Balls

Kittens as a writer I can selfishly say that out of the great big sack of goodies that human mammals have invented since we stopped being monkeys and started doing other things, words and language certainly have to rank high up there as one of our cooler inventions. You can’t put a price tag on them, nobody owns them outright, you can use them however or whenever you want and nobody and not even small pack of men who think that an invisible tyrant in the sky will give them a bunch of virgins if they fly a plane into some words can knock them down. Words can’t be seen but they are stronger than anything mankind has yet to build or try to blow up and knock over.

Yup. Words are pretty fuckin cool and if you truly appreciate words and eventually grasp the mechanics of them sooner or later you are going to stand in absolute awe of the way they are sometimes used and abused. They are rather like blues music that way.It’s not really enough to know which notes are blues notes, but why they needed to be played and mostly very frighteningly, why middle class fat bulbous white men should never ever be allowed to play them.

Being both an atheist and non-American can have both it’s advantages and disadvantages. It comes in handy when travelling to other parts of the word and when somebody asks where you are from you can say “I’m Canadian.” It’s always lovely when suddenly you notice the angry look melt away from the person who asked and suddenly they start speaking to you as an adult and not a simple minded bratty child with pudding on his shirt. It really comes in handy not being American and you find yourself dining in a restaurant and when you tell them you are Canadian suddenly you are usually guaranteed that the chef won’t jerk off in your entree. I say usually because it isn’t truly for certain since just because somebody is a good neighbor who keeps their lawn mowed and picks up their dog shit, if you still live in a bad part of town like North America people should still generally treat you with mistrust.

If you’re the kind of atheist like myself who doesn’t think that atheist should be guilty of the same sort of behaviour of religion like Richard Dawkins and his sheepole followers who like to prance around telling people what to believe and what to think you just tend to go it peace. You see the whole things an outsider and just look at religion as a scene of futility much like jerking off the dog so you can feed the cat. You don’t really think it should be taken away because people should be free to believe what they choose, but you also don’t really think it should be tax free state sanctioned or encouraged either. Kind of like child rape. You just sort of wish it will eventually go away so we can get on with other abusive and rapey things.

With all of this in mind, if you are going to take words, the outsider view from the cheap seats on America and religion and want to watch them all magnificently collide you have to be wonderfully baffled by the sheer terrifying abuse of the privilege of stupidity that is the ground zero mosque. It’s like watching Don Draper go completely bat shirt Death Star.

So 70% of Americans think that this mosque that is going to be built not actually at ground zero but several blocks away in the opposite direction is a bad idea. They call it an insult because several years ago a few numbering less than a baseball team wanted to prove to the world that their divine forgiving and wise invisible man in the sky had a bigger dick so they killed thousand of people to prove it.

A few years later we all know how that well that worked out. Somebody changed wrote a song about a boot in an ass, there were freedom fries, thousands more people get killed, late night talk show hosts have the best running joke they could ever hope for and so on. Thankfully during this whole mess sanity prevailed and obese American could go back to order super sized orders of french fries again presumably because the extra syllable in freedom versus french was putting too much of a strain on their double chins and there were too many whip lash casualties at the drive thru windows. Later this was to become part of a massive cover up as to why the insurance industry failed, but I digress.

Out of the 100% of Americans scampering around down there 70% or them want to make sure nobody ever build a mosque anywhere ever again just in case it may possibly offended somebody, 80% of those same people believe in a god. They think he performs miracles, they believe in angels, cures the sick, heals the blind, has a pet easter bunny and that once he created everything, everywhere that has ever been and always will be. Most of those 80% also think that man and dinosaurs lived together on the earth at the same time like the Flinstones. It seems perfectly reasonable to creationists that a man who would have been roughly 4’7″ back then would saddle up a triceratops and ride him like a coin operated pony ride. They also think it makes perfect sense that a small man could boldly walk up to a triceratops weighing several tons and that the animal wouldn’t simply eat him and his family.

Now that we’ve settled where the vast majority of the people who have opinions on this mosque also keep the true north compass aimed at for other things that they tend to have opinions about regarding science, carbon dating and pesky fact checking, we should probably notice a few words that all of them are very fond of. I say all because if there is one thing just like words that every society uses and understands is money and it’s written all over theirs. In God We Trust.

In god we trust is on every bit of American currency and it’s there because their founding forefathers put it there on purpose. It doesn’t say something actually useful or even try to include other people like “in god we hope” it just says in god we trust. This isn’t very hard to believe because these were also the same men who said “all men are created equal.” These men were also wealthy white land owners who kept stables of slaves (in Jeffersons case he also enjoyed raping several of them) who despite what their history books say about leaving their home lands so they could be free, were tossed out of their countries because of their upsetting religious puritanical beliefs and practices. If you have forgotten that fact and the words money talks and bullshit walks remember that still to this day governments don’t ask rich tax payers to get the hell out unless they are causing severe civil distress. Much the same way Osama Bin Laden was banished from his homeland of Saudi Arabia. Yeah, just like that.

The Americans know so much about money that in most ways they only barely qualify as technically being called a country and they’ve certainly lost the right to being called a super power country. They haven’t won any wars all on their own ever, nobody really gives a toss what they think (for good reason) and we’ve seen proof that if you want to upset them and make them sad all you have to do is just say you are going to maybe do something that they don’t all totally agree with and also don’t do themselves. In short America is just a cable television provider with an admittedly impressive gift shop.

People with enough money that says in god we trust all over it, and enough political clout to buy some time on one of their cable news infomercial channels are screaming themselves red white and blue that these people shouldn’t be allowed to build a building near where another building used to be. Other people with lots of money that says in god we trust all over say they want to build a place near what is now the words most depressing dog park and doesn’t even have a water slide or anything fun to do and go on television saying it is they’re right to do so. One side who believes in a talking snake says no and the other side who believes that bad people get 72 virgins as a reward for murder says yes, and nobody asked the virgins how they feel about the whole damn thing. Even the snake is keeping his mouth shut which itself is amusing because if you believe their comic book, a snake and a big apple started this whole mess to begin with when humans were teaching velociraptors how to fetch, sit and roll over.

Sitting out here in the cheap seat being neither religious or American you tend to see things with perspective. Immediately you notice that people believe some pretty goofy things and are too lazy to bother questioning what their slave owners have been telling them for thousands of years. You also notice from afar that if this mosque is built it’s going to do just what every other building does in that neighbor hood. It’s going to make lots and lots of money and all of it is going to say “in god we trust” all over it. Naturally they will think it’s their god, and their god only.

(It’s real Kittens and here’s proof)

It will be alongside strip bars, porno shops, dollar stores and fast food chains. Popeyes chicken uses only halal meat and nobody gets pissed off at that when they want a massive heart crushing sandwich for lunch near ground zero. They also don’t complain about the muslim guy who sells cheap house wares manufactured in China, a Communist country just like Cuba which Americans aren’t allowed to visit and for damned sure nobody wants to see the strip clubs disappear. The girls who work there sure ain’t virgins but if you tip them well, they’ll dress like one. Maybe even a Catholic school girl.

(No, I didn’t spend at least an hour looking at this in the privacy of a dark corner okay?)

You also tend to notice a great big dressing vacant lot where the World Trade Center used to be. Nobody has lifted a finger to build anything there since it went down and it looks like an amusement park if it was designed by a Soviet Russian novelist. You can’t even walk into the middle of it and find a guy with a hot dog cart, halal meat or otherwise. A new building would create jobs, be a part of the healing process that these folks just can’t seem to be bothered getting on with and it would generate tax revenue which would be a god thing in a shitty economy. Oh wait….it would generate not just some taxes, it would generate a fuck load of taxes.

If this mosque gets built it’s going to have one thing in common with every other business (and that’s all faith is, it’s a business just like Tony Robbins or The Muppet Show) and it’s going to make money. Lots of it. Unlike those other business though, it’s not going to have to pay any taxes. Places of worship are tax exempt. Millions of dollars saying in god we trust will be made and in the rare case of churches, mosques synagogues and all of the other big brand name cults, it’s about the only time money and those words are actually fitting. It’s a pretty sweet deal they have. A place of worship can set up their slave barn anywhere they want and in this case a really damned expensive chunk of real estate and not have to cough up any of their loot in taxes.

Thousands of years have passed and people are still bitching, fighting and killing each other over who’s god has the biggest prick. Or is that which prick has the bigger cock? Maybe it’s which cock is or isn’t a total cunt. Oh fuck it, at least they all agree that who or whatever their god is, they at least trust them enough to put it on something important, like money.

If the people who didn’t want a mosque there really wanted to fairly make it go away and not be a howling batch of racist bigots like their for fathers, they could simply change one law and make them pay taxes. If the mosque had to pay taxes their budget would go through the roof (or minaret in this case) and not even Allah could save them. They’d fire the bulldozing magic carpet and set up shop somewhere less expensive just like any other business.

Naturally this will never happen because then you’d have to tax every church, mosque and synagogue and the whole problem begins again. What is good for one group isn’t good for another, even when the product is an invisible male.

One thing is for certain though. If they ever did pull off such a field levelling feat everyone would want their god printed on every bodies money and since that couldn’t logistically happen they’d have to settle on something easy, catchy and some words that were meant for all of us by all of us. A nice tidy slogan that couldn’t even start a cola war. Something like “In Humans We Trust, Not Because We Want To, But Because We Have To…At least A little Bit.”

Okay so it’s not very catchy, but I’m working on it.

Keep Your Coins, I Still Want Change….

Woooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kittens I have a small admission to make.

I left the Mighty Keep Your Coins, I Want Change deep in the ground in the cemetery. Dead but not forgotten, until today. It seems I foolishly didn’t read the sign properly and buried it in a pet cemetery because a few thousand of you still read it every day.

But since you keep coming back, it’s back on. So stayed tuned tomorrow for the brand new spankin Keep Your Coins, I Want Change!!!

Signing Off

Well my Kittens there is a saying that goes “all good things must come to an end.” I have lived a long life. A life of 12 men and I still have no fucking idea what the hell that is supposed to mean. I only wish whoever came up with this saying was still alive so I could beat them with a burlap sack full of dull meat cleavers.

If things are good they they shouldn’t end. You should ride them till THE end, not A end.

But with this rusty old saying in mind I shall say however that things here at the Mighty Keep Your Coins are not good and indeed coming to an end. I’m putting a bullet in it and killing it off forever.

I was going to give it a massive make over and keep the torch burning but instead I decided to take a page from my personal life and start fresher, better and all over again for ground zero….but not the 9/11 kind. Again, like my personal life, KYC had been slapped together now and then and was on the decline and since anywhere between a few hundred to over a thousand of you folks read it every day I thought that you and I all deserve way better and the very best so that my Kittens….is what you’re going to get.

I’m a freelance writer which means I don’t blog for fun or because I think my few ambient thoughts should be muttered into the world as a faint attempt to give me the illusion of some sort of depth. I think most of those people have too much time on their hands, usually have nothing much to say and they say it far too loudly and often. A note to you people. Please stop. Nobody cares about the daily minutia of your lives. It’s annoying and your writing stinks worse than a anchovies vagina.

I get paid for this bullshit (usually very poorly sometimes with booze or slightly used weapons) but paid just the same. With that in mind it’s time to ratchet this shit up one big notch.

So my Kittens hold back your tears, put the gun down and away from your heads and cease all of your cries and wails. As always, I am taking care of you so I am proud to announce that I have given man-birth to not one but two mightier and vastly superior blogs…….

THE DAILY SUMO and it’s bastard brother AARDVARK MAGAZINE.

The Daily Sumo is a new daily read that will take the place of Keep Your Coins, but far greater and with more columnists and Aardvark Magazine hopes to be the Saturday New York Times….if it woke up hungover and in a really bad mood. There’s even an editors page so you can keep up on readers favorites like the weekly mailbag section with our friend Darwin The Mule.

Basically they are the blogs that I have always wanted to read all in one place but just aren’t there…until now.

What can I say Kittens it’s been fun and I want to thank you all for reading Keep Your Coins, I Want Change….I really do. I still don’t think all good things must come to an end, but maybe we should take Frank Sinatras advice and always leave a party while it’s swingin instead.

Cheers folks, and be sure to head over to The Daily Sumo and Aardvark Magazine. I promise to give you all your moneys worth (you cheap bastards) and to keep you entertained.

Jeff~

Guess I’m Alright

Some damned fine stuff from Liverpool….and you don’t get to say that very often.

Killer Whale Kills Killer Whale Trainer On Purpose. Look Surprised!!

You know what hasn’t happened in a while my Kittens? It has been a few months since an animal in captivity who has been placed in captivity so that a few paying doughy nit wits can gawk at them while they perform tricks for human amusement has killed and eaten one of their trainers.

Geez I really wish another animal would tear into one of its handlers flesh and…….

Oooooh….goodie. Look at this!!

Caught on camera: Last moments of SeaWorld trainer seconds before ‘serial’ killer whale grabbed her ponytail and drowned her

Six-ton ‘rogue’ was involved in two other fatal attacks

Horrified spectators filmed a woman trainer as she fed a six-ton killer whale moments before he dragged her to her death by her ponytail.

After diving, the whale held Dawn Brancheau, 40, under water until she drowned at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida.

Tillikum the whale was still being allowed to perform at the park up until yesterday’s tragedy despite being involved in the deaths of two other people in attacks.

The theme park, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year, immediately suspended the show.

The attack happened at lunchtime yesterday when about 50 tourists stayed behind after the ‘Believe’ show to watch trainers feed the orcas.

There were conflicting reports over how Mrs Brancheau, who had worked for 14 years with killer whales as was one of SeaWorld’s most experienced trainers, was killed.

Close friend and Corporate Curator of Zoological Operations at SeaWorld Parks Chuck Tompkins, who has worked at the parks for 32 years, said ‘Dawn had very long hair and it was in a ponytail. From what we understand the ponytail brushed against the nose of the whale.

‘He grabbed her hair, pulled her into the water and held her under water until she drowned.’

It is not clear what will happen to the whale now, he said – though he added it was too early to say Tillikum would never perform again.

‘We need to re-evaluate the training procedures and protocols and obviously we’re going to make any changes we need to make sure that this never happens again,’ Mr Tompkins told the MailOnline.

‘We need to provide the safest environment we can for him – and we still need to investigate how to do that – he still needs to be maintained as an animal.

‘We’re going to physically and mentally take care of him. We haven’t had time to evaluate yet – we’re going to take a deep look and make sure we make the right decisions and make them with the utmost respect to Dawn and her family.

‘I think it’s too early to say that he won’t perform again.’

When asked why the whale had attacked, he replied: ‘I don’t have a good answer to that. I don’t know what was going through his head. These are wild animals and we try and prepare ourselves for all situations and this is one of those times when we don’t have an immediate answer.’

It is not the first time Tillikum has been involved in an attack. Nicknamed ‘Tilly’, he was blamed for the drowning of one of his trainers in 1991 when he was at Sealand in British Columbia.

Sold to SeaWorld as a stud in 1992, the whale was also involved in an incident when a homeless man’s dead body was found across his back in 1999.

Well now that certainly is good news isn’t it Kittens?

Tilly the killer whale may still be allowed to perform tricks for people who enjoy paying money to see would animals do tricks for their amusement.

I believe the score so far is Tilly the killer whale 3 – Humans 0.

It’s awesome when people are killed by animals they cage and exploit. It really is. The wilder the animal and more gruesome the death the better. When a bear who is forced to ice skate goes beserk and kills everyone it sees, I’m a happy guy. That is until somebody shoots the bear for behaving like a captive exploited abused wild bear. ure it is fairly easy to say “oh my sweet tap dancing Jesus how can anyone think a human being eaten by an animal is a good thing?”

It’s fairly easy actually. The animals are held in captivity and abused for human amusement and entertainment. That’s how.

It isn’t like these animals are being used as food, or testing out cures for cancer or even marine life research. They flop around like a fat guy getting out of a La-Z-Boy for another bucket of bacon nachos in a big fish tank and every once and a while when they act like the wild animals that they are and eat their oppressors, people are surprised.

There always arguments that animals in places like Sea World and all of those other animal amusement parks have been hurt or could not live in the wild because of their wounds.

That’s true. Many couldn’t. So why does that make them fair game for humans to teach them to swim around with paying customers and bounce bowling pins on their noses?

This story reported that the whales “trainer” was killed. It wasn’t a handler, health care provider or keeper, it was a trainer. A person who was employed to make a killer fucking whale do pet tricks like a poodle at a dog show.

There are also arguments that having these horrific displays are educational. This is partially true. Hopefully the paying crowd was educated after Tilly ate his trainer that pissing off killer whales is a bad idea.

Marine biology studies are slightly more intricate than just going to see a captive killer fish play with a beach balloon while you eat cheese popcorn and buy a souvenier t-shirt on your way to the next amusement park.

The American Academy of Underwater Sciences at The University of North Carolina Willmington doesn’t sell souvenier t-shirts featuring a dancing blowfish and they do not offer a snack bar platter for the students. The lessons also aren’t called “show times” and are actual marine biology.

In their own words;

What is Marine Biology?

The field of marine biology — the study of marine organisms, their behaviors, and their interactions with the environment — is considered one of the most all-encompassing fields of oceanography. To understand marine organisms and their behaviors completely, marine biologists must have a basic understanding of other aspects or “disciplines” of oceanography, such as chemical oceanography, physical oceanography, and geological oceanography. Therefore, marine biologists and biological oceanographers study these other fields throughout their careers, enabling them to take a “big picture” approach to doing research.

Related Career Titles

Agronomist Environmental Engineer Marine/Fisheries Worker Animal Scientist Environmental ProtectionMarine Geologist Aquaculture Farmer Ergonomist Marine Sales Aqua culturist Fish Hatchery Technician Marine Tourist Worker Aquarium & Museum Worker Fisheries Conservationist Merchant Marine Aquatic biologist Fishing Captain Water Transportation Worker Barrier Beach Manager Forester Microbiologist Bio-Engineer Genetic EngineerMining & Petroleum Industry Bio-Technologist Geographer Molecular Biologist Boat Builder & Repair TechHorticulturist Museum/Aquarium Admin.Botanist Hydrographic Survey Tech.Mycologist Chemical Oceanographer Industrial Marine Economist Naval Architect Meteorologist Limnological Technician Net Designer Coastal Resources Worker Marina Worker Oceanographer Commercial Fishing Engineer Marine & Coastal Consultant Parasitologist Coroner Marine

Bacteriologist Pharmaceutical Salesperson Ecologist Marine Biologist Port & Harbor Facilities Worker Science Teacher Marine Ecologist Zoologist Science Film MakerTest & Inspection Technician Wildlife Biologist Science Illustrator / WriterToxicologist Wildlife Resource Worker Shipbuilder/Repair Underwater Technician Salt Marsh Manager Soil Conservationist Veterinarian Science Laboratory Technician Sport fisher Water Quality Technician Marine Engineering Technician State Parks & Recreation Worker Fish Processor Marine Engineering Technician Commercial Inland Water Transportation Worker.

Notice that nowhere in that actual list was “audience member” mentioned and I strongly doubt anyone who witnessed this whale trainer being eaten will be running for the marine biology booth on career day.

It isn’t educational…it’s amusement and animals are being abused to provide it.

The story mentioned that they haven’t decided whether or no to let Tilly perform again so that it can earn more money for Sea World. I truly hope they do let Tilly put the blackface on again and perform a marine minstrel show. I hope Tilly let’s a little bit of time pass so that his “trainers” feel comfortable enough around him again to pat him on the head like a good little fish butler fetching his master a mint julip. Then I hope Tilly remembers how tasty trainer meat can be and leaps out of it’s fish bowl, into the crowd and trainers area and eats everybody in sight.

I also hope the other whales follow Tillys example, strap on the lobster bibs and rip the faces off of everyone last human spectator and trainer possible.

With any luck people might get the message that animals that are plucked from the wild and even though they may not be able to re-enter it due to injuries, don’t need to sing for their super by performing tricks and could be enjoyed just as much in an artificial environment for them to be allowed to swim around and just be animals. Nobody gets an education watching a whale in a pool tap dance, but a person would learn a few things watching animals be themselves and may pursue a career to learn more about them.

Until humans figure that out I have a few other career ideas for the folks who enjoy watching animals do tricks so they can laugh and gawk while saying things like “look honey….it’s a baboon in a tu-tu!!”

If it is such a wonderful idea I think these folks should apply for jobs as;

Bear Proctologist

Camel Sperm Milker

Yak Saddler

Rattlesnake Juggler

Shark Psychiatrist

Tarantula Groomer

Cobra Whisperer

Rhino Fluffer

Panther Deodorizer

Hippo Jockey

Kangaroo Feeder

Vampire Bat Milker

Mountain Goat Psychic

Moose Wrestler

Monkey Poo Catcher

Just a thought…

Flu Inc.

Kittens I have a couple of interesting facts for you today. The first fact is that 78 out of 34,011,000 equals 0.0002293375672576519%. The second is that 16, 000 of 6,804,600,000 is 0.00023513505569761634%.

Now you may be asking yourself if I have just offered you the odds of winning the 6/49 lottery. Those odds are actually 1 in 13,983,816 to win the full jackpot and send you to a real estate office so that you can buy and island and populate it with personal slaves.

Here are some other odds to put the first set of percentages into perspective, and yes…they are real.

Odds of bowling a 300 game: 11,500 to 1

Odds of getting a hole in one: 5,000 to 1

Odds of getting canonized: 20,000,000 to 1

Odds of being an astronaut: 13,200,000 to 1

Odds of winning an Olympic medal: 662,000 to 1

Odds of an American speaking Cherokee: 15000 to 1

Odds that a person between the age of 18 and 29 does NOT read a newspaper regularly: 3 to 1

Odds that an American adult does not want to live to age 120 under any circumstances: 3 to 2

Odds of injury from fireworks: 19,556 to 1

Odds of injury from shaving: 6,585 to 1

Odds of injury from using a chain saw: 4,464 to 1

Odds of injury from mowing the lawn: 3,623 to 1

Odds of fatally slipping in bath or shower: 2,232 to 1

Odds of drowning in a bathtub: 685,000 to 1

Odds of being killed on a 5-mile bus trip: 500,000,000 to 1

Odds of being killed sometime in the next year in any sort of transportation accident: 77 to 1

Odds of being killed in any sort of non-transportation accident: 69 to 1

Odds of being struck by lightning: 576,000 to 1

Odds of being killed by lightning: 2,320,000 to 1

Odds of being murdered: 18,000 to 1

Odds of getting away with murder: 2 to 1

Odds of being the victim of serious crime in your lifetime: 20 to 1

Odds of dating a supermodel: 88,000 to 1

Odds of being considered possessed by Satan: 7,000 to 1

Odds that a first marriage will survive without separation or divorce for 15 years: 1.3 to 1

Odds that a celebrity marriage will last a lifetime: 3 to 1

Odds of getting hemorrhoids: 25 to 1

Odds of being born a twin in North America: 90 to 1

Odds of being on plane with a drunken pilot: 117 to 1

Odds of winning a straight up on a single number in online roulette: 37 to 1

Odds of being audited by the IRS: 175 to 1

Odds of having your identity stolen: 200 to 1

Odds of dating a millionaire: 215 to 1

Odds of dating a supermodel: 88,000 to 1

Odds of writing a New York Times best seller: 220 to 1

Odds of finding out your child is a genius: 250 to 1

Odds of catching a ball at a major league ballgame: 563 to 1

Odds of becoming a pro athlete: 22,000 to 1

Odds of finding a four-leaf clover on first try: 10,000 to 1

Odds of a person in the military winning the Medal of Honor: 11,000 to 1

Odds of winning an Academy Award: 11,500 to 1

Odds of striking it rich on Antiques Roadshow: 60,000 to 1

Odds of getting a royal flush in poker on first five cards dealt: 649,740 to 1

Odds of spotting a UFO today: 3,000,000 to 1

Odds of becoming president: 10,000,000 to 1

Odds of winning the California lottery: 13,000,000 to 1

Odds of becoming a saint: 20,000,000 to 1

Odds of a meteor landing on your house: 182,138,880,000,000 to 1

Chance of an American home having at least one container of ice cream in the freezer: 9 in 10.

Chance of dying from any kind of injury during the next year: 1 in 1,820

Chance of dying from intentional self-harm: 1 in 9,380

Chance of dying from an assault: 1 in 16,421

Chance of dying from a car accident: 1 in 18,585

Chance of dying from any kind of fall: 1 in 20,666

Chance of dying from accidental drowning: 1 in 79,065

Chance of dying from exposure to smoke, fire, and flames: 1 in 81,524

Chance of dying in an explosion: 1 in 107,787

Chance that Earth will experience a catastrophic collision with an asteroid in the next 100 years: 1 in 5,000

Chance of dying in such a collision: 1 in 20,000

Chance of dying from exposure to forces of nature (heat, cold, lightning, earthquake, flood): 1 in 225,107

Chance of dying in an airplane accident: 1 in 354,319

Chance of dying from choking on food: 1 in 370,035

Chance of dying in a terrorist attack while visiting a foreign country: 1 in 650,000

Chance of dying in a fireworks accident: 1 in 1,000,000

Chance of dying from overexertion, travel or privation: 1 in 1,428,377

Chance of dying from food poisoning: 1 in 3,000,000

Chance of dying from legal execution: 1 in 3,441,325

Chance of dying from contact with hot tap water: 1 in 5,005,564

Chance of dying from parts falling off an airplane: 1 in 10,000,000

Chance of dying from ignition or melting of nightwear: 1 in 30,589,556

Chance of dying from being bitten by a dog: 1 in 700,000

Chance of dying from contact with a venomous animal or plant: 1 in 3,441,325

Chance of dying from being bitten or struck by mammals (other than dogs or humans): 1 in 4,235,477

Chance of winning a bingo game where 100 players manage four cards each: 1 in 100

Chance of dying from a mountain lion attack in California: 1 in 32,000,000

Chance of dying from a shark attack: 1 in 300,000,000

By now my Kittens you may be thinking that I have given you the chances of the likelyhood that you will be bitten by Dracula or that Jesus will return to earth and become your shoe shining butler.

Nope.

0.0002293375672576519% if the percentage of Canadians who have died from H1N1 in Canada during the 2009/2010 flu season and 0.00023513505569761634% is the percentage of people who have died from H1N1 globally during the same period of time.

That means 78 out of 34,011,000 people have died in Canada and 16,000 out of 6,804,600,000 people on earth caught H1N1 and bought the big banana.

This is what the World Health Organization, the media, our governments and even ourselves called an alarming pandemic and scared everyone over the edge with terror. You literally have a better chance of being hit by a meteor and then end up being sainted for it than dying from H1N1, but here is the really good news. The World Health Organization says you can all relax now, because the danger is over and you can now relax and enjoy your lives. Please adjust your trajectory accordingly.

H1N1 flu pandemic unofficially over for now;

February 24, 2010
Theresa Boyle

HEALTH REPORTER

While the World Health Organization says H1N1 has not peaked internationally, the pandemic is considered unofficially over in Canada.

“Clearly, in Canada, H1N1 is gone,” Dr. Michael Gardam, director of infectious disease prevention and control with the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion, said Tuesday.

“It doesn’t mean it’s gone forever, but it’s gone right now. There is really no flu around. That’s everywhere across the country,” Gardam said. Toronto Public Health closed the last of its mass vaccination clinics in January, but some physicians continue to offer the shot in their offices, said Dr. Barbara Yaffe, the city’s associate medical officer of health.

“Over the last while we have had zero to two to three cases reported a week,” she said.

The WHO’s emergency committee, composed of 15 experts, met Tuesday and said it’s premature to downgrade the global flu outbreak.

WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan will make the official announcement Wednesday, and governments and the public will be watching the wording very carefully.

Dr. Nancy Cox of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a member of the WHO emergency committee, said in an interview with Reuters that “it’s very, very difficult to get the wording exactly right.”

According to the WHO’s latest weekly update, H1N1 transmission persists in limited areas of eastern and southern Europe, South Asia, and in East Asia.

Officially, Canada is still in pandemic mode and won’t move away from level 6 on the alert scale until the United Nations agency does.

According to statistics from the Public Health Agency of Canada, visits to doctors by patients with flu-like symptoms spiked in late October.

Of every 1,000 doctor visits, about 113 were from patients with influenza symptoms.

“It peaked by Halloween, and by the end of December it was largely gone. Over the last two months it has been essentially nonexistent,” Gardam said.

A feared “third wave” won’t happen here since so many people now have antibodies against the virus, Gardam said.

Estimates show that 20 to 30 per cent of Ontarians got the bug, he noted. And according to the health ministry, 38 per cent of the population has been vaccinated.

Nevertheless, a similar strain is expected to come back as seasonal flu next fall. But much of the population will have the antibodies to fight it and a vaccine will be ready in time for flu season.

The H1N1 virus itself was not as lethal as officials first feared. Worldwide, it has been responsible for almost 16,000 deaths. In Canada, it resulted in 78 deaths and 1,488 hospitalizations.

Oh my that is uncomfortable isn’t it Kittens?

The World Health Organization says the pandemic that was never a pandemic is over and all of you may now enjoy the tasty side effects of the flu shots they ordered everybody to go and have stuffed into them.

The media got everyone into a nice frothy terrified state and boosted their ratings and some very rich people made a crapload of money selling the flu shot to countries and patients. Even the very source of this story, The Toronto Star newspaper also warned us that Coco Rice Krispies aren’t a cure for H1N1.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

H1N1 Vaccine Manufacturers: Stocks That May Soar

Here is a list of H1N1 vaccine (swine flu shot) manufacturers. These are expected to benefit from the purchases of hundreds of millions of dosages by governments around the world.

Note that this is purely from a stock market point of view. These companies may become quite popular and their shares may soar. There is nothing stated here about the safety of the vaccines.

NOVARTIS (NVS)

Novartis is the Swiss company we reported a few weeks ago was the first to have a successful H1N1 vaccine. It expects to have a vaccine ready by October. It has several orders for H1N1 vaccines.

GLAXOSMITHKLINE (GSK)

Glaxo is testing a H1N1 flu vaccine in humans and expects to start giving the results to government agencies in September. It has won orders for H1N1 swine flu vaccine from nine governments, for a total number of doses ordered to 300+ million, with more orders still to come. Potentai windfall: $3 billion in the next six months or so.

SANOFI-AVENTIS (SNY)

SNY is one of the world leaders in flu shots and has received large orders from the U.S. and France, and it is in discussions with more than 30 countries about supplies.

It has a $250 million deal to provide the U.S. with the swine flu antigen in bulk.

ASTRAZENECA (AZN)

Astra had an initial $90 million order from the U.S. Its vaccine technology is different from traditional injectable flu shots in that it is a mist sprayed into the nose, making it far more comfortable to apply.

SINOVAC (SVA)

China’s SVA was the first company worldwide to complete clinical trials for an H1N1 vaccine, and that received approval from Chinese health authorities.

BAXTER (BAX)

Baxter completed its first commercial batches of H1N1 vaccine made using a cell culture process designed to be faster than traditional chicken egg-based vaccine production methods. It has supply contracts with several countries (Britain, Ireland and New Zealand). It said it could not take on additional orders.

INOVIO BIOMEDICAL (INO)

Inovio claims its DNA-based H1N1 flu vaccines provide protection against the swine flu strain in pigs and mice. It expects to begin manufacturing vaccine supplies for H1N1 clinical studies soon (this was August) hut it does not yet have the U.S. approval to begin human trials

NOVAVAX (NVAX)

U.S. biotech company Novavax has a new kind of influenza vaccine that works against the swine flu virus in animals. It would have to get approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before it could test the new vaccine in people and years of testing are likely to be required before such a new formulation could be widely used in humans

CSL (CMXHY.PK)

Australia’s CSL trades as an over the counter stock, it has been in mass production of H1N1 vaccine for several weeks, completed a first batch of 2 million shots and is producing 1-1.5 million doses per week until it fills all orders.

It has received $180 million contract from the U.S. for H1N1 flu vaccine and an order for 21 million doses from Australia. It expected to book sales of about $250 million from swine flu vaccines in the year to 2010.

SOLVAY (SVYSK.PK)

Belgium’s Solvay said that production of a cell-based H1N1 vaccine for clinical studies would start in August.

HUALAN BIOLOGICAL This Chinese company received the go-head from a Chinese panel of experts for an H1N1 vaccine.

GREEN CROSS

South Korea’s Green Cross can be expected to benefit from the $155M set aside for H1N1 vaccine preparations.
Getting the picture yet Kittens?

This is what happens when fear and ignorance win.

Fear was artificially created by the media for their sponsors to sell more of their product. This is not funny stuff, and the figures and facts here are real. They aren’t the artificially inflated numbers that you read about H1N1 at the beginning of the flu season, and you sure won’t find these numbers in the media today now that the World Health Organization says it is over.

Australia’s CSL makes this point by selling $250 million worth of H1N1 shots to the USA. When the H1N1 flu was reported in the media we did what any sane family would do. We checked into it and by that I don’t mean watching CNN and letting them form our opinions for us.

It took about 45 entire seconds to remember that since the world is not flat, seasons are different all over the world and those lovely criminals, Australia had just entered into their summer when our winter was beginning they would know how bad H1N1 was because they already finished their flu season and are also heavily populated by Chinese immigrants and are closely situated to China where swine flu began.

After another minute or so it took to Google how it effected Australia we learned that after all was said and done with their H1N1 season, it had turned out to be no big deal. In fact, there was so very little impact from H1N1 in Australia they reported they had a lower flu season casualty rate this year than in previous outbreaks.

This is something that the media never ever tells you when they are busy writing about the deaths from H1N1 or whatever the next pandemic du’ jour may be.

We read that 78 Canadians died from H1N1 but you never are exposed to any statistics regarding deaths from the flu in previous years. You are also never told of any pre existing medical conditions that the people who died may have had, where they lived in geographic relation to a hospital or even a pharmacy.

There is never any information on the age or any demographic background on these people and all of these facts contribute to whether H1N1 is a real threat and how bad it is compared to previous years. The media never reports these facts and even our own government doesn’t make it easy to find and there is a reason for that.

An aware media savvy population of critical thinkers is bad for business and H1N1 is business. It kept you glued to CNN to watch stories about the H1N1 pandemic that was sponsored by the advertisers of the flu shot.

There were no hard questions raised about the statistics from previous years at all. Nothing about demographics, previous health or even so much as geography. Not one useful piece of information to keep the public actually informed so instead most families raced their kids into a doctors office and had them jabbed with a potentially poison with a dangerous toxin.

H1N1 sold a hell of a lot of newspapers. It also sold millions of dollars of advertising time on news media stations to makers of the flu shot and it sure did get governments to spent billions on the flu shot with your tax dollars. These are indisputable facts.

Another fact is that you could not go to a bank and get a loan to refurbish a hot dog cart business unless you could show your last 5 years of sales, expenses, inventory and liquidity, debt servicing ratio or even what corner you park the hot dog cart every single day.

These statistics and facts where systematically omitted by the media and our government and the voting population went along with what they were told and couldn’t even be bothered to Google the facts for themselves, but you can bet your ass that they would Google themselves into a spastic euphoric frenzy if they had stock in one of the makers of the flu shot and were tracking their stocks profits.

The people who pushed the panic button in the media should be ashamed of themselves. Yes there was a pandemic and it will be back next year but it wasn’t a case of the sniffles. It was fear mongering and ignorance and there is no shot you can take to prevent it from happening, but you can immunize yourself with those rarely used tools that you do not even need to leave the house to find. The facts and they are available on Google when you aren’t busy wasting away on Twitter.

Here is another statistic that is true.

You have a 1 in 15,263,000 chance of being adopted by Madonna in Malawi this year. That is still twice and one third more likely to happen than contracting H1N1 in Canada.

Maybe the media should report that fact because Madonna sells a lot of newspapers as well.

The Finger

Kittens today we are going to talk about something we all know,
everyone uses, always enjoys giving and never enjoys receiving, says
more with a simple gesture than most explainations ever can, is
universally known, doesn’t require a passport or ticket yet you can
use in any country on earth and will be recognized and has been used
by humanity long before Jesus walked the earth.

He probably even used it himself.

You do not have to say one word to make your point very well known
when you use it. It is possibly the greatest communication tool
mankind has ever produced and aside from fire, the wheel, concrete and
the printing press I truly believe it is one of our more perfect
infoulable inventions ever.

It should be in the Smithsonian Institute alongside Fonzies jacket.

I am talking about the allmighty FINGER.

You can’t confuse the finger for the “we’re number one” sign. Nobody
ever thinks you are pointing at them when you use it. It doesn’t mean
“hmm….let me think about that for a while” or “gee I hadn’t really
considered your opinion.”

Never in history has anyone ever confused getting the finger for “why
yes I would enjoy a bit of marmalade with my tea and scone.”

We all use it and nobody ever asks why we use it, or wonder where it
came from. Kind of like wondering how or why we wipe our asses with
bits of expensive really soft paper and not a pinecone, or just having
the dog take care of it for us.

Us humans do that a lot. We do things without wondering why or where
it came from.

So what is the real story about the finger and where it came from?

For that we are going to have to go back in time before Jesus walked
around (not just on water) annoying money changers and look to ancient
Rome.

The finger or any gestures involving the middle finger, are thousands
of years old. In Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, Desmond
Morris and colleagues note that the digitus infamis or digitus
impudicus (infamous or indecent finger) is mentioned several times in
the literature of ancient Rome. Turning to our vast classical library,
we quickly turn up three references. Two are from the epigrammatist
Martial: “Laugh loudly, Sextillus, when someone calls you a queen and
put your middle finger out.”

(The verse continues: “But you are no sodomite nor fornicator either,
Sextillus, nor is Vetustina’s hot mouth your fancy.” Martial, and
Roman poets in general, could be pretty out there,
subject-matter-wise. Another verse begins: “You love to be sodomized,
Papylus . . .”)

In the other reference Martial writes that a certain party “points a
finger, an indecent one, at” some other people. The historian
Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor “expelled
[the entertainer] Pylades . . . because when a spectator started to
hiss, he called the attention of the whole audience to him with an
obscene movement of his middle finger.” Morris also claims that the
mad emperor Caligula, as an insult, would extend his middle finger for
supplicants to kiss.

Another possible origin of this gesture can be found in the
first-century Mediterranean world, where extending the digitus
impudicus was one of many methods used to divert the ever present
threat of the evil eye, which is a look that is superstitiously
believed by many cultures to be able to cause injury or bad luck on
the person at whom it is directed for reasons of envy or dislike. The
term also refers to the power attributed to certain persons, of
inflicting injury or bad luck by such an envious or ill wishing look.

The idea that the term denotes causes many cultures to pursue
protective measures against it. The concept and its significance vary
widely among different cultures. The idea appears several times in
translations (Tirgumim) of the Old Testament. It was a widely extended
belief between many Mediterranean tribes and cultures: Classical
Greece probably learned this belief from Ancient Egypt, and later
passed it to Ancient Rome.

Isn’t anthropology fun Kittens? Not only do we get to learn things and
use our thinking bones, but the next time we use the finger to tell
some diabolical fool that he or she has displeased us, we can explain
to them where it comes from. Books are rather fun and chock full of
useful things aren’t they Kittens?

The ancient Romans used the finger to insult each other exactly the
same way we do today, and to protect themselves when somebody was a
jackass and gave them stink eye just as we still do to this day.

Humans spend a lot of time walking around bumping into each other and
generally acting foolishly without investigating why we do it. Many of
our goofy habits date back thousands of years and are as much a part
of who we are than we realize.

Thousands of years of both good and bad habits are exceptionally hard
to break. Considering that humans have been wandering around for
roughly 200 000 years and we have been giving each other the finger
for over 2 000 of them it really isn’t a great mystery that we don’t
know very much about ourselves or our habits.

For example, a couple of thousands of years ago in Roman times and you
had trail rage because some dork decided to cut you off with his
manure cart while trying to pass you in heavy traffic, would you have
given him the finger with your left or right hand?

You would use your right hand and not because you were right handed.
You would use it because just like they do in most parts of the world
today…..Romans drove on the left side.
In 1998, archaeologists found a well-preserved track leading to a Roman quarry near Swindon, England. The grooves in the road on the left side (viewed facing down the track away from the quarry) were much deeper than those on the right side. These grooves suggest that the Romans drove on the left, at least in this particular location, since carts would exit the quarry heavily loaded, and enter it empty.

Some historians, such as C. Northcote Parkinson, believed that ancient travellers on horseback generally rode on the left side of the road. As more people are right-handed, a horseman would thus be able to hold the reins with his left hand and keep his right hand free—to offer in friendship to passing riders or to defend himself with a sword, if necessary.

The first legal reference in Britain to an order for traffic to remain on the left was in 1756 with regard to London Bridge. The Highway Act 1773 contained a recommendation that horse traffic should remain on the left and this is enshrined in the Highway Act 1835.

In the late 1700s, the shift from left to right that took place in countries such as the United States was based on teamsters’ use of large freight wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. The wagons had no driver’s seat, so a postilion sat on the left rear horse and held his whip in his right hand. Seated on the left, the driver preferred that other wagons pass him on the left so that he could be sure to keep clear of the wheels of oncoming wagons. He did that by driving on the right side of the road.

Countries that became part of the British Empire adopted the British keep-left rule, although some have since changed. In Canada, the Maritime provinces and British Columbia initially drove on the left, but changed to the right in order to make border crossings to and from other provinces easier. Nova Scotia switched to driving on the right on 15 April 1923.

While you were giving the finger to a man on an oncoming horse in Roman times you may have wanted to pepper your sentiment with a few words. You know, to fully make your point. “Te futueo et caballum tuum” or”Te futueo et equum tuum” would have done nicely. It means screw you and the horse you rode in on, words still commonly used today.

Es scortum obscenus vilis, Es mundus excrementi, Cupis homines, Moecha Putida, Canis filius, Podex perfectus es, Futue te ipsum!, Stercorem pro cerebro habes, Caput tuum in ano est, Perite,Vacca stulta, Caput stercoris, Cupio te meam mentulam sugare, Matris futuor,Te odeo, interfice te cochleare, Stercus accidit, Hic puer est stultissimus omnium!, Non Gradus Anus Rodentum!, De gustibus non est disputandum, Tum podem extulit horridulum, Potes meos suaviari clunes, Saltatrix tonsa, Quando podeces te regi eorum fecerunt?, Cacator Shitter Plenus stercoris es, Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem, Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris, Derideo te!, Estne volumen in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?, Hocine bibo aut in eum digitos insero?, Id imperfectum manet dum confectum erit, Morologus es!, Noli me vocare, Noli nothis permittere te terere, Puto vos esse molestissimos, Raptus regaliter and Tace atque abi are other examples of a few things you might have said and really pissed off the offender that are also used today and made Redd Foxx giddier than a Japanese school girl.

Unremarkably we have found these words and gestures far too handy to allow them to disappear from our vocabulary and universal consciousness. They are now and have been for thousands of years communication tools to allow us to convey a thought without any possibility of confusion or having to explain their meaning. You just cannot mistake the true message of the finger. It doesn’t matter of you like the message or not or agree with its usage. There is no other communication tool that has ever been created to equal its longevity and impact.

There are however lots of people who do not like the finger and what it means. they don’t like most things that offend them so they seek to control your words along with how and when you are allowed and not allowed to use them.

Rather than not use the finger or words because they do not like them and leave it at that, they want to make sure you don’t use them either. Not only that, they want to make sure you obey their every whim and want without much regard for your own because “they know what is better for you than you do.”

They don’t just rudely merge their manure cart into your lane giving you an excuse to give them the finger, they park it in front of you and make you either climb through their shit to get to where you were going, or try to sneak around them because manure carts are huge.

This is where the finger got a bad rap. Another tradition began in Roman times that we still all know about in one form or another, and one particular Roman who everybody has heard of but few know why or have completely missed the point as to why they know about him in the first place.

His name is Epicurious and wasn’t just a guy who liked a good meal and large portion of wine.

Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom very little is known—Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquility and freedom from fear (ataraxia) as well as absence of bodily pain (aponia) through knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of our desires. The combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form. Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, insofar as it declares pleasure as the sole intrinsic good, its conception of absence of pain as the greatest pleasure and its advocacy of a simple life make it different from “hedonism” as it is commonly understood.

In the Epicurean view, the highest pleasure (tranquility and freedom from fear) was obtained by knowledge, friendship and living a virtuous and temperate life. He lauded the enjoyment of simple pleasures, by which he meant abstaining from bodily desires, such as sex and appetites, verging on asceticism. He argued that when eating, one should not eat too richly, for it could lead to dissatisfaction later, such as the grim realization that one could not afford such delicacies in the future. Likewise, sex could lead to increased lust and dissatisfaction with the sexual partner. Epicurus did not articulate a broad system of social morality that has survived.

Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism, though later it became the main opponent of Stoicism. Epicurus and his followers shunned politics. After the death of Epicurus, his school was headed by Hermarchus; later many Epicurean societies flourished in the Late Hellenistic era and during the Roman era (such as those in Antiochia, Alexandria, Rhodes and Ercolano). The poet Lucretius is its most known Roman proponent. By the end of the Roman Empire, having undergone Christian attack and repression, Epicureanism had all but died out, and would be resurrected in the 17th century by the atomist Pierre Gassendi, who adapted it to the Christian doctrine.

Some writings by Epicurus have survived. Some scholars consider the epic poem On the Nature of Things by Lucretius to present in one unified work the core arguments and theories of Epicureanism. Many of the papyrus scrolls unearthed at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum are Epicurean texts. At least some are thought to have belonged to the Epicurean Philodemus.

Epicureanism emphasizes the neutrality of the gods, that they do not interfere with human lives. It states that gods, matter, and souls are all made up of atoms. Souls are made from atoms, and gods possess souls, but their souls adhere to their bodies without escaping. Humans have the same kind of souls, but the forces binding human atoms together do not hold the soul forever. The Epicureans also used the atomist theories of Democritus and Leucippus to assert that man has free will. They held that all thoughts are merely atoms swerving randomly. This explanation served to satisfy people who wondered anxiously about their role in the universe.

The Riddle of Epicurus, or Problem of evil, is a famous argument against the existence of an all-powerful and providential God or gods. As recorded by Lactantius:

God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak – and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful – which is equally foreign to god’s nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?

In modern popular usage, an epicure is a connoisseur of the arts of life and the refinements of sensual pleasures; epicureanism implies a love or knowledgeable enjoyment especially of good food and drink.

This can be attributed to a misunderstanding of the Epicurean doctrine, as promulgated by Christian polemicists. Because Epicureanism posits that pleasure is the ultimate good (telos), it is commonly misunderstood as a doctrine that advocates the partaking in fleeting pleasures such as constant partying, sexual excess and decadent food. This is not the case. Epicurus regarded ataraxia (tranquility, freedom from fear) and aponia (absence of pain) as the height of happiness. He also considered prudence an important virtue and perceived excess and overindulgence to be contrary to the attainment of ataraxia and aponia.

By now my Kittens I am hoping that this humble crudely assembled history lesson about traits and communication that date back thousands of years is beginning to seem rather familiar.

We are not that much different from the men and women of Roman times, we just have different stuff. There is nothing impressive about the age that we live in aside from the fact that we can LOL each other on mobile slave collars while driving around in cars and not on top of horse powered manure carts, although that is not to say that modern cars are much different either. It is just that now the manure is at the helm most of the time.

We are still lashed to forces comprised of inextricably linked forms of control. Religion and government are the same as they are now as they were in Roman times. They tax, they perform police and military actions, they occasionally feed the poor just enough to keep them alive and working poor and thus on their knees and they don’t like it when you give them the finger very much.

This is probably why the finger has survived as long as it has. We still need it because we still can’t behave ourselves enough to abandon the need for other people to govern us or even figure out what side of the road to walk on.

Until that happens we will still need the finger and the message it represents. This is why I like it so much. You can’t count on many things in life, but you can always count on somebody somewhere deserving The Finger.

Billy Bragg

“You can’t defeat the Axis of evil by putting smart bombs in the hands of dumb people.”

Ladies and Gentlemen….Kittens around the world, I offer you one Mr Billy Bragg. A genius who walks among us.

Now here is Mr Billy Bragg telling people at Speakers Corner in England recently why he has decided not to pay his taxes. You really need to watch it and listen to why he has decided not to pay taxes. Many of you may agree. Many of you will disagree, but either way you cannot deny this man can sure make a point and belt out a good tune at the same time.

…..tap…..tap….tap….tap….for those of us waiting for you to finish watching it, a brief intermission.

Now that you’ve watched the footage, Billy as usual made a great set of points.

Sadly though like many people, he missed the all important bonus round.

It’s like this Kittens.

Billy and most average Billies are pissed off that the banks and insurance companies who were roasted by massive losses and needed bailing out are still paying their top people bonuses.

Not only that, they are paying them big fucking bonuses. More than most of us will see in one lifetime, these people are getting on one pay cheque.

Most of us don’t like this very much because it pisses us off that our money bailed their asses out of the fire, but here is the thing.

They earned it.

Banks are in business to make money and they need their top earners more than ever. That’s how it works. They have a debt to pay back and the best people are earning the money to pay it back.

The banks and insurance companies are paying it back as quickly as possible so they can go back to doing what they do best. Fucking the rest of us over.

It isn’t the fault of the top earners that their bank screwed the pooch, and surely they would find another job in a heartbeat somewhere else but they stuck by their employers, made as much of our money as possible for them so they could repay their debt to the governments.

They worked their asses off and if it was you that exceed to such a high degree, you would want your money as well.

Sorry Kittens, that is just one of those sad facts of life that you may as well get used to right now.

BUT

Now that the banks and insurance companies are paying their government loans back so very quickly you may want to ask yourself a bigger question. One that Billy missed slightly.

Why be pissed off at the banks and insurance companies that you use, you pay money into, you accept their increasingly shitty deals and who arbitrarily have more control over your lives than any government ever will aside from one under marshall law?

You people…..you people took their loans.

You took their loans for houses and trinkets and televisions and Disney wallpaper and vacations and rub and tugs and singing dildos and every other consumer abomination you couldn’t afford and like any good businesses they took your money.

You ran up credit cards you couldn’t afford, didn’t bitch and boycott your sellers when they raised service fees, or bought fewer cars to insure on credit from a bank…you couldn’t even live without that pair of fucking sneakers with somebody elses name scrawled all over them. You wanted it all, they delivered for as long as they could and now you think it is their fault that they supplied the crack for your habit.

It is like watching a junkie complain about the high crime rate.

Not that they are without guilt.

They took a risk on you people and like anyone who risks the bank on greedy consumer human mammals….they lost their Saville Row shirts.

Not that watching any of it happen was a bad thing from your humble authors perspective.

Frankly I think it is funny when you people lose your homes and those companies go tits up. I love it when the government has to step in and bail out entire industries and pretend that they are doing it for the people, when all they are doing is loaning their owners some money, kind of like paying forward to their pimps.

It’s like voting.

I don’t vote and thus do not contribute to the problems of society. I am not invested in the out come at all because mostly I do not see any margin for improvement and also it is a exercise in mass propaganda and hypnosis.

People like to say that people who do not vote can’t complain but that is flawed logic.

People that vote put into the very people into power that screw you over and fuck it up.

As a man who has been of voting age for many years I can safely and historically point out that life has not gotten any better as a voter or not.

The word isn’t safer, life isn’t cheaper, more poor people aren’t being fed, fewer wars aren’t breaking out and the table isn’t any less rigged. Since I have of voting age there world has not gotten any better because of anybody who has been elected anywhere.

The Soviet Union and East Germany didn’t fall because of any politician, it was because of the people.

Barack Obama was voted into power as the man who most people who voted for him believed would change their lives for the better and guess what? It hasn’t happened. Not because he isn’t a good qualified man, but because people aren’t doing anything for themselves. A point he himself made.

It’s all bullshit because the people who own the world are not interested in you having a better life and it has been that way forever.

Consider that in a truly enlightened democratic society free health care and a university education would be to the benefit of our society.

We would produce healthy smart voters paid for by our tax dollars and it would benefit society as a whole, but our governments and corporations do not want that.

They want people who are rich enough to pay for education and sick enough to be kind enough to die off fairly early so we do not have to pay for pensions. An educated healthy person who can live to be 123 and collect a pension costs money. Lot’s of it. Their money that they take from the voters and workers.

A person who is smart enough to to punch a clock and complete a few tasks yet dumb enough to be lead into a mega mall because it says “big fat fucking sale” and consume as much goods and fast food will die sooner and deeply in debt. Debt that the banks pass onto their kids, and an early death their government doesn’t have to cut a pension cheques for several extra years.

Think of it like the pro-life movement in America.

Lots of people who do not like what free women do with their bodies so they try to tell them what to do with them. There isn’t many rich white women offering to have poor black babies stuffed into them so they can carry them to term.

Nope. They care about them until they are born and then happily let the state raise them so live poor black babies can grow up to be poor dead black workers and soldiers.

That is always when the sanctity of life doesn’t mean much.

It is sanctity when they are making sure they come into the world, but not very much when they are doing anything about the babies who actually have to live in it like a university education or proper health care paid for by their fellow man and not into a system that decides who gets what based on profit.

If you can manage to get deeply into debt to pay for your education and then transfer that knowledge to a company who effectively owns you so that you can pay your debts until you die then you are a prime asset.

Add on top of that a mortgage you can’t afford, credit card debt because you had to fill your life with stuff from the mega mall and even more stuff for the house you can’t afford to put in the house your kids will end up paying for after you die early from a heart attack due to stress, a bad diet and never getting out of your car except to golf and then eat at a theme restaurant.

Billy is right to be nice and pissed off at the raw deal he and his fellow man is getting and anyone should applaud a person who takes a stand.

I’m all for him not paying taxes but not because he doesn’t agree with bankers who achieved success for their employers receiving massive bonus for their diligent work in screwing society over.

He says he no longer feels represented and in solidarity with the people who represent him. That is why he shouldn’t pay his taxes, because his best interests as a tax payer are not being full filled by his government and never will.

It also would have been worth pointing out that the banks who are making the bonus are making those bonuses because the people who use them, are continuing to accept the control the banks have over their lives and maybe instead of worrying about bonuses and not paying taxes, their government should step in and curb the control the banks have over their customers.

This of course will never happen because banks have customers, who choose to use them and are not actually forced to use them unlike paying taxes to the government. It will also never happen because the biggest customers the banks have….is your government.

And Now The Bad News….

And now my Kittens…..the bad news….

Aliens are likely to look and behave like us
Alien life, if it exists at all, is likely to be just like us, a leading scientist has claimed.
Professor Simon Conway Morris at Cambridge University will tell a conference on alien life that extraterrestrials will most likely have evolved just like “earthlings” and so resemble us to a degree with heads, limbs and bodies.

This obviously isn’t going to be a high point when the visitors make first contact my Kittens.

Unfortunately they will have also evolved our foibles and faults which could make them dangerous if they ever did visit us on Earth.

The evolutionary paleobiologist’s beliefs mean that science fiction films such as Star Wars and Star Trek could be more accurate than they ever imagined in depicting alien life.

Wow! Did you hear that Kittens! Science dorks like Star Trek!!

Prof Conway Morris believes that extraterrestrial life is most likely to occur on a planet similar to our own, with organisms made from the same biochemicals. The process of evolution will even shape alien life in a similar way, he added.

“It is difficult to imagine evolution in alien planets operating in any manner other than Darwinian,” he said.

“In the end the number of options is remarkably restrictive. I don’t think an alien will be a blob. If aliens are out there they should have evolved just like us. They should have eyes and be walking on two legs.

“In short if there is any life out there then it is likely to be very similar to us.”

Oh goodie!! Let’s hope that they act just like us with lot’s of waste, consumerism, war, racial hatred, prejudice, anger, genital mutilation and poverty.

They could come in peace but also be searching for somewhere to live, and to help themselves to water, minerals and fuel he is due to tell a conference at the Royal Society, in London.

However he also thinks that because much of the Universe is older than us they would have evolved further down the line and we should have heard from them by now.

That isn’t exactly much of an achievement for a superior race. We’re not very impressive. In fact, if there was a god like some people believe then it is fairly safe to say that he aimed very low and settled for very little.

He believes it is increasingly looking like they may not be out there at all.

“It is about time they turned up,” he said. “It is very, very quiet out there. Suspiciously quiet. Where on Earth are they? I personally don’t think that there is anything out there.”

Either that or they just aren’t interested. Is that possible? Why leave a universe of wonders to visit this shit hole. At best it is the solar systems worst trailer park and at worst it is a penal colony for all of the DNA alieans from beyond didn’t want anymore. It would explain much of our repugnant behaviour.

His lecture is part of a two-day conference at which experts will discuss how we might detect life on distant planets and what that could mean for society.

Professor Paul Davies, a British physicist at Arizona State University, will reiterate his belief that life exists right under our noses – here on Earth.

He believes that the life forms, most likely microscopic, could exist in remote and hostile environments where it was previously thought no creature could survive.

The suburbs.

They are so different to life as we know it that scientists would have overlooked them in the past.

At the heart of his theory is that life on Earth may have come and gone many times during the planet’s existence.

These creatures would be the remnants of the previous inhabitants.

Not all are convinced by the “shadow life” concept. Professor Colin Pillinger, who led the Beagle 2 Mars landing mission, said: “I prefer to deal in scientific fact — this is wildly science fiction. You’d be off your trolley to go searching for arsenic-based life.”

Ummm….Has Nasa actually accomplished anything lately? Richard Branson is sending people to space and Nasa isn’t allowed to play with rockets anymore.

Professor Pillinger, who is also due to speak at the Royal Society, argues that Mars remains the best bet for finding alien organisms.

The conference will also address the social implications of the search for alien life.

I know of at least one group of people that won’t be too thrilled when we find alien life. They aren’t big fans of science (I don’t mean Greenpeace this time)and alien life might just poke a few holes in their explaination for where human life came from.

Professor Albert Harrison, from the University of California, will discuss how human beings might respond to the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence.

As usual, I suspect fairly poorly.

“It is easy to imagine scenarios resulting in widespread psychological disintegration and social chaos,” he said.

Is he kidding? He’s talking about a society that loses their fucking minds when an outline of Jesus appears on a pile of dog shit.

We kill each other for fun and sport, embrace cruelty of unimaginable proportions, commit genocide every decade or so and can’t even figure out how to effectively get some help to Haiti unless we are trying to conquer them.

People here lose their shit if they see a cartoon they don’t like that shows a picture of a god that they can’t even look at anyways.

Mankind would do what mankind does. We’d fuck it up.

“But historical prototypes, reactions to false alarms and survey results suggest that the predominant response to the discovery of a microwave transmission from light years away is likely to be equanimity, perhaps even delight.”

Uh huh…

Rocket Man

For Kelly~

Kittens before you begin reading this delightful tale, you really must watch that YouTube footage to truly grasp the moral of this story.

When I was a wee man I watched that footage with my father on the family couch after one of Mums delightful dinners of some kind of horrifying grey British food.

Dad and I watched the opening of the footage about the daredevil Kenny Powers and how he planned to jump a car 1 mile across the St Lawrence river. “This could be interesting” we said.

Then we saw the car.

It seemed the hero of the story Ken Carter went out and bought a Lincoln Continental. He welded a roll cage inside of it and painted it yellow. Oh….and he also stuffed a rocket into it, built two small wings out of what appears to be a snow shovel lit the wick at took off at over 280 mph.

You can imagine what happened my Kittens.

Ken didn’t quite make it. He chicken out and a man named Kenny Powers jumped in and gave it a try.

Carter was born in Montreal and grew up in a working class neighbourhood. With little education, he dropped out of school to perform car stunts with a team of traveling daredevils. Soon he was a solo act, jumping at racetracks all over North America. He became a notorious showman, earning the nickname “The Mad Canadian” for his death-defying antics.

In 1976, after 20 years of car jumps, Carter launched his most ambitious project: an attempt to jump over the Saint Lawrence Seaway — a distance of over one mile — in a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental. The preparations for the jump were the subject of a documentary called The Devil at Your Heels, directed by Robert Fortier and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

For months, Carter prepared his car and looked for sponsors, with his persistence in self-promotion paying off when U.S. broadcaster ABC gave him $250,000 to air the stunt on the episode of Wide World of Sports scheduled for September 25, 1976. Carter anticipated a live audience of 100,000. Construction of a 1,400-foot takeoff ramp began on fifty acres of farmland near Morrisburg, Ontario. Evel Knievel visited the site as a special correspondent for ABC and concluded that there was little chance of success. Delays in finishing the car and completing the ramp caused Carter to miss the broadcast date and ABC withdrew its support.

Carter resumed preparations the following year and again in 1978, but the jump was cancelled both times. On September 26, 1979, Carter got to within five seconds of takeoff before aborting the jump following a mechanical failure. The planned jump had been sponsored by a film producer in exchange for exclusive film rights. Believing that Carter had lost his nerve, the film crew secretly arranged for another stunt driver, American Kenny Powers, to perform the jump while Carter was in his hotel room in Ottawa. The Powers jump was a failure.

If fact, not only did he not fly for one mile in a rocket powered luxury car that is as aerodynamic as a cargo container (and roughly as heavy) he didn’t make it very far at all when basic physics caught up with him and the car was torn apart.

Kenny splashed into the river and rescue boats came after him, as if they expected some other outcome from Kens jump. The said he was “lucky” and had broken his back during the jump, something which Ken had done 6 times prior to the jump. Kenny wasn’t a fast learner.

At no time during the footage did they mention where Kenny planned on landing either and just that it was an island. They just said that he was going to send a rocket powered bulldozer hurling across the river for 1 mile that had no possible way to navigate itself and reach the other side.

There was no landing ramp and one assumes that since it was a rural area Ken thought he would just gently land…somewhere. Possibly crashing at 280 mph into a farmers flock of sheep igniting them into fireballs running around and setting his barn on fire kind of the like great fire of London.

Kenny probably figured after safely crashing into a field at over 200 mph he would simply exit the car now crumpled and burning a jet fuel fire at over 1000 degrees, lift himself out of the crater he created he would pick the gopher meat out of his teeth, take a bow and sign some autographs.

You may have noticed that besides the spectators there were lots of ambulances and speedboats ready “in case of a disaster.”

When Kenny was rescued he asked “Did I make it?”

By now Kittens I’m sure you all have the same look of disbelief on your faces that my Dad and I did the second we saw what Kenny was planning to do and with what vehicle he wanted to do it with and why it just wasn’t going to work out very well.

If, as the narrator informs us, the car achieves a takeoff speed of 280 mph, then using the equations of projectile motion, we can easily calculate that without air resistance (estimating a launch angle of about 30 degrees) the maximum distance the car could achieve is around 1500 meters, or just short of a mile. (I’ll leave it to those of you with a little physics background to confirm this is true.) However, at speeds of this magnitude, air resistance will have a major effect on the flight of the car. The force of air resistance is proportional to the square of the velocity, so if you double the speed you quadruple the air resistance. Incorporating the effect of air drag into the calculations we find that Kenny won’t even make it a quarter of a mile before falling ignominiously into the river.

Therefore we assume (even though we can’t see any fuel being ejected out of the car’s modified rocket engines after the initial thrust) that the rockets must be supposed to continue firing throughout much of the jump (flight). But even so, when speaking of air resistance, we are inevitably confronted with what appears to be the most problematical issue with this stunt: aerodynamic stability.

Most model rocket enthusiasts know that for a rocket to be stable in flight, its center of gravity (the point on the rocket where gravitational forces balance) must be in front of the rocket’s center of pressure (the point on the rocket where the aerodynamic forces, such as lift and drag, balance). If the rocket starts to veer off of its line of motion, as long as the CP (center of pressure) is behind the CG (center of gravity), the aerodynamic forces will apply a restoring torque, pushing the rocket back into its line of motion. However, if the CP is in front, the torque acts to destabilize the rocket, causing it to tumble. Fins on the tail of a rocket provide for a CP towards the back.

In the case of our not-very-aerodynamic-looking Continental, notice how the car is forced nose-up almost the instant it leaves the ramp. We strongly suspect the CP is too far forward! There seems to have been no attempt, aside from some rather minimal-looking fins placed near the center of the car, to account for this important effect.

In a much more well-known unsuccessful jump, the late Evel Knievel’s crew seemed to recognize this potential problem. For his attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon, the vehicle they designed was in fact a classic streamlined rocket, complete with narrow body and substantial fins placed at the rear. Rumor has it Knievel might have made it if his parachute hadn’t deployed too early. Nevertheless, just to drive home the point, we are not talking about jumping over stuff here. We are talking about flying.

Nobody sat down and explained any of this to Kenny, or the people who invested a million bucks.

So Kittens now that we know all of that dorky Mythbusters science junk about why Kenny didn’t make it, let’s ask ourselves something.

Did we need to know it?

Wasn’t it slightly evident from the very beginning that Kenny was going to have a bad hair day?

Did Kenny ever have that moment of regret when the car exploded and something besides his ass went through his head?

Kenny Powers isn’t alive anymore and died in 2009 so we can’t ask him, and Ken Carter (the guy who chicken out) died in attempting to jump a pond in Peterborough, Ontario. During the jump his car, a modified Pontiac Firebird had a malfunction and Carter crashed badly but vowed to try the jump again. Several months later he did. The vehicle overshot its landing ramp by 30 meters and landed on its roof. Carter was instantly killed. He is predictably buried in a unmarked grave at the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery in Montreal.

Is there a moral to this story Kittens?

Possibly.

It isn’t that no matter how much you may want too, you cannot jump a rocket powered brick across a large stretch of distance.

The moral of this story is that I have recently had to add a brand new file to “My Favorites” on my computer. It is called “Stupid Humans” and is already bursting with stories from around the world of people who on the surface might act and seem like they may be reasonable people who can pay their bills, keep food in the fridge and occasionally not wander into a moving train, but then they go on to exceed human stupidity on an epic level.

I hope you enjoy their stories the morals to them.