’ve both burst into the same tune or voiced the same out-of-context thoughts; but we don’t count those.

Shakespeare put it for us—

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy …

KISMET

Is the result intellectual annihilation?

“There is science,” says The Sage (he’s been absent from my life for over a week and I was getting worried) “and there’s superstition.”

While he’s happily purloining what’s left of my rum I ponder his perspicacity—not for nowt is he known as The Sage. I’m aware suddenly that he’s gone again and so is the last of my rum. No point going for a top-up, Spouse gets distinctly chilly if I have too many—dammit, I spent a long time in the navy back when rum was a staple. I’m qualified.

Science versus superstition? Maybe he has a point. Or maybe I have the point, to me science is superstition. No lines of demarcation here, the witch doctor chanting his spells blends seamlessly with the scientist mumbling his formulas. Science began and continues with superstition; if successful (i.e. repeatable on demand) it eventually evolves into technology—the flat earth supports orbiting satellites and all is well with the world.

I put religions into the same box and find they fit snugly. As devout as you, Sir or Madam, undoubtedly are, your religion is predictably (almost entirely) the product of your cultural heredity and your environment. And now …

TO MENTION THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT is to invite disdain from the educated. Fairly so, as things don’t go bump in the night. Not in an educated man’s house. So to avoid offense I shall not mention in any shape or form—

1. telepathy
2. precognition
3. reincarnation

Or not; it’s hard to disbelieve in the existence of something you’ve actually experienced at first hand, something you’ve done yourself, as in 1 and 2 above. Item 3 I merely believe in, so far as I know I haven’t actually done it (but I have my suspicions). It’s all a bit like when the scientist brightly tells me I don’t exist and am mostly just empty space—

“I’ve known a lot of people like that—” a boozy voice suddenly mumbles in my ear, making me jump. Damn, he’s back. “—lust a load of elementary particles like quacks and bisons all separated by huge distances. All energy, nothing solid. Hic.”  Perhaps if I ignore him he’ll go disappear himself …

With due apologies to the scientists and even philosophers who tell me I don’t exist, I just can’t accept it. To even try to not be me when I blatantly am*  goes a bit against the grain—

There was a Faith Healer from Deal

Said “I know that pain isn’t real—

Yet when I sit on a pin,

And it punctures my skin,

I dislike what I fancy I feel.

Oops. Lengthy post alert, I’ll taiho here for now and post about telepathy soonest. And precognition, complete with my theories (which truth be known are distilled out of all the others I’ve dabbled with over decades). Reincarnation (wait until you see the photos) (boring) will have to be ‘thoughts upon’ rather than observations from personal experience (but even there I may surprise us both).

KISMET

* Blogito, ergo sum

But sometimes I come across one I just hate and feel the need to pass it along. I hate it because it wasn’t me that wrote it and I’m jealous (sue me)(typical Leo, big hearted and easily miffed by someone else’s talent). This one came in tonight in an e-mail; I’ve seen it before and still hate it just as much—

=================================

The Green Thing:

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

The older woman was right, though — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Remember: Don’t make old people mad.

We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much …

I regret that I can’t give a ‘credit’ to the guy/guyette/team of genuises who came up with this in the first place—so if it’s yours be warned: I am jealous. I very jealous …

November 7, 2011

A pox on all Blister packs!

“The deepest level of Hell,” said Captain Jack Sparrow conversationally, “is reserved for mutineers.” But not if I had my way. I’d reserve the deepest hottest darkest nastiest level of Hell for the guy (okay, for the Committee) (no one man could be that fiendish) who invented the Blister Pack.

Time is at a premium. Too far south of the maturity Equator I just don’t have time to spare decoding blistapaks. I know there has to be a quick and simple (painless too, do I dare mention that?) method of getting into them but it eludes me. I’m sure that out there in the world there must be billions of folks who get home with their purchase, hold them up to the light, say the magic words, give a quick flick of the wrist and voila! there is your pair of scissors, paint brush, tape, mp3 player or whatever. I’ll bet that they flip the detritus over their shoulders without even looking and the wreckage goes right into the bin, too.

I’ve tried everything from razors to scissors to shears to electric hedge-cutters; from putting the package into the vise out in my workshop and twisting with all the demented fury that only desperation can trigger; and still nothing. The package just laughs and twists along with me until I have a multi-hued plastic pretzel complete with snapped off goods inside and still no way in to get them out. They should build warships out of this stuff. Main battle tanks and hold the Chobham, skyscrapers, earthquake-proofing …

After this ... Fort Knox, Plaaaay Doh!

Progress … would be a pocket-sized  Blista-Pak opener!

Fellow peasants, workers, and other less-than-equals:  To Arms!

To the bloody barricades!

One for all, all for me!

We are Revolting!

Gimme! 

They keep saying all this and more like it on different blogs. And in letters to the editors, forums, even twits twittering their tweeters … it’s all the same. People vociferously (means noisily, sort of) demanding “Equality”.

Time now that someone stood up (moi) and became the backlash:  No Equality! Let it be known that I, Argus of the grubby fur and rampant teeth, wish it widely known that I do NOT want to be equalised. I’m a round peg in a square hole and that’s just how I like it.

To make us all equal would be to make the vast reaches of mankind poorer. No? Poorer, not richer. I’ve damned well worked for the little I have, and with (or without) your permission I would dearly like to keep it. Less equal than some, more equal than others, but me.

As would, I imagine, anyone who’s ever worked and been paid and made savings and invested those savings wisely, so that they grew.

But still you bleat and scream like soals of shavage sharks for the blood of the Capitalist—which if I were an omnipotent fiend I would gladly grant you.

THINK ABOUT IT if you are capable: what if you got your wish? How about if all the wealth (that includes every penny you’ve got too, you know) were gathered up into one big heap, and while swarms of accountants do the sums swarms of others of us gather the leftovers of us and herd us all into lines … then when the sums are done we file past and are each given our ‘fair share’ of the wealth?

That’s a Fair share, Toots—means your fully equal portion, no more/no less, just the same as every other man,woman, child on the planet. Can’t be fair unless we’re all in the boat, can it?

Will you be richer, do you think, or will you be poorer?

PART TWO

Now that you’re looking at your newly bulging bank account and licking your lips thinking iPod, BMW, girls, season tickets, girls, yacht, girls, champagne/beer/rum, girls and perhaps some girls — how long do you think you will stay as equal as someone who (say) buys a sawmill, invests in an oilwell, purchases a wee farm or opens a hotdog stall on Mainstreet Littletown—?

Other than politics, pull, blatant force, inheritance, or politics (did I mention politics? Bugger, it’s germane so we’ll mention it again) politics; that’s how inequality started in the first place.

Within a few weeks most of us will be busted back to bare butts while just a few would be once again a bit more equal. In fact, Toots, that’s how it all started in the first place. But wait, it gets better—

—within a generation (two at the most) and ceteris paribus (go look it up, I dare you) we will be right back to where we are today. So—

I DO NOT WANT EQUALITY!

Get over it …

Damn. I didn’t know he was up and about at these ungodly hours—but methinks he might have a good point. Or not, whatever, I’m in no hurry to find out.

Is there any specific cure for insomnia, other than sleep? I think in my case it’s an overactive social conscience coupled with fury—all the more furious for my perceived political impotence. Hell hath no sleepless like a man motivated by incapable. For now … the mind never sleeps, so maybe a hot coffee might help—oops, belay that. Silly me.

“Maybe a wee tincture instead?”

He’s a trier, I’ll give him that. But no, I’d wake up about ten to a pair of accusing brown eyes staring at me reproachfully. She can get a lot of expression into those hazel flecks. Hold the rum.

“Getting old, are we?”

Sadly, he might be right. There was a time I could live all night and still turn to in the morning with a good day’s work and none the wiser. Not now. It was a different world then … I swear the skies were bluer, cool days crisper, the sun brighter as it struck diamonds from the wake billowing hugely under our stern as we worked up through thirty knots. Our speed made no difference to the huge albatrosses hanging serenely under feathery arms, just out of reach, regarding us with smiling eyes before peeling away in a glorious display of mastery of flight.

I could try going back to bed but give the thought away at birth. When in hyper-insomnia mode I toss and turn, spinning like a rotisserie chicken and almost tidal-waving the Spouse out of our non-waveless huge waterbed. So I get up and come to my computer to give her a chance—no point in both of us suffering my affliction.

From the other side of the room I hear the squeak of a cork being eased from the crock followed by a too loud POP then genteel gurgling noises; some of us have no qualms—thankfully he’s drinking from the crock itself so I shan’t have to explain a dirty glass in the morning. Anyway at last I’m almost beginning to feel sleepy enough to try again—

“What on earth are you doing up at this ungodly hour?”

I swallow my reflexive “Eek!” and don’t bother answering. She’d never believe me anyway.

She comes closer, blinking in the light, oblivious of The Sage sneaking quietly out behind her back and abandoning me to my fate. Thank heavens he thought to recork the crock but the aroma of Pussers Blue Label hangs in the air, a silent confirmation of the worst of her fears: Hubby’s a closet alcoholic.

In desperation I grab her, pull her close and clamp on an ‘A’ grade lip-lock. It works. Her knees buckle as always but now, thankfully, she knows I’ve not been drinking.

And there’s more than one way to fight insomnia …

This is the guy I have to share space with. Most of the time he’s out of sight and out of mind, too often he pops up unexpectedly when I’m struggling with some problem or another and I find his simple wisdom of immense help. Sometimes he’s a bloody pest. I refer to him as The Sage. I know when he’s about by the drift of pipe baccy on the air, but for whatever reason the Spouse can never smell it—which is a blessing because even when I haven’t had a wee tincture myself she can sense when he’s been into the rum, and of course it’s always me that gets ‘The Look’.

I guess we all have an albatross around our neck in one form or another, I suppose I should be thankful that he isn’t twins. He’s not here right at the moment which is good, I’d hate for him to read this—I’d never live it down.

I’m a self-educated man. I recently retired from my job as an agricultural labourer where the pay wasn’t much but the perks were sublime — all the fresh air I could eat whilst working mostly alone in the field; I adore quad bikes.

In the past I had several small businesses of my own, working my way up until I had a run in with the tax man (I was a week late with a form) and realised very quickly what I was up against. I disengaged as soon as I could, sold the business at that time and slothed out working for other suckers. Win/win, I worked as diligently for them as I worked for myself but they were a layer between me and the parasite government. My lifestyle wasn’t all that it might have been but I could live with that.

Now the parasitical systems are beginning to collapse worldwide and we are entering, as Confucius might be paraphrased:   “Interesting times”. It will be the proverbial bumpy road and an awesome amount of decent folks are going to be nuked. There will be violence as blind despair/desperation seeks outlet; all we realists can do is ride the wave or duck under it.

Once it has passed the survivors can rebuild.

But if we rebuild from the same old same old (more of the same) we set the scene for more eternal cycles of boom-bust-boom-bust-boom-utter collapse down the track. We need entirely new paradigms, new systems, out-of-the-box approaches.

My blogs are to outline both the problems and what I see as the solutions. If you read through you will react with shock/horror/dismay/outrage — the greater your reaction the worse you have been indoctrinated. Franklin said to the effect that there are only two realities in life, death and taxes. Succinct indeed. He’s my hero, I wish I’d read him decades earlier.

The problem is simple:  governance. Which means politics.

My solutions are simple, simplistic to some:  Get the politicians out of politics.

How so?

Read on. You won’t like it …