You get fired from your job of two years, you don't have any money in your bank account, your spouse left you your kids are becoming too much of a problem, you can't sleep at night. You have absolutely no idea what to do but everything seems so distant, so surreal that all of this misfortune would happen to you. Things start to turn blurry and your eyes distort your perspective so you grab onto your couch for balance. You decide you need to cool off somewhere and hit the coffee shop down the street.
In the morning you get dressed and order you preference and head back to your table. You expected just sitting down and idyllically studying the city but a stranger foils your plans. He studies you for a minute and then asks you what happened. You asked him to repeat his question just to make sure he said what you think he did, and he confirms it. You comply, desperate for a lending ear and entertain him with all of your current problems.
You start to talk about how you think it leads back to problems you faced yourself during childhood and how you were a difficult teenager and how you tried to rebel by drinking, smoking, getting high. You are about to continue about how you should have tried more as a kid when your friends stops you. You're Asian right? Uh yeah. You're a girl right? Yeah obviously, but- You were an atheist surrounded by Christians? I guess, sure.
Well then, your friends starts, you qualify for the The Sanctioned Exceptions of Declines for the Helpless. You see if you are failing it isn't your fault. It is because of the hard antagonists you faced in here. The hardships of racism, sexism, homophobes, ageism, the patriarchy, Democrats, Republicans, certain ethnicities, certain religious groups, anti-drug laws, unfair age dealing laws, the list goes on and on. Look, its not really your fault your life is like how it is now, these factors have disable you to be the person you are now! Don't blame yourself, blame these things.
You know that makes a lot of sense, that makes me feel way better now. Whats your name again? Oh sorry, how rude of me. It is America.
The Facet of Capitalism
I went over to a fast food places to get a burger. It was the standard kind, and there was nothing really special about it. It was okay but after 5 minutes I had finished it. 5 minutes. From a financial point of view that really proves the triumphant role of capitalism. It only took me just 5 minutes to eat it, but it should be worth more than that right? So much more than that.
It was the showpiece of over 100 hours put in to create it, 100 people involved in all of the assimilation of ingredients. Just the making of the bun takes so much time and effort, mixing the flour, sugar, yeast, oil, and salt into a dough, grounding it out to small balls, sprinkling them with more flour, heating it so that the bun tops are created, rounding off the tops, letting it cool off takes such an effort. Not including harvesting all the vegetables, raising and killing the cattle, all the things with the cheese, and this is all not mentioning. packaging it, and distributing it.
All of that work went into selling it to me, all for just a under 3 dollars. So many professions involved in its making, farmers, truck drivers, factory workers, cooks, cashiers. All for a simple wage and 5 minutes of pleasure. Just consider something else, something simple that you get, pickles. When I was out shopping I noticed the back of a jar of pickles and the countries it was brought in from were Thailand, Peru, Romania, all of those countries all of those people all assembled for me, it was flown in for me, it was packaged for me it, all the hard labor of easily 100 people all was for me.
A lot of people hate the rich but this is a very important aspect that is tied into this. If you don't buy that burger, or that jar of pickles, or whatever then hundreds of people will lose their jobs. The thousands of people like them who went into the production of that only performed all the painstaking labor for the tens of thousands of people like us to buy it. You talk about politics and if you're in a popular modern city then you'll be surrounded by people with liberal agendas. They'll preach about how they hate the rich and how they just steal money from the poor but that's the complete opposite of their role on society.
They don't steal money from the poor they give it to them. They're not the Al Capone's they're the Robin Hoods. Think about something they often buy: yachts. The amount of money they spend on yachts is huge right? That all goes into the mining of the metal, the black smithery of the shape, the tuning of the glass, the components of the engine, the leather in the seats, the amount of money and wages it gives off is huge. The government once tried to take advantage of this and taxed yachts only to see them stop buying the yachts and a close call of an entire industry falling from that decision. Their money employs and feeds thousands of people much more so than the Average Joe ever contributes right?
In a free society such as ours with such opportunity some are deemed to get rich and some are doomed to be poor. But I don't believe in limiting what the rich earns to raise what we all earn, that would do much more harm than good.
It was the showpiece of over 100 hours put in to create it, 100 people involved in all of the assimilation of ingredients. Just the making of the bun takes so much time and effort, mixing the flour, sugar, yeast, oil, and salt into a dough, grounding it out to small balls, sprinkling them with more flour, heating it so that the bun tops are created, rounding off the tops, letting it cool off takes such an effort. Not including harvesting all the vegetables, raising and killing the cattle, all the things with the cheese, and this is all not mentioning. packaging it, and distributing it.
All of that work went into selling it to me, all for just a under 3 dollars. So many professions involved in its making, farmers, truck drivers, factory workers, cooks, cashiers. All for a simple wage and 5 minutes of pleasure. Just consider something else, something simple that you get, pickles. When I was out shopping I noticed the back of a jar of pickles and the countries it was brought in from were Thailand, Peru, Romania, all of those countries all of those people all assembled for me, it was flown in for me, it was packaged for me it, all the hard labor of easily 100 people all was for me.
A lot of people hate the rich but this is a very important aspect that is tied into this. If you don't buy that burger, or that jar of pickles, or whatever then hundreds of people will lose their jobs. The thousands of people like them who went into the production of that only performed all the painstaking labor for the tens of thousands of people like us to buy it. You talk about politics and if you're in a popular modern city then you'll be surrounded by people with liberal agendas. They'll preach about how they hate the rich and how they just steal money from the poor but that's the complete opposite of their role on society.
They don't steal money from the poor they give it to them. They're not the Al Capone's they're the Robin Hoods. Think about something they often buy: yachts. The amount of money they spend on yachts is huge right? That all goes into the mining of the metal, the black smithery of the shape, the tuning of the glass, the components of the engine, the leather in the seats, the amount of money and wages it gives off is huge. The government once tried to take advantage of this and taxed yachts only to see them stop buying the yachts and a close call of an entire industry falling from that decision. Their money employs and feeds thousands of people much more so than the Average Joe ever contributes right?
In a free society such as ours with such opportunity some are deemed to get rich and some are doomed to be poor. But I don't believe in limiting what the rich earns to raise what we all earn, that would do much more harm than good.
Get It Before It Gets It
You're out on a hiking trip and you come to an opening in the forest and find a huge waterfall flowing down into a river up 30 feet. Your friends all want to cliff dive off the waterfall and although all of them successfully do it, you say no regardless of their prodding. At last when they all are about to leave you decide that you'll just man up and do it. For a second you're suspended in the air, and it feels surreal but the next you crash down hard on your back on a rock poking out in the middle of the stream.You crawl to the bank and cry out for your friends to help you go to the hospital. They take you but all the way they seem reluctant, they don't believe you jumped and that you got hurt, there isn't even blood or at the least a mark. The doctor says the same thing he says that there is nothing wrong with you. You're surprised but then get off of the seat to the floor an- ARGHHH. The pain feels unbearable but you keep walking.
You walk along the sidewalk of an empty brick street, alone and tired. The lamps and trees are the only boundaries that protect you from falling into the street from the daze you're feeling. You try to focus on the structure of the buildings and convince yourself if everyone insists its not real then it must not be right? You tell more people and they all say that the pains not real, that its just in your mind, that its just an excuse to be apathetic, that you just want attention. You feel even more terrible, is your mind just tricking you? You ignore it and keep at your routine, lifting weights, running, swimming, but it all just makes it much much worse.
You feel alone, neglected, dreadful. That pain in your back is the pain of depression and all the people you talk to about it is the general representation of how the public treats mental illnesses. When you press down on a button you depress it, and that is literally how depression feels. You feel weighed down, and the force denies you from doing things, even normal things you do everyday. Mental and Physical illnesses should be treated the same way, if someone was stabbed would say get over it? Walk it off? It's just a mental game? Then you shouldn't treat mental illnesses any differently.
If you were drowning and the lifeguard just said oh how beautiful the flowers are! How nice the dock looks! What a nice hue the sky is! You can't say anything, you're already drowning. People spend too much time saying how fake you are that you've already gone. Drifted down a deep ocean and the only chance of survival is someone immediately recognizing you problem and helping you. But else you just sink deeper and deeper without any trace, except the bubbles of your last breath.
You walk along the sidewalk of an empty brick street, alone and tired. The lamps and trees are the only boundaries that protect you from falling into the street from the daze you're feeling. You try to focus on the structure of the buildings and convince yourself if everyone insists its not real then it must not be right? You tell more people and they all say that the pains not real, that its just in your mind, that its just an excuse to be apathetic, that you just want attention. You feel even more terrible, is your mind just tricking you? You ignore it and keep at your routine, lifting weights, running, swimming, but it all just makes it much much worse.
You feel alone, neglected, dreadful. That pain in your back is the pain of depression and all the people you talk to about it is the general representation of how the public treats mental illnesses. When you press down on a button you depress it, and that is literally how depression feels. You feel weighed down, and the force denies you from doing things, even normal things you do everyday. Mental and Physical illnesses should be treated the same way, if someone was stabbed would say get over it? Walk it off? It's just a mental game? Then you shouldn't treat mental illnesses any differently.
If you were drowning and the lifeguard just said oh how beautiful the flowers are! How nice the dock looks! What a nice hue the sky is! You can't say anything, you're already drowning. People spend too much time saying how fake you are that you've already gone. Drifted down a deep ocean and the only chance of survival is someone immediately recognizing you problem and helping you. But else you just sink deeper and deeper without any trace, except the bubbles of your last breath.
Skulduggery in Brobdingnagian Eurhythmic
Noticed the title right? Really complicated, big words right, well wouldn't expect it from this blog in its usual sperrazatura (did it again) that I usually take part in right, but well, its a foreshadowing motif, illustrating that the rest of this post will seem foreign and complicated, probably even boring. Didn't really expect something like that from me right? Well in this post you'll see a lot of things that you won't expect.
Meet Herbert Dow. Herbert was a pretty accomplished person, for one he invented a way to produce bromine cheaply and founded Dow Chemical. For 36 cents a pound he would sell his product throughout the whole U.S. He ran a good business for a while, but then he realized he could do better, much better. He knew that he couldn't go international because those markets were ravaged with a huge German chemical cartel who sold at 49 cents a pound. It was tacit that neither would infringe on the others markets. But times were hard and he was about to go broke so he was forced to expand onto other places.
This did not sit well with the Germans, one of their men even went as far as threatening Dow to take his product off of their market or they'd ruin him. He was forced to cease and desist, or resist. After he refused, the Germans put their product on the American Market for only 19 cents a pound. This completely flooded the U.S. market offering this product way below its price. Their endgame was to try to completely destroy Dow's entire business.
But Dow outsmarted them and completely stopped selling in the U.S. market and instead had someone else secretly buy all of the Germans stock and repackaged them as his own and sold that to the European market, (even in Germany) for 27 cents a pound. While the Germans were wondering why there was such a great demand for bromine in the U.S. and why Dow wasn't out of business he completely blind sided them and broke the German monopoly. They finally caught on and they were forced to lower their prices back in Germany. He later went on to do the same with their dye and An important thing to note is that these are fungible commodities so that is why they were able to be substituted one for the other for the same price. Nevertheless this became the textbook way to deal with predatory price cutting.
One man, with all his cards laid out, pushed to his extent managed to evade the U.S. from a German monopoly and the spirit of American Freedom owes all its origin to one single person.
Herbert Dow: Monopoly Breaker, Freedom Maker, World Shaker.
Meet Herbert Dow. Herbert was a pretty accomplished person, for one he invented a way to produce bromine cheaply and founded Dow Chemical. For 36 cents a pound he would sell his product throughout the whole U.S. He ran a good business for a while, but then he realized he could do better, much better. He knew that he couldn't go international because those markets were ravaged with a huge German chemical cartel who sold at 49 cents a pound. It was tacit that neither would infringe on the others markets. But times were hard and he was about to go broke so he was forced to expand onto other places.
This did not sit well with the Germans, one of their men even went as far as threatening Dow to take his product off of their market or they'd ruin him. He was forced to cease and desist, or resist. After he refused, the Germans put their product on the American Market for only 19 cents a pound. This completely flooded the U.S. market offering this product way below its price. Their endgame was to try to completely destroy Dow's entire business.
But Dow outsmarted them and completely stopped selling in the U.S. market and instead had someone else secretly buy all of the Germans stock and repackaged them as his own and sold that to the European market, (even in Germany) for 27 cents a pound. While the Germans were wondering why there was such a great demand for bromine in the U.S. and why Dow wasn't out of business he completely blind sided them and broke the German monopoly. They finally caught on and they were forced to lower their prices back in Germany. He later went on to do the same with their dye and An important thing to note is that these are fungible commodities so that is why they were able to be substituted one for the other for the same price. Nevertheless this became the textbook way to deal with predatory price cutting.
One man, with all his cards laid out, pushed to his extent managed to evade the U.S. from a German monopoly and the spirit of American Freedom owes all its origin to one single person.
Herbert Dow: Monopoly Breaker, Freedom Maker, World Shaker.
It Felt Like Only Yesterday
I lived in suburban Chicago and though the big city was only 30 minutes away, there wasn’t much to do where I lived. It snowed plenty so sometimes we would do things with that, but I only had the worst memories of that because I had to constantly delegate and tell people what to do when they kept breaking the fort, or building the snowman wrong, or throwing snowballs before we officially started. Yeah back then I was an uptight freak and I’ve changed a loooot since then.
Anyway some of my close friends and I were all about the adventure, and getting into trouble, at least that seemed cool but we only read of it. We couldn’t really “explore” anything because around our neighborhood were just other neighborhoods, schools, and shops. One day one of my friends came up with the idea that we should ding dong ditch people and that would be so fun, so we tried it. Problem was it was way too easy to escape them, there were tons of bushes and trees to hide from and we were pretty fast, but also it was an old neighborhood with old people and they were pretty slow. It became boring after the third day we played it, the spark just wasn’t there anymore. Not until I fixed it.
I gathered all my friends up and added a twist to the game: one person would ding dong ditch and run to the middle of the street where all the others were waiting for him and we would all stand in the middle of the street and whoever stayed their for the most time would win. Sounds easy right? All they would do is just yell at you for a few seconds and shake their head and go back inside right? Not quite.
Some of my fondest memories (I don’t really know why I’m phrasing it like that because that was literally only 6 years ago) are from that game. They would set the dogs loose on us, sometimes they called animal control which when you think about it is a smart expression of mockery, and once they called all their own old friends to chase us, that was fun because since the all were in wheel chairs and using canes we would just walk away. I kinda feel bad from annoying those old people who should have just been relaxing but from that a lot of good things came of it.
We found our own little hideout, it was a place in a nearby woulds with a circle of trees around us but open grass in the middle. There we formed little clubs and many other games like vampires vs werewolf, infection, and hocus pocus. We expanded our friend group as many other people wanted to join and I met a lot of fun and interesting kids that I still keep in touch with right now. We became more athletic and come gym class we would always win in games requiring speed, stamina, and agility making me always one of the first picks for games.
That was my all time favorite childhood memory, innocent and full of fun, but then middle school came, and homework came, and extracurriculars came. But I will always remember the game that opened up my childhood spirit, my nirvana, my spot in the woods, my game.
Though I’m said of what I can’t experience anymore, I’m happy because of what it was. It was my childhood.
Anyway some of my close friends and I were all about the adventure, and getting into trouble, at least that seemed cool but we only read of it. We couldn’t really “explore” anything because around our neighborhood were just other neighborhoods, schools, and shops. One day one of my friends came up with the idea that we should ding dong ditch people and that would be so fun, so we tried it. Problem was it was way too easy to escape them, there were tons of bushes and trees to hide from and we were pretty fast, but also it was an old neighborhood with old people and they were pretty slow. It became boring after the third day we played it, the spark just wasn’t there anymore. Not until I fixed it.
I gathered all my friends up and added a twist to the game: one person would ding dong ditch and run to the middle of the street where all the others were waiting for him and we would all stand in the middle of the street and whoever stayed their for the most time would win. Sounds easy right? All they would do is just yell at you for a few seconds and shake their head and go back inside right? Not quite.
Some of my fondest memories (I don’t really know why I’m phrasing it like that because that was literally only 6 years ago) are from that game. They would set the dogs loose on us, sometimes they called animal control which when you think about it is a smart expression of mockery, and once they called all their own old friends to chase us, that was fun because since the all were in wheel chairs and using canes we would just walk away. I kinda feel bad from annoying those old people who should have just been relaxing but from that a lot of good things came of it.
We found our own little hideout, it was a place in a nearby woulds with a circle of trees around us but open grass in the middle. There we formed little clubs and many other games like vampires vs werewolf, infection, and hocus pocus. We expanded our friend group as many other people wanted to join and I met a lot of fun and interesting kids that I still keep in touch with right now. We became more athletic and come gym class we would always win in games requiring speed, stamina, and agility making me always one of the first picks for games.
That was my all time favorite childhood memory, innocent and full of fun, but then middle school came, and homework came, and extracurriculars came. But I will always remember the game that opened up my childhood spirit, my nirvana, my spot in the woods, my game.
Though I’m said of what I can’t experience anymore, I’m happy because of what it was. It was my childhood.
No One Gives a Goddamn Shit
You throw open the doors of the grocery store you came out of and take a deep breath of the midnight icy hues of Chicago in the winter. You scan your eyes all over the seemingly eternal abyss of a quaint wonderland standing still in time at your finger tips. A blanket of snow shelters the stores fronts and houses behind you, to one side of you is bridge that is rubbled with icicles forming a boundary over the outside of the outline serving as an outskirt, and directly in front of you is a long field of untouched ice that looks so surreal and peaceful. You smile a little and wonder how fun it would be to break the ice and carve out the first footsteps. You walk towards it across the street an-.
You hit the pavement head first and though your eyes are closing and blinking rapidly as you look up you can see a car speeding away. You look down at your hands and see yourself leaking blood from your stomach. You back feels so bruised and it hurts like a sunburn sitting on it but you know you would feel like rather burning in hell if you attempted to get up.You try to raise your neck up to spot someone who can help you but there is no one in sight amidst all the nightlife. After what seems like forever you can hear the thump of footsteps coming towards you. Churning your head back you spot a young woman and know you should be happy that help has arrived but you are confused. She has a smile on her face, not a creepy one, but a I can change the world! kind of one, which makes it even more weird.
"Ok what the problem?" What is the problem... is she joking? The problem is I GOT HIT BY A FRICKIN' CAR! "Ok, so I've never done this before but you see I got good grades in school, I've never smoked or drank, and all my friends say that I am one the nicest people they have ever met in their lives!" What kind of dark humor was this person into? I don't give a shit, how the hell will that help me with anything dumbass.
Now replace you with society and the "helpful young woman" with most of the inhabitants of society. Yes they all have their strengths but most of them aren't going to do jack shit in helping with the problems with in the city, state, or country. It may be mean, it may be hypocritical, it may be insensitive but I hate to say that it is true. It doesn't matter that you won a math award, were valedictorian, or that you were the head of Latin club. There are specific problems going on that need specific people and specific mindsets to solve them, and although optimism contributes it can only be the first step.
Morale: no one gives a goddamn shit about what you can do if it doesn't help them.
The Infinite Loop
From the founding of the Portuguese Empire, one of the longest lasting civilizations in the world that all started with promoting religion, to the start of the Yuan Dynasty, one of the largest societies in the world made to spread glory, and again to the Spanish Rule, one of the most powerful nations, arising from a need for wealth, there has been a constant variable. No matter how different in strength, time periods, or motives there still lies a common aspect of all these commands that spreads deeper than any of those factors. In fact, this constant holds true for all civilizations, regardless of their religion, glory, or wealth standings. Without buffer it stands and never mind the discrepancies of any sovereignty it has, is, and will keep being a perpetual element of the whole framework of it.
It goes as something like this. Hard times bring forth strong men. Strong men bring forth good times. Good times bring forth weak men. Weak men bring forth hard times. Look through any governing in the world and I will guarantee it is true, from the rule of General Hannibal, to Alexander the Great, to George the Third, this is a proven fact that stands the test of history. One clear example: during the atrocity of World War Two famine, wreckage, and poverty swept all corners of the world, especially Europe. But from it we received great men like Oskar Schindler who sheltered the Jews from falling into an Auschwitz Camp saving 1,200 Jews, like Coronel Contreras who saved 40,000 Jews by giving them fake Salvadorian passports, like Monsignor Hugh O'flaherty who was a master at evading Nazi traps and helped 6,500 other Jews.
Now not to be mistaken there are just as great, if not greater men alive in good times, even today, but still the cycle holds true. It is not just that strong men become more easily seen with the harder times, but also the fact that they are much more needed and of much more use then. Its easier to see one bright star alone in the polluted swamps of air in the city than the spot one out from the endless domain of them in the clear skies of the country.
In the end, that cycle is a journey that every civilization must face, and the fact remains that it will be a double edged sword that brings the best in sickness and in poorness, and in health and in wealth, it is truly and infinite loop.
It goes as something like this. Hard times bring forth strong men. Strong men bring forth good times. Good times bring forth weak men. Weak men bring forth hard times. Look through any governing in the world and I will guarantee it is true, from the rule of General Hannibal, to Alexander the Great, to George the Third, this is a proven fact that stands the test of history. One clear example: during the atrocity of World War Two famine, wreckage, and poverty swept all corners of the world, especially Europe. But from it we received great men like Oskar Schindler who sheltered the Jews from falling into an Auschwitz Camp saving 1,200 Jews, like Coronel Contreras who saved 40,000 Jews by giving them fake Salvadorian passports, like Monsignor Hugh O'flaherty who was a master at evading Nazi traps and helped 6,500 other Jews.
Now not to be mistaken there are just as great, if not greater men alive in good times, even today, but still the cycle holds true. It is not just that strong men become more easily seen with the harder times, but also the fact that they are much more needed and of much more use then. Its easier to see one bright star alone in the polluted swamps of air in the city than the spot one out from the endless domain of them in the clear skies of the country.
In the end, that cycle is a journey that every civilization must face, and the fact remains that it will be a double edged sword that brings the best in sickness and in poorness, and in health and in wealth, it is truly and infinite loop.
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