If you are a US citizen and you are getting married within South Korea to a Korean national, then you need this translated document. You can just fill out the blanks. This document doesn’t need notary or certification.
A couple of weeks ago, a shortseller report snowballed into a widespread media attention on the opaque business practice among Valeant Pharmaceuticals, its proxy corporation Philidor, and Russell Reitz – the unfortunate Californian pharmacist caught up in what may turn out to be the largest health insurance fraud of the current century, and the unveiling of possibly an Enron-Arthur Andersen type of accounting fraud.
Valeant’s naming convention of proxy corporations is remarkably Enron-esque. Copyrights belong to Globe and Mail. Accessed Nov 3, 2015.
I usually don’t bother with things like this in life, but what drew me into the story was the fact that Valent’s proxy-corporations were all named using chess terminology. I was hooked and spent an inordinate amount of time reading about the background, just for the personal pleasure of following a story. All of this voyeuristic reading eventually lead me to a workplace discrimination lawsuit between one Mr. Joseph Weinberg and Valeant and its subsidiary companies.
Joseph Weinberg is an IT professional and was hired, in 2013, by Valeant to work on the IT infrastructre. One of his supervisor in the IT department was Jacob Alao, who “had his own Nigerian financial company called Mongran Financial (“Mongran”) which “Valeant… had helped start.”
Suit alleges that a Valeant employee, Jacob Alao, was siphoning client information to a “Nigerian financial company” called Mongran.
The remainder of the lawsuit alleges Alao to be a scum of the earth, as well as a hostile workplace environment stewing with all manner of social filth.
This Jacob Alao
Mr. Michael Pearson, were you aware of the fact that your company was feeding private information of your clients to a Nigerian financial company?
What say you Mr. Skilling … I mean … Mr. Pearson?
This week, I read a Newsweek article about a solution to ending poverty.
How to Fix Poverty: Write Every Family a Basic Income Check is a very catch title. I even like the picture of a lady with shopping carts. That is sooooo much warehouse space for soooo little food. But what does the picture symbolize? Also, wasn’t this article about getting rid of food stamp programs and just giving people straight cash? So… why a sympathetic picture towards something the writer would consider inefficient?
The writer has a brilliant solution to the problem of welfare: The US government receives $1.8 trillion dollars to be used for welfare programs. Instead of using those tax dollars on food stamps, the money should be given as a $15,000 “thank you for being a US citizen” prize to every household.
The US government spends $1 trillion dollars on welfare of the food stamp variety??? Every year?
When I read this, I could not believe that governments could be so inefficient to waste soooo much money on pieces of paper that could be exchanged for food. I cannot believe that money went to food stamps because a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) is enough money to buy 200 billion hamburgers (assuming hamburger+tax at $5). Those 200 billion hamburgers is enough to feed all of US for an entire year.
It possibly couldn’t be all of that money was going into food stamps.
So where was the money really going to? Let’s take a look at the link on “$1 trillion on welfare”. It refers to a 2012 publication by the libertarian think tank, the CATO institute, The American Welfare State: How We Spend Nearly $1 Trillion a Year Fighting Poverty—And Fail. You can access the pdf article here.
Major boring stuff. Lots of policy words. But what do we have on Page 4?
Food stamps (SNAP) represents only 7% of that trillion dollars. More than 30% of that money actually goes to providing healthcare for people who couldn’t afford healthcare by other means.
That’s right. The “welfare of the food stamp variety” money actually goes to things like tax credits (read: citizen’s dividend already), education (Pell Grants), and most importantly healthcare (SCHIP and Medicaid at a whopping 230 billion dollars). There is no way we can cut out these programs for reasons too numerous and too obvious. That is crazy talk. Just plain facepalm.
I am wondering how the author, a Harvard graduate, of the Newsweek article could claim that the US government is spending $1 trillion dollars on food stamps. In reality, most of that money is being given back to the US citizens in forms of education grants, tax credits, and health insurance. Less than 10% of the money is being spent on food stamps!
I am wondering how the Newsweek editorial staff did not check the validity of the very definition of the word welfare as “food stamp-like programs”?
This is terrible journalism with a complete lack of due diligence on the part of Newsweek. This is misinformation at its worst. The article should be retracted before more readers are duped into thinking that ending programs like Medicaid and Medicare is the solution to the problem of poverty in the US.
—–
I have no solution to fixing terrible journalism. The title was crafted in the spirit of the original article I’m tying to ridicule.
What was it you once dreamed of? Where are you going to go to find this? And how are you going to ever get there? If not in the Now, ever present.
It is somehow too natural for us to be static and immovable in our psyche. We cling on to the narrow band of experiences and thoughts, and relegate ourselves to this thin sliver of the grander reality that for lack of a better name some have called God. We make so little of the truth that is so many dimensions higher than our consciousness allows comprehension. That I think is unfaithfulness.
And on this cold day of Korea, I am alone but also with everything and everyone. We look away from the pain, but we cannot close the eyes from the light that shines from within. The soul is the life, not only of this body, but of the whole of Existence. It’s the everlove.
All extremes of emotions are illusions. Always, there is sadness deeper than sadness and love greater than love.
Our experiences are limitless.
(Whit Welles @ wiki media. CC 3.0)
I love whales. ❤ Whales are totally awesome.
If you look in the history of whaling, the biggest reason for why humans have killed whales was the demand for whale oil.
(Kurzon @ wiki media. CC 3.0)
This was useful fuel for night lamps, before the age of electricity. While the 21st century US citizens are the moral embodiments of whale protection, it was not always so.
(Kurzon @ wiki media. CC 3.0) – Important to note the rise and fall of whale oil importation. The decline in the second half of 1800s coincides with increasing extraction of petroleum oil.
People who love whales should thank the greedy people who raped the land and squeezed the oil out of it. Like Standard Oil Company (est 1870).
(wiki media. CC 3.0) – Standard Oil Company later becomes the evil that is EXXON-MOBIL. Names don’t matter though. It was Rockefeller family.
Thank you, Standard Oil, for saving the whales from extinction.
Oh, and please refrain yourselves from being trolled. This is not the end of this line of thought.
I’ve been working at a plastic surgery clinic for the past seven months, and my homework has been to answer the question of ‘what is a face?’
Has that question ever crossed your mind?
——
Today, as I was leaving my morning swim lesson on a bike, a face hung upside down in my retina, like the full moon shining thru a window on the wall.
The blink of your eyes, the way your eyelids hung low above the horizon of your cheeks, they reminded me of the evening crescent, I once saw, chasing after the sun over the Pacific. I was drinking wine and watching you from the other side of the Bay.
The sky rests on your face. A whole month of it.
Your complexion is brighter than the silicate white of the full moon, bathing in the full sun, but where you blush, your face is soft and gentle underneath the surface. Your freckles, daytime stars.
That momentary vision of morning aura, I’ve seen the constellations shift over a million nights, the meteors occasionally coming and gone. So have I, on my bike, on towards Gangnam clinic.
—–
Sometimes, certain concepts are so complex that they escape explicit definition. Face is one of them. Aesthetics is another.
IF I knew what it was, I couldn’t tell you. And IF you were to see it, you probably would not recognize it.
Truth is that we fail to see the flower because the flower does not exist for us.
But we can’t be faulted for not being bees.
I was listening to Radiolab, and came across this song.
Instalove!
No lyrics anywhere, so I transcribed this from the radiolab podcast. Copyrights where they are due.
[potential mondegreen in brackets]
——-
Oh, our igloo house is big and now, oh~
Made each brick of ice like stone, oh~
It’s a fort that can’t be broken, oh~
a place no one else would ever find us, oh~
We were children now we’ve grown
We were children now we’ve grown, oh~
We were children now we’ve grown
We were children now we’ve grown, oh~
Nobody knows how loud your heart gets.
[Though you’re] a million miles away but I still hear you.
And I’m going going going going to get you.
Tell you all my memories and you will tell me yours.
Colors of my favorite trees before the [winter’s swove].
Visits you and me should talk about the great unknown.
When I’ve put distance in between and all the obstacles we’ve known.
The things we know we just don’t know.
The things we know we don’t know, oh~
The things we know we just don’t know.
The things we know we don’t know, oh~
Nobody knows how loud your heart gets.
Cause we’re a million miles away but I still hear you.
And I’m going going going going to get you.
Yeah I’m going going going going to get you.
Oh~~ oh~~
Oh~~ oh~~
Oh~~ oh~~
Oh~~ oh~~
Nobody knows how loud your heart gets.
Cause you’re a million miles away but I still hear you.
Yeah I’m going going going going to get you.
Yeah I’m going going going going to get you.
Like a robber in the night, I’m going to get you.
Nobody knows even [?] how loud [his/your] heart gets. (I’m going to get you)
Yeah I’m going going going going to get you.
Oh~~ oh~~
Oh~~ oh~~
Oh~~ oh~~
Oh~~ oh~~
In as much as this is true, every life destined for a greater purpose must begin with a sign that picks the one, from many.
A child born from an egg, which is the most usual thing for a dinosaur pup, is destined for something unusual. In the beginning, no one can know, the least of all the child himself, what that destined thing is.
It is only when one day, the child wakes up and finds feathers growing in his armpits, while all his peers are growing pubescent hair, that he begins to suspect that the story about his birth may have connection to his present conundrum. And what does a teenager do when he finds that he is different from others? He tries to hide that part of himself because he does not welcome the uncertainty that comes with being unusual. He fears for himself.
He does what he must. He steals dad’s tweezers, locks himself in the bathroom, and plucks the feathers into a bag. When night comes, he goes to the backyard and buries the unmentionable part of himself in the ground. And when the morning comes, the feathers are scattered all over the lawn, but, to his relief, his parents think a racoon had gotten its hands on a chicken in the neighborhood, despite the fact that the feathers look nothing like those from chickens.
He does what he feels, which is fear. He plucks and plucks, but they keep coming back in numbers, such that, what used to be a plucking every month was becoming a chore every week. Every other day. Then every day.
That part of himself, which had him born in an egg and now growing feathers, is patient and graceful. Like the sun, with warmth, sheds the coat off a stranger, that egg-feathery part of himself, with love, urges the man to accept what is his own individual reality.
One morning, as the teenager finally graduates, the young man wakes up and feels a prickly feather budding from his face. It is time, and he succumbs to the reality of his feathery condition. He knows he cannot fit in anymore, and leaves home and civilization, into the wilderness of mountains, where he alone laments his feather-growing self.
Then, meditating upon the egg and the feathers, he comes to a vision. In it, the sky is a muse, and in the vast blueness of its sonorous eyes, there are birds, which fly quite unlike any other bird he had seen. Feverish and confused, he falls asleep, in which the strangeness of those birds keep him awake, even as he is dreaming. His bones ache, and the final metamorphosis is upon the wretched creature.
In the morning, the wind blows from the sun. All is clear to him – the why of eggs and feathers- the lightness and brightness of his being – the ingenuity of forgiveness and love.
He is gratefully whole, for the first time in his life, because of the single realization of what he is.
He is riding the wind.
Why is snow white?
Ripped from Wiki Creative Commons
As strange as it may sound, snow is white because of air.
But snow doesn’t necessarily have to be white. For instance, a ball of snow submerged in liquid nitrogen is would be clear. And if you were to take just one snow flake, which is a crystal, it would appear clear as well.
I am not playing a semantic game of sorts. Yes, snow is white in its most natural state as an accumulation of snow flakes which has collected after a night of winter storm. However, it is not the crystals themselves which gives snow the appearance of being white.
Now someone versed in optical physics might say, “well, snow is white because, as a system of snow crystal matrix, the sum of refraction through the crystals basically creates a diffuse reflection.”
Ripped from wiki creative commons
That statement I would say is as true as if I were to say “Cars move because the engine turns the driveshaft and the axles.” But then what I would have done is to transfer the responsibility of movement from the car to the engine, without getting to the heart of the question, that which begs for the explanation that the chemical combustion process – oxidation of carbon fuel – is moving the engine, driveshaft, differential, axles, wheels, and ultimately, the car.
Of course, snow indeed is white because of the sum refraction of ice crystals. And what gives rise to the individual refraction on the ice crystals?
Well, if you remember the definition of refraction, it is the phenomenon of light “bending” at a surface boundary between two media of differing refractive index – say, between air (1.000277) and water (1.333).
Ripped from wiki creative commons
The above statement about refraction then begs the question “what is a refractive index?” A refractive index is the speed through which light propagates through a given media – like water or air. The higher the refractive index, the slower the speed of light in the medium such that light moves through water at about 1/1.333 of the speed that it does in vacuum (which has an index of 1).
At this point, most people are ever so sorry for having asked the question “why is snow white” because they feel as though they have opened a can of worms. Does the answer really have to be this convoluted and complicated?
No, it really doesn’t. But that’s why I have decided to sit down and spend this Sunday morning explaining this. We’re almost at the end.
The answer to the question is in the nature of the thing we have called snow, and this is why “air” is a critical component of the definition of “snow”, which we perceive to be white when we look at it and crumbles beneath our shoes when we step on it.
The thing that allows snow to be white is the diffuse reflection. And this diffuse reflection is caused by all the millions and billions of refractions. Each of these refraction happens because of the different refractive indexes of ice (water crystals, snow flakes, etc) and air.
Thus we come to explain that snow not just with ice but ice and air.
If this is true, then can we take air out of snow and see it turn clear? Yes, of course!
If you take a wad of snow into your hands and squeeze them, what do you have? A snowball. And let’s say you were.. or rather, remember, in an epic childhood snowball fight.
Your team was losing ground and the enemy was coming up to your snow-fortress. Desperate situations require desperate response. So what did you do with that snowball? You squeezed it some more.
And what did you have in your hands?
It was hard and not so white anymore. It was the inevitable product of the escalation of arms race that was the winter wonderland conflict. And that inevitability was no longer white as snow but clear as the ice. That was to say the white was becoming clear as the snow was turning into ice, which was air escaping and ice crystals binding.
Left: snowball. Right: iceball. Ripped from real world.
Someone might say… well couldn’t you have white snow that doesn’t have air?
Yes, snow can be white without air.
If we were to put a block of snow in a cold vacuum chamber, then you could take all the air out of it, and the snow would still be white. This is because the snow crystals would continue to retain all the refractive properties of the ice crystals which are now separated – not by air (index 1.000277) – but by vacuum with a refractive index of 1.
In the vacuum winter wonderland, the refraction would not have changed much from the real winter wonderland (1.000277 is practically 1). So it is possible to have white snow without air. It’s just that we began talking about snow in its natural environment. Out in the real world, we observe snow to be white, and the reason real world snow appears white is because of the air within.
Snow is white because it has air.
Items wanted: Pitchfork (extra $$ if enchanted)
Price: $9000
So it’s been two years since I’ve escaped the ogre’s lair.
The other day, I was dumpster diving for some old-but-still-composed food, and all I found was this slightly-rancid, unloved piece of salmon. Yeah, I ate it, and it didn’t taste so good and came out like fresh guano of seagulls.
So, as I imagined the insides of my colon from the smell of my hair, I was thinking about those days when the ogre made me break stones for bread and a safe place in the cave. I couldn’t believe myself when the thought occurred to me that it wouldn’t be such a terrible idea to go back and ask the ogre if I can work for him again.
The thought of wanting to go back was such a strange one that I had to retrace my steps. Why did I leave in the first place?
I had to think long and hard because if I didn’t concentrate, the smell, which can only be described as salmon-turned-poop, kept reminding me of my present situation, which had seen its better times. After a long and hard meditation, just yesterday, I remembered: the cave, I left for the sense of adventure.
Yes, I did have a fairly secure place to stay with two-to-three meals a day, but it was the light coming from the cave entrance above and the smell of fresh air from beyond that allured me. So while the ogre was sleeping that one day two years ago, I escaped – leaving all my friends behind. And now, two years later, I am dumpster diving for questionable fish and am sleeping in small holes wherever I find them.
To rekindle that sense of adventure and the reward of exploring the unknown – and to keep myself from smelling like old-food-turned-poop – I am going on a quest. And this being a quest of the witch-hunt kind, I am beginning by finding a pitchfork. I’ll pay 9000 dollars for the pitchfork that will do the job, but I’ll pay over 9000 if the said pitchfork is enchanted.
Now, having said that, I know that some of you are about to get on your metaphorical high horse and ride down the highway of poorly composed emails to tell me “ur an idiot. u cant kill witchs with pitchforks. u need water for that.” followed by the obligatory “lol.”
Don’t you think I, too, would have seen the Wizard of Oz (the version with Judy Garland, which is from where – I am assuming – you have gathered your information) and I, too, would have known about this most basic of all things witch-hunting related?
Well, OK. I didn’t watch the movie. But I have read the book, and I know that’s what happened – water and witch – in the movie.
Here is my rebuttal. I know you know about the witch and the water. And, more importantly, you know that I know about the same. What we don’t know is if that water-kills-witch thing itself is true. I will, however, tell you what I know to be true.
What is true is that you can’t believe everything you watch on a screen. I mean do you really suppose Judy Garland indeed was Dorothy from Kansas and that her Midwest-two-by-four-framed house was so structurally sound as to remain intact the whole night while being flown from the waist of Mississippi River to the Land of Oz – which I assume is somewhere in Canada – while being carried in the air by what was most likely a level 5 tornado that travelled at hundreds of miles per hour? (Kansas to northern Saskatchewan is like 1500 miles. Say the tornado carried the house over night – 8 hours – then its mean speed was 187.5 miles per hour.)
Well, I am no engineer or a meteorologist, but I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it at all.
Sure, like you, I suspended my disbelief – initially – for the benefit of narration, but in the end, I rejected the hypothesis that the story titled “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” is based on a true experience because it simply can not be so, from all the evidences I have mounted against it.
I know. Some of you are going to sit on your porcelain throne and reply on your cellphone that “Wizard of Oz is an allegorical tale of a young girl who finds the truth that it was all a dream and she had been asleep the whole time. And the dream is a fictional narrative created by the author, Lyman Frank Baum, by which the character Dorothy and, subsequently, the reader learns that home is where the heart is” as you dump a deuce.
Well, what you say is true, as is the sound of your produce breaking the surface tension. And just as authentic is the cool sensation of toilet water now collecting like dew on your chronic hemorrhoid, I find the following to be logic to be genuine:
Precisely because the Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an allegorical tale and not a “How I killed the Wicked Witch of the West: Based on a True Event” I have a trouble believing the premise of water-kills-witches.
So where was I…. right, the pitchfork.
Look, I’ve done my research, and yes, I need a pitchfork, and I will pay you TOP dollars for the right pitchfork.
First, the ideal pitch fork must be about 2 meters long (6 feet and 7 inches about). I am about 5 feet and 10 inches tall, and when I set the butt end of the pitchfork on the ground next to me, I want the work end of the pitchfork to be a head taller than me. This is so that when I come to the witch’s building on the hill, the witch will notice the pitchfork first and me second. I want her to know, first, the nature of my business and, only then, from whom the business shall come. Don’t worry. It’s a style thing.
Second, the tips of the fork must be flame resistant because I intend to use it to tip over the caldron, which will obviously be over a open fire in the witch’s courtyard. The witch uses a heavy bronze caldron, so the fork must have enough tensile strength to withstand the pressure I would put on it when I stick it between the bottom of the caldron and the fire immediately below it. I need solid metal… like steel. I don’t know if stainless steel will be alright – I’ve read that carbon fiber is definitely bad – because I don’t know if chromium coating can corrode through the witch’s hearts, which brings me to….
Third, the pitchfork must have THREE LARGE prongs with about 16 inches between them. Spears and two-pronged pitchforks cannot do the job because I found out that witches have… not one, not two, but three hearts! I have go Achilles on her Trojan ass when I throw the pitchfork like a spear through the head-heart, chest-heart, and the stomach-heart. Then, I have learned, she will fall to the ground without spilling any blood. If I miss any one of them, the blood will pool on the ground, and the witch will, apparently, reconstitute herself from the blood and soil. Then she will turn me into a flying monkey (the part about flying monkeys are true, apparently). So I cannot stress enough. It must be THREE pronged.
Otherwise – not a deal breaker – it would be nice if the pitchfork had a broomguard (I think they call it witch-quillon in Europe) just in case, the witch and I get in an all-out, broom-on-fork combat. It would be nice to protect my pitchfork hand because I need it for a lot of other things besides killing the Wild Witch of the West – like wiping my ass, picking my nose, and writing in my journal (not necessarily in that order).
As I have mentioned above, if yours is one of the oldfangled enchanted forks – the pitchfork equivalent of Excalibur – then I am willing to negotiate on the price with you. If you truly have one, it would look astonishingly, authentically Medieval – basically, it would appear useless for anything besides killing something with three hearts. Most likely your immediate ancestry is based somewhere in the original thirteen colonies and from somewhere in Europe before that. You’d know if you have taken care to know the origins of your family name.
The fork would have been given to you by your wise grandfather who gave you the fork and told you to guard it with your life until someone comes looking for it. You asked him, how would I know who that person is? and Grandpa told you that, when the hero appears, you’d just know.
Okay, I am not that dude, but if you have it, I would still like to see it. If it really is an Excali-Fork, I will tell you that it is so. Then I will ask to borrow and return it before your guy has even left on his journey on the way to you. That way you make a little side cash, I kill my Wild Witch of the West, and the hero of prophecy shows up and you’ll have it all nicely cleaned and waiting. You win. I win. The hero wins.
Wait, hang on a minute, might say the rarest of you, who all along has been reading silently and with patience. From your cubicle away from your daily responsibility of looking for NSFW material to share with your coworkers, you came across this. Now you are thinking…
This guy is full of shit. He says he has to dumpster dive to feed himself, which tells me, he’s probably one of these Haight and Ashbury bums always trying to cadge a cigarette or pander for the ever-ethereal change of coins I have stopped carrying since end of college in 2003 because now I pay everything with a credit card.
And you’re also convinced that…
There’s no ogre and there’s no witch. The ogre is just a metaphor for the corporate world from which he ran, and by escape he means he just quit and left work one day. Why… the no-good-sonuvabitch just wasted my time while I read this, thinking I would actually sell the old pitchfork taking up space in the back of my garage.
And before you close your browser and storm off for a cigarette in the staircase, let me – the person posting this ‘items wanted’ – congratulate, salute, applaud… nay, commend you for the powers of observation with which you have come upon the fine conclusion as to who I am and what it is that I am trying to do.
What I will not do, however, is tell you that your time has been spent in vain because, while you have been with me the last two minutes and trying to decipher an alternate message within, I have been telling you the truth, which is that the Wild Witch of the West lives; that I intend to kill her; collect the bounty on her head; and return with your 9000-plus dollars.
The bounty itself is, of course, a lot more than 9000 dollars.
Hey, I may be a hobo, but I am an enterprising one with a doctorate degree in medicine (I still have a california medical license which is valid until 2014). The total value of killing the witch is actually a staggering sum of money. Entertain me for a few more minutes, and I will explain how this works.
America is the land of the free market – the birth nation of Cap-everybody-in-the-knees-italism. The people are free to leverage their capital – which originated with free time – in order to enslave others – or usurp their free time – to the effect that those free people can trade other people’s god-given hours into money, a small portion of which is then paid off as wages and the rest of which goes into vaults of the truly free and the rich. And in America, it’s not just the free people leveraging their time against those of millions. The witches are doing it, too. That is to say, that 1% of witches have gone corporate with their spell casting, caldron brewing, etc.
The head honcho witch of the industry of witchcraft, whom I intend to bring down, is the Wild Witch of the West.
If I bring her down, then the chain of command is broken, and without her, I can go after the individual board members. And when I bring down the board members, the worker witches will all go back to their smalltime ma-and-ma-and-ma witchcraft shops, at which point, the local townsfolk could take care of their own witchcraft problems.
The amount of bounty, I calculate to be equal, or slightly lesser in value, to the economic value of bringing down Witchsmything Westones, Incorporated, which is the inverse sum value of productivity lost by all the local witch-hunting that, ineffectually, goes on every season.
You’ve seen it. Every American townsfolk and cityslicks are incensed by the report of the witchcraft as they are watching with the bottoms of their jaws resting on the dinner table. Just this past year, 2012, the news of this specific witchcraft has been on the TV several times.
Usually, it is a solitary young man, and under a spell, who had carried out the malefic will of the witch, whose face you have never seen and whose name you cannot remember. And because of the actions of this man – and the unseen will of the Company – you find out about the people whose lives have prematurely ended.
By the time the news reaches you, the young man has either killed himself or have been caught and executed on site, as he was resisting arrest with deadly force. And that, precisely, is the pure genius behind the evil design of this variety of corporate witchcraft, the person who carries out the deed and the person who writes the act are separate. I don’t mean to polish the saddle of my enemy’s broom here, but I do have to give credit where it is due. The Wild Witch of the West didn’t fall off no broom into the boardroom of WW, Inc.
I found the following information in an article “The changing paradigm of witchcraft” written by the last great witch hunter, Mr. William Johansson in the Journal of – where else – Witch Hunting (out of print since 1780s).
Back in the old days, you see, it used to be that the news of witchcraft is what ended the witchcraft.
Typically, it all begins when a witch drinks a sip of the caldron brew and turns into an object of desire, which most often is a beautiful damsel in distress on the side of the road where a lonely man walks every night. Good man he is, and he rescues this damsel from the mirage of bad man. From within his arms, she whispers her spell into his ears and poisons his heart. He falls asleep, and she returns to her SOHO (single occupancy house/office) cottage.
The next morning, the young man wakes up. He is having a great day and is doing his own thing, and the next moment, there is blood on his hands. He has fulfilled the witch’s intention, and he realized what the witch had made him do. So he drowns himself, and the news of the crime – the man and his victim – spread widely through the town, whose people understand the goodman would not have willingly kill another on his own.
The townsfolk stick their nostrils up, and the faint traces of the bitter brew still lingers in the air. They cup their ears, and the echoes of wicked spell still reverberate – almost silently – from the trees and rocks. They have recognized the witchcraft, and they went out – with pitchforks and torches – and killed witch for it is her who has committed the murder of two people. So effectively, the old witchcraft was a one-spell-two-lived-killed business.
In “the changing paradigm”, Mr. William Johansson mentions not one, not two, but three case studies of witches that used the press print to repeatedly carry out their spells. Of course, he did not copy the spells into his own manuscript because that would only propagate the spell, but I have done the research and what his article claimed was true.
Before Johansson’s time, such things as news and information travelled through what came out of mouths and what went into ears, and this used to be the only way a witch could cast a spell upon an unsuspecting man.
In all three cases that Johansson reported (all in New England colonies, where newspapers had been circulated before others) the witch had casted her spells not by the sounds murmured but by the words printed in volumes of newspapers. Oh, sure, the whisper of spells was how a real witch did it back then, just like a real farmer used his hand tools. But farmers didn’t stay that way, and neither did the witches.
With the advent of the print press and newspapers fast spreading, Mr. Johansson correctly predicted that, that witches would one day cast a spell, which would then perpetually re-cast itself through the news of it being propagated whereby one spell can kill thousands of people over time. As far as the three cases were concerned, the witches have been caught, put to trial, and killed – you guessed it – by three pronged pitchforks. The fire was a formality. I mean, would you really want to bury a witch’s body next to anyone’s grandparents’?
People took Mr. Johansson very seriously. Because of him, late 18th century saw a massive revival of witch hunting, and the witches faced a certain extinction and had no choice but to go underground, just as they had done during the Renaissance. When Mr. Johansson died from old age, he left a witchcraft-free world.
Afterwards, Nineteenth century and Twentieth century came and left. Witchcraft had been long gone – along with witch hunting, hand tools in barns, and most recently, the newspapers themselves. Now, townsfolk everywhere have forgotten what a witch is and that, to kill a witch, one must first pick up the pitchfork.
Instead, they sit by the dinner table and listen to the spell-casting news of the witchcraft. And while they listen to the newscasters saying how terrible it is that the young man went around killing people, their lonely son, Little Johnny, hears the Whisper of the Wild Witch of the West.
Now the story of Wild Witch of the West, briefly, is that of a smalltime witch from mid-to-late 20th century Colorado, who by happenstance came across Johansson’s report, and realized the idea of newspaper spells could be converted for the rising medium of television and, subsequently, the internet. She moved to silicon valley, and the rest, as they say among the witches, is history.
With the news media doing the brunt of her spell casting, the Wild Witch of the West became the most productive of all the witches. And she really rakes it in when a Little Johnny goes to his school like the good student he is and kills bunch of his friends – yes, they were bullies but that fact is not important – and kills himself.
The cops and TV crews show up at your door – didn’t I say Little Johnny is your lonely child? – and yes, they understand you are devastated but could you, for the good of the overall society, please shed any light as to why it was that Johnny might have done something so unbecoming of a child. You cannot understand, of course. That is how witchcraft works.
I can’t understand, so you tell them, Little Johnny was just a normal kid. He would never hurt an animal….
I really cannot understand how he got his hands on those rifles… oh, god… the guns… he.. it was that game he played every day! Call of Duty! Johnny must have gotten the ideas from Call of Duty. I am sure of it! Oh, my god, I never should have bought him that game no matter how much he begged…
And the TV crew just eats up the interview, and the news – along with your face – goes everywhere.
From all across the US, other parents watch the news, and immediately, they lock up the video games, thinking that would change what is wrong with the world, when, all around the country, the unsupervised but good children are watching stories of other unsupervised but good children who went to school and killed the bullies.
You, see, the witch doesn’t need violent video games. Nor does she need for every child or a man to think that violence is a valid and effective solution to being alone. She just needs one child or one man. And with enough frequency so that the spell is broadcasted through the news and continues on.
And that is, in fact, what happens.
The true victim of this witchcraft are neither the people who are shot nor the perpetuator who had the gun in his hand. Though they have paid the ultimate price, people who have died cannot remain victims because they cannot suffer any more.
Instead, the victims are the ones who must live on, the people whose loved ones who have died. And to a lesser degree, people watching the victims from a distance with remote controllers in their hands.
You, the people who are glued to the Tube, are the victims. And while you are listening to the news, you are not studying, you are not working, and you are not eating dinner as a people and a family. Though your hearts beat with each passing second, there is fear pumping through your veins. That is not living.
The true victim of 21st century corporate witchcraft are you, the people, who do not understand that you – like Little Johnny – are spell bound.
Now… I have digressed too far from what was a plea for the business transactions of 21st century. Let’s get back to the pitchfork and the bounty from which I shall pay you – the pitchfork owner – more than what is your due for letting me borrow your unused, unloved, witch-killing instrument.
With the pitchfork, I intend to kill the Wild Witch of the West, and when I do, the people of America will gain several things – life, peace, and time.
The future lives of Little Johnnies and the lives of bullies and other innocent bystanders, I will give save for free.
Your imminent grief of finding out your child killed bunch of people, or the uncertainty and doubt about whether your child is a killer, I will roll either the grief or uncertainty into a joint and smoke it for free. And you will have peace.
The time lost at home under the spell, I will also give back for free – but only on the condition that it will be dispensed at a nice family dinner every night, where you will talk to your children. Try: how’s school? What did you learn today? Did you have fun? Do you need help? Who is that friend?
I will even return the time you have gained while at work – which I estimate to be about 6 minutes out of your 2000 work-hour year – and for only this, I shall expect something in return, which is approximately 0.005 percent of your total productivity (0.1 hour / 2000 hours).
Considering the annual GDP of $15 trillion dollars, I calculate the value of 6 minutes to be 750 million dollars. Now, of course, if the people of USA gain that much value and I take that sum, then America hasn’t gained anything, you might argue.
But you see, I am not asking you to pay me this 750 million dollars EVERY YEAR. I am asking you to pay me this sum just ONCE. Otherwise and if I don’t kill the Wicked Witch of the West, you are throwing away 750 million dollars every year, which, coincidentally, is the yearly earned income of the Witchsmything Westones, Incorporated – this is a given figure in their SEC-mandated quarterly financial report.
It’s a great deal. America gives me 750 million dollars for 2013, let’s say. And for as long as the Union shall remain together, it is producing 750 million dollars worth of additional goods and services, annually. In eleven years, that’s 7.5 + 0.75 billion dollars, of which 0.75bil would be mine.
I know 7.5bil is not that much considering the $11 trillion dollar deficit, but, you know as well as I do – well, save except for the 0.1% of you – every billion dollar counts.
Anyways, I hope the explanation was helpful in understanding why I need a pitchfork, how I am going to become 7/10th of a billionaire in the next year, and most importantly, how I would pay you.
It’s true that I’ve told you of my business plan – thus losing a significant leverage. Fine, I am willing to negotiate that 9000 figure in magnitude scales (let’s talk how many zeros we’re talking about after 9000).
Think about it. It’s a win-win-win. You win because you get 9000+ dollars. I win because I am a instant 0.7billionaire minus your share. America wins because it will save 7.5 billion dollars over the next 11 years.
Well, ok, the witches lose, but you know the money has to come from somewhere. I say better them than anybody else. They have golden parachutes within the shafts of their Escalade-style brooms anyways. It’s in their contracts.
The Wild Witch, of course, has no escape from the consequence of her wicked life-mongering, for I am coming. With your pitchfork.
You can txt me 201-252-6525. And no, I will not trade sexual favors for 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 or 10-plus pronged pitchforks. In fact, I will not trade sexual favors for anything. Unless you are Charlize Theron, have the pitchfork I need, do not need the money, and for some reasons you cannot find sex despite your looks. Even then, nevermind.
There’s nothing to see here. Go back to your homes. Turn off your TV. Talk to your children. Better yet go to the library with your children. Read a damn book.
Aram Harijan 