'spare bulb in my hand' -BNL
2001-07-19 - 11:37 a.m.
�But there�s not much to do, when your friends are all fish, and an oyster and clam aren�t real family, so I don�t want to live in the sea...� -Ernie
Business proposition, part one. I woke up this morning with a brilliant plan.
Background: There is a rising and well-established trend for wanna-be-anarchists in America. The passives that want the government to fall, but don�t dare to think about ending up like Mr. McVeigh. �Dude, like...the government sucks.� �Yea man. We should just blow it up.� And with the impending doom of Bush�s Stupidity (TM), this trend should grow to be unanimous across the nation. But I ask you, how does a wanna-be-anarchist display their anarchy-ness? By stealing from the corps. They see a sample soap in WalMart (TM), and TAKE it. Then they feel all good, because they�ve done their duty to their philosophy of non-organization; knowing that, theoretically, they could live for free on sample items. Then they go home and drink some soda and watch a few movies.
The Demand: These people need a forum, a public notice board of some sort, to tell them where sample items can be had. The need for all stores, of course, is customers. Once you get them into your store, you�ve already won the war...some people feel guilty not buying something in a store they have walked into. Others will see that pack of gum on the way out, and say they need to buy something, so it doesn�t look like they TOOK a sample item (heaven forbid). And of course, the people who own the sample items want the sample items to get out into the populous, because after all, it is a sample.
The Supply: So I start a website. Contact every major chain of stores across the country. Tell them that I will tell the populous where these free samples can be had, and in exchange I only ask for ten dollars a month, for advertisement fees.
The Catch: But then it dawned on me that, at most, this process might make $6,000 a year (granted, it�s only part one of a larger enterprise). Money is money, but I think that it�d be more pain than it would be worth, to update the site every day, for every single location (link) for each chain of stores. Advertisement of the website is always a problem. And then, I don�t even really know HTML, so I�d need a little help from Shan. But mayhaps I could get someone like Dave to oversee the updates of the info, while Shan updates the website...whatd�ya think, guys?
Let�s go over the newspaper headlines, eh? (From 07/17/2001, Bangor Daily)
�Russia, China pledge friendship...Bush administration says treaty poses no threat to US interests.� The Russia hates us. China hates us. Everyone in the Balkans hates us, no matter what sort of �endangered� race they are. Everyone in the Middle East hates us. Canada doesn�t even like us because we have to masquerade as Canadeans when visiting another country, just so we don�t get mugged/ransomed/killed. The only nation that really doesn�t hate us is Tiwan, and then only because they consider us a necessary evil...and we�re loosing popularity with them by threatening to �protect� them. Historically, we don�t have a good history of keeping alive the people that we are �protecting�. And this anti-missle defense system has everyone on edge. We�re not paying our bills to the UN. And really, how long has this guy been in the oval office? Six months?
�US study of Prisons denounced...Mental health services in Maine questioned�. Evidently, a nationwide probe of the mental health services of prisons in each state placed Maine in the top four. The same week the study was being done, �the executive director of the Maine chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill� sent a large packet of information to federal officials, complaining about the poor state of the mental inmates in Maine. And if we�re in the top four, how are people in your state being treated?
�Police uncover bomb writings�. While his house was being searched (for drugs?) Irving Williams, of Searsport, was arrested. He was charged with possession of components to explosives (i.e. bleach), cultivation of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia. But they�re also trying to charge him with explicit content of something-or-other, for some stories that he wrote on his computer, �reminicant of the April 1999 shootings at Columbine�. Basically, the plot consists of some kids in trench coats blowing up a school and shooting some people. But even if it is gruesome, repulsive, and twisted, it�s just a story. And if you don�t believe in the diversity of thought or the right to be an individual, then I don�t have to tell you where to shove it. You�ve already shoved your mind into the television, allowed MTV to eat your brains out, and have prepared yourself for the slaughterhouse of consumerism. Nothing more than cows with credit cards. Moo.
The dimmer switch theory: I used to think that homosexuality was one of those human conditions. A mental DIP switch, just like heterosexuality, and bisexuality, and bestiality. No one is really born with one or the other...just a set of experiences that change your preferences one way or the other. But as time passes, it becomes increasingly harder to define exactly which �switch� is active in any one person�s head. In reality, the switches are never completely on of off. [Eight-hundred fetish channels in the brain, and no one has a remote.] For example, as one drives across the border from New Mexico to Arizona, no discernable change takes place in the landscape itself. The only real difference is that some wig-wearing assembly of men in the 1600s decided there was a border at that place, and it was so. These people are �us�, and those people are �them�. At what point does white cease to be white, and become gray? At what point does gray become black? By the same type of argument, a chicken can be said to be a fish. They are both composites of amino acids and proteins, albeit arranged in slightly different manners. But if there was a critter in the middle of �fish� and �chicken�, which would it be? And if there were infinitesimal divisions between the two, would we just call fish and chicken by the singular name of �ficken�? These infinitesimal divisions do exist, and to think that we have experienced every step of every evolution for every critter that ever will be is sheer ludicrousness. So why do states have different names in the first place? Because Carolus Linneaus thought that the hierarchical system looked pretty on paper. Conclusion: The only lines that are drawn are the ones we make up. And no one bothers to use an eraser. Secondary Conclusion: I am 61% lesbian, according to thespark (TM).
Post Sanctum: Step-mother ran over Step-sister�s cat, Snot. May he rest in peace.
