Politics - A Ballad

There is a group of people who through lack of self respect
Decide on a career path even hobos would reject.
And all this job requires is moaning, whining, bitchin',
Yes of course i'm talking about the humble politician.

They stand in front of cameras mixing truth with all their lies
unaware that everybody near them sighs and rolls their eyes.
And when there is a complaint: " he didn't keep his promise!"
Enter in the Democrats to keep the bastards honest.

Every party no matter its creed
has all the one most basic need
To lie its way into public office
so sit still and listen to this:

Politics is bad, but we need it.

Why the various systems of rule fail

A problem has arisen with the world. What is the problem?
Both capitalism and communism are bad.
Why?

Because capitalism works and communism doesn't.

And so what is the solution? Something in the middle? We can see that democracy seems to work well, but only when used in conjunction with capitalism. A Communist Democracy is unheard of. And anyway, the will of the many is controlled by the will of a few. Maybe anarchy? No, that wouldn't work either. There is a good reason that anarchists have never won. They are so busy trying to be anarchists that they forget that if they won there would be nothing left to anarchise (is that even a word?). So what are we left with? Fascism, no, it uses capitalist ideals to the extreme. Republicanism. No it also uses capitalism. Socialism? No, it uses communist ideals. Monarchism? No, sorry. That wouldn't work either. Kings and Queens who own alot will ocassionally turn into vile despots. And so we come back to the start. There is no system of rule that is good. All of them are bad. None of them work. So what can we do? Absolutely nothing.

And please, if you find any systems i failed to destroy utterly, please tell me.

The Washington Conspiracy

Hello my minions.

I found this online a few days ago, thought you peeps might find it amusing. Basically, Washington D.C, which for you folks who don't know your history, was built by Freemasons, has incorporated into it's design several pentagrams. Should you be wondering i will now go into some detail about what exactly a pentagram is.

Christian View: Represesnts the five wounds of Christ.

Alchemical View: Represents the five elements, air, earth, fire, water and spirit.

Occultist View: A powerful symbol of protection, commonly used in witchcraft.

Satanic View: When flipped upside down so the single point is facing down, it represents Satan. When facing the right way up, it represents God.

Masonic View: For early stonemasons, the pentagram helped in creating a perfect arch. If you draw a perfect pentagram then you trace around it and you get a perfect arch.

So anyway, here is the map of Washington:

And there you have it. A pentagram with its tip ending right on the White House. I guess you could call it a Masonic In-Joke. And then just to add more insult to injury, there are about ten other pentagrams created around Washington.

Toodles.

Bens short essay on religion

this is a short essay on religion. It was fun to write. i hope you enjoy.

Don't get me wrong, and start to think that i'm a christian basher, becasue i'm not, but I haven't got the time to listen to the religious right bum on about hell, abortion and gay marriage. It annoys me a great deal. The anger that is prevalent in "the religion of peace" scares me. The fact that no-one wants to acknowledge this anger scares me more. People are too busy damning Islam and the terrorists who are destroying it to stop and take a look behind them at the looming threat of Fundamentalist Christianity. People, probably you, my dear reader, look at countries like Lebanon and say, "look at those damn Muslims, wrecking the place." Even though Lebanon has a pretty much 50/50 split between Islam and Christianity. So, if Christianity really is the religion of peace, why is it destroying a country from the inside out, or at least, destroying half a country. And terrorism isn't just an Islamic problem, as the media would have us believe. What about the conflict in Northen Ireland? Protestants and Catholics. What about the Ergun? The Jewish terrorists of the forties. Look at any terrorists organisation and you will see a number of religions. it's just, because Al Qaeda hit us the hardest, we feel it our moral obligation to destroy Islam. Islam is not the problem. Islam is a religion that stresses peaceful resolution. Al Qaeda is a terrorist organisation. It believes that it is doing Allah's work. No one else does, maybe some hardline Muslims. only yesterday, I heard some stupid --- down the street say "Look, they captured another Muslim terrorist. We should just round 'em all up and send them home." I pointed out that Al Qaeda had been planning its attack on the west for nearly as long as i've been alive. They sent sleeper cells all around the world long before the planes hit. There are still an estimated 70-100 Al Qaeda operatives in America (thankyou CIA), most of which are believed to have been sent here in the early nineties.
So back to my original rant, the Christian Right in my opinion is the problem. The fundamentalists who planted the nail bomb outside an abortion clinic, killing two pregnant ladies and their unborn babies (fetusus, if you wanna get technical.)
Their logic: Those women were pro-abortion therefore anti-god. That means (and i quote the testament here) "die".
my logic: by killing two unborn babies and two mothers, you just committed quadruple homicide, putting you in gods bad-books. (Thou shalt not murder, wow, i really know my Bible). And so it is, the Fundies get all the power of Washington, all the guns of the US Army, all the support of most of the people, and none of the blame for the current state of affairs. They palm that off to people like me who disagree with them.

So just before i go, i want to share one last example with you. One last injustice which got me to write this lengthy article.

The scene: Michigan.
The date: October 31st, 2003
The characters: "Mary" the schoolgirl, and "Richard" the principle. As well as twelve jurors, one state courtroom and a judge named "Frank"

Mary, a Wiccan, decided to celebrate Samhain (more commonly referred to as halloween, and one of the most important holy days on the Wiccan calendar). To celebrate, she wore a pentagram around her neck. Richard, the principle, and a "good christian" took offence to this. He suspended her for five days for "wearing inappropriate attire" when Mary explained it was religous Richard... didn't care. Upset, Mary and her parents sought legal advice. They were informed there was nothing to be done. So, mary accepted her suspension and then went back to school. Then she noticed that alot of students were wearing crosses around there necks. So she wore her pentagram again, and again got taken to richards office. Richard again suspended her, this time for ten days. Mary pointed out the fact that students were wearing crosses. Richard pointed out that it was a religious symbol and therefore he couldn't do anything. mary also pointed out hers was a religous symbol. He said it wasn't. The state of Michigan said otherwise, so suddenly mary had a case.
So began the Mary vs Richards school case. After three days in court the twelve jurors came back informing the world (or at least the courtroom) that a pentagram was a religous symbol. Richard was forced to back down, mary was given the right to wear her pentagram. "Frank" however, scolded her.
"It is sad that religioins such as this still operate in Christian America." he said.

Well, that was a marathon to write, and i doubt anybody is going to read it, but at least its off my chest.

PS: I don't dislike all christians. I am friends with alot of christians and muslims and jews. i just don't like the right, the fundamentalists, the terrorists and washington.

Why Do Some People Insisit on Existence?

Why? Why do some people feel they have the right to exist. Some people just don't deseve that right: Insurance Agents, Lawyers, Conmen (sorry, they are all the same aren't they?...ohhh, snap!)
And then the anonymous person who decided it might be productive to put an article on Wikipedia entitled
"List of Unrefined Sweeteners"
Many people will disagree when i say an article such as this only is of importance to a very small minority of people. Nobody else cares. I don't care. My left thumb doesn't care. i'm sure, were he around, Jesus wouldn't care, though i'm sure he would pretend to care to keep up his facade of, "caring guy with lovable beard".
The only reason I found it was because I though it might be cool to click "Random Article as many times as i could in he space of thirty seconds. But even sadder than that was that the guy or girl who wrote the article listed 21 references. That is 21 seperate articles relating to unrefined sweeteners.

God, why is the world so?

Stupid Headlines & Stupider Questions

People like me find themselves drawn into a shady web of intrigue and confusion when editors use headlines such as:
"Della Bosca Wrote Iguanas Apology".
Now, there are so many different interpretations of this one little headline. So many ways it could be mistook. So why is it that people give me an odd look when I ask:
"What did the Iguana do?"
So until we get a headline that is straight to the point such as:
"Della Bosca complains, then resolves issue by writing an apology to himself"
I think I am well within my rights to ask a stupid question in response to a stupid headline.

Until Next Time,
Mister. B. Gone

Things That Annoy Me # 221 ---The misuse of chimpanzees--

Chimpanzees have had a hard couple of years. Don't get me wrong, I ain't no hippiefied animal rights activist or anything of that sort, i just think chimpanzees have hard a hard rap.

What brought about this opinion?

Well, recently whilst clicking "random article" on wikipedia I stumbled across a disturbing page called "Motorcross Kids". It wasn't that bad until i noticed that one of the kids, the hairy, chimpish one, was indeed a hairy chimp.

See for yourself:

Blatant misuse of Chimpanzee.

The kid on the left is thinking something along the lines of "Wow! A chimpanzee."

The Chimp is thinking something like "Look! I have teeth."

And the chick on the right is seriously considering firing her agent. Look at that death stare its like "Johnny, when i finish this movie i'm gonna dropkick you in the larynx."

And that is just one blatant misuse of chimpanzees.

There are more but i cant be buggered to list all them. Just accept the fact that chimpanzees are being abused on set and go and picket somebody.

Take that corporate America

Whilst traversing the den of iniquity we call the internet I stumbled upon an intersting article by Maddox, a internet satirist (http://maddox.xmission.com/). Avoid this site if you are offended easily, in fact, its probably best if you just avoid this site altogether.

This article related to how much internet advertising doesn't work. Becasue copyright is fun I figured I should post his website up to give him credit.

Anyhow, below are the statistics:

Money spent on advertising courtesy of Adage.com

Internet traffic rankings courtesy of Alexa.com

--Note, the lower the ranking, the better the website--

• "KFC" spent $224, 515, 000 on advertising and ranked 33266 on the web


• "Wendy's Old Fasioned Hamburgers" spent $270,965,000 and was ranked 21984


• "Burger King" spent $336,271,000 with a ranking of 20483


• "Subway" Spent $218,685,000 and was 13937


• "Coca Cola" spent $154,360,000 and was ranked 12388


• "Pepsi" spent $170,115,000 and was ranked 9297


• "McDonalds" spent a whopping $548,250,000 on advertising and got an overall ranking of 6319


• And (drumroll please) Maddox and his "Best Page In The Universe" spent a grand total of Zero Dollars on advertising and was ranked 5892.

So my question is this, what are the big corporations doing wrong? How can it be that one abusive satirist can have more traffic than a website which spends over Five Hundred Million Dollars on advertising.

And more to the point, how can people get away with spending such obscene amounts of money trying to sell a slimy, greasy hamburger when there are still countries in the world with life expectancies not much higher than 38.

Don't fear though, every now and then one of these companies will do a "Fundraiser" to show how much they care about the world. However, even these fundraisers are sales gimmicks. If you look close enough you will see that in order to get the money (normally only a few cents from any purchase) to the charity, you have to buy a hamburger, or fries.

All the below statistics are from the McDonalds Websites. I thought it might be fun to screw them with their own stats.

So lets do the maths, last "Fundraiser" McDonalds did they pledged one dollar from every big mac sold. Now, a Big Mac costs $3.95, and assuming you buy fries and a coke which will take the value up to $5.50. So pledging one dollar from $5.50 gives you $4.50, now McDonalds serves about 47 million customers worldwide each day, and most of their promos are world wide any way, now the Big Mac would sell about 13 million units each day meaning that they will still draw in $58,500,000 dollars each day of the promo, and only give away, $13,000,000. Better than nothing I suppose. The promo ran for three weeks, during which time McDonalds saw an increase in the amount of Big Macs sold, ( though interestingly they never mention exactly what the increase was simply citing "...More than usual...").

And even their good samaritanship with the Ronald McDonald House Charity is a ploy to sell you more McDonalds. Sure they pledge a few million every now and then but that doesn't detract from the fact that it is a blatant promotional tool. The very name of it, Ronald McDonald gives it away. Not only do they use their mascot, they also use their name.

Hows this for a new promotional campaign:

Till my next rant, ta ta.