HOW ORIGINAL?

What do you think is going to happen to the  InterNETtual property rights of Artists & Writers & Musicians & Corporations?

Shaun Huston on Pop Matters asks,
"Is anything ever wholly original in the sense of having no references or debts to other creators?"

He goes on to write: rip! A REMIX MANIFESTO 
"is an entertaining, thoughtful, and politically committed articulation of what the filmmaker dubs the “copyLEFT”, that is, those who support a copyright regime that favors openness and access to cultural product – music, films, books – rather than exclusive rights for the commercial owners of such product, which is labelled the “copyRIGHT.

The copyRIGHT currently dominates intellectual property law in the US.


What happens to the vitality of a culture when content can be locked down, essentially, for perpetuity? What kinds of options for creativity, for distribution, are opening up for artists in the emerging digital/remix culture? 


Are organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America defenders of creator rights or dinosaurs gasping their last breaths?


This meta-commentary works as well as anything else in the documentary to underline the essential point that culture is made, not owned."  http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/102337-rip-a-remix-manifesto 

I found another review in the Montreal Gazette.

"A Florida day-care centre was recently busted for having Disney cartoon critters painted on its walls. The centre had to remove them or face the wrath of a seemingly Mickey-Mouse law. It is no stretch to suggest that Disney’s Steamboat Willie character owes its origins to and is a parody of Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill. Regardless, Disney was rather litigious when it came to taking action on those who may have infringed on his creations."
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/arts/story.html?id=e88e2492-f6cb-4059-ba2a-17e79ed736b7

SOPA "Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a United States bill introduced by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Provisions include the requesting of court orders to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with infringing websites, and search engines from linking to the sites, and court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to the sites. The law would expand existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, imposing a maximum penalty of five years in prison. A similar bill in the U.S. Senate is titled the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA)."
Wiki

A decade ago we all watched the music & recording Industry fall asleep at the wheel as online "piracy" exploded. Steve Jobs came up with iTunes but most bands need to license their song for a commercial and go on tour to make money now. The days of getting royalty cheques in the mail aren't what they used to be. This documentary looks at how the US once brazenly ignored the rights of foreign authors to subsidize and promote American authors...the same situation that exists today in places like China.

Can some sort of compromise be reached or can this genie ever be jammed back in the bottle and corked? 

A BUNCH OF THINGS

A Screech of Gulls...

a Murder of Crows or a Parliament of Owls. I've always wondered who decided these creative collective nouns of animal species? You have to admit that some of them are remarkably perfect & self explanatory.

Here are a few of my favorites:
Implausibility of Gnus,
Dazzle of Zebras,
Scold of Jays,
Romp of Otters,
Charm of Hummingbirds,
Shiver of Sharks,
Cloud of Bats,
Pitying of Doves,
Array of Hedgehogs,
Unkindness of Ravens,
Exaltation of Skylarks,
Wake of Vultures,
Crash of Rhinos,
Parliament of Owls,
Ostentation of Peacocks,
Knot of Toads,
Flamboyance of Flamingos,
Tower of Giraffe,
Bloat of Hippopotamuses,
Prickle of Porcupines,
Gaze of Raccoons.

It would be fun to design a few collective nouns for various groups of Humans such as
a Plankwalk of Tea-Partiers,
a Spitball of Fox Newscasters,
a Brick of Black Bloc Protesters,
a Pustule of Paparazzi,
a Cocking of Gun Nuts,
a Lynch of Birthers,
a Weekend of Creationists,
an Ejaculation of Santorumites,
a Philandering of Gingrichists,
a Shifting of Obama supporters,
a Bewilderment of Ron Paulists,
a Capitulation of Romney supporters,
a Delusion of Michele Bachmannites,
an Absconding of Wall Streeters,
an Interruption of Telemarketers,
a Grandlarceny of CEOs,
a Spill of Big Oil Execs,
a Ransom of Lobbyists,
a Gist of Reporters,


You get the idea. Do you have some ideas or suggestions to add to the list?   

Learning From Mistakes

TOTALLY MADE-UP STORIES 
#1   August 1949, somewhere in America:

Shortly after penning the catchphrase,"Happiness is a warm Pussy", a struggling unknown cartoonist we'll call Charlie S. capitulated to the moral edicts of the church ladies on the editorial board of the local newspaper.

Charlie reluctantly changed the line to puppy and his beloved Mr Whiskers was turned into a dog called Snoopy...

and the rest is history.

Celeb Stalking Canadian Style

Dear Mr. Mercer,

As you can see from the photographic evidence I was not-so-subtle 'aboot' lurking during your shoot yesterday @ The Forks in Whateverpeg.
I am SO kicking myself for not properly introducing myself and thanking you for your contributions.  

I am chalking it up to being a bit too 'Canadian' and not harassing a celeb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Mercer 

I did however manage to summon a momentary bout of courage and request a quick pic and you were kind enough to accommodate a quickie with my wife who was absolutely thrilled!

I also mumbled a lackluster 'Happy Darwin Day' hoping to chat a bit, but I suspect that your hood muffled the sound and I know that you were trying to work. btw We had just watched you sloshing around the Bay of FUNdy in that jetboat.

Personally I think that you have the greatest job in Canada - http://www.rickmercer.com/ and you do not squander the opportunity to make us hewers of wood and drawers of water think 'aboot' what it means to be Canadian in the true Pearsonian sense of being Peacemaking eaters of Poutine...except for the fighting in Hockey thing which is the most obvious psychological leak in the national passive/aggressive psyche.

Most of my cyber-friends on Facebook and Blogger seem to be Merkins, Ozzies & Brits and they all especially enjoy your Talking With Americans bits. This year's Republican scapegoat offerings have been a godsend to the altar of Comedy. If only they weren't so frickin  scary. No child left behind my ass, now bananaman Ray (Atheist Nightmare) Comfort's "180" exposes young Merkins for not being able to pick Hitler out in a police lineup?

I can't help but notice how the interwebs has changed over the past few years. I'm particularly discouraged by the lack of focus and disintegrating level of concentration. The attention span & memory capacity of onliners is down to nanoseconds and the Powers That Be know it and use it to their advantage. SOPA is scary but everybody out there is LOOK SOMETHING SHINY ABOUT KIM KARDASHIAN!

I am concerned about everyone is being herded into the vortex of extremes..a fabricated forum of us or them/zero sum gain mentality that completely ignores the reality of the vast majority of the great unwashed being moderate in almost every part of their cosmology. The current Republican Candidate schmozzola is a perfect example. First of all, I'm embarrassed to admit that I know far more about the Republican Candidates than I do about the Canadian political landscape. Like all of the other boiling frogs, I'm suckered in by the outrageous uber- exposure of living next to the Elephant next door.

Like most Canadians I was deeply saddened by the death of Jack Layton..it was a real kick in the balls and a stab in the heart. The momentum and spirit of the 'Occupissed' insurrection dovetailed so perfectly with his ascent. It felt like the wind left the sails..much like 68 when Bobby and MLK were taken from the Americans..and then half the Boomers morphed from Hippies to Yuppies said the hell with it. 

In my heart of hearts I can understand how the average traditional person fears change, but like the proverbial boiling frogs the Conglomerates have submerged themselves in a pool of cognitive dissonance and tried to justify that the corporate lobbyist kidnapping of the political process is all for the better...give the 1%ers tax breaks and they'll create JOBS!

It's so out of control that Bill Moyers had to come back...he had a fantastic "HELLO!" interview with fallen-from-grace Bruce Bartlett this weekend.  http://billmoyers.com/segment/bruce-bartlett-on-where-the-right-went-wrong/ Mr. Bartlett also mentions how discouraging it is that people seem to be unable to read an entire magazine article and Moyers mentioned that people are unwilling to accept facts (the new "F" word) if they interfere with their belief-system...the age of compromise and forming an opinion based on facts seems doomed.

Okay You know all of this, I'm starting to ramble.
Listen I just wanted to thank you for stirring the pot so that some of the boiling frogs might get uncomfortable enough to jump out! Another byproduct of the corporatization of the lamestream media is that more and more of us ordinary citizens are relying on your type of program to cut through the bullshit and soften the truth about how screwed up the system is, with humour anchored by a huge dose of wtf common sense. 

So thank you. Hopefully you receive plenty of positive feedback.
I hope that you realize how much your efforts are appreciated, and keep up the good fight.
The next time I see you I'm going to give you a BIG hug!
Sincerely eh!,
Donn 

P.S. Let's hope that the 'Occupissed' Movement reaches the boiling frogs. Cheers

Rattling The Swill Bucket

"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket"
George Orwell

We male homo escapeons might try to distance ourselves from the primordial impulses which control our wenis and influence 99.99% of our behaviour...but we can't....not really.

Like it or not Ladies, we men can blame the brain. Yes our ridiculous sex drive is mercilessly dictated by the three-pound lump of jello lodged between our ears. The thick skull houses the 200,000 year-old monkey-brain which helped our species escape a period of drastic climate change that ravaged our once edenic& verdant bithplace, the African Savannah.

Fast forward to the present day age of incomprehensible miracles such as the world wide interwebs, mapping the human genome, and Hollywood suits green-lighting re-makes of 70s & 80s movies that nobody really liked the first time around...
and here we are..
still slaves to our apeman cravings.


I present as evidence of our anthro-psychological mindcuffs exhibit A: a simple car commercial.
Perhaps you've seen it?
How I love the catchy song Tightrope by Janelle Monae
you can listen to her video for the song here>
 *  
Mm-mm-MM!

and now here is the car commercial >!



Listen to all the benefits of owning this vehicle...
interspersed with the now ubiquitous jumpcut imaging of young people on the cusp of having it all. WOW!
But wait?

There is one shot 40 seconds in that every wenis owner from 12 to 90 remembers..
BAM...
it's only on for a single second...
and it has nothing to do with driving the car.

It's this cute girl in repose enjoying a carefree moment at the beach..

Actually most guys don't even notice that there is a Dude sitting behind her?
I didn't.

Now we all know that male humans crave a mindnumbingly low standard of needs, wants and desires... and therefore sex sells. 
I suppose that as a former TV spot writer/producer I may scrutinize Ads a smidge more than most folks, but most of the comments about this spot are asking about that girl. 

Perhaps the male sex drive is the achilles' heel..it is regularly used to destroy Kings, capture Spies and snag the tall good-looking guy down the street with the great job that's married to what's-her-face?.

We "Y" chromers and our seemingly endless supply of fertilizer..enough to effortlessly impregnate bajillions of females and re-populate our own planets...we're all virtually powerless to deflect either subliminal or blatant sexual messages.

It's not fair...ladies you should point fingers at the evil advertising wizards who are manipulating  our evolutionary monkey-see, monkey want-to-do brain!

This might be the greatest car in the world, but 99% of the hetero men will remember this one second flash of this cute girl in the Ad, and maybe even the name of the vehicle.

If Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket, this Orwellian pronouncement works on so many levels.
Rattling the stick indeed!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I thought I'd post this video of Paul McCartney rehearsing 'Maybe I'm Amazed', it was a tribute to his wife Linda.

Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995, and died at the age of 56 in 1998. Lady McCartney would have turned 69 last month!



I couldn't help but notice how Paul's face lights up when he turns to her.

TWO PATHS!?

I always wondered aboot a particular line in Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven,  a sprinkling from the May Queen? Apparently it's "spring clean"!

DOH! 

"Two Paths On The Wrong Track" was taken at dusk in Woodridge, Manitoba

Some dude on Yahoonswers wrote:

"Plant was deeply into Lord of the Rings at this time, so the May Queen was probably Galadriel, like the lines "all that glittered around her was gold", Lothlorien having golden leaves.
Frodo and his bunch reached there in spring, and were on a mission to "clean out" the world of Sauron."

THE VUVUZELIAN TRAGEDY

DEM-ographics
"You cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot."
Frank Schaeffer

I recently received a fabulous book from a very thoughtful Blogger.

It's  The Daring Spectacle by Mark Morford...a "kick-ass, take-no-prisoners, laugh-out-loud-funny Liberal writer, thinker and cultural critic.

"Believe that you are part of a groundswell, a resistance, a seemingly small but actually very large impending karmic overhaul, a great shift, the beginning of something important and potent and unstoppable."

Here is an example of his insightful snarkasm:
How to talk to complete idiots

THE CYBERBUZZCLOG

A few years ago when I started blogging all of the activities seemed compartmentalized.

Then the INDUSTRIAL blogging started and soon every Newspaper and Magazine writer jumped on the bandwagon.

You couldn't swing a cat without hitting another blogger.

Now the same story/BUZZ/ newsfeed is overlapping the interwebs from blogland to every corner of the social mediasphere.
You see the "sameverything" over and over.

A correction is imminent.

The SUEnited States Of America

Congratulations America.
As the most litigious people on the planet your society is malfunctioning.
If you live in SUE S. A. perhaps you need a copy of this BOOK
..maybe a couple..one in the car, one at work, one at home.

Actually, you should sue the Government for not giving you a copy!!

This recent story perfectly demonstrates how governments and corporations are so worried about covering their ass, that this paranoia of facing liability seems to have superceded the last shred of decency and common sense.

These rent-a-cop so-called "guards" are just there for decoration and to stop the occasional suicidal person from jumping in front of a corporate train in a public area. They have orders to observe and report...
is that useless or what?

Seriously, how much longer can the average American afford to live under the ubiquitous gaze of ambulance chasing lowlife lawyers and their greedy willing accomplices?

What is up with these spineless security guards..
oh I know they are following their orders..
but for the price of three useless rent-a-cops they could probably afford a real cop that could have intervened, restrained, and maybe even tasered that psychotic little bitch into submission.

I can't wait to see photos of these three spineless wussy asshats..
how could all three of them stand there and watch a 15 year old girl get kicked in the head...
especially since she ran over to them and asked for protection?

Here is an American Dude who sued Guiness Book Of World Records for being named the most litigious person in the world.

Unbef*ckinglievable!

PEOPLE GET READY

   There's a-Palin comin'.. 

You don't need no baggage
might as well hop onboard 
All you need is fate
to hear the disaster hummin'
Don't need no GOP ticket
you just thank, you just thank the Lord

DIMINISHING MARGINAL RETURNS

In a fixed production system (blogosphere) with fixed and variable inputs (time left on Earth and decaying attention spans) there will be a point beyond which each additional blog post yields smaller and smaller interest and gratification (work to fun ratio).

So now I'm  off to try Twittering for a month.

I was FaceBooking during January and it's a great site that is incredibly under-utilized by the great unwashed.

The vast majority of users just want to keep it "Lite" and talk about themselves and their day...about once a week? 

Most of the time I found it very hard to contain myself and adhere to the 90s style netiquette...knowing that the rellies and neighbours are staring blankly at your blather.

After spending years in the blogosphere, it just felt like nobody knew what to do with this forum (except the Bloggers) and those infernal f*cking applications/games suck the last drop of oxygen out of the room.

I guess that people go there to relax and get away from bloggers.

So now I'll see if Twitter is anything more than a glorified link site.

I've been there for years

but since I'm not much of a celebrity stalker, or plugging a book, I haven't really bothered to give it a chance.

HOW THE MIGHTY HUV FAWWEN

Wom monff waatah an Tiffah Wooffs if sti miffing!

Pehfohawy, I donh watth Goff, tho I don weawy cah.

wah-effa?

Ah wed thumweh tha heeth hettin fum new fwunt teef..

juth wi awl tha hawhee hayherth do.

Buh Tiffah Wooffs wuth tha bihheth fawebwity ohn tha pwanet.

Na hif hoody-thoo-thooth imath haf bin ahithewated, an a moth of hith thontheths haf weft ham hi ahn dwy.

Buh Goff neeths hum fo tha wateenths, tho I ethpeth ha be bah in spwing.

Wy do we ethpeth tho muth fwum mihawoneh fawebwiteeth anywaaf?

Tha ohwy humah beweenf juf wike uff!

WHY IS YESHUA'S BIRTHDAY A MYTHTERY?

Hmm, have you ever wondered why people celebrate Yeshua ben Yosuf's birthday in the middle of freakin' winter?

Call me crazy, but if you're planning to convince others that the turning point in the history of the entire universe was the miracle birth of a saviour, not only would it be the worst kept secret of all time, it would have probably been a good idea for someone to write down the actual day..
just sayin'?

Anyhoo, Yeshua's actual birthdate is as unknowable as the reason he waited in outer space during the millions of years of human evolution?
It's almost as if he spun the Earth, closed his eyes, and decided to drop in wherever his finger landed.

The best historical and scholarly guesstimaters tell us that Yeshua was prolly born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem, during April in the year 5 B.C. (Before Christ)..Got that?

December seems totally goofy because Yeshua prolly wasn't born after Rosh Hashana, which falls at different times during our "Julian" September because in Israel,  this is when the flocks came down out of the pastures and mountains and stayed in stables.

C'mon, you remember the quaint part of the story aboot the Shepherds who were out pretending to watch their flocks by night. The shepherds were totally amazed when an angel appeared before them and said Fear not, for I bring you great tidings of glad joy!

Here is my conception of what Glad Joy and her "great tidings" may have looked like.

Unfortunately, we're stuck with December 25th because of Constantine the Grrrrrreat!
aka Caesar-Flavius-Valerius-Aurelius-Constantinus-Augustus, who became sole ruler of  the Holey Roman Empire in 323.

Constantine's half-assed conversion to Christianity is debated by many scholars, however, he selected December 25th to celebrate Christmas because

A: it was a very calculated, politically-astute, manouever to circumvent Sol Invictus and overshadow the weeklong celebrations of Christianity's main rival,  Mithraism.
Along with their own pantheon of Roman Gods which they pretty much stole from the Greeks, the Romans had also enjoyed a long standing worhsip of Mithras, the Persian Sun god...
so basically just changing Sun to Son geddit?

B: plus the week ending Dec. 24 was the celebration of Saturnalia, which also wasn't very appropriate for baby Yeshua's birthday party due to the drunken debauchery and fertility rites which must have been super fun.

In closing we need to remember that Constantine 1 the Great is also famous for  
>being a Christian Saint and revered for his contributions to Christianity
>feeding defeated kings and their soldiers to the beasts in the amphitheater,
>decapitating and parading the head of rival Maxentius before sending it off to warn the "haters",
>poisoning his eldest son Crispus,
>and having his wife, the Empress Fausta, boiled to death at the request of his mother.

What a guy!
I hope that his helps.

TIGER LIES AT  3 UNDER
T'is the Season for Oversharing and this year jolly Saint Schadenfreude delivered a real "OMG" present to those less fortunate.

Yes this year ubiquitous Billionaire-Boy-Scout-Brand Tiger Woods went to naughty from nice and now he is having his nuts roasted on a very open fire.

Billionaire celebrity Eldrick Tiger Woods may be the best golfer that ever played the game, but why does the great unwashed expect guys like him to be perfect role models too?

Our society's ridiculous slathering worship of professional celebathletes, which should NOT include f*cking Golfers anyway, is just plain stupid. 

I am totally bewildered that our culture rewards genetically gifted entertainers with such ludicrous amounts of money and adulation. Hello, they are playing games? They should pay US to go watch them! 

Sports is much more than a substitute for War. Sports is a slick spectacle designed to distract the great unwashed from their mundane work-a-day lives.

Sports is supposed to replace the randomness of LIFE with a nobler more honest version that has universal rules that apply to all of the players...Yes, a level playing field.

Not to mention that there are referees and judges who, unlike our assortment of gods, actually interfere in the moment and hand out cautions, penalties, evictions, and even suspensions. There are Rules.

Owners, Agents, Employees, and the plethora of Merchants all really just want to make money by selling us tickets, beer, and salty snacks, it's a business. 

Unfortunately for young boys it's a real-life hero psychological imprinting mechanism. A role model factory of dreams.

But in the end, it's just a game, and now, another prefabricated "hero" has just shanked a few too many in the bush.

Who am I kidding?
The other post is too long..it's Friday!

Greeod is Good

IN GREEOD WE TRU$T

I watched the CARD GAME on Independent Lens/PBS the other night.
Did any of you see it? 
Let me begin with the premise that I suppose that a Free Market could in theory work fairly well if it was executed on a level playing field and people were able to manage their finances.

My Grandparent's Generation witnessed the Great Depression and didn't buy stuff until they had saved up enough money to do so. By the time that my Parent's Generation came around credit cards made it easier to get stuff before they could afford it.

My Generation wants everything (far more than they actually need) yesterday and now most of us can only dream of actually owning anything other than a bit of highly volatile equity.

The American Economy is the world's largest and most influential financial marketplace (for a few more years anyway) so for the time being, we cannot ignore it.

The recent financial landmine that Middle America flung itself upon was totally predictable... and yet We The People and their lobby-fed representatives, still let the "Banks" and their various tentacles, do whatever the hell they want.
WHY?

I've come to the conclusion that there are three main factors.
Fawlty Faith, the mirage of a Free Market, and unbridled Avarice. 
All one needs to do is look at the slogan on their one Dollar bill, "In God We Trust". Which should be changed to GREEOD?

For starters, atleast half of all Americans believe that Jesus is in charge of their finances. Like it or not, because so many American citizens adhere to their Faith above and beyond their Military Funding led Democracy, the USA is a defacto theocentric entity much like other Monotheistic states like Iranistan, which they despise.

One of the most perplexing situations is the average American's inexplicable addiction to the indoctrinated, ludicrous, notion  that the Creator of the Universe established the USA as the pinnacle of his plan for mankind.
Good Ole Manifest Destiny.

Yes, all 6,000 years of Human History has been Divinely premeditated and purposefully arranged for these "special" people at this precise moment in the Space/Time continuum.

Another dangerous part of this equation is that the guardians of the Free Market, like former Fed Grand Poohbah, Alan Greenspan, and the others before him, adhere to the notion that Capitalism cannot fail, because the forces of the Free Market will always correct itself. You can bet your bottom dollar on that and take it tothe Bank ;) 

Like the "Corporation", the Free Market is a living entity which is theoretically failsafe...so they fervently adhere to letting the chips fall where they may..what could possibly go wrong?

The other factor which is the glue holding it all together is pure Avarice.

Who can forget the great scene in the film Wall Street when Gord Gekko delivers his moving speech to the shareholders..
Greed is Good.

We hold these TRUTHS to be self evident, that Coveting thy Neighbours sh*t is the very foundation upon which the entire Economy exists. It's the American Dream to have way more sh*t than the Jones. 

For the chosen, exponential unlimited Government-Free growth is the Holy Grail at Ground Zero..this preposterous mixed-market governmentally tainted model would have never even be considered had the Great Depression mysteriously appeared.
Gee, how did the concentration of Capitalists enjoying unlimited-unregulated freedom to prey upon the public ever go wrong?

Surpassing the Jones, fuels the great unwashed to strive to have it all and then some,...atleast until the Rapture. I suggest purchasing this book..
How to profit from the coming rapture   

Rapturenomics 101!


It is backed up by the ridiculous Prosperity Gospel, which in itself is antithetical to the original proponent who was made famous for throwing the money changers out.
Doesn't anyone recall that bit about the Love of Money being the root of all evil? 
 

Don't worry about buying food tomorrow, or the surprise jump in your credit card rates, or your house being confiscated because you defaulted on your loans, no problemo...
GREEOD IS GOOD!


The Free Market is the living incarnation of GREEOD...
IT's will be done.

Cognitive Dissonance means simultaneously holding two contradictory ideas...ie both God & Greed are good.

As frustratingly obvious as this is, the Banks, that bailed-out Billionaire Club who gave themselves Billion$ in bonuses for f*cking up the economy & pooching the public, got a Get Out Of Jail card because what if they they had to pay for their mistakes like you or I do?

They'll take their glove and bat home and then nobody will get to play so nyeh!! 

Why don't the Americans storm the Bastille?
Why do they tolerate an Industry that preys upon them and then unbelievably has the gall to keep their bonus and and ask for a bailout?
It's abso-f*cking-lutely astonshing is what it is?


When the housing bubble burst the reigning Republicans had managed to gift the Banks with the keys to the candy store and nobody was monitoring them.


The Banks thrive on victimizing the Mr & Mrs Joe Sixpack who live paycheque to paycheque and who are the least able to withstand any bumps in their finances.

The Banks allowed these people to live on overdraft, get "free" credit cards, and over-mortgage their homes by 125%...so that they would rack up a new huge pile of debt on the cards which were borrowed against their over-valued homes to pay the cards off.

Woo-Hoooo!

Half of them believe that the Almighty is in charge of their finances because GOD loves them more than any other people in history.
I won't bore you with my usual litany of unanswerable questions..
such as..

Oh I don't know, WHY on Earth would GOD wait until the 1600s to plop his favorite folk in the already inhabited New World? Why would he intervene in human affairs long after we had been mucking about destroying local biospheres and murdering each other for hundreds of thousands of years?
Actually Millions of years if you want to get technical.

When the black-hearted professional Bank Lobbyists were interviewed on the program my blood began to boil. They said that "the People" are to blame for the glitch...the Banks didn't do anything wrong.
Which is frustratingly true.

This Generation knows nothing about saving their pennies until they can afford to purchase something.

So the perfect storm, this triumverate of Greed, God, and Entitlement, triumphed over the original parsimonious Puritan ethos. How ironic is that?

Do not be surprised if this house of cards folds like a cheap carnival tent and the "money" moves offshore to the East for good...
the East holds most of Uncle Sam's personal debt that he has racked up buying enough Military Weapons to kill every living human being tenfold. 
Another correction is imminent and it will be of Biblical proportions.

Unless?
Here's your chance to offer some sound, practical, financial advice...
like save string, start using public transit, and bring a bag lunch to work.

Go for it...

PRINCE CHARLING

Error to the throne Prince Charles, is here in the Colonies to settle a delicate political matter.  Charles has a bone to pick with our sexy Governor General Michaëlle Jean.

Apparently our delightful "GG" Michaëlle Jean, (pronounced Mick-ale Jzuhn) misspoke when she told foreigners abroad that she was Canada's head of state.

I forget now, but I think that the head of state is either the Queen, or the Governor General, or both, or maybe the Prime Minister or the Minister of Fisheries?
I'm not certain if that's ever been decided? 

(*smuggling peanuts is Cockney slang for visible nippleage)

I'm kidding.

The title rightly belongs to Prince Charles's Mumsies, Queen Elizabeth,
who is QUEEN of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Uranus & Saturn.

This week whilst visiting the Colonies at the pleasure of Canadian taxpayers, Charles met with our GG "Micky", as he calls her, to sort out this unpleasantness and secure his future as King of all those countries.

He will become KING providing that he can somehow outlive his mother who also happens to be the 13th richest Royal in the world @ $400MillionUS.

There have been other Charles in charge...

for instance..

The "third" bonnie King Charles was a foreign poseur and pretender to the throne..
unlike King Charles the Spaniel who ruled England for over 15 years until he was tragically run over by horse drawn carriage?

Did you know that when and if Charles ass-ends to the throne, he has the option of becoming either;
King Charles 3rd,
George 7th,  
King Phillips Screwdriver 
or better yet,
King Bloody Arthur!?

He can pick any one of his names?
Look, don't ask me how the bloody thing works?

That being said, Charles is prolly most famous for being a bit-of-a-Ladiesman.

To be fair, the poor bastard has lived his entire life under a microscope in a fish bowl and therefore his troubled romantic sexscapades have been fodder for the tabloids for 5 decades.

Whom amongst us can forget his Fairy Tale Wedding to Princess Dian-er way back in 1881?

Diana of course referred to his family as "the Germans" because Charles Phillip Arthur George nee-Mountbatten "WINDSOR",
is descended from the European Royal Household and Accountancy Firm of Oldenburg-Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg & Glücksburg.

Nevermind that twaddle.

What most people will remember of Charles is his lovelife, especially those well-documented phone transcripts.

Do you recall those exquisitly romantic, sweet-nothings he made to his then secret consort and now much maligned new wife, Camilla, Douchess of Cornhole?

btw: Camiller's great, great grandmother was the consort of Charles's great-great grandfather AND
according to her Wiki bio, that she is related to Celine Dion and Madonna..
9th cousin once removed..isn't that special?  :)


Transcript: Future King of England to then secret lover Camiller Parky'er Bowler:
"I want to feel my way along you, all over you and up and down you and in and out.
Oh God, I'll just live inside your trousers or something --
it would be much easier."

Camiller:
"Oh, you're going to come back as a pair of knickers?"

Future King O' England:
"Or, God forbid, a Tampax.
Just my luck!"

Camiller:
"You are a complete idiot!
Oh, what a wonderful idea."

Now the 18 1/2  members of the Canadian Monarchist Society may have their knickers in a knot over who is getting "head" of state, but as this article  in "The Guardian" suggests, most of the Canadians polled would rather have a Loon.