Mr Bison's Journal

Nutritional Bisonomics

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:10:00 +0000

Here's a couple of statistics that might just be related, although which causes which is up for debate:

Illegal immigrants in the US: 12-20 million
Recipients of food stamps in the US: 30-33 million

Yes, that's right, at least one in ten of the US population is now getting free food paid for by the rest of us, according to Associated Press estimates (although others figure it's now more like one in nine). The federal government has creatively re-branded the food stamps program as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is a piece of timeless lefty euphemism. It would better be described as the Free Food Giveaway Program.

Now, maybe I'm a bit slow, but I'm always hearing about how we only have illegal immigration because of all the jobs that legal US residents won't do. ("It's a victimless crime - without them who will pick the fruit or cut your lawn?") Meanwhile there are thirty million US residents getting free food because they don't work. Excuse me, but that is utterly fucked up.

Let's allow for the fact that some of the thirty million SNAP recipients are children. (Given the high incidence of single parenthood and the unselective breeding habits at that end of society, let's face it, it might be quite a lot.) There are still probably around eight or ten million potential workers getting free food, paid for by taxpayers, while not doing the jobs that illegal immigrants end up doing. Why don't they get out there and get jobs? Because they're better off staying at home and sucking on the public teat than busting there arse cutting lawns, gutting chickens or replacing roofs.

It's a simple fact that with a nice cosy welfare safety net people don't have to go out and find work. Meanwhile, immigrants from countries where the taxpayers won't feed you while you sit on your arse are only too happy to come here and work hard. When I had my roof replaced the workers were all Hispanic. I have no reason to believe they were illegals, but they worked hard from early morning to evening. Meanwhile, in some public housing project, hundreds of thousands of people will have been whining about the lack of job opportunity for them, explaining that this is why their kids are selling drugs, moaning about poor schools and tucking into free food provided at someone else's expense.

In theory you could just send all the illegals home and then have the unemployed do the work. Ten million illegal workers replaced by ten million food stamp recipients. It's easy, right?

Here are some more statistics to brighten up your day:

Average cost of food stamp program per person: $113 per month
Number of recipients: 33 million
Total annual cost: $45 billion

Number of US taxpayers: 90 million (135 million tax returns, less 45 million that pay no federal taxes)
Annual cost to each taxpayer of providing free food to other people: $500

That's right, if you pay federal income tax you're coughing up five hundred bucks out of your paycheck so that other people can spend their money on beer, cigarettes, cable TV and other "essentials" while you buy their family's food. That's fucking bullshit. I've heard from a firefighter, working hard and economizing to make ends meet, who got pissed off continually seeing people in public housing with big flat screen TV's that he couldn't even hope to afford, all paid for with other people's money. Their "entitlements". It's amazing what you can afford when your food comes free, your rent is paid by the government and your kids' clothes are given to you.

Something's wrong here, people. It's fashionable to compare the current economic downturn to the great depression, but that's laughable. Back then people would criss-cross the country, willing to do anything to earn a crust. Nowadays you can just sit on your arse and wait for food to drop in your lap. There are, we are told, so many jobs available that we have to let illegal immigrants come here. So why are more than ten percent of the population getting free food then?

It's enough to make you puke, but bear in mind that you'll be replacing that meal with your own money if you do...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Crap No-one Needs, #16

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:07:00 +0000

The Art Establishment

Have you ever thrown up on the pavement? You might be an artist. Ever spilled some paint on the floor? Yep, sounds like you're an artist. Ever cut a cat in half to see what the insides look like? You could possibly be a psychopath, but you probably have a great future as a famous artist. The whole art establishment is so infested with useless wankers who wouldn't know real art if it crawled up their anus and tickled their spleen, that there's really no qualification required anymore.

Remember the "Piss Christ" photograph? Some moron pisses in a glass and puts a plastic crucifix in it, takes a photo and calls it art. The National Endowment for the Arts, a $155 million Congress-created boondoggle for worthlessness, puts this and other similar shit on exhibition at the taxpayer's expense and calls it art. If there was ever a sector of human endeavor that exhibited the Emperor's New Clothes phenomenon it's the art world: if you think some dozy tart's unmade bed, half a cow in a glass case or someone's crude painting with their own excrement isn't real art it's because "You're just a middle-class drone who doesn't comprehend the artist's deep appreciation of the human condition, communicated through a complex medium in order to bypass our natural emotional filters". In other words, if you think the emperor is naked, you must be stupid.

If all these wankers were just running around on welfare pissing on crucifixes then I wouldn't care, but they're doing it on our dime. It's not the business of government to be subsidizing the arts - if something is good enough then someone will pay to see it. Those that clamor for government arts funding (which, let's face it, means arts funded by taxes expropriated from working people against their will) realize full well that given a choice the working public will not voluntarily pay to support someone who spends his day pissing in a glass and taking pictures of it. Without government intervention art would have to survive on its merits, which would immediately condemn half the liberal arts establishment to get a real job.

Yeah, I know, people pay millions for Damien Hirst so-called artworks. which doesn't mean they have any artistic merit, but that's an entirely different phenomenon: art collection. The whole point of that is for people with more dollars than braincells to buy stuff so they can show off to other such people how wealthy and "enlightened" they are. It doesn't have to be good, only "desirable", an attribute conferred by an art establishment so removed from what the real world thinks as to have rendered their opinions meaningless.

Here's some art rules to live by:

1. If The Bloke Down The Pub Could Do It, It's Not Art

When we watch professional sports we know that the quarterback, sprinter, tennis player or goalie is performing at a level that we couldn't; that's why we pay to see them. They demonstrate excellence. It's the same thing with art. When I see a Bruegel painting I know I couldn't have done it, plus it's interesting to look at. Half of what passes for modern art requires no real talent other than the art of self-promotion and the ability to talk bollocks, which brings me to:

2. If You Have To Explain It, It's Not Art

If you could walk right by the so-called art and have no idea that it was art at all, then it isn't. Notice how modern art requires a soundtrack of interpretation and commentary to help the observer "understand and appreciate" the artist's message. This is a clear sign that it's a load of old bollocks; the number of accompanying words is directly proportional to the speed with which it should be consigned to the dumpster.

3. If It's Not Painted Or Sculpted, It's Not Art

Since music and dance are their own categories, art is a term for things of beauty that are static and to be looked at. This includes pictures, sculptures and maybe certain photography. That's it. It does not include "art installations" which consist of crap just thrown together, or people engaging in "interactive art". This is just bollocks. You know it's bollocks because normal people, uncontaminated by art indoctrination, would walk up to it and exclaim "What a load of old bollocks". Living in a room for fourteen days is not art.

4. If It Needs A Famous Name Attached, It's Not Art

What's the chance that if I'd pissed in a glass and put a crucifix in it, I would have got it into an exhibition in New York? If I cut a dog in half and put it in formaldehyde would I get my own show and have someone pay a million for it? Fuck no. If you took a Constable picture and took the name off you'd still walk past and think "Fucking good picture of a haywain, that." If you walked past the glass of piss you'd think "Jesus, I think someone pissed in that glass. Is there a tramp in here?" So just imagine it's not Tracy Emin's unmade bed, or Damien Hirst's half a cow, or Andres Serrano's glass of piss. What if Albert Bloggs or Dave Brown had done it? Would it still be good enough for an exhibition? Of course it wouldn't - it's not real art, it's just a bunch of art establishment wankers crawling up each others' arses.

Fundamentally the art scene is infested with pseudo-intellectual wankers, and if it that's what makes them happy then good luck to them. Except when the government, laboring under the biggest deficit in history, finds it essential that they confiscate money from working people to hand out to so-called artists who are just climbing over each other to be more "shocking" and "controversial" while not being required to exhibit any real talent.

Here's a suggestion to all those cutting edge art tossers: the Piss Christ is old news - if you want to be really "out there", why not take a dump on the Koran and photograph that? No, I didn't think so. Not so brave when some Islamist would cut off your tiny balls and make an exhibition out of you?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

A Horse's Head For Chrysler

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sun, 24 May 2009 15:03:00 +0000

There was this old mob technique which was employed when they wanted to take over a bar or other such money-making establishment. They'd send in some boys to trash the place or rough up the staff and then offer the management the opportunity to buy protection. The thing is, the cost of protection tended to go up, and to come with other strings attached, so that eventually the owners would just give in and sell up for a fraction of the real value of the business. This is called extortion.

Chrysler is in bankruptcy. The real owners of the business are the secured lenders, since they have first call on all the assets of the business. This is what was agreed contractually when they made the loans. However, the deal being offered to them is to sell up for approximately 20% of what they are owed. Guess who gets 55% of the value of the "new" Chrysler? Yes, it's the UAW autoworkers union.

There are lots of theories about why US automakers went in the toilet, many of them referring to "poor management" or "unattractive product". There's even been a chorus of wisdom suggesting that they lost money because they weren't offering fuel-efficient vehicles, making a neat link with prevailing eco-weenie sentiments while neatly missing the point that the only vehicles they made any money on were trucks and SUVs. No doubt they had poor management, but if the product has been weak it has to be related to the fact that they've been losing money for years. How can you put A-grade vehicles in the market if you make a loss on every one, and would make a bigger loss if you tried to make them better?

Let's cut through all the bullshit: the reason the traditional US automakers are losing money is the gold-plated, over-the-top, extortionate pay and benefits that the UAW has extracted over the years with threats to strike and shut down operations, plunging the companies into insolvency. For years management has chosen to pay off the thugs at the UAW rather than face them down, and just like the poor bar owner faced with the goons from the mob it's hard to pass judgment on them from the safety of your armchair. Any normal company shuts down plants when sales fall (and remember that US automakers have lost share every year), but in the twisted world of the UAW, the automakers have to pay all the workers even if there are no jobs to do, or pay them a small fortune to fuck off, and then pay their medical costs, pension costs and those of their families, forever.

What really pisses me off is Obastard's government brokering a deal where the union gets to walk off with most of what's left of Chrysler, in spite of them having no secured position (unlike secured lenders) and completely missing the fact that the UAW is what caused the whole mess in the first place. They should be grateful that there are any jobs left for their members at all after what they did. Obastard has been bought and paid for by the UAW (campaign donations anyone?) and has pressured the rightful owners of Chrysler to sell out cheap.

Tell me what's so different between the UAW crippling the automakers and then walking off with most of what's left, and the mob running down a bar and then buying it for a song. The labor laws over here just encourage this sort of large-scale extortion (remember the unions did the same thing to the airlines, bleeding them dry until 9/11 came along to finish them off) and it's no accident that the non-union auto operations in the US are growing.

In the twilight world of left-wing ideology we're supposed to look the other way as union thieves take other people's property, since it's all "in the interests of the workers". But what else would you expect from a government determined to confiscate ever more of our money to hand out to its cronies to buy votes?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

A Simple Explanation...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:25:00 +0000

I was sent the following explanation of the financial crisis, rendered in simple terms:

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar somewhere in Europe. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed alcoholics - to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar.

Taking advantage of her customers' freedom from immediate payment constraints, Heidi increases her prices for wine and beer, the most-consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit.

He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are guaranteed. Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.

One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the bank (subsequently of course fired for his negativity) decides that slowly the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar.

However they cannot pay back the debts.

Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.

DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80 %.

The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment due dates and having invested in the securities are faced with a new situation. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor.

The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties.

The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax levied on the non-drinkers.

I wish I could say that I had written it, but unfortunately I've been much too busy, what with having to work extra hard to pay all the taxes required to bail out the dumb fucks who put us in this mess. Beer anyone...?

Weight Loss

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:49:00 +0000

Like so many things, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Someone decided that we should have a weight-loss competition at work, which involved teams of five people seeing how much weight they could lose over a couple of months. When I accepted the invitation to join a team I didn't really pay much attention to the other members - after all, I wasn't about to get all psycho about weight loss. Unfortunately what I hadn't realized was that of the four other team members, three were bone-thin bastards with no weight to lose, and the fourth had already been working hard at it for a month, meaning that I was the only one who was a candidate to lose any weight at all.

Now, I'm no fat bastard, but I could probably lose a few pounds and feel no worse for it. Mrs Bison thinks about ten, which is optimistic. Bison Daughter is expecting me to end up with a six-pack, which is simply ridiculous, but represents a charming show of faith in her old man. It's not like I'm in this to win it; there are some people in our office who could - how do I say this delicately? - comfortably lose the bodyweight of a good sized dwarf and hardly notice. Nevertheless I at least want to be sure that we're not the only team to actually get fatter while supposedly trying to lose weight.

So what's my strategy? "Eat less and exercise more" is a well-established approach, but I already exercise five or six times a week, and I'm buggered if I'm going to go hungry. The thing about lifting weights is that it's important to ingest a significant amount of protein at regular intervals during the day, so I can't skip that. The only other time I decided to lose weight I went on a "no pasta, rice, bread or potatoes" regime for a few weeks. (I didn't cut out cakes or sweets.) It worked well, but I became pissy and irritable for a few days, and the aggravation of having to try and find alternatives to these starches while traveling became a monumental pain in the arse.

This time I'm going to cut back on the carbs again, reducing the starches, avoiding cakes and candy, and adding in fruits and salads to fill the space. I've been at this for a few days now and I have to say it's a fucking pain in the arse. Of course Mrs Bison decided to mark my endeavor by making her famous cherry cake, which I had to refuse, even as she repeatedly taunted me with the offer of a slice. (Does she actually want me to lose any weight?) Tomorrow I'm going to take a salad to work, complete with a can of tuna and hard boiled eggs for protein (which hopefully means I won't look completely gay).

Obviously this isn't a diet where I eat less food, only different food. If I was a bloater I might have to reconsider, but I'm only prepared to contemplate minor deprivation in the cause of pointless competition. The problem is that I just discovered Five Guys burgers. There's a place close to the office and I only got round to trying it just prior to the start of this contest. It was outstanding, no other word for it. Fabulous juicy burger, big pile of tasty fries; fuck me, I can almost taste it now. And yesterday Mrs Bison bought ice cream. Fucking diet...

Maybe there's a better way. I could just avoid wearing underwear when they weight us in at the end, that should save a few ounces. Have a haircut the day before, leave my car keys at my desk, wear lighter shoes, that sort of thing. On the other hand, Mrs Bison is now watching one of those tiresome period drama Dickens productions on public television. Watching that would bore the shit out of me. If I can only watch long enough, surely significant weight loss is guaranteed?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Male Enhancement

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:11:00 +0000

I decided to drop my car off for an oil change today before taking Mrs Bison for a gratuitously large Chinese lunch. Normally I'd wait with the car and take the opportunity to look over the new and used cars in the dealer lot, just for fun. Show me a man who can find himself surrounded by cars and not want to look at them and I'll show you a man who doesn't need a car simply because he's on the other bus. I could have checked out new cars when we came back from lunch but today my heart wasn't in it. You see, it appears that in addition to a new car I'll also need a bigger penis.

Whoa! Hold on there - I've had no complaints (he hastens to add) - but I've been reading car magazines recently, you know, things like Car and Driver, and if the advertising is anything to go by I can't get a new car without also doing something about my dick. There was this full page advert headlined "Does Size Really Matter To Your Lover?", followed by a lot of small text, the upshot of which was that I should send anywhere between $70 and $100 to purchase some non-FDA approved dried monkey jizz (or whatever the stuff is made of) which would give me a bigger, thicker more energetic manhood with "Orgasmic Thrust Activation".

Maybe it's because the advert was in a car magazine, but I can't help thinking that orgasmic thrust activation is something you'd find on a new Corvette, maybe to help you pull away quickly at the lights. Except it would be abbreviated to "OTA" and you'd have to nod sagely when the salesman told you that the car had it, even though you had no fucking clue what it did. And it would have its own little light on the dash which would come on after two thousand miles to inform you that the OTA wasn't working, and before you knew it you'd be back at the dealership every other week for them to try and fix it. But it would still be a bragging point: "Yeah, I got the Z06 model because of the OTA - you should feel your neck snap when you hit the gas!"

There was a second advert in the same magazine under a "Size Does Matter" banner, but this time you could spend more than $300. Maybe you get a really big penis with their stuff. But what if it worked? None of your pants would fit anymore, and if you got an unexpected erection at work you'd have to hide it under the desk. Fortunately the risk is low - I'm sure none of this shit works, but there must be plenty of blokes out there willing to roll the dice. And it's got to be good business for the companies who sell it. I mean, not only does it not have to work, they don't even really need to send you any pills. What are you going to do? Complain to the Better Business Bureau? Yeah, I can see that conversation happening.

"I'm calling to complain about this company. I sent them $300 because they said I could add three inches to my penis. And girth too. They definitely said girth. Now I've been taking the pills for a month and nothing's happened. No, definitely no bigger. Because I measured it. With a ruler. How long? Is that really important? It's the same as it was before, surely that's all you need to know? The girth? I don't know, it doesn't feel any thicker. No I didn't measure it - the ruler wouldn't bend. Oh, I suppose you're right, I could have used a bit of string and then measured the string. But I want to complain - they won't send my money back. My name? It's - erm - Smith. Yes, Smith. Address? I'd rather not say..."

Or maybe the company sends you the money back on a big pink check emblazoned with the words "PENIS ENLARGEMENT REFUND". Like that's ever going to get cashed.

Some of the other ads are more subtle - they don't mention size directly but instead refer to "Natural Male Enhancement", which is right up there with Around View Monitor, Lane Departure Prevention System and Electronic Brake Assist in the list of options on your new car. "I'd like it in black with the leather interior and the Natural Male Enhancement package please."

Clearly lots of blokes want a bigger dick. I'd love to be able to reassure them that "Size Doesn't Matter" but my non-scientific survey tells me that "Women Talk About Size". At least one of my colleagues claims to be getting the "short end of the stick" whenever she takes one home. My question is, are new cars disproportionately purchased by men with small dicks who are looking to compensate? Is that the real reason the car magazines are full of penis enlargement adverts? Whatever the reality I'd suggest to any bloke considering sending his hard-earned cash to some outfit promising to add inches to his member that he would indeed be better off putting it towards a new car. Not because it'll make up for the shortfall, but simply because he'll at least get some pleasure from the car. And in the meantime remember this sage advice from a noted stand-up comic:

I took this woman home and when I got undressed she pointed at my dick and said "Who do you think you're going to satisfy with that?" and I said "Me."

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Life Everlasting

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:34:00 +0000

Maybe it's fitting that on Easter Sunday, when millions are celebrating the last time someone rose from the dead, I found myself listening to a National Public Radio program about cryonics. Normally I eschew NPR, full as it is of dreary arty bollocks, lefty liberal apologetics and "black-only" racist programming, but it has its moments, and today contained one of them. The program looked back to the early days of cryonics in the sixties, when some bloke called Bob Nelson started freezing people and storing them in the charmingly ridiculous hope of reviving them later. The technology wasn't there at the time, but who knows what will be possible later, and I couldn't help thinking what a horrific thing that would be.

The idea behind cryonics is that most people who die aren't really "dead" according to the "information theoretic" definition of death, since their identity and memory is still preserved in their brain tissue at the moment of clinical death. As minutes or hours go by the brain will decompose and identity would be lost, but in theory if you froze someone who died of something like a heart attack you could revive them later.

Let's leave aside all the scientific questions about how long you could wait to freeze someone, what you'd need to do to preserve the body tissue and all that other stuff. For a start it's arse-clenchingly dull to anyone who's not into cryonics, and I have a suspicion that anyone who is into cryonics is a nutter. Frankly, I couldn't be arsed to research the subject. But let's think about this for a bit. What if it worked? What if people didn't die but just went into stasis for a bit and got revived later?

For a start it's not as though the world is short of people. The population is now estimated at 6.7 billion; when I was a kid I remember being told it was about 4 billion. Even without cryonics we're going to run out of places to put them all, and land to grow food for them. About 60 million people die every year, but even if you only consider the "wealthy" ones the number isn't small. 2.5 million die annually in the US. Assuming that cryonics becomes possible and affordable just imagine the additional land that'll be given over to gigantic frozen warehouses for all their corpses. And what are the eco-weenies going to say about the huge amounts of electricity being used to refrigerate all these bodies; instead of returning their carbon to the earth they'll be using fuel for centuries. Bear in mind that it's not necessary to prove that you can revive people for there to be a market here - there's no shortage of idiots willing to be frozen just on the off-chance of future success.

Let's hope the idea never works - with the birth rate at 75 million per year (a net of 15 million over the death rate), even if we only revived 25% of the stiffs we'd be looking at doubling the population growth.

And what would we get at the end of it? Statistically speaking an awful lot of people die when they're old. I've seen old people: forget the problem with all the senile ones, just think about how they spend their time now. Revive them and before you know it we'll be knee-deep in wrinklies. They already retired so what are we going to do? Pay them another pension until they die (again)? You won't be able to move at WalMart, and forget trying to eat during the early bird special. The economic might of the United States will be devoted to the production of dentures, incontinence pants and arthritis drugs. The promise of cryonics is that we get to see a wonderful future, beyond our dreams, but the revived pensioners are just going to moan about how much better it was in the old days so what's the point?

That's the trouble with people - they don't think things through. Everyone wants to live forever but I'm afraid that doesn't work. Instead of people trying to extend their lives indefinitely wouldn't it be better if we enjoyed life while it lasted, embraced death when it came, and realized that millions of drooling carcases, kept alive only by advanced medical intervention, should be sent on their way? Today millions remember how two thousand years ago someone got nailed to a cross so we wouldn't have to fear death anymore. Doesn't seem like it worked, does it?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Fuck Me, It's Dwayne Dibley!

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:12:00 +0000

Mrs Bison spent about four hours yesterday taking Bison Daughter shopping, on account of the fact that she's grown out of everything. In the good old days we'd buy clothes in advance - whatever was on sale at the end of the season we'd buy it in a larger size for next season, and that way we'd stay ahead of the game. (To be fair, when I say "we", I obviously don't mean me.) However that doesn't work now because the girl has discovered "fashion". That means a shirt with no logo from Target is "unfashionable" but the same shirt with "Hollister" plastered all over it is "way cool". Never mind that they're all made in China and would fall apart if she didn't grow out of them so quickly, the branded stuff is much better.

There's a balance here - I'm not going to force my kid to be the only one with no logo gear, but I'm also not giving in to this "everyone else has it so I have to" bullshit. A few branded items amongst the other stuff go a long way.

The marketing of branded clothing to kids is an irritating way to suck more money out of our pockets but at least the clothes still look like clothes. The other night I had the misfortune to experience America's Next Top Model on TV. Have you ever seen such a load of complete bollocks in your life?

The whole fashion industry seems to be populated by freaks, degenerates and weirdos, the kind of bizarre, self-obsessed nonces that you'd cross the street to avoid in real life. Just look at what goes up and down catwalks in the major fashion shows - no-one in their right mind would ever conceive of actually wearing any of that crap, and anyone who'd pay what it sells for clearly has more money than sense, by a phenomenally wide margin.

I don't want to sound like an expert on America's Next Top Model, but it falls into the standard reality-show format, where a cast of wannabes are put through a series of tests and gradually eliminated by a panel of judges. One of the judges is a "bloke" (I use the term in its broadest possible sense) by the name of Miss J.Alexander. What struck me when I saw him on the show was that he was dressed in the kind of gear that would make anyone look like a complete pillock. The whole fashion industry is an "Emperor's New Clothes" experience; if some "high fashion" name started prancing around in a bin bag and wellies suddenly everyone else would want to. Who could believe that flared jeans came back, for fuck's sake?

But as soon as I saw J.Alexander, the famous fashion figure and catwalk coach, the first thing I thought was "It's Dwayne Dibley!" Yes, the ultimate fashion-failure character from Red Dwarf. He was the spitting image! I know everyone from the UK will know who he is, but here's a link to Dwayne Dibley for those who don't. And if you haven't watched Red Dwarf before I can only suggest that you've clearly been wasting your life to date.

At the top of the page are four pictures - two are fashion failure Dwayne Dibley and two are fashion guru J.Alexander. Can you tell them apart?

So forgive me if I'm somewhat reluctant to ponce about in whatever the fashion industry tells me is now "in". Remember, just because it's fashionable doesn't mean you don't look like a twat.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Handy Job

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:19:00 +0000

I'm not quite sure how the subject came up. There we were, sitting in a cozy restaurant in Belgium, with low ceilings and candlelight, enjoying one of those meals that you just don't get in St.Louis. It was a place run by a husband and wife; he cooked while she ran the front of the house. There was no menu - when we arrived she just explained what they were going to make for us and checked that everything would be OK. (Presumably they'll make accommodations if something would cause you to heave.) Outside the rain fell steadily, and through it, illuminated by evening streetlamps, we could pick out the classic architecture of the town square.

Early on the conversation was polite but hesitant; this was a business dinner, with seven or eight of us gathered. Gradually the conversation shifted, however, and I found myself relating the story of a television program I saw many years ago in which zookeepers were harvesting semen from a gorilla in captivity. I pointed out that the process involved sedating the gorilla and then inserting a large stainless steel vibrator in its anus to cause ejaculation. Two things struck me: firstly, a gorilla has a really tiny dick considering the rest of its physiology; secondly, there didn't appear to be much in the process for the gorilla, who was presumably going to wake up with a hangover, a sore arse and an empty sac. None of us want that to happen, do we? What do you think goes through the poor beast's mind after that? "Jesus, I must have hit the fermented bamboo juice a bit hard last night. What the hell's wrong with my arse? Oh fuck! Who was I with? Oh man, does that mean I'm gay now? I hope no video ends up on YouTube."

I only verbalized the first part of that story in the restaurant, not the imagined thoughts of the awakening primate, but you have to be careful with stories like that because if you misjudge the mood of the group you can suddenly end up with an awkward silence, and everyone studying the menu intently. Since there was no menu in this place we would have been screwed. Fortunately my counterpart came back with an even better story.

Apparently his company used to be in the pig genetics business. Like most industrialized companies they had a very active health and safety program, involving sharing learnings and improvements between different sites that would make the workplace safer. In one instance there had been a problem with the people who had to harvest the sperm from the hogs ending up with carpal tunnel syndrome, which had resulted in the development of a new tool or gadget to help them avoid this. Carpal tunnel? You mean they did it by hand?

Harvesting sperm sounds like it's a noble and scientifically justified endeavor, but at the end of the day you know that you're basically a pig-wanker. How do you live with yourself if your job involves giving hand relief to swine on a daily basis? What do you say when your kid asks what you did today? More to the point, what's the going rate for jerking off a hog? Because I have to believe that there would be more money in pulling off people, and probably less chance of being trampled in the mud while you're doing it.

Back in the restaurant, three excellent courses were followed by a fine dessert. Although the rain was still falling when we eventually stepped out into the cobbled street to make our way back to the car park, life didn't seem too bad. The weekend was coming, and there is, at present, no prospect that I will have to wank off any pigs in my immediate future. And I'm not hung like a gorilla either. Happy days!

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Road Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:33:00 +0000

It's Spring Break here in St.Louis so, contrary to normal practice, we decided actually to go away for a few days. Since I'd rather stick pins in my gonads than pay to be treated like shit by an airline, we set off by car for Big Cedar Lodge, down in Southern Missouri by Table Rock Lake. This is about a four hour drive from St.Louis, providing the opportunity to experience the very best of highway-side Missouri entertainment along the way.

I have to assume that the places dotted along the highway are examples of what is known as "small town America", albeit somewhat corrupted by the influence of so many passing travelers just begging to be separated from their dollars. It must be interesting to live there - it's not at all clear what you'd do by way of entertainment, unless you have an inclination to junk food, fireworks or pornography, because that's all you see along the road.

One of the large signs proclaimed "The World's Biggest Rocking Chair" was nearby, begging the question "Who gives a shit?".

One of the great benefits of I-44 is that you have plenty of gigantic billboards to help ensure that you don't miss any of the fine roadside establishments that grace the highway. On the way down we were still two hours out of Branson when we began to be bombarded with invitations to stop off for Branson coupons, or to see the big-name tacky shows that infest this otherwise meaningless town. Of course there are also many artery-hardening junk food emporia peddling their greasy wares, but by far the most entertaining signs are those advertising "ADULT STORES". The signs are invariably large and yellow, whereas the stores themselves appear small and seedy, although judging by the number of cars parked outside they weren't hurting for business, even before midday. Isn't there some sort of basic principle of decency that you shouldn't hit the scud mag store before lunch? It's like drinking - perfectly understandable if you do it in the evening, but if it's the first thing on your mind when you get out of bed then you've probably got a problem. The exotic dancers at the place next to Big Louie's apparently start at 11am, in case you're interested...

My favorite store sign was the one for what I believe was called the Lions Den establishment just outide Waynesville. It apparently offers a new video arcade, which cannot help but to conjure up images of people tugging themselves off in little cubicles. No-one watches porn unless they plan to "take Captain Picard to warp speed" do they? Can these people really not wait until they get home to rub one out? Or maybe they can't take the porn home in case the missus finds it, in which case this is less of a porn shop and more like a porn library. (Silence please!)

Anyway, this store was almost next door to the Grace Covenant Christian Center, which seems like unfortunate planning on someone's part. Maybe the Lions Den name was an oblique biblical reference, although I don't recall Daniel pulling his pud when he was thrown in with the big cats. What really got my attention was the giant bowling pin eight in front of the Adult Store sign. Maybe there was also a bowling alley nearby, but it just seemed to me like they couldn't quite get planning consent for a huge pink dildo to advertise their store, and consequently had to make do with a bowling pin.

In between the Christian Center and the Porn Warehouse was McDonalds. Now we know they don't site their stores by accident - they pay great attention to traffic patterns; clearly plenty of people frequent the video arcade. Or perhaps they just have an outlet for all the man-mess generated. What's that funny sauce they put on the Fillet O Fish called again?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Vegetable Rights And Peace

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:44:00 +0000

No wonder vegetarians are such miserable cunts - have you ever tried the food? Mrs Bison decided, for reasons better known to herself, to mix things up on the dinner front tonight, with a recipe for meatballs based on this Match textured vegetable protein. Now I have to give Mrs B the benefit of the doubt on this - she almost always makes excellent food, something she attributes to me having low standards and being easy to please. No matter what the truth in this, I get a lot of good food, and all of it based on variations on a theme of dead animal, so I was willing to give the soy-based veggie crap a go.

Jesus, how does anyone choke that shit down? I was prepared that it wouldn't taste like meat, in much the same way that a spicy bean burger doesn't taste like a hamburger. But here's the thing, a bean burger does taste like real food; in this case beans. And spices. So while you're certainly going to be disappointed if you bite into one and you were expecting medium rare ground sirloin burger, if you set out to eat it as a bean burger it can actually pass as food.

Textured vegetable protein is another thing altogether. It doesn't taste like beans, or any other recognizable food substance. It has the consistency of something that has been extruded from the rearmost orifice of a cat, and a flavor that makes you wish that it had. At least cat shit would have some meat content. I suppose the veggie crap is supposed to be all nutritionally beneficial but, let me tell you, the nutritional value of something is irrelevant if it engages your gag reflex so comprehensively that you can't swallow it.

Bear in mind that Mrs Bison's characterization of my eating habits is not far from the truth. If it moved once I'll eat it. Even if it's still moving I'll give it a go. I've eaten duck brains, fish eyes, frog ovaries, dog penis and cow tongue, so I'm not what you'd call a picky eater, but I'd eat any one of them before ever again tucking into textured fucking vegetable protein. It's earthworm-guts, leper-sputumly disgusting. I kept trying to eat it; I got three balls of the shit down, for fuck's sake, but I couldn't get through it all.

So I retrieved the package from the trash to see what the source of this vile taste was, and I have to say that I was left somewhat in the dark. The ingredients included the aforementioned textured vegetable protein and some other items like caramel color, but did not include any clue as to the source of the nasty seed things in it, which appeared to be mildly less appetizing than what we feed the parakeets. What I did recognize was assorted veggie-world slogans about this kind of crap being "better for the world" and "better for everyone". Bollocks is it.

Bison Daughter complained that she needed some meat, which made me very happy, since with girls you worry that they're only one step away from some bullshit vegetarian anorexic nightmare. Just imagine that there was no meat though. Last night we went out for barbecue, and the dead pig meat was so tender I could have hugged it; what if you had to exist for the rest of your natural life on the kind of tasteless, nutritionally worthy, ethically responsible shit for which textured vegetable protein is the poster child? Fuck that!

Have you noticed how the animal rights brigade are ready and willing to engage in violence so they can stuff their world view down everyone else's throat? You know what, if I had to eat that modified dog excrement every night I'd be ready to burn something too, although I'd be more inclined to direct my ire to the vegetable protein manufacturers before going after Hummer dealerships, drug companies and those people who like to make beagles smoke. I've never yet had a smoking beagle ruin my dinner.

Anyway, I'm now about ready to yak up the few veggie balls I swallowed, and Mrs Bison has vowed never to go anywhere near that shit again. Tomorrow I fully intend to find myself a vegan and slap them for being such a dickhead. If it wasn't for them no-one would make that textured veggie bollocks, and it wouldn't be lurking on the shelf, ready to ensnare the passing shopper with wholly unfulfilled promises of flavor.

It's fucking shite - don't ever attempt to eat it, OK?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

A Good Read

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:37:00 +0000

It was a wonderful sunny day in St.Louis, and there's always that little voice inside me on days like this that says "You need to go out and make the most of it". Fortunately I've got really good at ignoring that voice, as it can result in a perfectly good relaxing day being spoiled by some pointless trip and vain attempt to wring joy from it. Much better to sit on the deck in the sun and fritter away the afternoon aimlessly. To be fair, I didn't ignore the little voice which said "You need to go to the gym and do your leg workout", which was why I only had the afternoon to fritter.

What I really like to do on a day like this, or indeed any day with nothing better to do, is to sit with a good book. Unfortunately I am shit at buying good books; I can wander into Borders with the best of intentions, but no matter how hard I try, I can't find anything remotely worth reading. It's all trashy fiction, deep meaningful treatises on feminist thinking and nineteenth century drama by people who you get to study in literature classes. (And don't we remember how shit they were?)

For good reading I have to rely on gifts from my in-laws, who periodically send me excellent books, and without whom I'd be reduced to reading the back of cereal boxes. Sure, I don't get many books from my in-laws, but that's not a problem because I can re-read the good ones. In fact, in a couple of decades I probably won't even know I've read them at all, so I'll never be short of a good book.

Today I sat in the sun with McCarthy's Bar, an outstanding gentle travel/comedy book by Pete McCarthy which I've had for years but which never gets old. It's about his travels in Ireland, the country of his ancestry, and his attempt to see if he belonged there by virtue of his Irish roots, even though he grew up in England. I strongly recommend you get a copy.

I always enjoyed going to Ireland because of all the great people I met there (and not because of the weather, which was invariably shit). I can't stand St.Patrick's Day, and all that pseudo-Irish green shamrock bullshit, paraded by fat Americans who had a great, great grandfather who once drank a pint of Guinness, and who consequently believe they're all refugees of the potato famine. Fortunately Ireland isn't like that, apart from the touristy bits which cater to all the visiting fat Americans, of course.

I used to travel regularly to Mullingar, which I've never seen mentioned in any travel guide. It's about two hours West of Dublin, assuming you know where you're going and you avoid the highway. I always went on the back roads, using directions I'd copied on a cardboard rental car sign while being driven at night by the bloke whose job I was taking over, while suffering from the after-effects of food poisoning. (I'd spent the better part of the previous night riding the porcelain bus in a hotel in Manchester.) When we arrived in Mullingar we went to the Bloomfield House hotel, which had been a convent in the past (there was only one other place to stay at the time, the Greville Arms I think, and it was always risky because loud parties could be taking place right under your room.) As we left the check-in desk and walked upstairs all noises faded away and suddenly you felt a weird silence, kind of creepy and ominous. Every time I walked up there alone I half-expected to see a ghostly nun sweeping down the corridor.

On this occasion my colleague was walking with me and as he opened the door to his room he beckoned me in. "See? Can you smell that? It is the menstruation of the nuns!" Frankly I think that says more about him than the hotel, which was always excellent, and never smelled of nun menstruation as far as I could tell (although I'm hardly an expert).

Anyway, in spite of my careful directions I got lost the first time I tried to drive to Mullingar by myself, on account of following a sign to the town of Trim (which was on the way) that actually directed me off the road to Trim. I drove down the narrow lane and came to a junction where five lanes came together. There were no signs to give me a hint, but there was a man standing there with a herd of cows. I wound down my window and asked him where Trim was; he directed me back the way I'd come, but then he asked me if I wouldn't mind putting my car across one lane and standing in front of another so he could drive the cows without them wandering off in the wrong direction. That's when I realized that I was really in Ireland.

It'll soon be St.Paddy's Day, and wankers everywhere will be drinking pissy green beer, wearing ridiculous shamrock crap and pretending they're "Oirish". I won't be among them - the whole thing is bollocks, and dangerous bollocks at that, used in the past by Irish Republican terrorists to cadge cash for weapons from fat gullible Americans so they could kill kids in the streets of England. But I always enjoyed the real Ireland, regardless of the personal hygiene habits of its nuns...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Tipping Points

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:35:00 +0000

Two things are happening that have the potential to bring economic prosperity to an end, and at the risk of referencing one of the most overused new phrases of the age, in each case we are approaching a tipping point.

The first issue is that approximately half of voters the US pay no net income tax. Of course it's long been the case that the majority of taxes are paid by the wealthy, and you can certainly argue that this is fair - why shouldn't everyone pay the same percentage of their income in tax? Unfortunately taxes aren't "fair", and the very wealthy always end up owing much more of their income in tax than lower income earners because it's so tempting for the many to push the burden onto the few, especially since envy is such a powerful social motivator. Sure, the rich can always respond by just not paying the taxes - note how many wealthy Democrats failed the "have you paid all the taxes you owed" test recently. And that's just the ones exposed to scrutiny as part of Obastard's confirmation process.

The problem comes when so many people pay no tax at all. When most people pay tax there is a natural brake on government spending because people don't like tax increases. Without any brake, government will always find new ways to spend money and never cut back on the old ways. However, if you don't pay any tax, why not vote for all sorts of new spending? Free healthcare? Yes please! Someone else is paying! At the point where the majority of voters have no personal interest in restricting tax increases we risk an accelerating orgy, a society bingeing in new entitlements at someone else's expense.

You might hope that Americans wouldn't be that stupid, but just check out what they watch on TV to get an idea about the IQ of the typical voter. They're fucking idiots, and considerably less likely to take a considered view of long term economic impact of tax policy than they are to text their vote for American Idol while eating themselves to obesity on stuffed crust pizza.

Meanwhile government is adding new branches, new programs and millions of new non-jobs, all paid for by taxes. (Climate change department, anyone?) There comes a point where more people work for the government than work for private companies. Obviously it's worth pointing out that government contributes absolutely zilch, zero, fuck-all, nothing by way of productivity. No wealth is, or ever can be, created by governments; it can only be redistributed, inhibited or destroyed. But that's not the tipping point issue. The problem is that when most people work for the government the majority suddenly has a vested interest in the government not cutting back on wages, benefits and other perks. In fact they'll likely use the power of their union to make sure that the government pays them well above what they are really worth every year. Governments, being craven bodies, entirely beholden to the fear of losing power at the next election, will avoid facing the economic crisis that results from a bloated, inefficient, unnecessary, overpaid, unaccountable bureaucracy, and will just vote it another pay rise and print more money to do it.

So if you're expecting an economic recovery from the so-called stimulus package, don't hold your breath. Taxing the rich and employing more enviro-crimes officers will simply accelerate the decline in the economy until it finally becomes apparent even to the liberal cocksuckers that money does not, in fact, grow on trees.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Wasting Money

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:47:00 +0000

OK, I'm not even going to pretend to be in a reasonable mood today. I'm still pissed about that $900 million gift to Gaza that our fuckwitted government intends to make on our behalf. My equilibrium was not improved by the stock market's further collapse below 7,000 today and the consequent knowledge that everything I invested in it was a complete fucking waste, and I'll be working until I'm ninety, whereas if I'd pissed away the cash and taken out a big loan instead, for a house I couldn't afford, I could now sit back and wait for everyone else to pay my mortgage for me.

Needless to say, I've heard nothing whatsoever from the complete twat that "manages" my investments (such as they are). The only things he ever sent me were selected articles titled "Next Stop The Dow at 15,000" or similar crap. Ever since the decline started I periodically receive articles from him pointing out that we're now at the bottom, and the only way is up, usually prefacing another round of collapse. What a cunt.

Anyway, I don't think yesterday's short and vitriolic note really captured the underlying problem I have with how governments spend money. I was concentrating on how stupid it was to give huge amounts of our money away to strangers. I didn't even get onto two other salient points which Ms. Clinton might have considered:

1. The Palestinians all hate America and want us dead. They hang effigies of Americans in the street and regard us as the Great Satan because we support Israel. Giving them a huge gift is like giving a Rolex to a cousin who hates your guts, except it's $899,995,000 more expensive. You might as well burn the money.

2. The Palestinians will continue to fire rockets at Israel, so the Israelis will knock down Gaza again, rendering the investment utterly pointless.

But even that isn't really the point. Just imagine that the project made sense (go on, really try). Assuming someone did the math and evaluated the project goals, the potential approaches and the costs and benefits, how did they come up with a number of $900 million, with an initial payment of $300 million? Don't those numbers seem kind of round to you? For those of us who live in the real world, where capital is scarce and has to be justified based on a cost/benefit analysis, return on investment calculation, consideration of alternatives and supported by a well thought-out project plan, just imagine going before the Board of Directors and asking for $300 million for a project.

"Really? You need $300 million exactly? You developed a plan to accomplish a goal and the cost for this plan to be executed came out to be $300 million exactly? Pull the other one, shit-for-brains, you haven't got a plan at all, have you? You just showed up here with an idea and expect us to write you a giant check? Did you even attempt to find a less expensive way to achieve your project goal? Did you carry out any value-engineering? Use any cost management tools? What's your bid strategy?"

Nothing the government does is ever properly thought-out. It's always a really big round number, and then they go away and spend it without any oversight, usually with no-bid contracts for all their cronies.

Even on a smaller level I just don't understand why government isn't required to act like business. Our local school district is remodeling Bison Daughter's school. In reality they're making a new entrance and enlarging some office space. Total square footage of additional classroom? Zero. Total additional amenity provided to the kids? Zero. Total return in terms of enhanced education? Fucking zero. And yet they're spending the money anyway, because it'll look pretty, and presumably it got passed because "educating our kids is a priority". Bollocks.

In business we have to at least show in theory how investment generates return. If I brought forward a multi-million dollar project to create a new entrance for our office, but it didn't add any revenue, reduce any costs, increase quality or add productive capacity, I'd be laughed out of the room. And even if it's a good idea we're expected to work that idea, to reduce costs and consider different options, so that when we spend the money we get the best return for our investment. Guess what? None of them ever show up as a round number.

So you can bet your arse that no matter what you think about giving money to fucking Gaza, the money will be wasted. Which just pisses me off more, because amongst all those companies with falling stock prices are many who would just love to get $10 million or $20 million to invest in new facilities, here in the good old USA. Instead Obastard is going to increase the tax burden on corporations, making investments less attractive. If you wanted the Dow below 5,000 you could hardly write a better prescription. Which probably means I can expect a note from my investment advisor tomorrow, pointing out what a great time it is to buy stocks...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Thin The Herd

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:09:00 +0000

Today I'm suffering from Rhinovirus Homilis, better known as the Man Cold. Of course it didn't hit me during the week, so as not to interrupt work, but instead chose to fuck up my weekend. Yesterday I felt like shit, and was therefore looking forward to the cold progressing so that I would feel better today. Instead I now feel like double shit, lightly toasted with a side-serving of shit. Shit cubed, in fact. Yesterday I bought a mountain of cold remedies, not because I had a cold, but because the money in last year's health savings account is about to expire and I thought I may as well spend it on something. I don't know why I bothered - cold remedies don't do shit.

So I'll spend the rest of my day drinking tea and filling tissues with unhealthy looking phlegm, until I eventually give up on stupid cold remedies and mix some honey, scotch and lemon for a proper treatment.

In the meantime, since thoughts of illness and impending early death were on my mind, I was reflecting on the mess we've got ourselves in with old people. Let me put in simply: the fuckers are everywhere. They make up names for themselves, like "seniors" in an attempt to connote wisdom, societal status and rank, but we know them better as those fuckwits who buy a new Buick every three years, put white tires, a vinyl roof and a luggage rack on it and drive it up the pavement or over a bus queue.

To be fair, old people come in different categories. Mrs Bison has a relative of 102 who still lives at home and tends his own garden, whereas a significant portion of those twenty years his junior are sitting in a giant diaper being fed soup, if they aren't already pushing up the daisies. One centenarian in the same town apparently developed a penchant for internet porn, which is as far as I'm concerned a reason to congratulate him (although not to shake his hand); at least it gave him a reason to get up every day.

There are, however, legions of old people sitting around just waiting to die. A lot of them are warehoused in old people's homes, at considerable expense to them, their relatives or the government (i.e. the taxpayer, you and me). The problem is that people don't die of anything anymore. Back in the good old days a harsh winter would take care of the weak and feeble. Heart attacks, cancer and all the other old favorites would similarly thin the herd. But with all the medical advances of recent years it seems that the expectation in the medical community (indeed, their whole mission) is to postpone death indefinitely.

The problem is that while you can postpone death, you can't postpone aging, so that the animated carcasses you get left with don't necessarily have any quality of life. Of course the medical profession links arms on this point with religious groups who seem to have some major hangups about letting people die. This seems somewhat odd when you consider that the afterlife is supposed to be such a fabulous "meeting God, no more pain, eternal joy" affair. If Great Grandpa is kept alive by machines, is fed through a tube and shits in a bag, what's the big deal about letting him go on?

Leaving aside the personal morality, what about a bit of simple common sense? In 2004 old farts represented 36 million, or 12% of the US population; by 2050 they will number nearly 90 million, more than 20% of the population. Not all of them will be taking Viagra and going on cruises; a significant portion will require full-time care and constant, increasingly expensive medical intervention. At the same time we're being told that the healthcare system here is broken. At some point we need to grow a spine and confront the fact that a massive portion of our limited healthcare dollars are directed to the pointless extension of low-quality life. Not only is it spend with a very low return in terms of quality of life improvement per dollar, but everyone completely avoids talking about what a waste it is, while younger people die for want of quality care.

The danger here is that the AARP is already a powerful lobbying group in the US (meaning that by giving money to politicians they effectively buy policy). Why do you think that blind half-wits who don't realize the war is over can drive their giant Cadillacs through a school playground? The AARP effectively blocks any attempt to force old people to be checked for driving competence. Imagine that their ranks are doubled: now we have a society which will spend its entire working life generating money to pay for Mum and Dad's residential care, or their own. The US economy will implode and no-one will be able to buy anything except incontinence pads, tartan rugs and small, annoying dogs. We'll all be working directly or indirectly for the healthcare industry.

At some point we need to accept that people should die. When I was a kid we learned that there were about 4 billion people on this planet; we're now over 6 billion, actually closer to 7 billion, and expected to pass 9 billion by 2050. If you serioulsy believe that we can, and should, extend every life indefinitely, where the fuck are you going to put everyone? There won't be enough space to park all their fucking Buicks!

I vote for letting people push the button and end their lives when they're ready. And if you no longer know what's going on around you, that's a pretty good indication that it's time to go, so at that point someone else can choose. Hell, I can barely put up with this fucking cold, endless nose-blowing and feeling like crap for two days; if I have to sit in my own piss and breathe through a tube while I'm doing it you can sign me up.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

The Lunatics And The Asylum

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:20:00 +0000

It would be funny, if it weren't so sad, that so many stupid people here in the US believe that it's the Government that will solve the problems of the economy and lead us all to a bright financial future. Let's leave aside for a moment the oft-repeated assertion that governments can't create economic growth, they can only facilitate it by creating the right environment for the market to work. More often, of course, they fuck it up most comprehensively by waggling all sorts of economic levers which they don't understand and following a set of dogmatic principles that have nothing to do with growth and everything to do with wealth redistribution or social policy.

It was Winston Churchill, one of the greatest men ever to have lived, who pointed out that "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." You could see that immediately in the Obastardization of the so-called stimulus package and the idiot's subsequent tax policy - never mind about creating more wealth, let's just make sure we grab from those who earned and give to those who didn't.

But regardless of your politics, left or right, I simply don't understand how people can possibly believe that the government is effective at anything. This applies to governments of either party here in the States - after all, it's mostly the same cast of characters in Congress, and the same millions of useless bureaucrats who administer policy, no matter who's in office.

Just take something simple like the switch to digital TV. The February 17 date for the switch was set years ago. Since then TV stations have been required by statute to devote endless hours to reminding us that all our aerial TVs would stop working on that date if we didn't have a digital one, or buy a converter box. Everything was rolling to this date, and then what happened? A twat got elected and decided to postpone the change, ostensibly because people weren't ready. Weren't ready? Are you shitting me? Having been prodded and reminded of this for literally years, having put up with inane and repetitive commercials on TV, endless discussion on the radio and reminders at every turn, some people aren't ready. Well fuck 'em.

There's only two types of people not ready - those who couldn't be bothered and those who couldn't afford a converter box. The government already spent millions in free vouchers for the converters; what's next? Are we going to impose a new TV tax on anyone earning over $100k per year so we can buy a new flat screen for every lazy tosser out there who devotes their welfare check to methamphetamine and cheap beer? The point is, though, that there will always be people not ready; delaying the switch won't change a single thing, other than fucking up everyone's plans for the changeover. It's like having Y2K and then deciding it should be in March because some people didn't pay attention.

This is the big difference between businesses and government. Both are capable of fucking up. When a business fucks up it loses money, or goes bust. When government fucks up it just takes more of our money away from us. When a business encounters hard times it reduces costs; government just looks to increase taxes or borrow more. Check out California - they've run out of other people's money but they won't cut any of their "sacred cow" excessive spending. When businesses treat their customers like shit they go somewhere else; governments routinely treat people like shit, providing a level of service that would be laughable in the private sector. (Just head down to your local DMV office if you are in any doubt.) But customers don't have a choice.

In the real world businesses dismiss employees who don't work hard, who steal or who treat customers badly. What do you think the turnover in the public sector is? How many lazy, failing teachers get dismissed every year do you think? How many rude and incompetent DMV administrators? How many corrupt local officials? The very thing that makes businesses deal with their problems (the knowledge that someone else is trying hard to make their customers leave them) is the discipline missing from government. Nothing gets better because no-one's arse is on the line if it doesn't.

Amazon managed to build a world-class supply chain infrastructure that can get you just about anything you want to your door tomorrow. The government spends billions and can't even get a digital TV switch to happen on time.

So why can't the government run anything efficiently? Could it be because so few people in government ever had to run anything in the real world? People were surprised at the chaos in post-hurricane New Orleans but what do you expect of the leadership at the top of every government organization is a political appointee whose major qualifications probably come down to the quantity of political dick they've sucked over the years. Out in the real world, real people in businesses make a living providing a product or service that people want, with the discipline of knowing that customers can leave. That means you have to manage costs aggressively, innovate, invest wisely and provide the kind of service that makes people want to buy from you again.

There are millions of managers and directors who have learned how to do this. But who do we see running the country? Wankers like Obama who never ran anything in their lives, who couldn't be trusted to run a fucking lemonade stand. If you walk around Congress and peek inside the offices of the elected representatives you will see that most of their staff are about twenty three years old, straight out of college, never worked a day in the real world, and are immediately immersed in the bizarre parallel universe of politics, where letting people keep more of the money they earned is considered a "gift" by the government, and taking my money simply to give to people who didn't earn it is somehow not seen as "expropriation" or "theft".

Yet people persist in expecting this cast of clowns, from both parties, to magically fix the economy. Would you trust a surgeon who never trained but spent their entire life working backroom deals and making speeches to remove your appendix? I think not. The very best we can hope for from government is that they create the conditions for economic growth, and that means incentives for private investment and tax policies that encourage success. What we're seeing instead is Obastard's paymasters on the left rifling the pockets of the economy while it's flat on its back, shamelessly taking money they didn't earn to hand out to those who didn't work hard enough or behave prudently enough, along with a sickening cast of left wing interest groups.

Stimulus package my arse.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

More From Whitey

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:04:00 +0000

I was definitely planning to write something lavatorial or vaguely penis-related, and definitely humorous, as an antidote to yesterday's more serious post, but I saw that our new attorney general, Eric Holder, (did he cheat on his taxes too?) gave a speech on the subject of race today and I just couldn't let it pass. First he took the opportunity to call us a nation of cowards. Then the gist of what he said was that we're still basically a self-segregated society, and that "we must feel comfortable enough with one another and tolerant enough of each other to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us".

Really? A frank conversation? Apparently yes, because he went on to say "If we're going to ever make progress, we're going to have to have the guts, we have to have the determination, to be honest with each other. It also means we have to be able to accept criticism where that is justified."

Yeah, right. I know how this process of race politics works in real life here - the criticism is fine so long as it's leveled at whitey, but you so much as hint at any failings in the so-called black community and you may as well just check yourself into Racists Anonymous and be done with it.

Let's peel this racial onion a little bit, though, just in case Mr Holder is serious. His point seems to be that we're not the "melting pot" that we're supposed to be. White people largely hang out with other white people and the same for blacks. He didn't mention Indians, Chinese or Mexicans, which is not a surprise because in the world of racial politics these "not white but not African" people are an unfortunate distraction, but I'm sure the same is true for them. This isn't good enough for Mr Holder though - we should all be living in mixed race neighborhoods like those smiling pictures in adverts where the random group always contains at least one black/woman/hispanic, and probably a token gay as well.

This would make perfect sense if the idea that we're all the same apart from our skin color was actually true, but it is, in fact, utter bollocks. Sure it's true for some of us - the black colleagues I've had were basically the same kind of person as me. They were professionals, family men, lived in suburbia, dressed smartly and had a lot of the same experiences growing up (such as going to college). But in spite of the fact that they have everything in common with people like me and fuck-all in common with some hip-hop, drug using, pants round his arse, ghetto pimp, they get labeled together as part of the "black community". And who does this? It's the fucking black community themselves, or at least a very vocal section of it.

If Holder really wants a color-blind society where we all mix in, one of the prerequisites is that we don't pay attention to skin color and use it as a badge of commonality. People like him need to stop labeling all black people as part of one group, and implying that we should see them all as "the same". It's noticeable that Holder gave his speech to mark Black History Month, which is exactly the kind of useless, racially charged, divisive bullshit that reinforces differences and the black/white divide. If we can't even talk about our history as one thing, without segregating it, how the fuck does he expect that we're going to forget about race and live together in a color-blind nation?

Meanwhile the NAACP has its Image Awards, which, like every single awards ceremony up to and including the Oscars, is a sickening display of mutual fawning and backslapping, the main difference being that it's by and for blacks. Or, to be more accurate, everyone but whitey. And probably the Chinese too, because they aren't brown enough. Just attempt to substitute "White" for "Black" in all these events and you're back on the fast track to Racists Anonymous, but apparently racial exclusion is OK when blacks do it. And yet this dickhead Holder wonders aloud why it is that we tend to self-segregate, when the whole mission of the supposed vanguard of the black community seems to be to reinforce differences, create a separate black identity and opt out of a mainstream multi-racial society in favor of a new range of cultural ghettos.

If he really wants to have a "frank conversation" let's start by asking when he's going to stop perpetually looking backwards. At what point do we stop taking a month out of the year so everyone can wallow in the civil rights past. Do we have a Jewish History month where we remember the Holocaust? I think that was a pretty big event too, but we don't have so much as a day set aside for that. What about the rich history of the Chinese, or Indians, civilizations with an enormous amount to teach us. Do we have a month for them? What about all the different European histories? Where's British History Month, for fuck's sake?

Until we stop using the civil rights past as a catch-all excuse and people start taking accountability for raising their children, looking after their neighborhoods, improving their schools, working hard to put food on the table and kids through college, nothing's going to change. When Holder says he wants a discussion, what he really wants is for whitey to feel bad that there's not enough black people in his street and for this to translate into yet more redistribution of money, as though if we wave the magic dollar wand we'll all live happily ever after in a multi-racial nirvana. Bollocks.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Court Order

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:23:00 +0000

It's that dead time of winter - February is only half over and Spring is nowhere close, but football (by which I mean the NFL, American football) is over for the season. Fortunately baseball season hasn't started - I have to say that I find this the most pointless of all games - steroidy bloaters play 162 games of rounders and each team wins and loses almost exactly half their games. As if that unending succession of individually meaningless games wasn't enough to bore everyone rigid it's only a prelude to a long, drawn-out playoff process, culminating in the so-called World Series, where one American team plays another American team. Although each team is mostly made up of people from the Dominican Republic.

So in the meantime we have basketball. What a fucking waste of time that is. Each team of seven-foot, baggy-shorted, tattooed role-models takes it in turns to bounce the ball down the court and score, before running back to watch the other team bounce the ball and score. Again and again and again, until one team wins 116-112 or something like that.

On the few occasions I watched basketball I couldn't help noticing that most of the NBA players are black. Something must be wrong here, surely?

Colleges and law schools in the US routinely go out of their way to increase the numbers of black students above that which would result from a strictly merit-based admissions policy, such as would result from considering exam results, test scores, etc. This "affirmative action" approach effectively results in racial quotas, even though these have been found to be unconstitutional. (Quotas are supposed to be illegal but race may be considered as a factor in admissions, and we know what that means.) This results in black students attending colleges that they would otherwise not be able to attend, and the thinking seems to be based on a fundamental precept: blacks and whites are equally intelligent, so if the white kids are better qualified it must result from some bias in the education process, which must be remedied by setting the bar lower for the black kids.

Hmmm. So far so good, but why are there so many black kids on the basketball court? I have to assume that black and white kids are equally sporting, otherwise I'm perpetuating a terrible stereotype. Therefore the imbalance must result from a lack of opportunity for white kids to develop their basketball skills growing up. I would therefore suggest we introduce a system of racial quotas (sorry, "consideration of racial origin in hiring") to get more whites into the professional game.

Yeah, I know the purists might be concerned that the talent would suffer, but that's the price we pay for racial equality; just ask the white kids with higher test scores who couldn't get into Harvard.

I'm assuming equality between races here, but maybe this is one of those selective equality things, like gender equality. This seems to hold that anything a man can do can be done equally well by a woman (firefighter, welder, boxer) but that many of the things a woman can do can't be done nearly as well by a man (raising children, for instance - just ask any man fighting for custody in a divorce). Maybe blacks are as good as whites at most things and better at all the rest. Sort of like a master race, right?

Of course, back in the real world we let coaches pick their own teams (although we do have special rules to encourage the appointment of black coaches) but we can't let that degree of Darwinism apply to the world of business can we? This in spite of evidence put forward by Richard Sander at UCLA, a left-wing supporter of racial preferences, that the process of preferences in law school admissions actually hurts minority students by placing them in tougher academic environments than their qualifications justify, resulting in half of them ending up in the bottom 10% of their class, with twice the drop-out rate of white students.

Never mind the unfairness, this is like sending a bunch of pasty white kids to the NBA under a system of racial preferences and then looking the other way as they get their arses kicked on the court.

Meanwhile I can take an objective view of the issue. For a start, I regard basketball as a complete fucking waste of time. And on top of that I regard most lawyers as a complete fucking waste of oxygen. So it really doesn't matter much to me whether each group is black or white, but I would like to see all those lawyers we don't need working to get white kids on basketball teams we don't care about. At least until football season starts again...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Turn Your Head And Cough

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:08:00 +0000

Today I managed to take an hour out of my fun-packed work schedule and get a physical. It's not that I felt I needed one, nor did I have any strange symptoms that made me suddenly reassess my mortality. No, my trip to Belgium had used up the last of my sleeping tablets and for some unaccountable reason the quack likes to see me periodically (like every year or so) if he's going to keep writing me a script for narcotics. So, since I had some money left in my health savings account I thought I might as well get the 30,000 mile service, have my oil checked and make sure I wasn't one step from the breaker's yard.

For some reason I couldn't get to see an actual physician until March (obviously being ill is very popular right now) so I saw the Physician's Assistant. After all the obligatory weighing, blood pressure taking and answering of questions on a form (such as "Have you ever had sex with a man?") I was ready for the fun part. Something important changed since I was last at the doctor's office. Something very important. I turned forty. This means I qualify for a prostate exam (although, thank fuck, it's another ten years until I'm due to have a Dyno-rod up my anus for the full colon exam).

The build up was very subtle - first she lulled me into a false sense of security with an ear exam. Then she tested my reflexes, of which I apparently possess none, and checked my breathing. Next thing you know it's down with the pants and time to turn my head and cough for the hernia check. Nice warm hands, but no time to relax because the next step was "Turn around and bend over". Apparently I'm not bending over far enough, and I'm requested to bend over further; meanwhile I'm murmuring "There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

At this point she tries to relax me by telling me that she's not going to do anything without telling me what she's about to do. I'm sorry, but do you think that makes it better? Do you really think I want to hear you tell me what's going to happen in advance? So I can visualize it? Trust me, some things are easier to handle when they come as a complete surprise.

"OK, first I'm just going to look."

Oh right, just in case I wasn't self-conscious before, I'm now having my ringpiece examined by an expert. What's she checking for? To see if it looks healthy? Or maybe she doubted my answer to the question about sex with men. Nah, probably just taking aim. I don't know what she said next but it had something to do with lubricant.

"Now I'm going to shove my entire hand in your anus and do rock-paper-scissors."

Well that's not exactly what she said, but it may as well have been. I now know how the turkey feels. All I needed was a light basting and I was oven-ready. Apparently there are men out there who actively enjoy having their prostate gland manipulated during sex - it's supposed to be terrific. Well, file me under "Not Going To Try That" because I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone stays focused on the task at hand with someone shoving a middle digit up their khyber pass. And what happens when they get their prostate exam? I don't even want to think...

The good news is that I'm healthy. At least for now - perhaps the blood work they ordered will reveal some hideous ailment in a week or two. But tomorrow I'll return to work an older, wiser man. I'll have that look in my eye. You know - the flinty "I've experienced a few things in life" look of the range-hardened cowboy. Kind of like John Wayne. I'll probably be walking like him too...

Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Day Trip To Brussels

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:10:00 +0000

I happened to look in the mirror today and notice that I still look like crap, a fact confirmed by my family back in the UK when I spoke to them via Skype. I didn't think the picture resolution was that detailed, but apparently I look every bit as knackered as I feel. This in spite of the fact that the "Day Trip to Brussels" that was probably responsible for much of my haggard demeanor happened more than a week ago.

The plan was simple: throw a change of clothes in a bag and buy a ticket Tuesday morning (last minute - when I say "plan" I don't mean "in advance"). Leave Tuesday afternoon, fly overnight and arrive Brussels airport 7:30am Wednesday. Be at the office by 8:30am, shower and start work by 9:00. Fuck up a couple of people's days and then have dinner with a colleague and his wife Wednesday evening before crashing at a hotel. Head back to the airport Thursday morning and catch the 10:40am flight back through Chicago. Simple, right?

It worked fine right up to the part where I got to the airport on Thursday and found the flight was delayed. Mechanical problems. The airline wanted to route me back via New York but then send me on a five hour misery journey via Raleigh Durham (where the fuck is that?) on a tiny runt of a regional jet. Since my arse falls asleep after thirty minutes stuck in one of those things, and given that my delayed flight through Chicago was still showing an earlier arrival in St.Louis than the alternative, I rolled the dice that the plane would be repaired.

Turns out that it couldn't, but of course we didn't get to hear that until after the departure time had been repeatedly put back for an hour at a time. The airline rep, a half-Asian woman who apparently possessed half a brain, was so clearly not in the loop that any conversation with her was pointless. Initially the delays were met with good humor but eventually I gave up and pointed out that she had no information of any use and that she was clearly not being informed by her airline about what was really happening. She argued that she was being kept very well informed, at which point a fellow passenger interrupted to tell us that the flight had just been canceled, thus rather neatly proving my assertion and causing her to scurry off.

We got 13 Euros worth of food vouchers but since I stuffed myself with sandwiches in the British Airways lounge I used them instead to buy Mars bars to take home to Mrs Bison. Chocolate over there just shits all over the stuff we get here, even when the brand name is the same.

So we all got marched over to a nearby hotel for the night. By this time I had got talking to the fellow passenger, a woman also heading back to the US who was conveniently plain enough to banish any "readers' letters" fantasies from my mind, but good company under the circumstances compared to the rest of the sheep with whom we were surrounded.

They checked us into the hotel, but since it was being paid for by the airline we weren't "real" customers, and so they'd turned off access to any "pay" features in the room. No high speed internet, no phone calls (even to free numbers) and no soft pornographic movies. You'd think after fucking up the whole day the least they could do would be to let their customers rub one out in the comfort of their hotel room, but apparently not. I had work to do so I ordered a room service burger (shouldn't have been able to do that either, but I don't think their system can block it) and tried to get the internet working by giving a credit card at the front desk. The people at the hotel (are you reading this, Sheraton?) were completely and utterly fucking useless, and couldn't figure out how to take the "block" off my room, so I had to go down to the lobby and use the free wireless. All I needed to do was enter my name and room number, but when I tried I got an error. "Incorrect name".

Fucking morons had entered my name wrong when I checked in, but I had no way of knowing what they'd put instead. How fucking hard can it be to enter five letters when they're written down in front of you in capitals? And now there was a line of people checking in half way to the door, so I had to cut in and ask the useless Belgian motherfucker at the desk exactly what fucking absurd spelling of my name he'd used so I could get online. It had been a long day.

The following day we were supposed to be at the check-in desk at 8:40am, not a significant challenge since the hotel is right at the airport and walking over takes about sixty seconds. I booked a wake-up call but the airline also booked calls for all of us. Obviously they have problems with the sheep getting ready on time because I got seven wake-up calls before I could finish showering and get downstairs. On the last one I asked them how many fucking calls they thought I needed and they apologized. After breakfast I went back to my room and got another wake-up call. I asked why - the response was that I didn't answer when they'd called earlier I pointed out that this was because I had been eating breakfast downstairs after the previous seven wake-up calls. Jesus! Some people shouldn't be allowed to leave their house unsupervised, let alone work in the hospitality industry, where they have to have contact with the rest of us.

At the check-in desk the bad news was that our plane was still not repaired; on the plus side they'd canceled the New York flight instead and given us that plane, so we left on time and arrived in Chicago, where I discovered that as a permanent resident I now have to stand in the Visitors line at immigration, a line which move about a foot every hour and which is filled with Indians, all holding documents which the immigration officials have clearly never seen before, with about eight mistakes in, and all attempting to import eleven relatives spanning three generations. And a water buffalo.

So no, global travel isn't glamorous. In fact it sucks arse, and will probably be responsible for me dying early, with more wrinkles and less hair than I deserve. And if I didn't live a worthy life, I'm sure my time in hell will be reassuringly familiar - seven wake-up calls every day, an endless queue and absolutely no porn. Can't fucking wait...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Bear-Faced Cheek

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:38:00 +0000

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. Hands up if you bought roses or chocolate-covered strawberries? All you lot with your hands up, you're twats: Valentine's Day is the biggest rip off, load of old bollocks known to man. When I was a kid it was still a fun day. You'd wait to see if you had a Valentine's card from a mystery admirer, always anonymous (which was the tradition, and also what made it fun). You could also send one to that girl you fancied, the cloak of anonymity providing cover against looking like a saddo if she wasn't interested. I don't know what grown-ups did back then, but it seemed to me that Valentine's Day was for people who wanted to get together, not for people who were already a couple.

Fast forward thirty years, and the Hallmark crowd has turned the whole event into one massive excuse to make you part with your money. Firstly they have created this whole imperative that couples give each other cards and gifts. Peer pressure and relentless advertising combine to make Mrs Average feel neglected if Mr Average doesn't come home with at least a dozen red roses, and possibly something with a diamond in it, too. Poor old Mr Average daren't show up empty-handed and incur the wrath of his spouse; and Mrs Average wouldn't dare tell her harpy friends that she only got a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day, in case they looked down at her with smug fake pity. Meanwhile the chocolate, diamond and flower merchants are raking in your money as you subserviently feed the myth of the "romantic day". Tonight, even crap restaurants will be full of couples going through the motions of a dinner, simply because the calendar says Feb 14. Baaaa!

Of course, if you do give in and buy roses you'll end up paying three times the normal price. The flower industry pretty much makes all its money on Valentine's Day and Mothers Day. But buying flowers is at least understandable; what I cannot comprehend is how a whole fucking industry has grown up around people sending each other Teddy Bears. The Vermont Teddy Bear Company offers the Loverboy Bear, which sports jeans, a t-shirt and shades, and in fact more resembles Homoerotic Bear. Or there's the Love Bandit, which comes dressed in a black shirt, with a black mask, and should possibly be renamed the Arse Bandit. And here's the hilarious bit - each one comes in a "Fun & colorful gift box with air hole". An air hole? Are you shitting me? What, in case the poor thing suffocates? Jesus H Christ! The world has gone completely fucking monkey bollocks arse-backwards retarded! Small wonder that we're disappearing up our own economic arse when people like that are allowed to take out mortgages. I'm just amazed they don't drool all over the forms.

Here, let me spell it out for you: If you send someone a romantic Teddy Bear, you are a twat. T.W.A.T. But there must be a sod of a lot of you, because Vermont Teddy Bear's stock of dumbass romantic bears is listed as "sold out".

Meanwhile, back at the kids, all the fun has gone out of Valentine's Day. At Bison Daughter's Elementary School they had a class party yesterday. That's a pretty tenuous excuse to interrupt education. Here's a thought, fucking dickhead teachers: how about you spend your time educating my child, like I pay you to, and leave the "having fun" part to us, rather than wasting half the time they're in school dicking around with bullshit "class parties" and then sending them home with a ton of fucking homework so that we never have any time together. Wankers! The really stupid thing is that they couldn't call it a Valentine's Party. Oh no, it had to be a "Friendship Party". What the fuck? If you don't like Valentine's Day don't have the stupid party at all. And don't make the kids give cards to every other kid in the class, boys and girls alike. How fucking retarded is that? Typical politically correct lefty educational bullshit - reduce everything to the level that it becomes utterly meaningless, just in case we offend someone.

Hallmark and their friends have completely neutered Valentine's Day, just so they can sell more crap. It used to be about sending a card to someone you fancied, but now they're twisted it (at least in the States) so that parents give Valentine's gifts to their kids. Now that's just wrong. (Except in parts of Arkansas, but they mostly can't write in the cards anyway.) The whole day has been hijacked to make us all buy stuff we would otherwise never buy, to assuage the guilt they'll pile on us by proxy if we don't comply.

Fortunately Mrs Bison can also spot bollocks a mile off, and much prefers that I buy her flowers on a day she's not expecting it, because it means more that way. Which is perfect by me except for one small detail. I'm not that good at remembering to buy them when there isn't a billion dollar multi-media advertising blitz to remind me...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

A Little Light Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:32:00 +0000

I just finished reading a book called The Grey Gentlemen. It's a strange little book by Michael Ende which dates back to 1974 when it was translated from the original German. Now I'm not the kind of person who seeks out obscure foreign literature, and the only reason I ended up reading this was because a good friend gave me a copy. It's obviously been out of print for a long time, and this was second-hand book he bought specially for me over the internet. Since the only copy I could find on Amazon was listed at more than $90 this is clearly not the kind of book you give unless you really want to.

I'm not going to spoil the book for you by explaining the plot, although the chances that you will ever read it are as close to zero as makes no difference, but I will say that it seems to be a children's book for adults. I don't mean "adult" in the sense of things like my Little Red Riding Hood story, but in the sense that the message of the story would be lost on kids, who probably haven't experienced the things that work, money, responsibility and ambition bring.

The central figure in the book is a little girl called Momo. The message of the story is essentially all about time - the paradox that we spend so much of our lives saving time and yet we never seem to have enough of it. Why is that? And, more importantly, what do we give up in our relentless attempts to save time?

Think about it. We spend a huge part of our waking lives working; especially in the US, we are working more hours than ever before. Our kids spend most of their days at school, and when they're not at school they're being driven around various timetabled activities, or doing homework, all to make them more "rounded" and marketable later, in the world of work. When people aren't working for money they will spend an inordinate amount of time working on their house, or their garden, making them look nicer. Just watch the traffic at DIY stores on a weekend.

Why do we spend so much time working? Because we need the money. And why do we need the money? Well, there's that house, for a start, and the college education, and all the smart clothes that you need to buy so you look nice at work. And we have to eat out at restaurants, or buy convenience foods, because we don't have time to cook a proper dinner every night. And we need better cars too, and phones and iPods and a Wii. (Everyone, apparently, is dying for a Wii...)

The thing is that I spend most of my life working, or thinking about work. And yet I'm not short of money. Don't get me wrong - it's not that I'm rich, but I don't live any differently than I did fifteen years ago, when I had bugger-all money. I'm not intentionally frugal, but most of the things that I enjoy (curry, scotch, lifting weights, fried breakfasts, friends, cream soda, etc.) aren't that expensive. So I'm not short of money, but I am definitely short of time. I love weekends because I can relax and do fuck-all if I feel like it, and yet there's always a feeling that I have to make the most of the weekend because it'll be over in a few hours, and I'd better not have wasted it vegged out in an armchair.

The irony is that in spite of the fact that I'm not short of money but would definitely like more time, I'm engaged every day in trading more of my limited remaining time for more money. And in thirty years, unless I pop my clogs early, I'll be an old man and willing to trade almost anything to have my time over again.

Now if this was just me then everyone would just shake their head, mutter "sad bastard" and get back to their own idyllic lives; but it's not just me. Most of us are engaged to a greater or lesser extent in trading precious time for money, so that we can buy crap that doesn't make us any happier, and which in some cases we only have to buy at all because we don't have any time. A few weeks ago I started making my own bread. It pisses all over the stuff we buy at the store, and not because I'm doing anything special - this is just basic bread machine dough. Even Bison Daughter loves it. And yet we still end up buying bread at the store because I don't have enough time to make the good stuff.

OK, so I'm not about to give up civilization and live in a yurt, eating creepy crawlies and wiping my arse on leaves. And I might buy a Porsche Cayenne this year, even though "Porsche" is practically a byword for "small penis". (It's a risk I'm prepared to take.) I'm just saying that we all spend way too much time rushing around earning and spending. We're not saving time by eating take-out pizza and pre-packaged convenience food full of high-fructose corn syrup. You can't save time - you can only choose how to spend it. And as someone once pointed out. no-one on their deathbed wishes they'd spent more of it at work.

One of the central themes of a book called "Why Work Isn't Working Anymore" is that happiness doesn't come from "stuff" but from time we spend with friends and family. But in the quest for more "stuff" people spend less and less time with friends and family. They have more stuff than ever before but they still can't understand why they're not happy. Even having spare time doesn't do you any good if you don't have people with whom to spend it. This is what Momo knows in the book, but it was also noted by a comedian I heard recently who bemoaned the fact that he didn't use any of the time he had these days to learn new languages or musical instruments, but instead devoted it to "cupcakes and masturbation". You may win the lottery and give up the quest for stuff, but your friends will all still be working so you'll have no-one to hang out with. Faced with the hideous alternative of daytime TV you'll be hitting the cupcakes and yanking that thing before you know it.

This might seem a little depressing, but The Grey Gentlemen isn't a depressing book - it just makes you think about time a little differently. Having said that, I don't know about you but I think it's time for a Scotch...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

An Exciting Future

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:20:00 +0000

Tomorrow's another day in the office. The good news is that, at least for now, I still have an office to go to. The bad news is that, in the face of an economic collapse, we have a moratorium on travel, so the office is now the only place I ever go. I am, more than ever, massively grateful that my job (normally) allows for travel and a change of scenery. Sure, I get the hassle of fat TSA wankers asking me to remove my shoes at airports, and crap seats on tiny planes, but if I had to show up to the same four walls every day for a whole year I think I'd just off myself and be done with it.

Everyone seems to be in the same boat, apart from law firms (that's a recession-proof business, since people never tire of suing each other, and the economic mess just provided a rash of new excuses) and a few similar types of business. We're all tightening our belts, laying people off, cutting expenses, canceling investments, taking pay cuts and missing bonuses. At home we're buying less stuff, eating cheaper food and avoiding big spends like cars and holidays, just in case it's our arse on the line next.

So why is everything suddenly such a fucking mess? On one hand this may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. When the economy shows signs of slowing down, companies project lower sales so they trim expenses. In the face of a full-fledged economic crash everyone's suddenly stopped spending. Companies aren't investing in new capacity because they no longer need it, so jobs are lost. Banks aren't lending money to people because they no longer have it, so businesses have to halt construction and other projects, and jobs are lost. Consumers are worried that their job may be next so they stop spending too, and suddenly unsold cars and houses are piling up; production has to slow down, and jobs are lost. (Unless you're in the UAW, where for some reason you're entitled to full pay and benefits for life even if you do fuck-all, but that's another story.) Maybe this whole mess started with excessive lending by banks to people who had no earthly hope of paying loans back, and the belated realization and write-off of those "assets", but perhaps it's now nothing more than a crisis of confidence - we're in a recession because we think we are. If everyone believes the future's bleak, and as a consequence stops spending money, then surprise, surprise, the economy grinds to a halt and we're in a recession. You can thank the obsessive doom and gloom media for that.

On the other hand this could just be the chickens coming home to roost. People are being confronted with the crumbling of a paper economy where growth was based entirely on people borrowing money they didn't have to buy crap they didn't need, in the expectation that continued growth would always provide a bigger pay check and a longer line of credit next year. It's like a big party - so long as everyone keeps drinking the hangover never happens, but once you stop you're in for one hell of a miserable come-down. Everyone stopped drinking at once and now we're all gazing around at the vomit and broken furniture, wondering who the fuck is going to clear it all up.

Two things happened today that convinced me that both of the above may be true. Firstly, Mrs Bison and I went for a walk and encountered a man in his mid-thirties walking on a mile-long trail which is either gravel or fully paved, equipped with two walking poles and a strap-on hiking belt festooned with what appeared to be Batman's clip-on appendages. Trust me, if people are buying shit like that to go for a walk on a path there really is no hope for civilization, and maybe a massive recession is what is required to teach people not to waste their money.

Then we stopped by the supermarket to buy some mince for dinner and on the front page of the free small business monthly newspaper was a story about how a pet spa business just got funding for an expansion in spite of the recession. Just so some sad wankers can pamper their dog with a shampoo and set, or have their cat massaged. You know, if people are still out there spending money on fucking crap like that then the economy is alive and well, and as soon as we stop listening to the whiners in the media and get back to business as usual then this will all be over. When we resume normal buying behavior then businesses can start making things, and hiring people again. Then some of them will borrow money, make investments and hire even more people.

Personally I'm looking forward to it. When the economy picks up I'll be back on the road, experiencing the very best in crap airline food and useless airport security. Or, should I be unfortunate enough to lose my job, it appears there's a great opportunity out there brushing the clag out of long-haired dogs' coats, and polishing cat's arseholes. I can hardly wait...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Stroh

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:41:00 +0000

It has long been my view that New Year's Eve is a bunch of hype about nothing - the date clicks over and we're expected to drink ourselves into insensitivity so that we can join hands and sing the few words to Auld Lang Syne that anyone knows, while some ball drops in Times Square or a group of inebriates counts backwards from ten. Then we're supposed to kiss, shake hands and wish each other a Happy New Year, before trooping out into the night, perchance to sleep and reawaken, faced with the same load of old bollocks as last year, only now with the addition of an outsized, fuck-off hangover. The only thing worse is being at home, and having to watch celebrity new year activities on TV; I can only assume that 31 December is a hot suicide date.

This year, however, we went to a party at a friend's house and, in contrast to the picture of misery above, it was excellent. The food was outstanding and beyond plentiful, as was the liquor, with at least ten different single malts available, plus about twenty beers. In fact, there was a game where we had to guess which beer was which on a list of fifteen, by taste. The list included offerings from England, Ireland, Belgium, Italy and Mexico, as well as some decent American beers. It did not include any Bud Light, Miller Light, Coors Light or Michelob Light. In fact next year I'm planning to arrange a taste test with just American Light Beer, along with Donkey Urine as a wild card.

Unfortunately I had consumed an excessive quantity of Mrs Bison's home-made soup at lunch, so by the time I'd loaded up with food at the party I had little room left for beer. What do you do when the space available for liquor is too small for regular beverages? Switch to something stronger of course, and not much is stronger than Stroh 80.

I picked up this 80% alcohol Austrian spirit years ago at a duty-free because I couldn't believe anything could be that strong. It has a taste reminiscent of kerosene with a light flavoring of charred chocolate, and it will burn all the way to your genitals and back again when you drink it neat. This is, I have to say, the only safe way to consume it, because if you blend it in, say, Coke, you will have no idea how fucked up you are getting until it's too late. Then you too might find yourself vomiting from the upper deck of an open-topped bus. (But that's another, much older story.)

Having called it a day at about 3AM, after beer, red wine, vodka cocktails, champagne, Scotch and the aforementioned Stroh, I was ready for the traditional breakfast of champions this afternoon. Yes, I made a pilgrimage to McDonalds because, for no accountable reason, I fancied a quarter pounder with cheese and some shit fries. As I may have mentioned in the past, new year's resolutions are for arseholes, but if pressed to make one on this first of the year I would have to choose "Never Eat At McDonalds Again". Their motto should be "A Little Slice Of The Ghetto In Suburbia". Not only was the food shit (even by their desperately low standards) but as the sole occupants of the establishment we were treated to a ringside seat at a staff dispute between female staff members:

"Have you clocked out?"
"Ahm just leavin'"
"Ah'll write you up agin."
"Ah knew you would, you just causin' trouble."
"Wah don' chew just leave?"
"---"
"What you jist say to me?"
"Nuthin - I wuz jist talkin' to mahself."
"Well don't you be walking by me saying that stuff."
"I wouldna come in if ah'd known you wuz on."
"Well ah'll make sure ahm on every day so what you gonna do then?"
"You ain't gonna have a job much longer's what ah heard."
"You ain't comin' behind here again. You don't got no reason to come behind mah counter."

And so on, until we finished out styrofoam fries and fucked off into the wintry sunshine. I'd planned to take something back home to Mrs Bison, but I was buggered if I was going to buy more crap food at the FcDonalds soap opera that was unfolding, so I went instead to the Hardees drive-through, where the service was quick, the Little Thick Burger was excellent and the fries were (according to Bison Daughter) much better. What was I thinking? I know Hardees is better than FcDonalds...

I can only assume that the Stroh killed off more brain cells last night than I'd realized, specifically those associated with good judgment. Still, it's now 2009, and the Darwinian economic apocalypse that is in full swing should hopefully result in dismal establishments like our local FcDonalds going to the wall. Survival of the fittest, that was Darwin's big thing. Having survived the Stroh though I'm more inclined to the wisdom of Nietzsche: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. By that line of thinking I'm about ready for anything 2009 has to offer.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Good Neighbors

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:10:00 +0000

When I was younger I trained as a scientist, which was fine until I realized that being a scientist was going to bore me rigid because I didn't have the patience for it. One good thing about it, though, is that it reinforced a fact and hypothesis-based approach to thinking, which should serve anyone well in any profession. Ironically, in the "real world" of science, you don't have all these neutral, open-minded scientists engaged in an exciting joint pursuit of the truth; what you get is a whole host of pet theories which are vociferously defended, notwithstanding the discovery of evidence that they are, in fact, complete bollocks. The system is far from perfect, since funding has a lot more to do with who you know than the quality of your ideas, but at least ideas can be promulgated somewhat freely.

Unfortunately, in the realm of politics, ideas are not able to be debated because political correctness has already dictated that "the world is flat" and not only will no amount of data suggesting otherwise change this belief, but anyone calling attention to it will be labeled a heretic and their ideas dismissed from consideration. This is a well-established liberal/socialist approach to achieving political goals - don't compete on the merits but shout down your opponents, intimidate them and label them "racist" or "elitist". If someone has unpopular ideas then they are racist, and no-one needs to consider the views of a racist, do they?

This was demonstrated just recently in the UK, where residents were invited to comment on the proposed siting of a "travellers camp", a euphemistic name for a piece of land where benefit-scrounging pseudo-gypsy bastards park their caravans and from whence they embark on a litter-strewing, thieving, burglarizing, mugging and drinking assault on the local community. Everyone knows this is the case but no-one is allowed to say so because under EU law it would be "hate-speech" towards the "Romany" people who supposedly make up the travelling community. (Never mind that they are mostly of Irish descent and no more Romany than you are.)

The point is that by labeling certain points of view racist, the liberal establishment effectively prevents anyone expressing them. Even if they can't throw people in prison for having those views, they don't need to compete with the ideas on the basis of logic or fact; they can simply be shouted down.

One of the side-effects of the housing crisis has apparently been an influx of black "Section 8" renters into more affluent neighborhoods, as cash-strapped mortgage holders opt for the stable government-subsidized income from these renters as a means to survive financially. This has apparently resulted in an increase in crime and anti-social behavior, but to say so immediately invites charges of racism, as this story shows. The liberals can wring their hands all they want, but anyone who suggests that an influx of families from the projects won't increase crime is talking out of their arse. Who the fuck do you think commits the crime in the projects? The crime fairy? It's not someone else, it's the people who live there, and it's not as though there's some magic filter to sieve out the scum when they move out. Just ask the people in Houston who experienced the massive crime influx when New Orleans exported its inner city black population.

"Oh Mr Bison, you're just a racist - we don't need to listen to you, blah, blah, blah." Bullshit - try looking at the facts. Every night on the news I hear about killings in North St.Louis, and the footage always shows wide streets of fine brick houses, considerably better built than my wood shack. These used to be wealthy suburbs before large numbers of black people moved in and "white flight" left them monochromatic. Now people talk about white flight as though this was the "sin" that caused the decline of these neighborhoods. Fuck off! When the nasty white racists left, the neighborhoods were fine - everything that happened since then was done by the black people who moved in, but you won't find a single politician who will say so, because they'd be "racist".

The schools in these areas are often violent, and routinely are accused of failing the children, but no-one suggests that maybe it's the children who are violent, and the children who are failing the schools. You see, buildings aren't violent; houses aren't criminal and streets don't join gangs and sell drugs. People do. And when you export people with those values to "nice" communities, you don't magically transform them.

Funnily enough, it's the same values that enable people to escape poverty that would make them fit into "nice" society - respect for hard work, education, the law, family, property and individual responsibility. I've seen the reality with my own eyes - a well-maintained suburban house with a pool, in a top school district rendered near-derelict over the period of little more than a year. Rusty cars in the drive, a chain-link fence with a pit-bull, the pool water turned black, guttering hanging off down to the ground and unrepaired, police SWAT teams in attendance, garden ruined, rusted bikes and garbage left outside. Eventually the black occupants left and the new owners have spent weeks working to render the house habitable. But it wasn't their black skin which was the root of the problem - the black bloke over the road was a great neighbor - but the values (or lack thereof) that they brought with them.

For as long as we refuse to criticize the people who have made the cess-pit communities what they are, and shift the blame onto whitey, we won't make any meaningful changes. And it's not about money. Even if you reward indolence with free money, even if you pay for all these "poor, disadvantaged people" to move into nice suburban houses, how long do you think it will be until they have wrought the same destruction, crime and misery there? That's the massive fraud perpetrated on our society by the perpetuation of this myth of the "victims" - it's not their fault, therefore it must be society's fault, so society must pay for their failure, over and over and over again.

One thing basic to the scientific method is cause and effect. If you pay no attention in school, get no qualifications, commit crime, can't get a job and then produce multiple offspring which you cannot afford, it's your own fucking fault. Priority one might not be to get a pit bull and some gold jewelry, and it certainly should not be the responsibility of those of us who made the effort to pay for you wankers to live in the house next door through Section 8 just so you can fuck up our lives too.

Just don't expect to hear this issue debated freely any time soon.

Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison