Well, if you they thought that was explosive, wait’ll they get a load of Parkergate!

That’s right … Parkergate; just like Wienergate but this time involving a local Toronto politician, John Parker. Well, just like Wienergate, except there was no (visibly) erect penis involved, just the tweet that Parker was surrounded by “hot chicks” while attending a recent plaque unveiling ceremony. Here’s the disgustingly full transcript (you might want to have your kids to leave the room now):

Delighted and honoured to help unveil eight new Toronto heritage plaques and meet hot chicks in the bargain. I love my job.

Can you believe that shit? “Hot chicks”?! What the fuckety fuck?!

The outrage was immediate and palpable. Here’s just a small sampling of the ensuing backlash:

The tweet was erased despite his initial refusal to apologize. Parker, known for his light-hearted tweets, blamed the media for making city hall a place where fun won’t be tolerated.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/06/21/john-parker-hot-chicks-tweet548.html

The insolence!

Although the event went off without a hitch, the councillor made waves later in the day when he expressed his view of the overall event on the popular social networking tool Twitter.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/06/20/toronto-politician-tweets.html

The gall!

Pulled out of a meeting at his City Hall office, Parker said the focus should be on the eight plaques unveiled Monday to honour Torontonians, not something he posted on Twitter.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/06/20/councillor-tweets-about–hot-chicks

Bastard!

Heritage Toronto communications director Rebecca Carson said, with a laugh, that she believed she was one of the “hot chicks” in question. She said Heritage executive director Karen Carter might have been another.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1011996–heritage-employee-surprised-by-councillor-s-hot-chicks-tweet

Sickening!

Parker (Ward 26, Don Valley West) said the constituents who have contacted him about the flap have been supportive.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1012552–parker-apologizes-for-offending-with-hot-chicks-tweet

Go back to Nazi Germany!

The Don Valley West councillor noted the number of people following his Twitter account has gone up in the wake of the story.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/06/21/councillor-apologizes-for-hot-chicks-tweet

Scum-sucking troglodyte!

When does a Tweet cross the line? When it involves “hot chicks” and a city councillor.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/rob-ford-asks-parker-to-apologize-for-tweet/article2068241/

Arrrrrggggh!!!!! *running out of the room screaming*

Well, thankfully our mayor stood up and took offense right away, calling on Parker to apologize. I couldn’t actually find anyone else that was publicly offended but that’s probably because of the extreme trauma that’s been inflicted on them. I also couldn’t find a reference to who the “hot chicks” were, but obviously…

…ahhh, I can’t do this anymore. It’s soooooooo stupid! The reason I couldn’t find the offended parties is because, for all intents and purposes, they don’t exist. The various women interviewed for articles expressed, at most, surprise, but not much else. Seriously, even if they took offense, who among them would step forward to positively identify themselves as the “hot chicks” in that tweet? Only Rob Ford, it seems. And since he wasn’t there, I can only assume he took exception to not being included in that group. Well, sorry, Rob … maybe if you manicured your bikini line now and again.

John sums this up best: “I think I’ll be aware of the hazards of slow news days.”

Yup.

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Okay?

Good.

So let’s talk about this concept of the straight and narrow, shall we?

What a load. Seriously. They (I’ll explain who they are below), had a chance to convince me that being a law-abiding, tax-paying, run-of-the-mill citizen is what’s best. What they ended up doing instead is convincing me that the law has nothing to do with justice, rules and morality are unrelated, and that anyone trying to convince you otherwise is either hopelessly ignorant or in on the racket.

The racket is, of course, the money game, extending all the way down from the corporations, through their (sometimes our) subservient government, and onto us minions, all upheld with thinly veiled lies and hypocrisy. Oh, and police, operating under a ridiculously precedent-laden law.

“Hang on just a second!,” you might say, “weren’t you poking fun at the G20 protesters for standing up against exactly this?!”

Nope. It wasn’t the message I had a problem with, it was the method. Breaking a few windows and spray painting illegible slogans is idiotic. Blocking the streets to prevent fellow citizens from using them is childish. And if you read a newspaper, or have half a brain, you’ll note that Starbucks and the major banks et al. suffered not one iota. Big surprise!

But I’ve done my fair share of G20 railing myself, plenty around this blog to back me up on that.

And the G20, really, is a perfect example of corporate dominion over government. All Torontonians are acutely aware of the ridiculous security measures the G20 were provided with during that eventful weekend, something that would never be extended to individual heads of state. When the Queen comes to visit people can run up to her and shake her hand for heaven’s sake! And the G20 isn’t a governmental body, or a policy body, or anything of the sort. It’s 100% about money. It’s about financial stability – how to make life comfortable for those for whom life is already too comfortable.

To be fair, this isn’t anything new. I mean, how long have bankers, financial analysts, and all these overfed con men (the reason markets require confidence to operate), been telling us to be frugal with our money in order to make modest gains through savings or measly investment accounts. Right … and where exactly are they urging us to save / invest our money? Their banks, credit unions, investments funds, and so on. Shocker, that one. And I wonder if these same people would ever put their money where their mouths are. You know, be satisfied with a 0.01% compound rate with a $50 monthly fee for the privilege.

And, really, have a stroll down to King and Bay downtown one day and have a look around. I dare you to argue that frugality and savings and all the other bullshit we’re still being shovelled built all that.

Like I said, you either have to be ignorant or in on the racket.

The concept of profit is another one that’s deeply flawed. The bank / business establishment would have you believe that profits are the end-all be-all. After all, don’t they constantly demand profits each and every quarter? That’s kinda like you walking into your boss’ office every three months and demanding a twenty-percent raise (for doing nothing, I should add). Your boss would probably laugh at you, right? Yet his / her boss expects exactly this – at least. So, every quarter, the people at the top make more and more while you get to wait a whole year before finding out that you have to “tighten your belt” because profits are down. Not that the company is losing money, let’s be clear – in that case you’d be laid off. They’re just not making as much as they’d like to, and since their ravenous mouths must be fed first (because they’ve obviously done the most to earn it), it comes out of your paycheque.

Yup, profit is a set of scales. If someone has a lot, someone else must necessarily have little. Or the government prints more money, thereby devaluing it and starting massive inflation. That’s no good for anyone so the status quo stays. And if it was just a little profit, as the same two-faced bankers / investors / financiers tell us to expect, it wouldn’t really be a big deal; those who lose in order for others to gain wouldn’t lose that much. But we all know that it’s never enough – they’ll take your fingernails if they think they can get two pennies for them.

And they’re insidious about it too.

Have you tried to rent a hotel room in, say, the last thirty years or so without a credit card? Damn near impossible. Last time I tried, it went a little something like this:

“Why do I need a credit card to rent a hotel room?”

“We need to make an imprint just in case there are damages or extra charges.”

“So you’d arbitrarily charge any amount on the card? What if my limit is two-thousand and I do four grand in damages?”

“We’d rather you didn’t, sir.”

“So would I, but I’m trying to make a point here.”

“No, we would only go up to $500. Our insurance would have to cover the rest.”

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Okay, here you go, five-hundred in crispy new bills. You can hold on to this deposit and I’ll pick it up tomorrow once you say the room’s kosher.”

“Sorry, sir, we need a credit card imprint.”

“But I’m offering you legal tender here, up to the limit that you just stated. Money up front and no extra processing fees for you. Better than going through the credit card company if I wreck the place, so what’s the problem?”

“Sorry but that’s our policy.”

End of conversation. You must do business with Visa or Mastercard or whoever if you want to stay in a hotel.

And it’s the same with the government.

My sister recently got a traffic ticket, as we all do from time to time. Payment instructions for credit cards only. No cheques, no cash. No shit. Some government agencies no longer accept legal tender as payment. In other words, government won’t accept government-issued money. You must do business with a credit card company, or a bank (not a government entity last time I checked!), yet you can’t pay using a form of payment issued by the payee.

And this wouldn’t be particularly bothersome to me except for the outrageous fees that are foisted on us by these institutions. In this regard, any fees are outrageous. If we want a job, if we want to conduct affairs with the government, if we want to just live our lives, we are beholden to unrelated private enterprise and are charged for doing so. In other words, we are forced to give up our money to private interests by law.

Mind you, that doesn’t stop the government from pulling its own tricks in lock-step. Most Ontarians have recently started enjoying the new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), combined from the previous Goods and Services Tax (GST) and a federal tax. For a lot of things this hasn’t meant much change, but new items were introduced for taxation so that the government could misappropriate even more of our money. We’re now required to pay 13% on funerals, for example – assholes won’t even let you die in peace.

Then there’s the Eco Fee that was introduced along with the new tax, and it shows just what a travesty all of this is. No level of government seems to know exactly how much stores should be charging, but that didn’t stop them from passing the law anyway (and then temporarily rescinding it after discovering that they didn’t really know how their own fucking law worked!). Had we been overpaid, we would of course be required to return the money. Giant private enterprise, of course, is under no such similar obligation.

Stores happily started to charge anywhere from a buck to five dollars on everything that might fall under the “hazardous waste” category, the excuse being that the fee would be used in the safe disposal and recycling of said hazardous waste. But you have to bring the waste to a drop-off site yourself. Okay. And what the fuck are you bringing back anyways? The fee covers stuff like dishwashing soap and paints and other consumable stuff – things you use. The soap goes down the drain, the paint goes on the wall. What you’re bringing back are empty recyclable containers. So, you get to pay for recycling something that you have to bring back that, really, you’re not bringing back because you’ve used it up.

And the HST is applied on top of the fee! It’s called a fee so they can put a tax on it since it’s still illegal to tax a tax – at least for now.

I know, I’m already bald from all the hair-pulling.

And this, this is what I get for forking over half my paycheque to the government?! All these taxes that we’re all paying into because, supposedly, they’re being used for our benefit? Yeah, I’ve had some experience with these so-called “benefits”, I take the ancient transit system every day that I support through both orifices, I ride my bike on the pot-holed roads that I also pay for, and I walk on the broken sidewalks that come out of my pockets. And you know what? I call bullshit. They’re fucking lying to us and stealing from us – it’s no more complicated than that.

This is why people who say “there are no certainties in life but death and taxes” deserve to be slugged. They’ve basically equated a natural process that’s an actual certainty to something completely artificial and potentially escapable. And these people usually say it with a smile and a shrug, urging you to accept their wonderfully lackadaisical take on the rape we’re all experiencing. They’re either aggravatingly ignorant or in on the racket.

People who tell me that I need to express myself at the ballot box get a wallop as well. There is not a single party out there that doesn’t perpetuate this shit. PC, Liberal, NDP, doesn’t matter. I’ve voted for all of them and they’re all assholes once they get into power. For fuck’s sake, it’s only been four years, are people’s memories that short? They’re all crooks!

And to all the people who think you can make a difference with your dollar – have you not been paying attention? Look, let’s say you buy at the local mom ‘n pop. Okay, so there’s a little community benefit, true. But – you pay taxes. They pay taxes. You buy brand-name products, profits of which go right up to the behemoth corporations in control. What? You only buy hand-made? And prithee tell, where did the raw materials for those hand-made products come from? There are only a handful of things, usually agricultural, that you can buy that are partially outside of the system of corporate control, and Monsanto is trying to make sure you get fucked on those too – taxes not included. Basically, you’re simply shuffling around pieces of paper, allowing mom and pop to pay rent, stay afloat, exist for another month. In the grand scheme of things, you might as well be at Walmart buying a $7 Coke (taxes and fees included) with your credit card.

Don’t even get me started about Apple.

Welcome to the corporate dystopia of 2010 – came a bit sooner than I thought.

But there is hope.

The one thing that I find laughable in the G20 protesters’ arguments is the thought that there are a handful of megalomaniacal men sitting at the top of the food chain pulling all the strings and reaping all the benefits. Megalomaniacs exist by the thousands if not millions – we’ve all probably met one or two. You know, God’s gift to this earth, can do no wrong, etc.

It’s clear that these people won’t stand to be anything less than number-one asshole, and since there are so many of them, it’s a constant climb over the bodies of predecessors. Yesterday’s top dog is today’s dog food. So while I’m certain that megalomaniacs exist at high positions, they tend to do so only for brief periods. That alone could help to explain why the need for quick profits is so prevalent – they know their time is limited so they’d better scrounge up as much as they can. As the world’s population increases, this will only become more tumultuous; law of averages.

So I’m generally unconcerned about any singular overarching regime controlling the globe. Even if we ended up with one world corporation / government, there’d be too much infighting to make it the Orwellian 1984 that so many people fear. Besides, such broad-ranging, active surveillance requires that 50% of the population is being watched while the other 50% watches. After all, those not being watched are potential wrenches in the machinery – the criminals, saboteurs, and everything else that Big Brother can’t abide. Who’s left to run things? Nah, the numbers just don’t work.

The system we’re involved in, as I mentioned, requires confidence. It’s a con, a ruse – make-believe. Money is a mere representation. There used to be a time when a dollar bill was a promissory note; you could go to the central bank and exchange it for a dollar’s worth of gold. Now it’s merely a concept. If you don’t believe it’s worth a dollar’s worth of goods, services, or whatever you plan to exchange it for – it’s not! You sure as hell can’t exchange it for gold at any bank. Only coins, in fact, have intrinsic value, and they’re slowly being phased out. Paper money is probably next.

It’s the same with law. Law was at one time a standardized representation of justice; you kill someone, you get punished. It used to make sense. However, because the law needs to apply to everyone equally, every idiotic judgement got thrown into the books as precedent. If a judge ruled a specific way, a future judge is duty-bound to rule the same way; the law must not only be fair but must be seen to be fair — sure you’ve heard that one. That’s why people are more and more frequently getting off on technicalities and precedent. The hubris of the legal system and its judges specifically is, ultimately, the instrument of its own demise.

While these systems are imploding on themselves, it’s incumbent on us to lose our fear of them. And maybe pick up some useful trades while we’re at it. Big Brother isn’t watching. Those cameras aren’t for our safety or protection. The police are enforcing law, not justice. Money is a suggestion, credit cards are an insult, and government is a subsidiary.

Look, I’m not gonna tell you to break the law. The law insists that I don’t. But when you start to look at the whole ball of wax for what it is, you start to get the idea that maybe a little side-stepping is in order. That’ll be my excuse when I’m before the courts. :)

Get off the straight and narrow if you want to live as anything more than a subservient stooge. Do it to a lesser degree for the benefit of your kids. Oh, the lofty will try to convince you of how wrong you are for doing so (usually while doing exactly the same thing), but don’t let their crap fly unless you’re planning to let it hit the fan. As the bard once said, “don’t believe the hype!”

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It’s so nice to have the pleasure of your company for another instalment of the Guide. I do hope that life has treated you kindly and that during the odd times when it hasn’t that you’ve had some opportunities to practice being practical. And, more importantly, that that practice has brought you some satisfaction.

In this edition I’d like to pull back from street level and look at a couple of larger forms of urban insolence: government and transit. It’s certainly not necessary to go into any sort of detail; insolence comes in many forms from both sides at this level, from new taxes to higher bus fares, and these are not necessarily local or even urban issues. In fact, as I hope you’ll find, the topics covered here have broader applications.

However, for the practical gentleman this poses a profound conundrum: does one take up arms and revolt against increasingly unjust overlords at great risk to oneself and one’s family, or does one resort to enjoyable but much less effective flaming paper bags (with surprise) left on doorsteps?

Alas, neither option seems agreeable, does it? On the one hand we must choose between radical criminal action, on the other classically amusing but ultimately ineffectual pranks. What’s the practical gentleman to do?

A great deal of wisdom has been scratched onto the walls of prisons as regards these matters, but please allow me to at least get the ball rolling:

The Continental

When one can’t be direct but wishes to nonetheless improve a situation, one must think outside the box. If more money is involuntarily leaving our pocket, more must come in to replenish it. It’s a simple balancing act. Thus, the practical gentleman takes his case directly to the people, bypassing the tight-fisted upper echelons altogether.

In this approach, we simply ask passersby to donate for charity, and I must stress strongly that this is not the same as asking for hand-outs. That would be most ungentlemanly and besides, this is an investment. To convince our fellows of this, however, we are required to present our case with a little more flair. Some call this marketing.

We simply invest in a nice colour print-out of the charity we’re representing, a nice binder to put it on the cover of, and a few hundred charitable donation “receipts” to give to anyone who requests them, to go in said binder. And a pen :) The charity is of course you, only jazzed up a bit; marketed better. Try some interesting twists on your name, combine it with a slogan, borrow a nice logo, but keep it all simple. For example, “The Patrick Fund – Fighting poverty at hom e and abroad”. The name must always be entirely truthful and you should always have a full explanation at the ready. In this case, it is a fund that is in my name and to be used to fight poverty in my home, possibly also to fight that woman I don’t much care for. With minor typographical errors.

For the logo, simply take an existing one from anything around you (using a cell phone camera, for example), and cut off everything but a quarter of the image. For simpler logos, like the Nike swoosh, you may have to use a half of the photo. Or, if cutting doesn’t produce satisfactory results, simply flip the image around horizontally or vertically. The McDonald’s golden arches easily become William’s golden catch basin — for money!

But, most importantly, you must add a prominent outline of the African continent on the logo (hence, “The Continental”). This lets people know you like geography. If you don’t, maybe now’s the time you gave it another try! People aren’t going to give their money to just any old schmuck on the street. Let them know how worldly you are, what a great investment you’ll be, why they should believe. Africa, the symbol of hope.

In this way you don’t hide behind any small print and your honesty and commitment to being upfront will shine through. The donations will come pouring in! At the end of the day you can go home satisfied that your fellow human beings have helped you because of a shared sense of civility. Take that, government!

The Convenient

Did you know that local businesses often provide instant financial support to anyone who strolls in through their front doors? It’s true. In most convenience stores, for example, often placed clearly and visibly in front of the cash register is the leave-a-penny take-a-penny bowl. Most store owners don’t contribute to it so they have no say in how it’s apportioned; it’s a social support system by the people, for the people. Including you.

Penny contributions can be made when pennies are abundant in your life. When they’re scarce, you can of course take. But be sure to do so a penny at a time, thus affording someone else the opportunity to take every alternate penny if they wish. A two-second wait period is customary unless no one else is in front of the counter with you.

The only drawback of the take-a-penny system is that some stores carry larger caches than others. I suggest carrying a strong bag (the pennies will get heavy!) and visiting as many shops as you can. Remember, those pennies already belong to you so you’re not required to make idle chit-chat with the shopkeeper. If they give you any trouble, simply threaten to call police. If this is not your style, you may instead opt to dress provocatively. Ladies will have an advantage over the gentlemen here, I’m afraid. Sorry fellas, we can’t win ‘em all.

The Economic

Many economic pundits have been putting forth the idea that being environmentally conscious and being profitable don’t necessarily have to be exclusive of each other. In fact, an amazing array of novel ideas is beginning to surface during these difficult financial times, many of them designed to produce environmental benefits, and many of those turning in tidy profits for anyone willing to put in some effort. The concept of carbon credits, for example, is ingenious but it hasn’t quite caught on yet. The problem is simply a dearth of mass adoption. This means that the market is still very much wide open … for anyone willing to roll up their sleeves and work for it.

Honest rewards for honest labour.

The further upshot of this is that the practical gentleman may rest well at night knowing that he’s earning an income from a noble pursuit, its influence continuing well into the future. The only requirement is a nice smile and a number of carbon credit certificates. There is no currently accepted standard for these – be creative, but keep the initial batch inexpensive. The idea is not to lose money here :)

Now the hard part: we go door to door selling carbon credits. There’s no trick here, you just have to shake hands, sip tea, and sell the hell outta that carbon!

Eventually, you may want to to invest in some fancy paper certificates — set yourself apart from the competition. Just work the cost into the price of the credits.

You can promise clients that each carbon credit they buy will be used to directly sequester a certain amount of green (in your pocket), ‘n house gasses. Not sure exactly what those gasses would be, but probably natural (this is a good, light-hearted jest to open the conversation with – and be sure to hug the potential client).

Of course, you must guarantee each and every certificate. Should the client ever wish to redeem it, you must exchange the credit for the appropriate amount of carbon. Although it’s difficult to get pure carbon, rough carbon (mixed with impurities) may be produced simply by burning something to ashes. This is your contractual obligation so you must honour the request within a reasonable time frame.

One of the biggest arguments against buying credits in this way is that (it is claimed) they are really used to prevent the environmental effects of burning stuff. Haha! What nuthouse did that escape from? If you buy a carbon credit, you should be able to exchange it for carbon. Who’s going to pay for not getting something? When the customer understands that this certificate is worth something, then it becomes a lot more valuable. Treat each buyer like the intelligent human being they are; logic will always wins the day ;)

You’ll have to do some research into going carbon credit prices but, since you probably won’t have any immediate competition in your neighbourhood, you may just be able to set whatever price you want. Just be sure not to price yourself out of the market! :D

I hope, dear reader, these points will help you through the tough times. They were inspired by a certain form of insolence, but their application turns out to be much broader. If the challenge was to think outside the box, hopefully that has been achieved. Certainly they are merely a spot from which to cast off, but hopefully they’ll chart a course to some pleasant tropical island with nice beaches, nice people, and nice drinks with little umbrellas in them. Even Mexico might be a nice escape.

Wishing you a bon voyage!

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