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Kicking against the pricks...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 2307
It's easier to ignore, why fight it?
It's the way things are. Learn to live with it.
You're right, but what are you going to do about it?
We've surrounded ourselves with pricks. We've planted ourselves a rosebush and made our bed amongst the thorns, best plan: don't roll around.
You can fight, you won't get anywhere.
You have to fight, it's your obligation, your responsibility. If you don't fight, the pricks will multiply, they will take even more and greater liberties with your time and finances. Every fight, win or lose, is a victory.
By pricks I mean the City. I mean the Government. I mean the Corporations and Companies who waste our time on hold, in line, who rob us blind with service charges, with system access fees, with delivery fees. I mean the Banks who charge us to handle our money, charge us for everything, who have created artificial inflation and economies by printing and lending even more artificial money, then expecting us to bail them out when projected earnings fall short....
Corporations when dealing with other corporations have what are called "Service Level Agreements" - SLA's; wherin companies that don't honor their contracts within agreed response times to agreed standards are subject to financial penalties. Send the companies you deal with a Service Level Agreement outlining what you expect from them. Enclose it with your first bill payment, or send it via registered letter. Or don't send it - The contract they hold you to is implicit, not signed, by accepting their product it is presumed that you accept their standards and levels of service. Your own contract can be implicit as well, by accepting you as a customer make them accept your standards and expectations. But know what your standards and expectations are, write them down, be clear, know when they have been violated.
When necessary, make the businesses you deal with aware of your own personal SLA. If they have failed to live up to it, send them bills for your time and expenses. Charge them interest and service fees on unpaid balances. If they continue to resist, send the bills to collection agencies with adjustments for the commission the collection agency will charge. Don't take a lawyers word that you don't have a case, lawyers have been taught to "think" inside the system; their morality is for sale, realize that the jury you help select will not be comprised of lawyers, it will be comprised of people as irate, fed up, and pissed off as yourself. Share your pain, They will understand. Make them understand that their decision will be the first of many steps towards real change.
Deal with people, not companies. By this I mean find local businesses that will value your patronage. Consider the time you spend in line at a large supermarket to save possibly $5 on groceries, then think of the pleasure you'd take in bringing your business to a smaller enterprise that didn't keep you waiting in line and valued your business. Create value and diversity in your neighborhood, avoid the big box marts, the mega stores and shopping malls like the plague. Think of the diversity and choice that is lost as the smaller businesses give way to make room for the larger ones. And remember that the lower prices are offered by paying lower wages, skimping on benefits, shortened training and no enrichment programs. Their lower prices are only ever a temporary incentive to squash the smaller businesses; when all competition is gone you will be paying the highest price possible.
It's your responsibility.
2 Cars. I'll take the bus.....
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2414
I have 2 cars. The first, an blue 80's Chrysler Daytona. A friend gave it to me about 4 years ago, it's been a good car, I've put around 80, 000 Km on it with a minimum of maintenance, 2 alternators, a tune up, runs great. But the doors have stopped opening, or to be more precise, closing, when you open them they fall down off the hinges, and so we keep them closed and hop in through the windows. Apparently this is a common thing for this car. "It's Cool" I tell the kids, but I don't think they believe me. What parent is an authority on "cool"? And the electric's are a bit funny, and so the windows don't always close when you're inside and the speedometer doesn't always work, but these are small things, it's a good car, it runs great. A couple of months ago, though, it got a flat, and so I parked it in the driveway, it's been filling with snow and leaves ever since.
TO fill in the gap a friend gave me her old car, a black 90's Volkswagon Jetta, she had just bought a new car, "this car", she warns me, "could die at any moment", and so forwarned gives me the keys. And I've been driving instead, flagrantly disloyal to the blue car, the children liking the novelty of getting in through the doors, the boy had been getting self-conscious of jumping in through the windows of the old car when I picked him up from school (he wasn't buying my arguments about how this was "Character building", he saw it as proof instead of my lack of worldly success). And he's sort of proud that I've got this new car, this Volksagon, his mom has one too, so I must be coming along in the world.
At first the black car sort of runs OK, but not really, it over-revs, my door and the windows stop working as soon as I take possession, the engine smokes as if it's on fire whenever I stop for a red light or get stuck in traffic. But it's better than nothing. Soon, however, the cars fate is sealed, the transmission dies, there is no prospect of affording another, it's beyond repair, time for me to call the Kidney foundation, or that number I found tucked under the windscreen - 'Cars Towed by Vince'...."how could they tell?" I wonder.....
I'm pissed off. I've just filled it with gas, with antifreeze, I checked the transmission fluid, but it's always the way.
I have 2 cars, but I'll be taking the bus.
68 Seconds
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 1904
"68 Seconds" he tells me..."If you can just sustain the thought, the intention of wealth, for 68 seconds then it will happen".
He's been talking to someone famous who channels aliens.
"28 seconds is the equivilent of working 2000 hours. But the growth is exponential, hold the thought, the gratitude for 68 seconds and it will happen. Think as if it's already yours.....".
I've tried it. 68 seconds is too long.
The Pimplemaker
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 2248
It's night and I'm in front of one of those imaginary family restaurants in an imaginary high street somewhere in North Edmonton. I miss this area, the windows into the restaurant are plastered with theatre posters, coming carnivals and events, there's an ice cream poster on the door - "The Pimple Maker" - it's a big single scoop of Ice Cream with a large hunk of chocolate on top, the chocolate has been broken open to reveal a sweet candy mass dripping out onto the ice cream.
Then I'm talking to Milan, apologizing for never visiting him, I'm trapped in suburbia - "So far into South Edmonton" I complain "That I might as well be living in Calgary....."
The dream changes. I'm in a long hallway, generic, patterned carpet, lighting like they have in hotels. I've done well, gambling, made a few million, and as I'm leaving the casino a big black guy, casino goon, comes to stop me. He reaches for his gun but I've got the drop on him, I've taken the precaution of arranging for a third arm, a magicians dummy hand and sleeve, to hang down on my right side with it's hand stuffed with paper, thousand dollar notes on the inside and outside to make it look like money. My free hand is inside my jacket, I reach up and aim a large semi-automatic at the thug, he continues to go for his piece and so I shoot him. I keep walking out of the casino, I see another guy who owes me money, he's coming for me as well, I twist his arm and force him to his knees, gun at his temple, "Do it" he's telling me, I don't want to, he owes me money, 30 something, bland face with clear blue eyes looking back at me "Do it!", pushing his head against the muzzle of the gun....
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