Fans of the Unshow will know that I have a pretty special connection with God. After all, he was a guest on the show. This fact is made all the more baffling by the other fact that I profess to be an atheist. This doesn’t mean that I have given up hope for some of the big answers, it just means that I don’t really care. My logic is that if God is actually there, he’ll understand my twisted logic, or, and this is more likely, not give a flying fatwa what I think.

If I was God and I made something remarkably dim-witted, I wouldn’t hold grudges. Knowing and understanding all must be pretty calming, I figure.

Some part of me wishes that there was a definite answer to the questions of life. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with Bible Bashers on the street every day. Well, every other day that is. Today must’ve been a special day because they were out in force, in broken English, which is worse because they can throw verses at me but when I retort they can’t understand.

Like when I asked about the age of Earth and he said that 4000 years was just a parable, to which I replied that this meant anything you find inconvenient could just be called a parable. He answered me with a well timed and drawn out blank stare. I really should stop talking to these people.

In order to counter these armies of Scripture Streetwalkers, I have devised these Ten Commandments of Avoidance to protect you from these people as you walk the streets. By blindly following these rules and watching for the signs of the Deliverer you may avoid losing precious moments of your life or worse still, having your soul ’saved’.

Commandment One: Beware the Neverending Smile. As you stroll along, you may think that the person up ahead is just happy. Think again. There are not that many happy people in the world these days, what with wars going on, high prices, taxes and global warming. If someone is smiling more than a second it is probably because they are high on hymns and are ready to tell you about them. You look into their eyes, they are wide, they appear to be glad to see you. You know that this is just too good to be true. Run, lest they impart the meaning of their joy.

Commandment Two: Clipboards: Thine Security Sense is False. So you see a person with a clipboard. Ah no problem there. Probably just some poor schmuck with a survey. WRONG! Suddenly you find yourself staring at a set of questions all about people called Mary, Moses and Matthew, but by then it’s too late, you have a pen in your hand. You hurriedly scribble the answers down and try to run away but they have you, they’re talking, it’s too late. Noooo! Beware the clipboard, for often these implements carry rounds of biblical ammunition, from surveys to fliers to booklets filled with stories about mystery heroes with long hair. See the clipboard and run, my friend.

Commandment the Third: As Moses Parted the Seas (parabolically of course), So Doth The God-Talker. You may notice, if you pay close attention to the people around you, that something strange is happening. People in the street in front of you are parting for no good reason. What could it be? What else but a church junkie, looking for friends so that they can all inject good intentions of hope into each others souls. For nothing will part a crowd like a Smiling Samaritan with the Good Word on his tongue.

Commandment Four: Do As The Jew Doth. While you may not be a Jew, it certainly is convenient to pretend to be one to ward off the surprise attack. The average basher isn’t equipped with the arguments to topple a faith older than theirs, especially one whose followers betrayed their number one guy. Most likely they’ll give up. Feel free to do your best Jewish impression to suit. Trust me, Jews appreciate good Jewish impressions.

Commandment Five: Do As The (insert religion here) Follower Doth. If Jewish impressions aren’t your thing, then you are not lost. There are plenty of religions that are just as repugnant to Christians. Try Islam for example. One mention of the Crusades or US Christians invading the Holy Land and you’ll think you had Saladin’s sword in your hands. It’s all in the approach. Greet them with “salaam alaikum” and it will it will be over before you can say hijab!

Commandment the Sixth: Unleash Thy Fury. One of the great things that many people forget is that Christians have to forgive. This has a great benefit for you the hapless victim: you can punch them in the face! Ok, well maybe not punch, because from a distance you can really get a run up and do a flying karate kick. A normal person would be angry, but if you apologize, they will forgive you. They have to! Then you can punch them again, and again, all the time with forgiveness guaranteed. Feeling tense or angry? Well, a happy Christian may even lighten your day after you get some of those frustrations out.

Commandment Seven: Repeat Ad Nauseum. An old game, yes. A good game, double yes. Turning bible talk into a fun game, absolutely! The rules are simple: just repeat everything they say. Exactly. Time yourself to see just how long they will endure their own words. Hey, if everyone else has to endure them, why shouldn’t they?

Commandment Eight: God Is Your Friend. Literally. If you were unable to read the signs and find yourself cornered by one of those smiles which are too wide for the mouth, all is not lost. Simply smile the same smile back and tell them all about the voices in your head. Tell them about your friend, God, and how he tells you many things. Have a conversation with him while your talking with them. “God says He’s angry” and look worried. “God, stop talking, stop! stop!” Trust me, by the third blood-curdling scream as you pound your fists on your temples, there will be no-one left talking to you. That is, unless of course the voices were there to begin with…

Commandment Nine: Cultivate a Following. Interestingly enough, someone who really wants to tell you something will often follow you if you fail to stop. The trick is to look interested enough to give them hope, but not slow down enough to stop. See how far you can take them. Up stairs, down stairs, across the street, across town. Given enough hope of saving your soul, the travel possibilities are endless!

Commandment Ten: Placing Distance. Should all of the above Commandments fail to protect you from the incessant rantings of a Godhead, DO NOT FEAR. For there is one final action which may be taken which is a sure-fire method for when all of the lying, acting or punching just won’t work. The trick is to put the greatest distance possible between you and the offending party in the shortest amount of time. They may shout “God bless you” or some other horribly joyous blessing as you peel off. However if the wind is right, or your running fast enough, you may be able to avoid even this. And that may be the greatest blessing of them all.

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My family well knows of my thoughts about government. A great deal of my friends do also. I have long been a supporter of libertarianism, although with so many factions of it I can never pinpoint which one I follow exactly. Safe to say, pretty much everyone I know knows that I hate big government. Most government. Pretty much all of it actually.

I know it’s kind of old news now, but if I can have a segment on The Unshow about Steve Irwin, then I’m damn well sure I need one on the renowned economist, Milton Friedman, a great professor and intellectual who, sadly, just passed away. Professor Friedman also made arguments like I did about free markets and the like, but with much more eloquence and, as it were hard data. The man was brilliant, and it is truly a crime that more people don’t know of his work.

In memory, here is an excerpt from an interview he gave on Open Mind in 1975, hosted by Richard D. Heffner:

HEFFNER: I’m Richard Heffner, your host on THE OPEN MIND. My guest today has been labeled this country’s foremost conservative economist. Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago, of Newsweek magazine, and of wherever it is that persons of brilliance and concern gather to discuss the fate of individual liberty in the midst of ever-expanding governmental responsibilities. Professor Friedman, I wonder if I might begin the program by saying that you’re a kind gentleman, yet you’re identified by many with those who seem — to those who make that identification to want us not to do kind and gentle things — perhaps not provide for the poor, perhaps not provide for the aged — and I wonder how you’d reconcile these phenomena and whether you feel it’s fair to characterize you as a conservative economist.

FRIEDMAN: Well, let me start at the end of that first. I never characterize myself as a conservative economist. As I understand the English language, conservative means conserving, keeping things as they are. I don’t want to keep things as they are. The true conservatives today are the people who are in favor of ever bigger government. The people who call themselves liberals today — the New Dealers — they are the true conservatives, because they want to keep going on the same path we’re going on. I would like to dismantle that. I call myself a liberal in the true sense of liberal, in the sense in which it means (inaudible) and pertaining to freedom. Now, that brings me to your second point. One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. We all know a famous road that is paved with good intentions. The people who go around talking about their soft heart — I share their — I admire them for the softness of their heart, but unfortunately, it very often extends to their head as well, because the fact is that the programs that are labeled as being for the poor, for the needy, almost always have effects exactly the opposite of those which their well-intentioned sponsors intend them to have.

HEFFNER: As an example, what are you referring to?

FRIEDMAN: Let me give you a very simple example. Take the minimum wage law. Its well-meaning sponsors — there are always in these cases two groups of sponsors. There are the well-meaning sponsors and there are the special interests who are using the well-meaning sponsors as front men. You almost always when you have bad programs have an unholy coalition of the do-gooders on the one hand and the special interests on the other. The minimum wage law is as clear a case as you could want. The special interests are, of course, the trade unions, the monopolistic craft trade unions in particular. The do-gooders believe that by passing a law saying that nobody shall get less than $2 an hour or $2.50 an hour, or whatever the minimum wage is, you are helping poor people who need the money. You are doing nothing of the kind. What you are doing is to assure that people whose skills are not sufficient to justify that kind of a wage will be unemployed. It is no accident that the teenage unemployment rate — the unemployment rate among teenagers in this country — is over twice as high as the overall unemployment rate. It’s no accident that that was not always the case until the 1950’s when the minimum wage rate was raised very drastically, very quickly. Teenage unemployment was higher than ordinary unemployment because, of course, teenagers are the ones who are just coming into the labor market — they’re searching and finding jobs, and it’s understandable that on the average they would be unemployed more. But it was nothing like the extraordinary level it has now reached — it’s close to 20%.

HEFFNER: Why?

FRIEDMAN: Because the minimum wage law is most properly described as a law saying employers must discriminate against people who have low skills. That’s what the law says. The law says here’s a man who would — has a skill which would justify a wage rate of $1.50, $2.00 an hour. You can’t, you may not employ him. It’s illegal. Because if you employ him you have to pay him $2.50. Well, what’s the result? To employ him at $2.50 is to engage in charity. Now there’s nothing wrong with charity. But most employers are not in a position where they can engage in that kind of charity. Thus the consequences of minimum wage rates have been almost wholly bad, to increase unemployment and to increase poverty. Moreover, the effects have been concentrated on the groups that the do-gooders would most like to help. The people who have been hurt most by minimum wage laws are the blacks. I’ve often said that the most anti-Negro law on the books of this land is the minimum wage rate. And so I think the real answer to your question is that you must not judge a bottle solely by its label. You have to look at what’s inside and see what the law or the measure produces.

Click here for the whole interview… or watch the video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6813529239937418232

Popularity: 2% [?]

On the advice of someone I know, I decided to renew my visa using the Busan ferry. The advice went something like: “oh yeah, it’s really cheap and most people do it because it saves money.” So on Friday, I caught the KTX to Busan and took a ferry to Fukuoka, Japan.

Logistical note: There are various ferries, which depart from the terminal near Jungang-dong station in Busan (the station next to Busan station). The return journey costs around 200,000 won with tax. There are more charges in Japan when coming back. I’ll get to those later.

Anyway, it turns out, it’s not cheaper, just slower which is unfortunately is not the same thing. To begin with, I’d recommend going to another country to renew your visa. Japan, while a great place I’m sure, is not an easy place to get around. For starters, almost everything is in Japanese. Around the ports was a little different, where some signs were written in Korean. After I stepped off the ferry after 2 hours and 30 minutes of smooth sailing and having my bags completely searched, I searched for a bus. All bus signage was in Hanji and were it not for a nice Japanese English speaker, I would have had to catch a taxi. If you’re doing this trip, take the 151 bus to Tenji (the center of town), pay when you get off the bus.. about 200 or 300 yen.

On the subject of yen, know that the place to change money may not be open, as I found. In the mad rush to get to the port in Busan, I hadn’t changed any and only carried a 500 yen coin from my last visit. This factor saved me a good deal of heartache.

After getting into the city, I started searching for hotels or motels. In Korea, it’s easy as pie to find a love motel. They’re nice cheap places to stay if you don’t mind the sleazy neighborhood. In actuality, there’s very little sleaze just a lot of neon and young couples who live at home. The point is, they’re easy to find. I walked all over the city and couldn’t find anything sleazy enough and all the other hotels were full. Finally I got lucky with one hotel who gave me a room that smelled of perfume. Maybe the previous occupant had been a corpse, but I really didn’t mind. Three hours of walking around the city hadn’t put me in the best of moods. If I didn’t find those pretty Christmas displays along the way, I might just have lost my mind.

I had one thing on my mind: food. I needed food so bad. I only had time for breakfast in Seoul and my stomach was eating itself as I trailed the streets for some nice Japanese ramen. I found some, with dumplings and fried rice. I have to put it to the Japanese – they know good food. Next, find something to do in the city.

It was cold, not colder than Seoul, but still quite chilly. I found an English pub and a nice Scotsman inside to give me the lay of the land. We discussed the differences between life there and in Korea. He showed me around a little, a few bars here and there. Eventually, his Japanese wife called and told him to stop hanging around Japanese “beetches” and to come home. I decided to retire for the night too.

What can I say? I only spent a night there, but I felt a little powerless to do anything. The average Japanese speaks less English than the average Korean it would seem. In the few bars I was in and in the discussions I had with my Scottish friend, there really wasn’t a great deal of difference between life here and there. My only thoughts are that the girls are uglier, but dress sexier, the food is awesome, the streets and buildings have a style about them, but also a clinical feel, and finally that where Koreans are quite emotional, Japanese hide that part and give off a calm exterior. For better or worse, well I didn’t stay long enough to find out.

The next day, I had forgotten the bus number I had to catch. I remembered the streets we traveled through from the ferry port, but it seems that my photographic memory is limited to visual locations and doesn’t extend to bus numbers or Japanese characters. The first bus I caught took me far, far away from where I was meant to go. When I finally made it back, it had begun to rain. Again, no English characters. I followed the road back for a bit, where the bus had gone the night before, the slow drizzle flattening my hair and slowly, steadily soaking my clothes. I wanted to catch another bus, but I had a fear of going somewhere far away, so I decided to make a dash for it. I ran for a couple of kilometers, my memory steering me forward. Soaked to the bone, I made it to the port 30 minutes before boarding.

I changed my money back into Korean won, then went to the counter to get my boarding pass. The woman told me that there was some bogus fuel charge of 400 yen. I went back and changed money. I paid the bogus charge, swearing under my breath and went upstairs. Boarding time, I tried to enter but it turns out there is another bogus charge of 400 yen to pay for another unknown reason. No ticket, no entry. I went downstairs again, changed money, went upstairs again, bought the stupid ticket and boarded. I longed to be back in a country that sorta made sense, as opposed to this one which was all hard work.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. I could’ve just taken a taxi from the town to the ferry port. Showing a taxi driver my ticket would have pointed him in the right direction. Yes, yes, that is how a normal person would probably do it. I could’ve checked with the counter before changing money and even kept a thousand yen as backup. Yes. I know. But taxis are expensive, I don’t always get the order of operations right and saved yen is just a waste. In other words, I’m a bit of a cheapskate. If there is money to be saved, I’ll probably do it.

The long and the short of it is, I could’ve spent just a little more money and had a nice trip to another country like Hong Kong, Taiwan or even flown to Tokyo for the same or a similar price. KTX – 90,000 won return, Busan ferry – 200,000 won return, Green Hotel Fukuoka – 50,000 won 1 night, dubious charges in Japan 10,000 won. Next time I’m calling my good friends at Topsale to get me a cheap flight. If you’re residing in Korea I recommend them, call up ask for English then tell the guy that David recommended you. I don’t know that there is any point in the last part, but it can’t hurt.

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It’s a Sunday night. I’ve been sitting at my computer for more hours than I care to recall. I stand up. I walk over and open the fridge. Nothing inside. The sight discomforts me, so I go to the local supermarket to find something to put inside it. I walk the aisles and visualize all of the shelved items chilling out in my white box. Nothing seems necessary to me. I buy a bottle of water and some milk and go back. I realize that what I need is not a lot of stuff to put inside my fridge but really just a smaller fridge. Milk, butter and some cans of drink would fill it and I’d feel better.

Then I recoil in horror. What am I doing? I’m worried about my fridge. Why should I even bother with nonsense like this. In the grand scheme of things, the contents of a certain cold place ain’t going to play a large role. Besides, I eat out every day and I like it that way. However it got me thinking. How necessary was anything I had done that day? I pondered it hard.

There was the morning. Always my least favorite of the various segments of the day. To me, mornings always move too fast, or I move too slow. I try to get myself together, but what with the shower, breakfast, clothing and stumbling around in a daze, I find that I just can’t be ready in any reasonable time. I’ve found that I just can’t break that hour or so of dead time where I prepare myself to face the world. Just thinking about it makes me want to hide under my doona again. On this particular day I had woken late, around 11:30 and so breakfast had to become lunch, and lunch had to be eaten out because there was nothing in my fridge that could reasonably be eaten. So I had gone out, ordered and spent another hour of dead time filling my stomach.

To me, eating has always been something of a pain. There’s the finding of the food, the preparing of the food, the actual eating of the food and then there’s the cleaning up. It’s all just too much trouble. Give me a pill of nutrition and I’ll show you a happy Dave. This is the reason I eat out. It simplifies all of the stages of the consumption process. You find the restaurant and the item on the menu, prepare it by telling the waiter or waitress what you want, eat it (not much of a change there) and then feel bad for whoever is washing up. If you ask me, this is still far too much time wasted on eating.

Then there was the rest of the day, during which I stared at the computer. Don’t ask me what I was doing. It’s not because I don’t want to tell you, it’s just because I don’t remember exactly what it was. At the time it was quite interesting. There was that video of a guy playing the piano and drums at the same time, but edited together in a process known as still motion video. That was funny. Then I must’ve watched a TV show, yes I think that was it. The rest, well, that was a blur. Looking back, I wonder why I chose to throw away those hours of my life. But not just those hours. What about all those TV shows, movies and games. I have no skills or knowledge from them which will do me any good. Was I just putting off living for all those hours. I’ve watched 24 seasons 1,2,3 and 4. That’s 4 whole days gone on just one TV show! I stopped thinking about it for fear of falling to the floor in despair.

Was I covering up my boredom by filling my time with meaningless stuff? Yes, I think I was. But if that was really true, then what meaningful thing might I do with this time? Were I Leonardo Da Vinci, I might paint a portrait or invent a new machine or study the inner workings of the human body. Not wanting to go to extremes, I thought of something more real-world, something more like my own life. I might work on a new design for my website or write a new blog entry. Surely though, this is just wasting time in a different way. It’s creatively wasting time. I suppose creative wasting is better than inactive, passive wasting. But what about creatively finding new ways to waste your time? Someone might just say that you were sitting around in your underwear watching movies all day but what you’re really doing is “studying the literary styles that the writer has used to craft the work”. Your mum tells you that it’s about time you stopped wasting time on “that stupid YouTube site”, tell her to hold off on that judgment. What you’re really doing is “analyzing” pop culture and social trends which influence the culture of tomorrow. When someone complains that you have seen the same news item three times in a day and feverishly check your social news bookmarking sites like a junkie, tell them you’re just “keeping yourself informed” of the latest in world developments. And of course, when your wife or girlfriend complains that you drink every night and come home stinking of booze at 3 in the morning, well you’re just “socializing” with friends aren’t you?

I called my friend.
“Hey, what do you do when you aren’t working or studying or eating…. or showering or traveling somewhere?” I said.
“Uh David? Is that you?”
“Yes it’s me. So what do you do?”
“Uh, I guess I watch TV or meet my friends…”
“Ah-ha! A waste of life!”. I said and hung up.

Not satisfied with just one, I called another friend and delivered the same question.
“Um…” came the reply.
“Come on! And not TV or friends, I’ve already had those two.”
“I play with my dog.”
“Pah! A meaningless waste of affection!”

Next… “I write poetry”
Ha! A self-indulgent waste of paper, worse for the pain it will inflict upon it’s eventual reader.

Next… “I like to shop”
Consuming in a mindless attempt to avoid looking at the advent of your death.

Next… “I started a company in my spare time and made myself a millionaire”
Gimme a break! That’s just work. I said not work!!!

At this point I ran out of friends who would submit to my interrogation. But that was fine because I had my answer. Everyone wastes time. Well, ok, some people don’t and make money from their efforts, but mostly everyone does at some point. You might think that you’re productive and don’t have time to waste, but it will get you in the end. You’ll give in, you’ll see a movie, you’ll read an article that isn’t completely relevant to your end-goal and that will be it, a downward spiral of use and abuse as the hours turn into days and you blindly hide away from the fact that you are in fact throwing your life away until you’re just a quivering heap of consumption, lying on the floor.

And as you pick yourself up and check your empty fridge for the fifth time that day, you won’t worry because you know that deep down, everybody does it. Even if no-one will admit it.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I was delighted yesterday when I found out that one of Terry Pratchett’s books will be made into a movie. Not only that, but it will be a Christmas movie with Death as one of the main characters. To top it off Nigel Planer (of Young Ones fame, and an hilarious reader of a number of Pratchett’s audio books) is among the cast.

For those who haven’t heard of Terry Pratchett or the Discworld, these books are possibly the most consistently funny stories in fantasy history. They may also be the largest series, at 33 books and counting. They center around life on a planet known as the Discworld (a flat world sitting on the back of 4 elephants, who in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle flying through space). The multitude of characters include wizards, witches, goblins, night watchmen, warewolves, gods and of course DEATH.

Let me give you an example from the book Mort:

“The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles — kingons, or possibly queons — that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.”

All 33 books are full of great quotes like this one. Should this Hogfather movie be a success then there are tons and tons more they can make. Oh, so awesome!

For more great quotes from the Discworld books, have a look at the Wikiquote page.

Popularity: 3% [?]